When Michele Turk’s 11-year-old son, Michael, was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, she made it her mission to show him, and later others, that he was so much more than the boy who shouted obscenities hundreds of times a day. In What Makes Him Tic? (June 4, 2024; Woodhall Press),describes Michele’s leave-no-stone-unturned strategy to figure out what her son needed to succeed academically, socially, and emotionally in a world where Tourette is the punch line of jokes.

In What Makes Him Tic?, Turk blends firsthand experience raising a child with Tourette with useful information on how her son was able to control his symptoms, accept his condition, lean into his strengths, live a full life, and transition to a young adult who is now living independently and thriving at age 24. Readers follow Turk on her six-year journey to make sure Michael survived his school years with his self-esteem intact and didn’t become one of the many students with special needs who fall through the cracks. Michele found him treatments and people who could help, pushed for a good education, and became his advocate and his champion. 

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An educational and heartwarming memoir, What Makes Him Tic? serves as a road map and inspiration for parents, caregivers, and educators of children with Tourette and other special needs as well as people with TS. After reading What Makes Him Tic?, parents of a neurodivergent child will feel less anxious and alone — and better able to cope with the challenges of parenting a child in a world that’s wary of people who are different. The book is a must-read for parents and caregivers hoping to find the right medical care and education, and who want to help their child navigate the social landmines of middle and high school while finding and nurturing their talents.

People have achieved great success despite, or perhaps because of, their TS, including Oscar-and Grammy-Award winning musician Billie Eilish, actors Dan Akroyd and Seth Rogan, and soccer star Tim Howard. In fact, the book addresses how neurodivergent people are now being viewed not only in terms of their deficits but their strengths as well.

An experienced journalist, Turk sprinkles the narrative with facts based on extensive interviews with medical experts about Tourette, often referred to as “the most misunderstood well-known condition.” More memoir than medical story, What Makes Him Tic? is a moving portrait of a family, a marriage, and a mother coping with day-to-day life amidst the stresses of caring for a boy with a stigmatizing condition. The book is also a surprising testament to the healing power of music: taking readers to New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall — where Turk was certain she was the only parent ever to sit in the audience and wonder whether her child would curse while singing with a youth chorus onstage — as well as inside bars and music venues where Michael sang, played drums and guitar, and, ultimately, where he found himself as part of School of Rock.

Personal and powerful, Michele’s story also takes readers inside her marriage — which became a relationship in turmoil — as she honestly explores the toll Michael’s struggle took on her marriage to a doctor who didn’t make time to help his son, leaving her, a woman who had doubted her abilities as a mother, to find reserves of strength she didn’t know she had — just like her son.

Join Michele and I as we discuss her debut memoir and life as a journalist.

Rachael W: Throughout the memoir, you make important distinctions about what Tourette is and isn’t—and how it’s been treated in popular TV shows and movies. For those who haven’t read your book, how would you briefly define Tourette and what were the symptoms you and your son, Michael, dealt with?

Michele T: Tourette syndrome is a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary motor and vocal tics. Despite being portrayed as commonplace, only 10% of people with Tourette syndrome curse or use offensive language, a condition known as coprolalia. My son did, in fact, develop coprolalia at age 11, but prior to that, he had mild motor tics like eye blinking, which are much more common. He has been more or less tic free for a decade.

RW: In chapter 2, you discuss your ambivalence about becoming a mother, that you didn’t have the “yearning” other women have. This is not a book about “finding yourself as a mother,” though, in some ways, it actually is, as you navigate the challenges of raising a young boy with Tourette. First, I want to share my gratitude for acknowledging a feeling that we, as women, are conditioned not to have, surely not to talk about openly. Did you feel ambivalence writing publicly about your ambivalence to become a mother?

MT: Not really because I had already written about my ambivalence about motherhood in a Washington Post article before I became a mother. I agree that it was sort of a taboo subject, especially 25 years ago. However, I felt it was important to address here because all women don’t have the same feelings about motherhood or so-called maternal instincts — I didn’t until I gave birth to Michael and it was love at first sight, as I say in the book. I also added all of this backstory because several people read earlier versions and said that I seem to be so all in as a mother that it was hard to believe that I approached it reluctantly — after almost ten years of marriage.

