EXPOSÉ
WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD?
Ironically, if I follow the breadcrumbs back through my childhood, I knew I always wanted to be a storyteller. I also wanted to live in a castle, have my own wild herd of palomino horses, perhaps become a Harvard-educated lawyer &/or an Olympic gymnast (none of those panned out, by the way), but storytelling was the consistent thread through all those fantasies that never actually went away. I discovered Nancy Drew as a kindergartener and read Carolyn Keene with 5-yr-old fanaticism. Chapter books were everything. Hand me a chapter book, and I was happy.
I remember writing my own stories as early as 1st grade and thinking, “This is fun. This is what I should be doing.” I entered stories and poems into local Seattle contests throughout elementary school and often won awards. By the time I hit middle school the severe self-consciousness of adolescence set in, and I became much more reticent to make things up and share the contents of my own imagination with others. It took more than two decades for me to give myself permission to return to that childhood happy place of making stuff up and living in my own head again.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOUR WORKSPACE?
I love so many things about my carriage house (which is really just a fancy word for garage). I think the greatest thing about it is there are 4 walls, and it’s self-contained. It’s a free standing structure and serves as an insulated container for my creativity alone. I so admire creatives and writers who are capable of creating and writing from home—I think it’s one of the hardest things to possibly do; compartmentalize the domestic reality while remaining physically inside it. I have three teenage stepchildren, a husband and a dog, so having a dedicated creative space, apart from my home, helps me feel grounded in my identity as a writer and a creative.
When I first moved in, a friend visited and observed that it was my “She-Shed”—the female corollary to the “Man-Cave”. Though I don’t call it my “She-Shed” I certainly don’t mind the concept … there’s definitely lots of feminine creative energy swirling around in there.
WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO FICTION AFTER WORKING IN JOURNALISM AND DOCUMENTARY FILM FOR MANY YEARS?
I think fiction for me was a way of liberating myself from the constraints of my lived experience, while still being able to mine that experience for a tremendous wealth of material. I wrote for the school newspaper in high school as well as a local Seattle community newspaper. I studied journalism at NYU, then worked in broadcast journalism in NYC and later in documentary filmmaking in Los Angeles. Everything was nonfiction. As a writer I’d explored memoir and personal essay, but I’d never given myself permission to leave the parameters of the factual world.
Honestly, I hit a bit of a breaking point in my personal life, and it felt like the greatest thing I could do was to render my experience in allegorical ways. I find it so powerful and intoxicating to be able to write characters who are one or two steps removed from my life, yet still grappling with all the things I grapple with. What I find fascinating about fiction is that when I’m in the flow, the characters tell me their story. The words write themselves. I’m often just a conduit for the story, channeling itself through me to the page.
Cliché as it sounds, truth truly is SO much stranger than fiction. Just look at what we’re living through right now. There is so much information coming at us all the time and a great deal of it is awful, painful, and extremely difficult to process. I fatigued of existing in the realm of nonfiction and trying to make sense of all that is going on in the world. I think being creative requires a fair amount of sensitivity, vulnerability, and soul baring, and remaining sensitive and vulnerable is a challenge in today’s society. Fiction simultaneously offers me both an escape from reality as well as a way to process and make sense of the truth. In many ways, fiction allows you to extract the truth from a situation and present it in a crystallized form, without all the malaise of real life.
WHAT TIPS OR SUGGESTIONS CAN YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE STARTING A CREATIVE BUSINESS?
Be humble. Be Determined. Be prepared to evolve. By the time you “arrive” or “launch” or “emerge”, you and your business will have grown and changed so much you may not even recognize the original seedling of an idea that started it all. And that’s how it should be. It’s a creative process, after all. Don’t be too attached to anything except for your belief in yourself and your vision, and let that particular attachment be unshakeable. Also, don’t rush to spend money on things at the outset. Taking your time to feel things out, intuitively filter your options, and really trust what’s right for you and your business is never a bad piece of advice. You can do a lot with creativity and ingenuity alone. Good ideas and worthwhile services rise to the top if you trust that what you have to offer the world is of value.
Also, my final piece of advice—wear other people’s advice like loose clothing. Nobody’s advice or opinion is gospel; your own personal experiences, mistakes and hard-earned victories will be the most instructive thing of all.
WHAT IS YOUR NO-FAIL GO-TO WHEN YOU NEED INSPIRATION OR TO GET OUT OF A CREATIVE RUT?
Travel! Preferably as far away as possible. Travel is one of my greatest pleasures in life. I think perception is the lifeblood of my writing, and the greater the travel adventure, the greater the opportunity to perceive and see the world in new ways. But it’s not often we get to pick up and leave everything behind, so travel for me has also come to symbolize something as simple as a change of scenery. For instance, today I felt stagnant and picked up my laptop and “traveled” to a local Vietnamese restaurant. Sitting in a booth at a restaurant I don’t usually visit on a weekday afternoon, eating a dish I’ve never before ordered on a Wednesday for lunch, is as fresh a perspective as any. If I’m restless, I try to change what I’m looking at, who I’m listening to, and where I’m doing that listening and looking. All of a sudden perspectives shift and dams are broken.
That being said, I also believe that you can’t force yourself out of a creative rut, no matter how down on yourself you might get about it. I’ve gone weeks, sometimes months at a time without writing a single new word in my novel. In those scenarios, I try to read as much as possible. I’m one of those people with 25 books on my nightstand and I’m halfway through almost all of them. If something isn’t speaking to me I put it down and pick something else up. Fiction, non-fiction, essay, poetry… I’ll read anything. The fact is a rut is a rut—you must do whatever feels right to you to alleviate the stagnation. There is no shame in it; it’s simply exploring different ways of moving yourself forward.
DO YOU HAVE A FEW FAVORITE AUTHORS OR BOOKS? IS THERE AN AUTHOR OR A BOOK YOU’RE READING RIGHT NOW?
I just re-read A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, and I think it’s even more brilliant and extraordinary the second time around. I also love Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins and think that was probably the most fun I’ve ever had reading a novel as an adult.
Growing up, I devoured His Dark Materials, the Philip Pullman trilogy. I reread them as an adult prior to visiting Oxford, England for the first time (the story is set in Oxford), and I couldn’t believe the richness and the thematic depth—there was even more to appreciate as an older reader, though nothing beats the magic of reading an epic story like that for the first time as a child.
The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn have some of the best sentences ever put together, in my mind. The prose is devastating and delicious and seductive and suffocating and you can’t put his writing down. Also, I’d lock myself in a room and devote an entire uninterrupted weekend to anything by Louise Erdrich, Ann Patchett, Barry Lopez, and yes, Karl Hiaasen… because sometimes you just need to roll your eyes and laugh your ass off.
