Brittney Cannon
Author Interview
30 October 2015
David Colón
Author Questions
1.
Who or what inspires you as an author?
a.
Particular writers: J. M. Coetzee, Juno Diaz
b.
I like doing things that are a little bit
innovative—the novel I published was speculative fiction, set 200 years in the
future. Not really sci fi but the setting makes it sci fi, but the chief
technology was books
c.
I like to do things that are a bit different
i. The
reconning of barbaro soto – not published yet (5 chapters, each one is a day in
the life of someone who has a life not surprisingly similar to my own, teaching
at the college of st. Zachary, educated in Brooklyn then in California, a busy
week and half for him
ii. Did
different voices and tenses in each of the chapters--- first and fifth are both
third person present, then the second and fourth are first person past, then
the middle is first person plural (we), not too experimental, but I like to do
some different things
d.
The founder effect – a guy has 12 fingers and 12
toes, misanthrope because people reject him, doesn’t want to be around people
or alone, so he starts a menagerie of animals, unlikely love interest
2.
Who or what motivates you as an author?
a.
^^ answered in Question 1
3.
What author[s] or book[s] influenced you as an
author the most?
a.
Everything by Coetzee and Diaz
b.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
c.
Julio Cortazar
d.
Avant garde writers and poets that I thought
were pretty interesting too
e.
Medieval stuff
i. Beowulf
1.
Has been so Christianized, but there’s no overt
Christianity in the book
2.
Grendel being condemned, not unlike Milton
f.
Contemporary latino writers
i. John
rechy
ii. Tomás
Rivera
g.
John Banville, the Sea (really well written)
h.
Phillip Roth, every man
i.
Toni Morisson, Tar Baby and Mercy—set it late 17th
century America
j.
I just like fiction that does the things that
nothing else can do but fiction
4.
Most often, where, when, and how do you write?
a.
I’ve had a shelf project for the sake of doing
scholarship (Founder Effect)
b.
When I do commit myself to writing fiction, I
write all day, every day, day and night
i. When
my wife and daughter went out of town for a week, I wrote like 100 pages
ii. I
got dominos 2 for 1 special and ate nonstop pizza and just wrote
iii. Writing
literally like 18 hours a day
1.
A lot of other writers will say, I write for one
hour every morning, and have a set schedule and read all day, but that’s not
how I work—for me it’s just binge writing
5.
How is technology changing print culture,
specifically regarding authors and readers?
a.
A lot of ways, I read something recently that
said for the first time in our history since the rise of the printing press in
the 15th century, written text no longer has primacy in our culture.
b.
There’s a lot more automatic writing that is
happening—texting, writing where there’s not much a difference between writing
and what you’re thinking
c.
There was a gap of writing and contemplation,
the source of writers block
d.
We’re shrinking the space between whats going on
in your mind and the page for better or for worse
e.
Conversations don’t die
6.
When you write, who is your intended audience?
a.
My intended audience is definitely myself
b.
It’s myself and imagine the best writers I’ve
read if they were readers, my favorite authors
7.
How is the current technological revolution
changing your audience?
a.
Well my novel was published as an e-book also,
it was published in print, it was published in e-book, and people have bought
the e-book.
b.
My book was also published in England, and it
was nominated for an Arthur Clarke award which is a science fiction award out
there
i. But
it happened in England, so part of it was I was able to respond, and submit to
England over the internet, I haven’t met my publisher in person
c.
Reviews are much more democratic, I have reviews
on amazon of people I’ve never met that I’ve never sent my book too
d.
In some ways, it diffuses the amount of tension—we
have our sacred cow writers, but it also kind of makes publishing pretty
democratic
e.
People have to be much more entrepreneurial, you
have to write something that peple really want to read, and you have to develop
your platform, because there are so many platforms you have to work on
f.
The people who are more successful are the
people who are able to do that
8.
What do you think reading and authorship will
look like fifty years from now?
a.
I think one of the things that technology has
done is it’s made everyone an author
b.
Recently andrea Lunsford came to visit our
campus and spoke to some grad students
c.
She is one of the most accomplished rhet comp
scholars around
i. She
said there’s a shift into so many people are writing texts,
ii. It
used to be a smaller number of people wrote and a lot more people read, but now
it’s the opposite, any sort of people can blog, anyone can publish
iii. It’s
so easy just for the tactility, anyone can write
iv. Anyone
can get something in print it seems, and there’s going to be a lot more texts that
get written that can get read, which might spring back to more reading, but
it’s hard to predict
d.
One day iphones will be tiny and imprinted into
their head
e.
It’s gonna be the death of university as we know
it, remembering is going to be pointless when you can always access all the
information in the world
f.
Whats going to wind up happening is that in my
life time, definitely yours, we’re going to see a shift in what people know and
remember and memorize is going to be totally not important at all—what you can
predict, intuit, forsee that’s gonna be…
i. That’s
why I’m confident that fiction, the arts, in a lot of ways is what it always
does—because if it’s fiction you’re making up something that hasn’t happened
ii. It’s
going to be based on memory, but you’re going to be taking liberties in the way
it’s told, or in the way it’s telling. The active writing is anticipatory,
you’re anticipating that it’s going to be worth keeping around
iii. Literature
is a vicarious experience of another person, that’s clearly not what technology
can do, at least as we can understand it now
9.