RW: Later in chapter 2, you write, “I can bake an array of goodies. I am a good reporter and a decent writer, friend, wife, and daughter.” I was struck by your admittance early in the book that you’re a “decent” writer. It is comical because What Makes Him Tic? is far better than decent, but also, I appreciate the writerly candor. As writers, we think we need to be the best, to write the “Next Great American'' something, or it’s all for naught. Indeed—the publishing world is ultra-competitive, which validates a writer’s feelings of self-doubt. What words of advice can you share with emerging writers who let perfection get in the way of progress?

MT: That’s very kind of you. On the one hand, I agree that writers can be critical of themselves, but also writing does not come easily to me. I’m someone who writes and rewrites over and over, which helps me figure out what I want to say and how to say it correctly. Also, I have always thought of myself as a better researcher and reporter than writer — these are my strong suits, and what I love doing. I have a Master’s in Journalism (as opposed to an MFA), and I was taught, and still practice, old school journalism so writing about myself in the first person was difficult.

As for advice, I am not the best person to seek advice from because I have let perfection get in the way of progress. For me, it really helped to get feedback from professional editors who helped me hone and shape my story and figure out what to cut.

RW: When your son, Michael, was first diagnosed with Tourette, you compiled a tremendous amount of research to understand the condition, how to treat it, and how to manage it as a parent. How did all that information help as you sat down to write your book?

MT: The research was invaluable. I still have every email, every packet of information, and every research paper, piled up in boxes. At first, the book was a traditional memoir but a few years back I decided to write a reported memoir, and that’s where all the research came in handy. I went back and rifled through those boxes to find factual information that would help inform readers about Tourette Syndrome. There still is so much misinformation about Tourette so I wanted to sprinkle tidbits throughout the book to educate readers.

RW: You talk a lot in the book about managing a career as a writer/reporter and being a mom to two, one who is neurodivergent. You write, “In the 11 years since Michael was born, Russ had relied on me to take the lead parenting role, which seemed fair, given that I was working part-time from home, and he had a demanding job.” Now that your children are older, and your book is published, what are you working on? What writing projects are in the pipeline?

MT: It was a lot, for sure, especially when he was first diagnosed and we were in crisis mode. Even though his symptoms were severe, I feel grateful because every child with Tourette does not have the happy ending that Michael’s story has, as someone who is a college grad and is living on his own and thriving at 25. If you met him you would never know he has Tourette.

Right now, I am working on a number of companion pieces to What Makes Him Tic? to coincide with Tourette Awareness Month, May 15 to June 15. This involves taking a lot of those facts and stories in the book and unpacking them into longer essays and articles. For example, I did not talk about my daughter too much in the book, but I am interested in sharing information about how parents can support neurotypical siblings. Another idea is for a story on music’s effects on the brain, the healing power of music, and how some people who are neurodivergent have brains that are wired differently in a way that might predispose them to creativity. I discovered early on that my son magically stopped ticcing when he played drums or guitar. In fact, people are beginning to think of Tourette not only in terms of deficits, but in terms of the strengths kids might develop because of their condition.

RW: As a reporter, it is natural that you would write a book about one of the most compelling experiences in your life. How did you land on memoir as opposed to any other genre of non-fiction about Tourette?

MT: Like most journalists, I prefer asking the questions so it was challenging. However, within a year of Michael’s diagnosis, it seemed as though so much had happened that was worth sharing, from his struggles at school, self-esteem, being ostracized from his peers, not to mention the incessant ticcing.

I had begun to scribble notes, I kept a journal, and shared bits and pieces as it was happening in real time with other women writers in a memoir class, and the feedback there helped me to realize that my family’s story was one that needed to be told. Also, I looked for and read a lot of books and there was nothing else like it; My book is the book I needed back then. My goal has always been to educate and inspire other parents.

RW: What is your writing and revision process?

