Writers have their own unique paths, but oftentimes, there are commonalities that impact all who endeavor to put words on the page. Australian author Marissa Price and American author Melissa Holbrook Pierson touch on some of the universal challenges of being a writer– like finding time to create and staving off “impostor syndrome.” They also discuss the particular joy of being lost– and found– in a good story, regardless of whether one is reading it or writing it.

Marissa Price: To begin at the beginning, what genre do you write in, and who is your target audience?

Melissa Holbrook Pierson: Genre is such an interesting subject—itself one of my favorite things to write about. Probably the closest description for what I do is creative nonfiction, since I don’t consider myself any one thing. I love to research, but I’m not an academic. I use the first person, but I’m rarely terribly personal in my subject matter (except for the fact that it needs to fascinate me both viscerally and intellectually). Science often informs my writing, but it’s by way of getting at the mechanical underpinnings of our emotional life. I consider the infrequent poetry I write as also a form of nonfiction. I like to write without consideration of form. I want to bring it all in. Mine could be called the “ kitchen sink” genre.

MP: What draws you to writing and keeps you going, even when the going is tough?

MHP: Maybe this sounds like a glib answer, but this really is the truth: I can’t do anything other than writing. I developed no saleable skills other than reading closely and writing. Over the decades that I’ve been a writer—working predominantly as a book author and a critic, both of books and film—the publishing landscape has gotten harder and harder to navigate. I knew at the time when I had a couple of steady outlets that paid print rates (back in the Dark Ages) I was extraordinarily lucky to make a living saying stuff I felt like saying, but I had no way to know that that luck could vanish overnight, and that after thirty years of “plying my craft” or whatever you want to call it I’d be back at square one. It is not uncommon for this to happen, and for it to cause a serious crisis of confidence. Perhaps this is a gift in disguise, though, because it creates the necessity to tune out the inner critic, focus, dive into the pure act of writing—of enacting joy, which is the particular quality of entering the flow of words.

I assume since you asked a question about the difficulty of writing, Marissa, you too sometimes experience it as hard. What for you marks the difference in the experience of “easy” writing and “hard” writing? Does it say something about the process, or the nature of writing in the first place, or is it a signal about what is or is not going right?

 MP: I do sometimes experience the pressure of writing, though I think it’s more of an impostor syndrome type of thing. A “why do I think I’m good enough to write and publish this.” The mechanics of writing  come easily and I love it. I get to practice regularly, being an English teacher and tutor, but I love nothing more than sitting and just creating. My main issue is time . . . fitting everything in is a massive challenge, because I have that full-time teaching role, a tutoring business, and small kids. But you make time for what you love and I find it soothing. I also find it frustrating when time makes it necessary for me to walk away from the manuscript and leave it be, because the flow is interrupted, but I get there in the end. I often wonder if I would be a better writer if I could just transfer my thoughts to the paper– Harry Potter style!

MHP: Boy, do I concur on the problem of lack of time, the great enemy of art. It’s particularly critical for writers who are also mothers, as I remember from the time my son was young. Yet I always managed to find it where it was hiding, even if it never felt like enough. And now that my son is a teenager and I should ostensibly have my time back, it’s still as problematic as ever. I’m beginning to think it’s a constitutional problem, then: there’s never enough time to wander as far into the writing world as we’d like—because it’s an infinite universe.

MP: I relate completely. It seems as soon as I have a spare moment it gets filled with something else immediately!

Do you have a favorite character you’ve created? If so, who are they and what makes them special?

MHP: Well, as a writer of nonfiction, all my characters are in effect some facet of me. I think the one I like the best is the one who pretends to be fearless, who wants to look into herself and admit her flaws and put her mistakes out there in unflinching black and white. I want to be the “character” I created this weekend, where this hopeless amateur danced in a public parking lot with a group of professionals who brilliantly performed some choreographed routines. I flailed. For that moment, I was the character who says, “What the hell; I suck and it doesn’t matter who sees it. I’m having fun. Music is more powerful than shame.”

And how about your character, Harriet Hunter. Who is she? What are her primary characteristics? Is she someone you know (or you)?

MP: Harriet is a bit of a conglomeration of people that I know and qualities that I admire. She has flaws as well, some of which belong to me, I think! Harriet is a typical teenager—struggling with friendships, boys, schoolwork and family, while still also dealing with what’s happening in the texts. She’s strong and feisty, but she’s also compassionate and can see the good in others. I really like writing her, she’s such a good character to work with.

MHP: Since it has formed the subject of some of your own work, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on what is it about Shakespeare’s plays that lends them to seemingly infinite reworkings and relevance?

