I have been asked by writer June Caldwell to take part in a blog tour. Until now I have never blogged and thought to myself maybe this is an opportunity to begin, that I can use the following four questions to fumble my way through an opening post. Thanks, June, for getting on my case to take part.
1. What am I working on?
I flit anxiously and eagerly from genre to genre. I always have a few stories on the go. Some of them are like eels - they slip away if I do not make a fast grab. Some are like bold children - they pay absolutely no attention to anything I tell them to do. A couple of plays require open heart surgery. Several poems are threatening to rise up en masse and bite off my fingers, feet and other unmentionables if I do not give them immediate attention. I have four novels to write and so I am tentatively trying to negotiate with the devil for more time. These nights he shows up at the foot of my bed brandishing a chess board. I feel like the knight in the Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal. God help me.
2. How does my work differ from others in the genre?
I don't know if my writing differs all that much. I am an aural learner as opposed to say the more common visual learning that attends so much writing. I hear things before I see them. Often I mishear things. This can provide delightful moments. I like to use humour. It brings the unfunny moments into relief. I think it was Chekhov who said happy people write sad stories and unhappy people write funny stories. I'm not sure what that says about me or my writing and I probably don't want to know. Any time the vaguest notion permits me to consider that I am in any way different I feel the devil at my shoulder, sniggering.
3. Why do I write what I do?
My reasons are partly intrinsic, partly religious, partly fanatical. Intrinsic because if I do not write I will go mad. Religious because it is an act of faith; every time I settle down to write I am believing in something that, as yet, does not exist. Fanatical because I love moving as quickly as possible from the everyday world into the world of the imagination.
I began writing as a boy. Little stories, plays, poems. Then, when I was twelve, I stopped and, for a long time, I was reluctant to resume. Don't ask me why. To misquote Don DeLillo, what we are reluctant to touch often seems to contain the fabric of our salvation. I believe very much in the redemptive powers of the imagination.
4. How does my writing process work?
Ha, ha. I am, at various times, a reluctant, plodding, instinctive, spontaneous writer. Late last year I told the devil I could no longer stay up chatting until five in the morning. He laughed at me and suggested I refrain from refreshing my email every five seconds and not log on to facebook until well into the afternoon. I thought this was good advice. Thanks devil, I said, let me know when I can do something for you. A week later the demented lunatic started showing up with his chess board.
DeLillo again: May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.
And finally (for now): Read like a thief and write as though you are already dead.
These are my answers. They will change. And sometimes the questions can be enough. Now I can hear the devil laughing again. It occurs to me that I may have to come up with a pet name for him.
The three writers I choose to continue are:
Geraldine Mills
Lisa C. Taylor
Aoife Casby
GERALDINE MILLS is a poet and short fiction writer who lives in Galway. She has four collections of poetry and three of short stories. She was the Millennium winner of the Hennessy/Tribune New Irish Writer Award and a Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in 2007. She was recently awarded her second Arts Council Bursary to work on her next short fiction collection. She is a mentor with NUI Galway and is an online tutor in the short story with Creative Writing Ink. Her third short story collection Hellkite (Arlen House) was launched in 2013.
www.geraldinemills.com
www.geraldinemillswriter.blogspot.ie
LISA C. TAYLOR has published four collections of poetry, Talking to Trees (Finishing Line Press), The Other Side of Longing (with Geraldine Mills) (Arlen House), Insufficient Thanks (Finishing Line Press) and most recently Necessary Silence (Arlen House). She is completing a collection of short stories. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the L.L. Winship PEN New England Award, and recently The Best Indie Literature of New England. An interview with Lisa was published in the Worcester Review in 2014. Along with Geraldine Mills, Lisa’s collaborative collection of poetry The Other Side of Longing was chosen for the Elizabeth Shanley Gerson Lecture at University of Connecticut. Two of her books have been taught in college classes in Connecticut.
www.lisactaylor.com
www.poetobservations.wordpress.com
AOIFE CASBY works as a writer and visual artist and is currently studying towards a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths University, London. She is interested in practical and theoretical approaches to Practice Based research and in the materiality of text and the construction of manuscripts. She is working on a collection of short fiction, on sequences of text with roots in the found and the visual and on a collection of poetry. Aoife is interested in how ideas of Place, specifically Home, affect the creative process, in structure and in that peculiar tension between word and image. Her work has been published in literary periodicals in Ireland and abroad. She has been short-listed for the Hennessy Prize and has received an Artist's Bursary Literature Award from the Irish Arts Council.