MT: It seemed endless. And haphazard. I wasn’t writing the book for a decade, but it was on my computer for a decade. During that time, I would write feverishly for several days or weeks, determined to finish whatever draft of the manuscript I was working on, and then leave it untouched for months. I showed it to several editors and agents over the years, and I workshopped it for a couple of years early on. I spent time at my local library, coffee shops, and The Fairfield County Story Lab (a writer’s co-working space), where I got my best work done without distractions, and I attended a few writer’s conferences, all of which inched me further along. Once I signed the book contract, and had a deadline, well, that’s when I really hunkered down because, like many writers, I can’t accomplish anything without a deadline. I’m not sure I would call that a great “process!”

RW: Your book is published with Woodhall Press, an independent publisher for independent authors, with or without an agent. Do you have an agent? Can you tell me more about your decision to work with this publisher and the benefits you have found so far vs. pursuing a “big 5”?

MT: I did have an agent at one point, but the contract with Woodhall was unagented. By far the main benefit has been that I have much more control of the story and the edits, which is important to me because I want to protect my son. Most people are pretty misinformed about Tourette and I didn’t want him or his story to be misrepresented. I asked for Michael’s recollections as I was revising and he read and signed off on the manuscript before I hit send (as did my husband and daughter), but if I had been with a larger house, the editors might have taken greater liberties with the story.

It’s funny because even now, people still act surprised when they find out how well he is doing, when in fact, there are many people with Tourette who are successful adults, including soccer star Tim Howard, actors Seth Rogen and Dan Akroyd, and of course, musician Billie Eilish.

RW: What does Michael think of your memoir?

MT: Michael has always been supportive of the memoir, and he has told me how proud he is of me, which is so sweet. He wrote me a Mother’s Day card last year saying he didn’t realize how much I had done for him until he read What Makes Him Tic? and thanking me! Of course, I am more proud of him and I am grateful that he allowed me to tell his story. That said, it has not been published yet so I hope he doesn’t mind a little publicity. He has not had tics for so long, and Tourette doesn’t really disrupt his life any more so I hope he inspires other kids and their parents who may still be in the thick of it.

RW: What is one thing you want readers to walk away with having read What Makes Him Tic?

MT: Parenting a neurodiverse child is hard work so don’t be so hard on yourself. Also, it will strain your relationships, and challenge you in so many ways, and you will make mistakes. While you’re waiting to find medical or therapeutic solutions, be sure to get support in whatever form works for you and your child and make sure your child finds something they love to do and can excel at, that makes them develop self-esteem, and really nurture those talents and interests, whether it’s sports or music or art or whatever. I believe this, in his case music, was truly my son’s salvation.

Check out my new coloring book and affirmations for kids, Mimi’s Big Mermaid Adventure & Affirmations now live on Amazon!

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Inspired the current political climate, Matonis’s narrative dances on parallel lines between the 19th century and today. You’ll be drawn in to her persuasive world in just the first pages. Be sure to buy your copy here.

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Rachael: This is your second novel. How long have you been writing novels? Have you always been a writer? What was your career before becoming a novelist?

Heidi: I took some writing seminar classes in college and loved them. After college I got a masters in Publication and Design. I focused my efforts in putting together a copywriting portfolio.  I worked very briefly as a copywriter. But to answer your question, no, I have not always been a writer and didn’t envision myself as such. I’ve had a vegan food company for the past ten years. I started writing during the pandemic on a whim and never stopped.

RW: You mention in your acknowledgements that Greg Jackson, podcaster from History That Doesn’t Suck, gave you the “seed” for this book. How so? Was it a particular episode that inspired you, or a story he told on the podcast? And why Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and not two other historical figures?

HM: So, I love history. And yet I had a resistance to learning about American History. I Googled around and found the podcast “History that Doesn’t Suck.” I was completely hooked by the “legit, seriously researched, hard-hitting survey of American history through entertaining stories.” One day I was running, listening to the episode about the election of 1800 between the incumbent John Adams and his vice president Thomas Jefferson. I actually stopped in my tracks and thought, Am I listening to the news?  The similarities between the election of 1800 and the 2020 election was astounding. Both included violence, vitriol and fake news.