MP: Teaching Shakespeare keeps this question relevant in my mind, and it’s always the question that kids ask because they see a 400-year-old text and say, “why?” But the themes that Shakespeare explores in his plays are timeless—he was kind of a fortune-teller in a weird way. There aren’t too many elements of his plays that can’t be theoretically applied to the present day, and the whole concept of humanity and the human experience. He’s pretty cool for his time, and I love it when the kids find insults that they use now in his work. They always feel a bit ripped off that the Bard was there before them!

MHP: In order to write for a young audience, do you need to change something in your own persona? Do you have an ideal reader in mind? Describe her, if you can.

MP: I find audience as interesting as you find genre (which is the bane of my existence with my books!). When I started the series I didn’t actually mean to appeal to a YA audience, I just wanted to tell the story of Romeo and Juliet with some female agency. I would love the readers to be both male and female, and for the story of human empowerment to come through. I’ve switched some traditional roles around in a subtle way and it’s always really interesting to see who picks up on that. Kids who don’t quite know who they are yet are ideal readers, because I hope to influence them to be strong and independent without compromising on principles or hurting others to get what they want. I love when adults read the books too and take just as much away. Because I do have contact with teens very regularly through teaching, I feel like I have my very own case studies walking around to help me get into the mindset of a teen. I still remember my own trip through high school, so some of that comes through in the form of some lessons. I’m very much a Disney kid and would find it really difficult to write anything that isn’t G-rated, so this genre suits me well, I think. Because I’m still a big kid myself, I don’t really need to change anything in myself to write at their level. There is so much sadness in our world now, that I really want the books to be an escape for readers—a story they can enjoy that still stimulates their imaginations and entertains at the same time.

MP: Do you remember the first piece you ever wrote?

MHP: I love this question, because I forget so much. The first I ever wrote and got “published” was an article about my great-great-grandmother, who was the first woman doctor in the state of Ohio. I think it was in junior high or high school, and it was in a history newsletter. I never dreamed then that I’d continue to write on history (though I am adamantly not a historian), but here I am, considering a book topic that is both about why history is so thrilling, and partly about my family history.

MP: That’s so cool. Your great-great-grandmother sounds amazing! Absolutely incredible. I also love history; my thesis is based on historical analysis and procedure and I’m looking at the historiographical development of radicalism. It’s really interesting, but totally overwhelming too! Aside from that I adore history, and I’m really glad my books allow me to go back in time and research everything I need and use all the facts I thought would be totally useless that I’ve gathered over the years in obscure areas!

You’ve mentioned that you write poetry—do you think you’d ever write fiction?

MHP: I think I valorize fiction as something I “can’t” do—although it was what I wrote from grade school through high school, and what I imagined I would always write. Now, when I read (and sometimes review) fiction, I’m always asking myself, “How the heck did the author do that?” It seems so magical, so Olympian. Creating characters and imagining intricate and surprising plots: I just don’t know that my mind is built that way. Although I did have an idea recently for a novel that really excited me for a minute there. . . and then—impostor syndrome, as you mentioned. (Do you know a writer who doesn’t suffer from it, by the way?) I got stopped. It will probably turn out dead on the page.

I’m in awe of fiction in other words.

MP: I would absolutely love to see you write fiction. I worked in law for 10 years, then went to teaching and was struck with an idea for a story. I’d played around for years but nothing serious, and then bang. I didn’t tell anyone I was writing it until it was finished and edited, which I think helped because the only pressure on me then was from myself. It’s different now, and I’m definitely feeling the pressure to get Book 3 done. But it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. And I don’t know a single female writer who doesn’t have impostor syndrome to some degree. It can be completely debilitating for some, which is really sad because they have so many amazing things to say! I love Katherine Lowry Logan for historical U.S. fiction, though I must confess her books are expensive to buy in Australia and I hate reading ebooks, so I’ve fallen off the wagon there!

You’re independently published, as am I. What do you find the most rewarding thing about that experience?

 MHP: I’m happy and proud to be published by a venerable house that is still independent, and owned in fact by its workers. I’m very much a democratic socialist. I love the vigor a small house brings to its ventures. Every person in the house feels a stake in the success of its books.

MP: That’s fantastic! It’s such a huge experience and it’s important to work with people you like and respect.

MHP: Speaking of togetherness, do you have a group of writer friends with whom you can talk, complain, get reality checks, and the like?

MP: Hmm . . . a little. I have online groups that I’m a member of and I find that some are really helpful and nurturing. Some are very political and argumentative and I tend to find them draining. I have an illustrator/author and a children’s book author who work for me as tutors, so it’s good to bounce off them at times. I rely on my mum and my sister-in-law to help me with beta and line reading, though I also have a professional editor who does the developmental edit and looks for traps and gaps. I’m lucky that I have a circle of amazing friends and family, and a wonderful husband, who listen to me complain when I need it. They just listen, which is fantastic!

