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jaeleslie at 11:17am on 20/06/2003
jaeleslie at 11:17am on 20/06/20031. If you had actually written that novel, what would it have been about?
2. If you had the chance, whose literary world would you inhabit?
3. How has life changed for you now that you are no longer the Pirate Queen of the TCPAAPA? Do you miss it?
4. Where haven't you been that you would like to visit?
5. Are you a different person at home and away?
What fine questions. I don't know if I can get all that into the short time we have here. The first one alone gave me several days' pause.
The first novel that I didn't write was about being in high school, and the improbable things that happened or might have happened there, the usual sort of thinly-veiled artless autobiographical bildungsroman based on "a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication" (as Uncle Oscar put it). I got so far as to think about it as how that young group of friends living in far too interesting times pushed and pulled one another more or less into adulthood, by making themselves a community despite their uprooted, over-intellectualized histories, but by then I was making rather longer lists of the books I wasn't writing. I haven't written novels about being a faculty brat, about different places I have lived in, educational romances about going to college, and grim modern mainstream stories about waitresses and secretaries and musicians and gas station attendants and failed love affairs in the style of Raymond Carver, and so on and on. I still have some hopes for the action adventure Son of the Monster Men. It's been some years since I have bothered to even make such a list, since making an ambitious plan is such a transparent ploy to avoid actually writing the thing. My latest stab in that direction was the NaNoWriMo project which I titled Twelve Dancing Princesses which I figured should give me plenty of room to throw in everything. Because you can't hold anything back and save it for later. I think I have proved that pretty conclusively. I have long since given up imagining that I could go back and write the old stuff -- but I hope I might still revisit some of those temps perdus with new eyes, and a tour group along for the ride. I am a different person now and have had to wait all these years to have enough wisdom so that I might manage to make some sense of what has happened to me. So I am now completely unabashed about working in the field of memoir instead. But you know how Serious Writers are nowadays those whose activities culminate in a fictional novel. (Used to be the Epic Poem, but that was before my time.) Twenty minutes in the future, it will be a website.
Whew, next question. If you had the chance, whose literary world would you inhabit? Fortunately that subject came up in Turboapa a couple of months ago, and I decided I would just as soon live in E. Nesbit's world. It is a quiet sort of mundane world except for the magical things that occasionally happen. Mermaids. Carpets. Phoenixes. Megatheriums.
Being the Pirate Queen of Turboapa, no, that is not something I miss. All that deck swabbing, and no glory. But I am still the Pirate Queen, you know, that was a definite self-discovery. I try to be a good Queen and follow all the rules, except when I don't.
Where haven't you been that you would like to visit? Well there certainly is a lot of world out there still, and I rather like many of the places I have been and would like to go back to them, and spend weeks and months, besides finding new places. But as age & disability & fatigue creep up on me I have recently worked out that much of the Third World in these days of modern times is for rather younger, more vigorous travelers than I. A few South American capitals would be nice. Japan. China. Tibet. You know, great swathes of the world that I have seen only from the armchair. The half of Australia where I have not yet set a toe. Then there is the most of Europe where I haven't been, and even several of the United States. The giant redwoods, for instance, while they are still there. New Orleans. Bunch of historic Civil War sites with connections to family history. And you know I was really up for Nova Scotia, before we ran into that moose in Ontario.
Am I a different person at home and away? I think not. Of course changing my surroundings is a real shot in the arm, particularly if there is a friend or two about to share the excitement. But I like being at home now, which was not so much the case a few years ago. It is possible that I have worked out better and more satisfying connections to the people who can share the daily voyages here -- although most of you live far away.
2. If you had the chance, whose literary world would you inhabit?
3. How has life changed for you now that you are no longer the Pirate Queen of the TCPAAPA? Do you miss it?
4. Where haven't you been that you would like to visit?
5. Are you a different person at home and away?
What fine questions. I don't know if I can get all that into the short time we have here. The first one alone gave me several days' pause.
The first novel that I didn't write was about being in high school, and the improbable things that happened or might have happened there, the usual sort of thinly-veiled artless autobiographical bildungsroman based on "a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication" (as Uncle Oscar put it). I got so far as to think about it as how that young group of friends living in far too interesting times pushed and pulled one another more or less into adulthood, by making themselves a community despite their uprooted, over-intellectualized histories, but by then I was making rather longer lists of the books I wasn't writing. I haven't written novels about being a faculty brat, about different places I have lived in, educational romances about going to college, and grim modern mainstream stories about waitresses and secretaries and musicians and gas station attendants and failed love affairs in the style of Raymond Carver, and so on and on. I still have some hopes for the action adventure Son of the Monster Men. It's been some years since I have bothered to even make such a list, since making an ambitious plan is such a transparent ploy to avoid actually writing the thing. My latest stab in that direction was the NaNoWriMo project which I titled Twelve Dancing Princesses which I figured should give me plenty of room to throw in everything. Because you can't hold anything back and save it for later. I think I have proved that pretty conclusively. I have long since given up imagining that I could go back and write the old stuff -- but I hope I might still revisit some of those temps perdus with new eyes, and a tour group along for the ride. I am a different person now and have had to wait all these years to have enough wisdom so that I might manage to make some sense of what has happened to me. So I am now completely unabashed about working in the field of memoir instead. But you know how Serious Writers are nowadays those whose activities culminate in a fictional novel. (Used to be the Epic Poem, but that was before my time.) Twenty minutes in the future, it will be a website.
Whew, next question. If you had the chance, whose literary world would you inhabit? Fortunately that subject came up in Turboapa a couple of months ago, and I decided I would just as soon live in E. Nesbit's world. It is a quiet sort of mundane world except for the magical things that occasionally happen. Mermaids. Carpets. Phoenixes. Megatheriums.
Being the Pirate Queen of Turboapa, no, that is not something I miss. All that deck swabbing, and no glory. But I am still the Pirate Queen, you know, that was a definite self-discovery. I try to be a good Queen and follow all the rules, except when I don't.
Where haven't you been that you would like to visit? Well there certainly is a lot of world out there still, and I rather like many of the places I have been and would like to go back to them, and spend weeks and months, besides finding new places. But as age & disability & fatigue creep up on me I have recently worked out that much of the Third World in these days of modern times is for rather younger, more vigorous travelers than I. A few South American capitals would be nice. Japan. China. Tibet. You know, great swathes of the world that I have seen only from the armchair. The half of Australia where I have not yet set a toe. Then there is the most of Europe where I haven't been, and even several of the United States. The giant redwoods, for instance, while they are still there. New Orleans. Bunch of historic Civil War sites with connections to family history. And you know I was really up for Nova Scotia, before we ran into that moose in Ontario.
Am I a different person at home and away? I think not. Of course changing my surroundings is a real shot in the arm, particularly if there is a friend or two about to share the excitement. But I like being at home now, which was not so much the case a few years ago. It is possible that I have worked out better and more satisfying connections to the people who can share the daily voyages here -- although most of you live far away.