RW: Throughout the narrative, you provide us with the first person accounts of the protagonist, Sara, and her deceased son, Johnny. You didn’t, however, give us the firsthand insights to Thomas, Sara’s captor. Why not?

HM: I was very interested in having a female protagonist who slowly discovered the charismatic personality of her captor.

RW: We know right away that the protagonist, Sara, lost her son, Johnny, in a domestic terrorist attack. The alternating narrative with Sara’s is Johnny’s, which is a bold choice that reads remarkably plausibly. How and why did you decide to use a dead narrator to mirror the living one’s?

HM: I researched what is left of a human body after it explodes. The answer: very little. The body is mostly water molecules that vaporize. The most significant and enduring element is nitrogen. Nitrogen atoms can exist in the same form for billions of years. I imagined Johnny existing in the form of skin cells, hairs, and fingerprints left behind.

RW: You self-published this book. Tell me about that experience, why you decided not to pursue a “traditional” publishing path and the benefits you’ve had controlling the creative process. Would you recommend this path to other emerging writers?  

HM: I have an agent and my book is professionally edited; however, my agent was unable to sell the book to a traditional publisher. Traditional publishing has been eviscerated by self-publishing.  The margins are minuscule, and publishers are reluctant to take risks; they need to know a book will sell.  My advice is to try the traditional route via agent and publisher but know that is not the end all. Everyone now has access to publishing.

RW: There is a big debate amongst the writing community whether an author needs “a platform,” or not. As an author without a social media platform, how do you promote and sell your book? How would you assuage those of us who have a small or non-existent social media presence?

HM: Well, to be very honest, I have not done a good job promoting and selling my book. I am just ramping up now. I have had stickers with scannable QR codes put on my frozen vegan packages. I am hatching an egg using my body and posting on social media. Both these efforts relate to my first book, Hatching Love. I hope to promote Imagining Monticello by parlaying onto a lively political landscape with the 2024 election.

RW: One aspect I particularly loved about this book is the parallel from history to modern day politics. In Chapter 4, you write “But the explosion at Go-Go Gourmet was unique because it, inadvertently, blew up the Constitutionalists’ biggest donor, Richard Thibaut.” I assume this is Peter Thiel. Am I correct?

HM: Yes, you are correct. I had a lot of fun orchestrating Peter Thiel’s death in Go-Go Gourmet! On one hand, it’s comforting to know that we are living through trauma our nation has withstood in the past, and on the other, it’s a reminder that the best predictor of the future, is, indeed, the past.

RW: Would you say your message has more to do with today’s current state of politics or where we come from as a nation?

HM: By drawing parallels between the politics of 1800 and now, I am trying to show that we’ve been through periods of divisive party politics. That being said, I do feel the period we’re in is unique. We cannot discount the power of social media and the easy access to guns.

RW: What is your writing process? Do you outline, draft, revise? Or do you draft, revise, draft, revise as you go? And what does your revision process look like?

HM: I write absolutely every morning. I am not an outliner. I have a rough idea where I’m going but I stay very open to possibilities. I am my first reader and I like to surprise myself! It takes me about eight drafts before I’m ready to show my work to the editor. After I get my first round of feedback, I write 2-3 more drafts. As the work takes shape, I change the font color from red to green to blue, to black. When a page is all black, I  format it.

RW: As Sara begins building trust with her captor to afford her more freedoms, like not wearing a blindfold or earplugs, she also develops trust of him, ultimately experiencing Stockholm Syndrome. Writing about a condition one doesn’t have (assuming you are hopefully not a victim of Stockholm Syndrome) can be a tricky subject. How did you address Sara’s condition honestly and with sensitivity? Was there valuable research to guide you?

HM: I read about Patty Hearst and watched the movie. I also read about Elizabeth Smart and watched the movie. They were shockingly similar. I also read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s a book about a man who suffers from locked-in syndrome.

