Five questions from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
charlottecooper
Nov. 10th, 2006 10:43 amsusanstinson1. What is it that appeals to you about the being a writer?
I have a strong sense of vocation about writing fiction and poetry. I've done it since I was very young (under ten), and doing it well -- wrestling through problems, not slacking, staying with it when it's hard (including when external circumstances make it hard, with all sorts of breaks for pleasure and distraction and other priorities and general human messiness) -- gives me experiences of excitement, satisfaction, release, completeness and appetite for the next project. It's even better than scratching an itch, and it's powerful. For the purposes of this book, for instance, I love needing to look at spiders and really note their behavior when they show up around me (I feel guilty when I ignore them), and I both love and dread reading intense old Calvinist theology. One thing I love about that is how the biggest questions in life -- how to think about death, how to make choices (and whether that's possible and what the gradations of will are), how to form judgments, the role of the emotions -- are given this enormous centrality and weight, fitting in a scheme of the sacred that is both highly familiar to me and utterly dangerous. So that's about writing in that it's a discipline for going into things that scare me and making something of them, always with the insistence on the importance of stained linen shifts and venison pie and bee balm -- on the way things smell and taste and the force and mystery of every day life. I mean, right now, I've got my hands in records of lives and thinking that are deeply esteemed and honored in some circles and highly scorned in others, and I can only make sense of this if I can make the sweet human sloppiness of it all live in a convincing way.
In language, which is a plastic squeezy bear full of honey, so hard to get out if it's crystalized. On paper. Oh, and then to be read, which I have such hunger for, for my fiction, to be deeply, attentively read, for all the years I pour into those books, this book, to offer something that people really want and need, and are able to find, well, I want that. I keep wanting it, and when it happens, I want it to happen more.
2. If you were a man, what kind of a man do you think you would be?
It's kind of unlikely, but this question is making me picture myself as an ex-football (American football) player, a linebacker, you know, like John Goodman or Emmitt Smith (whom I'm loving on Dancing with the Stars) or my grandfather. Big and big-bellied, amiable, with surprising delicacy and graceful, and lots of force that is so obvious to everyone that I almost never need to use it, except in entertaining pasttimes or in getting physical work done, for which I'm willing to put enormous effort in if needed. I'd be burly and bookish, maybe a little prudish, more sentimental than I am now, trained to be good with tools, and appreciative of the other kinds of skills and bodies that there are in the world. I'd use an electric shaver, and, although I'd be embarrassed to admit it, Old Spice aftershave.
3. How do you know when someone loves you?
Oh, how do you? There are definitely things that you can see in people's faces, shifts of feelings at key moments that are generous and unexpected or just show a strong response to something that I wouldn't have thought would matter to them, and that's when I understand that they care so much about it because it matters to me. That's one thing. And, for me, a lot of love is so unspectacular, undramatic, just a really daily (or weekly or whatever) kind of coming through, of working to be present, of being willing to really see me and, I don't know, of showing up with kale or a critique or attention, and doing it even when it's hard -- and when everybody is lazy or mean or self obsessed or thoughtless, of trying again, even though it's embarrassing, really trying and relenting when you can. Being irreverent and appreciative, both, and not faking much. Oh, persistence. It's hard to say how I really know it, and sometimes I feel myself neglecting the most bedrock loves in my life for new, shiny infatuations, and I like working to be open to new possibilities, but, oh, there's this thing Saul Bellow (yeah, him), I think it was, called potato love -- lumpy and dirt-specked and right there under the cabinet -- that gets me through the day.
4. What do you think of Patti Smith?
Sadly, I know very little about Patti Smith, and I don't know her work. I've heard a story about her and the playwright Sam Shephard shoving a typewriter back and forth across a table in a tiny apartment in New York City, writing a play, probably in the seventies, and that's always seemed like a nearly impossible and thrilling thing to do, especially because after that they got to, you know, put on a show! The famous photo of her in a white shirt, jacket over her shoulder -- I was pulled to that, but (probably, in part, because of snobby, a little older hip people I knew who loved her) she always seemed too cool and too sophisticated for me, like those people who've been known to glance my way at parties or literary events and than quickly look elsewhere, utterly uninterested. I always suspected that it might be like that with me and Patti Smith, so I've never given her work a chance, even though![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sallybelle told me not long ago that she loves her, and jasonelvis wrote something great about a Patti Smith concert a while back.
5. At what occasion did you last have to stifle a giggle?
I was giggling throughout when I first read these questions -- they are so good, it kind of delighted me -- and I giggle a lot. I also stifle giggles a fair amount, I know, but I'm not coming up with the last time I did that. If it comes to me, I'll write it up.
If you'd like to be questioned, let me know. It may take me a while to come up with them, and I'm not able to do too many people -- I'm thinking about five.