MHP: I think that’s huge. It’s something that I definitely miss; I think my general social anxiety is a big deficit in my professional as well as my personal life, because I’m not connected to any writers IRL. But I do have a beautiful set of online support groups made up of women who are so generous with help, suggestions, and support. Otherwise it can be a lonely existence—I love writing’s solitary aspect, but not its lonely one. Just you and the blank page! Exciting and scary at the same time. For you, is writing an occult science? Do you have any rituals associated with it, such as a lucky pen or certain atmospheric requirements?

MP: Not really. Mine is more time based. I can write pretty much anywhere and I type rather than handwrite, but I do like to make sure I start and finish in the time frame I give myself as much as I can. For example, if I’m in term and teaching I’ve found I just can’t seem to get the flow, whereas holidays seem to give me more inspiration and more time to get it all right.

MHP: What’s the next venture, and the one after that? Do you always have a long lineup of hopes, or do you focus on one thing at a time?

MP: I have a lot of things on the go. I’d love to expand my business, though it’s definitely growing organically. I love what I do, working with kids around literacy and learning, and teaching others how to blend pastoral care with academic learning. In terms of writing I tend to do pieces here and there, for publications like TheRefresh and The Regionalist when I write non-fiction. I want to finish my series. There are 10 books planned in total and I’m on the third, so a while to go yet. Publishing the first book was such an achievement I’m not ready to stop yet!

MHP: Ten books planned! I find that extraordinary. I’m actually having trouble at the moment coming up with the subject for just one. But I would imagine a series, with a consistent theme or world, would be more like writing interlinked stories, or building a mansion with many rooms. But I may be way off here. The closest I get to planning is the notebook (and attendant scraps of paper) in which I scribble ideas for essays—and sometimes short stories—that I never seem to get around to writing. I think that’s the idea telling me it’s not right, or maybe it’s just not the time. I’ve found ideas in there that I have gone back to, after forgetting they existed. And I’ve started a document called “Abandoned Ideas for Writing” that will perhaps stand as a prose poem. That’s one way of using unusable ideas, eh?

MP: Do you have a “day job,” or have you managed to make writing all that you do?

MHP: I got a master’s in English lit but never went into academia, nor did I ever return to an office job. So for a long time I’ve pieced together a quilt of work: I proofread, edit, write book reviews, and whatever other opportunities present themselves. Beyond the written word, I have few salable skills. It’s provided a living, but never wealth (how many writers can say it does?), except for the great fortune of being able to pursue a livelihood I love. I recognize how terrifically privileged that makes me, and there’s really not a day I’m not grateful for such luck.

MP: Are you writing about your family history now? Who is the coolest person in your family tree and why?

MHP: I do think whatever book I write next will have something to do with my personal history and the ways it has intersected with history at large. That’s the place that fascinates me most. My late father was a passionate amateur historian and preservationist, and this makes him the coolest person ever to me: it took a while, but now I find my thoughts consumed by the traces that past lives have left on the landscape, like little gifts or clues for the person who cares to see, and I realize I’m basically turning into my father. I could do worse.

MP: Do you have any releases coming up? And where can people buy your books?

MHP: Book-wise, I’m in limbo with proposals floating around at various stages of completeness or consideration. It’s the first time in twenty years I haven’t gotten started on the next before the previous one was published. My last book, The Secret History of Kindness, was a difficult baby, so to speak. I could write a book about writing that book. Hmmm. Is that an idea? Anyway, most of my books are available through the usual suspects, Amazon being, well, the Amazon in the room.

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Melissa Holbrook Pierson is the author of five books, including The Place You Love Is Gone and her most recent, The Secret History of Kindness. She’s also an essayist and, as a passionate lover of books, a critic. She lives in beautiful upstate New York. More: http://www.melissaholbrookpierson.com/

 

 

Marissa Price is an Australian school teacher who also runs The Literature Factory, which helps Australian children with literacy, reading and writing. The Lit Factory runs tutoring sessions and workshops, as well as publishing several Australian authors including Marissa and Nicole Bonnelli Madeley. Each publication has its own educational value, making them perfect for the Lit Factory imprint.

Marissa’s book series, Into the Abyss, currently has two books available. Vault of Verona and Scourge of Scotland follow the story of Harriet Hunter, a young Tasmanian woman who discovers that she is able to travel back into the stories of the greatest literary giant the world has ever known – Shakespeare. Harriet runs rampant in Verona during the time of Romeo and Juliet, tasked with the job of stopping the ticking time bomb that will be a double suicide. Her story continues in Scotland with Macbeth’s ambition providing the catalyst for a collision that will change the course of history for generations to come. For more information on the Into the Abyss series or The Literature Factory, visit www.theliteraturefactory.com.au