RW: What is one thing you want readers to walk away from having read this book?

HM: I want readers to walk away with a feeling of empowerment. One of the themes I played with was brains vs. brawn. Sara ultimately overcomes her captors by being clever and patient. I also want readers to walk away with a sense of enduring love of family, even when a member appears gone, they are with us.

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In her remarkably informative memoir, Women Behind The Wheel: An Unexpected and Personal History of the Car, Nancy Nichols takes us on the drive of her life, shaped and influenced by the automobile. This is a story we expect to read by men, after all, cars are their domain, right?

Nichols provides a persuasive argument that cars are not a man’s-only interest; cars have played a major role in women’s history and domestic life today. Cars freed women with the ability to drive long distances on their own and seek romantic excursions with men. But cars also further chained women to the homes, with minivans and “Soccer Mom” cars marketed towards mothers to haul around children, groceries, sports gear, and more, some even equipped with vacuums—a mobile home environment for accommodating the lives and needs of others and, of course, to keep clean.

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As Nichols delves into her personal experiences of growing up with a father who was a used car salesman, a drag racing brother, and a mother and sister whose cars were extensions of their own personal style, she also informs of us the history of the car that changed the way average American families like hers live. Cars enhanced the Suffrage movement, and challenged traditional gender roles—hence the inception of the “woman driver” trope we all still know and endure today.

If you think car and driving culture doesn’t have a rich and compelling history, Nichols’s book will not only inform you, but will make you think differently about all the places you go and how you get there. Buy your copy here today!

Rachael W: You have an extensive list of sources, some of which I’ve read (thanks to your recommendation.) Tell me about your research process, how you came across these authors and titles. Did you start with burning questions you’ve always wanted to get to the bottom of, like, where did the women-driver stereotype originate? Or was the impetus a more generic, “let’s see what we can find out?”

Nancy N: Both.  I have always wondered where the bad driver stereotype originated. And it took me a long time to realize that cars in the beginning were very hard to drive and to start.  They had hand cranks and there was no such thing as power steering.  It just makes sense that they would be difficult for women to drive. They were also difficult for men. But the idea that women were bad drivers stuck.

I didn’t know as much at all about all the important cultural research around women and the car until I started digging into the book more.  I read Virginia Scharff’s, Taking the Wheel, first.  Then I followed on with a lot more research.  I like to read a book or an article and then find the best bits and figure out where they came from in the footnotes. From there I find and read the original source.  It takes a lot of time, but I enjoy it.

RW: You’ve received a lot of positive attention on this book so far. Congrats on the glowing review in NYT Books. I find the memoir parts of the book interesting and compelling, but I also believe that memoir—creative non-fiction in general—has a lot of elasticity. A memoir isn’t like a novel, where there’s a set format of components that should be included. And for a car enthusiast, such as myself, the history was essential. But I wonder what would you might say to a reader who asks for more memoir and less car?

NN: Braided nonfiction narratives must walk a fine line between the personal and the larger story at hand.  You can’t please everyone.  You must do the best you can and be in service to the book you are writing. The material itself will tell you what it wants to become.  I know that sounds a little vague, but I try to work with the material at hand and just sit with it.  I do believe that it will tell me what it wants to become.  Nonfiction is not like fiction.  There really are only so many routes to tying together the facts at hand.  I can’t just make up whole chapters or scenes.

RW: Sadly, both of your parents passed before you wrote this book, or at least before it was published. It seems that the one question every student of memoir wants to know is how to write about people who might be offended by what you say. How do you think this book would’ve been different, if at all, if your parents were around to read it today?

NN: I have always written about family members long after the relevant events. My mother died when I was 10 and my father passed many years ago. I don’t know what they would think of my book.  I only have one member of my extended family living who even remembers my birth family.  But I did pass the manuscript by my son and my husband for approval before publishing.  For students of memoir who are new to writing, I would say that they need to make conscious and careful choices.  It is possible to create very bad rifts in your relationships with your published work.  It’s a very personal choice to do that. And you must believe it is worth it.

