My interview #4 is a little bit late, but it definitely happened! I interviewed Mrs. Maricel Edwards and it was absolutely delightful. Here is a piece of what we talked about. The rest of the interview is to the right in the links section.
Interview
My topic is Storytelling and my essential question is how does an author communicate who they are through their stories
Oh thats good and there’s so many different ways to approach that, okay
Ok, so.
Q: How did you end up in your field?
A: Teaching… I ended up teaching because I was originally working in public relations in marketing which I enjoyed. It was an internship that became a job right after college,it was up north and my dad got sick. And we all needed to converge down here to Southern California so I quit my job, came down here you know. And I didn’t have any prospects , all my prospects were up north. My sister says, you have a BA, why don’t you become a substitute teacher? All you have to do is take a piddling little test which is like cake and then you can sub. And subs, honestly I say this to everyone with a BA, if you have that degree and you just take that test, they take like a hundred bucks a day just to babysit. And so that’s what I did, I became a sub. And I said “wait I don’t like these lesson plans, these lesson plans are stupid” So I became that sub that changed the lesson plans on the teachers and I said “wow I like teaching” and therefore I became a teacher because I liked to write my own lesson plans and not follow somebody else's. And that’s how I became a teacher.
Q: Now, I know that you love books, and stories. But did you always love books and stories? Or did you just fall on it later in life?
A: Oh my god, since I can remember I’ve always had a book in my hand. Whenever we had family gatherings, which was a lot, I was always the kid who sat in the corner and didn’t play any of the games and just read books. And people knew “for birthdays and christmas just get her books” which was difficult in the Philippines because the books that I wanted were American. And thank goodness that my family went to America often because their pasalubum “gift you give when you come back from a trip” to me was always American books. So I had an entire collection of hardback Nancy Drew, Secret Garden, Little Princess. The classics that I would get and I was just … I loved books! I lived breathed, I just. Books!
Q: Have you ever felt a particular connection to a book or story or quote?
A: Always. It depends on what I’m currently reading but I will always become either that writer or that character for whatever book. Like currently, in fact just last night I finished Code Name Verity . This is a young adult book about these two girls, its a dual perspective, they're best friends. And this author Elizabeth Ween made them sound completely different. For first person, that’s amazing. And after I finished reading the book, and I read it all in one shot, I’m writing a good reads review, I took on the voice of one of the characters. Just because that’s what I do. Once I become sort of engrossed by the story, that’s sort of what I become. For me to pick one character or one quote or one book. It’s impossible. A, I’m old and I’ve read many books. And also B, it really just depends on the current read at the time.
Q: What about in your past phases of books that you’ve read?
A: Well, because for a long time I stuck around with the fantasy, the writing style. I liked the long eloquent sentences, I liked the diction of high fantasy. Any British author. I love the way British writers sound ten times more intelligent than American ones. It’s all their diction, it’s the words they use. So yes, every single British author and every single British character. That’s who I relate to.
Q: What made you want to write?
A: Nothing makes you want to write. You either write or you don’t, and I think that’s what makes it so hard to be an english teacher because I can’t even fathom people not needing to write. You write because you have something to say. And if you can’t write then that means you have nothing to say which means your not human or you’re dead. So I’m always writing. I’m writing letters or I’m writing inquiries or I’m writing stories or I’m writing lists. I knew I wanted to write well when I would share my pieces with people and then I would watch their faces just light up because they wanted to know more. And that’s also why I don’t think that authors don’t write in a vacuum. Whether you’re writing for school or writing for people you have to whore out your pieces because your pieces only come alive when other people are reading them.
Q: Okay, what do you find inspiration from?
A: Good writing. Just solid, well crafted writing. And what I mean by that is language and diction. I love words. I love putting words together and making new meanings out of old words. I love juxtaposition where you take one word that means one thing and another… synesthesia . You know when you say “I smell purple”. That’s amazing! Because you don’t really smell purple but just putting it together, all of a sudden BAM you’ve just got this huge image! People don’t understand about the magic and beauty of words.
Q: What do you write about?
A: The last piece that I was working on, which was like 100,00 words of my manuscript. And that was only halfway through the story was of course fantasy. I like fantasy best because it’s what I grew up with, it’s what I grew up on and it also allows me to be as imaginative and creative as possible.
Q: I know that you were interested in Nanowrimo, but I don’t know if you’ve read up on the book and how they make it a user friendly guide to get through it. But there’s a section where it says to make a list of everything that you love and then about what you hate and then write about what you love in a book. So what sort of things would have been on your list?
A: But why not the hate?
Q: Because the things that you hate are like “ I don't like unhappy endings” or “I don’t like it when there’s a character like this. So if you write about the things that you hate, then you’re not going to enjoy the story and it’s gonna go flat.
A: I love dialogue. Rapid fire, uninterrupted, back and forth authentic dialogue. Uninterrupted by all those qualifiers “he said/she said”. Almost like a script, I like that. I love backstory, if this character is going to do this then I better know damn well why. I want backstory even if I don’t overtly read it in the story, there needs to be hints so that I know that character is alive somewhere, and not just on that scene.
Q: If you could travel to write, would you? And where would you go?
A: Yes. England. Because History. Because Big Ben. Because Shakespeare.
Q: would you go there because you would like to include these things in your story?
A: Yes, it would make my people sound really authentic