How did you find a publisher, and how long did
that process take?
a.
I used the internet, I knew that my book was not
marketable by mainstream standards so I looked for a niche publisher, an
publisher that published exactly what it was
i. I
narrowed my searched to literary speculative fiction, something that was
fiction that wasn’t totally realist, something that would do something in an
unfamiliar setting, like there’s some clervoyance in some of my characters and
it’s set in the future, and there’s only a couple hundred people in the world
for some unexplained reason—so I didn’t have the platform to market that
b.
Once you’re an established publisher, that name
recognition, people will read whatever you write, so I wanted to look for an
independent publisher, so I was trying to self identify with what I wanted to
write
c.
Publishing was the hardest part for a writer,
because you have to self-identify and explore
d.
So I found a small publisher in England that
published literary speculative fiction, so I sent it, and they like it
e.
That actually didn’t take very long, because it
was a small press, it was like a year, less than a year
i. I
also was like a guinea pig for them, because they had published an anthology of
short stories, so I was their first novel, and they’ve published many since
then
ii. They
published the ebook before the books, which is unusual, I’m not sure why they
wanted to do that but they did
iii. I
think that the fact that we didn’t sell very much, didn’t make much of a
ripple,
iv. I’m
not that interested in the showmanship, I’m not convinced I’m the best writer
in the world, I don’t know if the things I write will totally utterly change
your life—I don’t know, I’m not convinced of that. I don’t have that kind of
blind spot in my self-reflecting ego, which I think some people need to market
it, but I’m just not that enthused about it, I’m not that great, the networking
and promotion is not that big to me. In the future I’ll forgo the route of
submitting for little prizes, little little prizes, where they’re blind
reviewed
v. You
need to publish this, if you publish this thing 30,000 things will be purchased
1.
They will be interested and purchase
vi. But
I have zero motivation to hoodwink people into thinking im the best writer ever
f.
My career is not contingent upon it, I don’t
need it to pay the bills
g.
I would spend my retirement just writing, I like
the doing of it, it’s the making of that world that’s just—to me it’s so
satisfying, and just to hear sentences come out just right
i. Like
I remember one sentence was just “quotes sentence”—I was just satisfied with
writing that, for that character
ii. And
another sentence, from Soto **struggles to remember** I think it goes something
like “he wondered if there was” ** goes to a locked cabinet and takes out a
manuscript “from all my unpublished writings” – “He wonders if there is a
deeper register of finding the right words, a frequency lower than the mind can
hear, that requires a heart to break in order to be audible.”
1.
I’m not saying they’re the greatest sentences in
the English language, but there are moments when you are writing that
2.
For that moment in the text when it’s just write
in this persons life in their experience, and you just nail it, and you’re
convinced that you’ve nailed it, and that’s the pull of writing
10. How
much did your manuscript change during your publisher’s editorial process?
a.
Not as much as I expected, maybe not even as
much as I had hoped. There was a lot of
little tinkering, a phrase here, a phrase there, like all over, and then there
were a couple long scenes that I had hoped an editor had said “here’s how you
cut it down and fix it” and they didn’t do that, so I kind of had to do that
myself. I mean it changed, but not unrecognizably, it wasn’t that drastic. Revisions weren’t too drastic.
b.
Although they probably could have been more
drastic and made it better, and I go back to it and read it and I’m cringing,
but there’s times in writing where you want to do the next one to be better
11. Do
you have a definite and specific organization and structure in mind as you
begin writing? If so, how definite and
specific is your outline?
a.
Absolutely, always
b.
Oh, like I have to kind of know what the whole
thing is going to be before I start it. I don’t start it with like a plan start
to finish
12. How
would you describe your writing process?
a.
It depends on the thing that I’m writing
b.
Like for example, this new thing the founder
effect, has been shelfed for now. It kind of blurs fiction and creative
nonfiction—because the main character is aware that he’s text, he gets
intertextual, he talks about other books, he quotes other books, he just kind
of like does research in the book, it’s kind of a weird mix, so it’s kind of—it
depends on the project
i. There
are certain writers who have very recognizable themes and styels and topics and
people know what like an alice Monroe story is kind of like, and people know
kind of in that sort of a vein. But every time I write in fiction, I try to do
something that’s very different, and maybe I’m trying to find tthat thing
that’s my best voice, or maybe it’s about how img oing to do it
ii. I
have to feel like I’m learning something and it has to be stimulating to me
13. Do
you have any writing habits or rituals that help your writing process?
a.
Drink a lot of coffee, forget to eat
b.
I mean it only happens so often, because
professionally I have demands about publishing scholarship
14. Do
you write in multiple genres?
a.
Yes—see above descriptions of various texts
15. What
was your first publication, and what do you think of this publication now?
a.
I want to go back and talk to that young man,
talk some sense into him
b.
Forgiving, you know realizing that I was younger
and not so great at that, see the maturation process, what I’ve become more
self aware about, as writers get older, they get better at understanding what
you don’t have to put on the page
i. Sometimes
you can just put the first thirty seconds of a conversation, then cut to the
next scene, than spend an hour continuing that conversation and leaving it off
the page can be better, you know just to hint at it. It gets better to know how
to manipulate gaps for dramatic effect and efficiency.
16. Besides
teaching and authorship, have you had any other jobs in the writing field?
a.
No
No comments:
Post a Comment