RW: In chapter one, “Birth of a Used Car Salesman,” you tell us about your father, who sold “more Dodge Darts than any other man in the state of Illinois.” Readers can deduce that you were drawn to cars because of your parents, but what do you think explains your father’s decision to work in the automotive industry, and to not only sell cars, but collect and sell parts, too?

NN: I try to do justice to my father’s story in this book.  I think he was traumatized by his little brother’s death in a car accident when they were both young.  Was he trying to work something out by selling cars? I don’t know, but I suspect so. We will never know for sure. I have a lot of sympathy for both my parents.  I think they did the best they could with the situation they were in.  That’s all anyone can do.  But I can’t really understand all their decisions.  I try to make this clear by using the vehicles they drove as examples.  My mother drove a convertible and we lived in Northern Illinois.  It was just unpractical in the extreme, but in some way she was also. So those cars were important clues for me as I tried to understand my family members long after they had passed.

RW: For readers who haven’t yet had the privilege of reading your book, can you tell us about your background, particularly in writing? How did you know you wanted to be a writer? What do you like to write outside of professional work? Are you a novelist, too?

NN: I worked in television at the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour and in print as a senior editor at The Harvard Business Review.  I’ve published a lot over my 40 years in the business.  I am currently working on my first novel. It’s like starting all over and being a beginner again. So much fun.

RW: From what I can glean, you do not have a social media presence, which is a pretty brave position in today’s economy. In what ways have you found success in promoting this and other books without using social media? Does your publisher think you should be on a platform?

NN: I’ve gone a very traditional route with publicity for this book.  I was delighted to get reviewed in The New York Times book review and to have been a guest on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. My publicist at Pegasus, Nicole Maher, has been amazing.  I think my publisher is happy with the attention the book is getting. I know I am.

RW: I always want to know a writer’s process. The research notwithstanding, it does seem that you prepared for this book and did a lot of planning. You were inspired by your father’s career, your brother’s racing, the way cars were an extension of your mother’s and sister’s personal style. How long did you percolate on this story before committing to writing a memoir? How did the story come to you? Do you outline? How do you revise? Do you write and revise each chapter at a time, or do you wait until the manuscript is completed before you go back through?

NN: I originally was writing a more traditional memoir.  I was able to publish a part of that in True Story, a publication of Creative Nonfiction.  At that time, I was told by my previous agent and editor it wouldn’t work as a book and that I couldn’t sell it.  Then I found a new agent, Reiko Davis of DiFiore & Company, who brilliantly helped me reformat the book into the current narrative nonfiction structure. Jessica Case at Pegasus Book was brave enough to accept the book on proposal and really get behind it. So, it was a long road.  I write and rewrite in one long document.  Gets kind of messy, but I finally work it out.

RW: What do you drive today and what would you drive as a second car if money/practicality/etc. were no object?

NN: I still drive a Subaru Forester—the one I wrote about in the book.  Very practical. If money was no object, I might like a Mercedes G Wagon or an S Class.  If I could have a collector’s car—the 1955 Dodge La Femme. It was made essentially to appeal to women buyers. It was very pink and had a built-in handbag. There is no limit to the number of cars I would like to own.  I would like to have a project car and do a custom renovation. But honestly, that won’t be happening on the current budget.

RW: In your chapter “My Mother’s Chevy Convertible and Sexual Freedom,” and later in “Automotive Maternity and the Volvo,” you discuss how the car changed history for romance and motherhood in both good and bad ways. Regarding a controversial Volvo advertisement, you write, “The ad also reinforced long-standing beliefs about automotive culture: that women favored safety over speed and performance, that women prized utility in cars rather than pizzazz, and that the interior of the car was itself womblike, a special domestic space that women were responsible for keeping clean." I don’t think there’s a world in which we don’t end up with cars or some kind of equivalent, but how do you think the world would look today if we still didn’t have cars to make out in as teenagers, or schlep our kids’ hockey sticks to practice? Do you think that the car has made our culture more progressive? Do you think it’s true that women, in general truly do prize safety and utility over performance and pizazz? Why is this a binary choice, do you think?