www.aoifecasby.net
1. What am I working on?
I flit anxiously and eagerly from genre to genre. I always have a few stories on the go. Some of them are like eels - they slip away if I do not make a fast grab. Some are like bold children - they pay absolutely no attention to anything I tell them to do. A couple of plays require open heart surgery. Several poems are threatening to rise up en masse and bite off my fingers, feet and other unmentionables if I do not give them immediate attention. I have four novels to write and so I am tentatively trying to negotiate with the devil for more time. These nights he shows up at the foot of my bed brandishing a chess board. I feel like the knight in the Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal. God help me.
2. How does my work differ from others in the genre?
I don't know if my writing differs all that much. I am an aural learner as opposed to say the more common visual learning that attends so much writing. I hear things before I see them. Often I mishear things. This can provide delightful moments. I like to use humour. It brings the unfunny moments into relief. I think it was Chekhov who said happy people write sad stories and unhappy people write funny stories. I'm not sure what that says about me or my writing and I probably don't want to know. Any time the vaguest notion permits me to consider that I am in any way different I feel the devil at my shoulder, sniggering.
3. Why do I write what I do?
My reasons are partly intrinsic, partly religious, partly fanatical. Intrinsic because if I do not write I will go mad. Religious because it is an act of faith; every time I settle down to write I am believing in something that, as yet, does not exist. Fanatical because I love moving as quickly as possible from the everyday world into the world of the imagination.
I began writing as a boy. Little stories, plays, poems. Then, when I was twelve, I stopped and, for a long time, I was reluctant to resume. Don't ask me why. To misquote Don DeLillo, what we are reluctant to touch often seems to contain the fabric of our salvation. I believe very much in the redemptive powers of the imagination.
4. How does my writing process work?
Ha, ha. I am, at various times, a reluctant, plodding, instinctive, spontaneous writer. Late last year I told the devil I could no longer stay up chatting until five in the morning. He laughed at me and suggested I refrain from refreshing my email every five seconds and not log on to facebook until well into the afternoon. I thought this was good advice. Thanks devil, I said, let me know when I can do something for you. A week later the demented lunatic started showing up with his chess board.
DeLillo again: May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.
And finally (for now): Read like a thief and write as though you are already dead.
These are my answers. They will change. And sometimes the questions can be enough. Now I can hear the devil laughing again. It occurs to me that I may have to come up with a pet name for him.
The three writers I choose to continue are:
Geraldine Mills
Lisa C. Taylor
Aoife Casby
GERALDINE MILLS is a poet and short fiction writer who lives in Galway. She has four collections of poetry and three of short stories. She was the Millennium winner of the Hennessy/Tribune New Irish Writer Award and a Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in 2007. She was recently awarded her second Arts Council Bursary to work on her next short fiction collection. She is a mentor with NUI Galway and is an online tutor in the short story with Creative Writing Ink. Her third short story collection Hellkite (Arlen House) was launched in 2013.
www.geraldinemills.com
www.geraldinemillswriter.blogspot.ie
LISA C. TAYLOR has published four collections of poetry, Talking to Trees (Finishing Line Press), The Other Side of Longing (with Geraldine Mills) (Arlen House), Insufficient Thanks (Finishing Line Press) and most recently Necessary Silence (Arlen House). She is completing a collection of short stories. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the L.L. Winship PEN New England Award, and recently The Best Indie Literature of New England. An interview with Lisa was published in the Worcester Review in 2014. Along with Geraldine Mills, Lisa’s collaborative collection of poetry The Other Side of Longing was chosen for the Elizabeth Shanley Gerson Lecture at University of Connecticut. Two of her books have been taught in college classes in Connecticut.
www.lisactaylor.com
www.poetobservations.wordpress.com
AOIFE CASBY works as a writer and visual artist and is currently studying towards a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths University, London. She is interested in practical and theoretical approaches to Practice Based research and in the materiality of text and the construction of manuscripts. She is working on a collection of short fiction, on sequences of text with roots in the found and the visual and on a collection of poetry. Aoife is interested in how ideas of Place, specifically Home, affect the creative process, in structure and in that peculiar tension between word and image. Her work has been published in literary periodicals in Ireland and abroad. She has been short-listed for the Hennessy Prize and has received an Artist's Bursary Literature Award from the Irish Arts Council.
www.aoifecasby.net
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