I have a strong sense of vocation about writing fiction and poetry. I've done it since I was very young (under ten), and doing it well -- wrestling through problems, not slacking, staying with it when it's hard (including when external circumstances make it hard, with all sorts of breaks for pleasure and distraction and other priorities and general human messiness) -- gives me experiences of excitement, satisfaction, release, completeness and appetite for the next project. It's even better than scratching an itch, and it's powerful. For the purposes of this book, for instance, I love needing to look at spiders and really note their behavior when they show up around me (I feel guilty when I ignore them), and I both love and dread reading intense old Calvinist theology. One thing I love about that is how the biggest questions in life -- how to think about death, how to make choices (and whether that's possible and what the gradations of will are), how to form judgments, the role of the emotions -- are given this enormous centrality and weight, fitting in a scheme of the sacred that is both highly familiar to me and utterly dangerous. So that's about writing in that it's a discipline for going into things that scare me and making something of them, always with the insistence on the importance of stained linen shifts and venison pie and bee balm -- on the way things smell and taste and the force and mystery of every day life. I mean, right now, I've got my hands in records of lives and thinking that are deeply esteemed and honored in some circles and highly scorned in others, and I can only make sense of this if I can make the sweet human sloppiness of it all live in a convincing way.
In language, which is a plastic squeezy bear full of honey, so hard to get out if it's crystalized. On paper. Oh, and then to be read, which I have such hunger for, for my fiction, to be deeply, attentively read, for all the years I pour into those books, this book, to offer something that people really want and need, and are able to find, well, I want that. I keep wanting it, and when it happens, I want it to happen more.
2. If you were a man, what kind of a man do you think you would be?
It's kind of unlikely, but this question is making me picture myself as an ex-football (American football) player, a linebacker, you know, like John Goodman or Emmitt Smith (whom I'm loving on Dancing with the Stars) or my grandfather. Big and big-bellied, amiable, with surprising delicacy and graceful, and lots of force that is so obvious to everyone that I almost never need to use it, except in entertaining pasttimes or in getting physical work done, for which I'm willing to put enormous effort in if needed. I'd be burly and bookish, maybe a little prudish, more sentimental than I am now, trained to be good with tools, and appreciative of the other kinds of skills and bodies that there are in the world. I'd use an electric shaver, and, although I'd be embarrassed to admit it, Old Spice aftershave.
3. How do you know when someone loves you?
Oh, how do you? There are definitely things that you can see in people's faces, shifts of feelings at key moments that are generous and unexpected or just show a strong response to something that I wouldn't have thought would matter to them, and that's when I understand that they care so much about it because it matters to me. That's one thing. And, for me, a lot of love is so unspectacular, undramatic, just a really daily (or weekly or whatever) kind of coming through, of working to be present, of being willing to really see me and, I don't know, of showing up with kale or a critique or attention, and doing it even when it's hard -- and when everybody is lazy or mean or self obsessed or thoughtless, of trying again, even though it's embarrassing, really trying and relenting when you can. Being irreverent and appreciative, both, and not faking much. Oh, persistence. It's hard to say how I really know it, and sometimes I feel myself neglecting the most bedrock loves in my life for new, shiny infatuations, and I like working to be open to new possibilities, but, oh, there's this thing Saul Bellow (yeah, him), I think it was, called potato love -- lumpy and dirt-specked and right there under the cabinet -- that gets me through the day.
4. What do you think of Patti Smith?
Sadly, I know very little about Patti Smith, and I don't know her work. I've heard a story about her and the playwright Sam Shephard shoving a typewriter back and forth across a table in a tiny apartment in New York City, writing a play, probably in the seventies, and that's always seemed like a nearly impossible and thrilling thing to do, especially because after that they got to, you know, put on a show! The famous photo of her in a white shirt, jacket over her shoulder -- I was pulled to that, but (probably, in part, because of snobby, a little older hip people I knew who loved her) she always seemed too cool and too sophisticated for me, like those people who've been known to glance my way at parties or literary events and than quickly look elsewhere, utterly uninterested. I always suspected that it might be like that with me and Patti Smith, so I've never given her work a chance, even though
sallybelle told me not long ago that she loves her, and jasonelvis wrote something great about a Patti Smith concert a while back. 5. At what occasion did you last have to stifle a giggle?
I was giggling throughout when I first read these questions -- they are so good, it kind of delighted me -- and I giggle a lot. I also stifle giggles a fair amount, I know, but I'm not coming up with the last time I did that. If it comes to me, I'll write it up.
If you'd like to be questioned, let me know. It may take me a while to come up with them, and I'm not able to do too many people -- I'm thinking about five.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 04:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 04:04 pm (UTC)2. What's your strongest loyalty?
3. Who is your favorite writer? Or maybe a couple writers that you love?
4. What do you like about cats?
5. What's the most radical thing you've ever done?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 04:17 pm (UTC)Sweet human sloppiness!
Your writing is a relief, Susan. A huge relief!
If you still are taking questions, I'd like some. If not, that's okay, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 04:28 pm (UTC)2. Tell me about a physical place you love, especially the moment of entering it, of getting there.
3. What is a monster that haunts you?
4. What role does fiction play in your life?
5. What is a sound you have a strong emotional response to?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 04:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 05:18 pm (UTC)What do you feel about forgiveness? Is that a useful concept for you?
If you look away from the computer screen, what are you looking at now? What's around you?
What's the most seriously adult-ish item of clothing you own?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 04:52 pm (UTC)The squeezy bear, the old spice, the kale!
I'm so glad I took this reading break and that you had writen this at just the moment for it to show up near the top of my page.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 05:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 06:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 06:37 pm (UTC)2. What do you do to cultivate patience? (If you don't do that, is there any emotion or quality that you consciously cultivate)?
3. Are you ticklish?
4. What do you look for in films that you love?
5. What is the appeal of Disneyland for you?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-12 11:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-12 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-12 11:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-14 01:11 am (UTC)