NN: I don’t see a world without cars or some sort of personal mobility tool that looks very much like a car. I think the car is a mixed bag.  It has meant more freedom for women, but it has come at a high price.  I don’t think women value safety more than men, but I do think women are less likely to be looking for speed in their daily driver.   There really is some truth to the fact that “speed kills.” The faster you are going the more likely you are to be hurt or killed and the chances of being hurt or killed grow much greater as your speed increases. In that way, I think the choice may be binary…in the sense that it is embedded in the unchangeable physics of heavy objects at high speed.

RW: I love the contradiction that you made so glaringly clear about cars and women: on the one hand they are machines of power and freedom and on the other, they are tools of domesticity and responsibility. In your chapter, “The Punch Buggy: The Volkswagen Beetle and Violence against Women," you write, “Learning to drive was not only a personal milestone, it was also a boon for the rest of the family. Now that I could run errands and do the shopping, I was like every other woman driver. In the broad swath of automotive history, one thing has proven true: for men the car has always symbolized adventure and escapism, but for women the car likely means a longer to-do list. More chores mean more miles.” It is sort of insidious how the auto industry made cars an essential way of life for women and then ostracizes them when they drive. 

NN: As someone with some experience in the industry you will understand the old rule of thumb:  Women will buy a man’s car, but men won’t buy a woman’s car.  So, the auto industry was faced with appealing to women without damaging their model’s appeal to men.  That meant creating a kind of “domesticized” version of the auto for women. Cars for women were about being in service to others; cars for men have been more about romance of the open road.  That’s how the car industry sold the “two-car” family idea.  It worked economically and it played into already prevalent ideas about gender.  There is even an ad that appealed to men.  It said in short, buy her a car so she can do all the annoying things she wants you to do on the weekend. 

RW: In your chapter, “Back to the Future in the Electric ‘Ladies’ Car,” you write, “All of which [concerns about electric cars] is more or less true, and yet to raise these concerns is to be accused of being a technophobe, or in the words of a Twitter mob, spreading FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt.” In the next chapter, “Tomorrow’s Vehicle: Autonomous, Connected, Distracting, and Dangerous,” you provide a very balanced, and unafraid critique of the future of the vehicle.  In doing so, you’ve challenged the future of the car. What would you say if a reader accused you of being a technophobe? 

NN: Women’s concerns about the car have been denigrated and denied almost since the inception of the cars, so part of what I am advocating for is letting women have a bigger voice in car culture.  That’s the first thing. Second, to the extent that your readers are interested in this, I would suggest reading Matthew B. Crawford’s Why We Drive.  He had the best argument for why we need to be careful about the selling of the future.  Once something gets branded as the next best thing you can look like a fuddy duddy for not adopting it.  But aren’t there a lot of us who wish our phones had never been invented? We love them and loathe them.  All I am asking is that we spend some time thinking about the car of the future, so that we make the best possible choices going forward.

RW: What do you hope readers walk away with after reading Women Behind the Wheel?

NN: I’ve always wanted people to pay attention.  Ever since I started reporting in my early 20s, I had this naïve view that the problems of the world could be solved if we just paid attention.  I think that with the car we’ve grown so accustomed to accommodating it and its needs and forgotten so much of car history that we’ve in some sense become unaware of the auto even as it zooms all around us.  Henry James said he wanted his readers to be finely aware, so as to be richly responsible.  That seems like a good goal to me.

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A fellow Vermont College of Fine Arts alum, Robin Oliveira is the author of 3 novels. She holds a BA in Russian and studied at the Pushkin Language Institute in Moscow. She is a former registered nurse, specializing in critical care, and lives near Seattle.

I invited Robin to participate in an interview with me, which we conducted over email just as her book launched. What follows is our discussion.

Rachael W: I was markedly impressed by your relationship with Samuel as author and character. It almost seems, as the reader, who knows little about you personally, that the character, Samuel, is a part of you. You wrote and developed the other characters perfectly, but there was just something about Samuel that was different, more personal. How do you get to know your characters so well that you write about them so convincingly? Alternatively, what obstacles can get in the way of knowing a character and what they will do, the choices they’ll make? Has Samuel appeared in your other books, maybe in a different form or with a different name?

Robin O: I’d written from the male point of view before, however Samuel Fiddes IS close to my heart. I imbued him with the characteristics of all the good men I’ve admired in my life, young and old, who have been friends to me. Samuel is loyal, kind, whip smart, generous, full of integrity, and willing to do anything to ensure the safety and well-being of those he loves. In many ways he exaggerates those traits, as an ideal, though he does stumble as he tries to rebuild his life after a significant loss. One of the manifestations of his integrity is that Samuel makes community through his goodness, which is very important to me, personally, and very important in A WILD AND HEAVENLY PLACE.

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The level of research necessary to be as detailed as I am in my novels gives me breathing room to spend time with the characters. I think a writer should aways be willing to be surprised, to ask why a character is doing something, what they want, how might they get what they want. I play with them by putting them in challenging situations to see how they will react, go down different avenues with them, make mistakes with them as I try to discover who they are. My most apt tool is one that the author Douglas Glover once posed to me when I struck an impasse with a character. I’ll pass it along here. When you are at an impasse with a character, ask yourself, What does their soul want? This simple but vital question gets at the heart of the emotional arc of any character. I ask this multiple times of each of the characters as I write the novel, which keeps the narrative thread intact.

Samuel Fiddes is unique among my characters. I had never met him until A WILD AND HEAVENLY PLACE.

RW: I loved the short interludes between each part, providing third party context for the times and the history. Did you write those, or were the ones from the Glasgow Herald or the Daily Intelligencer real excerpts that you were able to dig up? If you wrote them, how did you research current events in those times and places and match the language? If you found them, how easy was it to get these old newspaper articles?

RO: The epigraphs at the beginning of each of the five acts/parts of the novel are taken directly from newspapers and books of the era. It was very easy to find them. American Memory at the Library of Congress has many digitized newspapers from the last 150-200 years, with an excellent search function that allows you to focus on either dates or events. Newspapers can lead you to other resources. For instance, the epigraph from a travel guide I found because The Glasgow Herald reviewed the book, which I was then able to find in Gutenberg or Google Books. In the first draft I turned into my editor, I had epigraphs for each chapter, but she cut them in favor of including them only at the beginning of each section. I would have preferred to keep them all, but we writers only have control over so much.

RW: Tell me about your research process. In the acknowledgements, you mention a few people who helped in your journey. But I want to know what questions you started with, what you intended to find out or answer, what deviations you might’ve taken, and anything else you can share about the researching process. 

RO: I can best summarize my research process by saying that I do not outline, nor do I know when I begin writing what I might need to know to bring a story to life. I often know very little about my subject matter, so I don’t know what questions I am going to have, or the answers I will need. I do not have a period of research and then a period of writing. I wouldn’t know what the story needs. Research is ongoing. When I run into a roadblock—for instance, needing to know about coal mining in the Pacific Northwest—I stop writing and dive in, consulting every available resource, both primary and secondary. I have utilized nonfiction books, JSTOR articles, historical maps, newspapers, diaries, court transcripts, railroad and ship timetables, old city directories, advertisements, photographs, contemporary travel guides. In addition, I speak to experts in their fields, both over the phone and in person. I have flown to France to study the artifacts of Edgar Degas’s studios in the basement of the Musée d’Orsay, walked Civil War battlefields, traipsed over mountains looking for 19^th century mining artifacts, etc. What is fundamental to my process is that I will do whatever is necessary to understand the subject and the place that I am writing about. Research gives me story, and story gives me research. The two are symbiotic.

If I diverge from history, which is rare, I note it in my author’s note. Sometimes the needs of story and novel structure demand a deviation to make the novel sing. I remind myself that I am not writing history. I use history to bring the past to life. In A WILD AND HEAVELY PLACE, I moved an explosion in a coal mine to a different time period because it was necessary to echo an earlier event in the novel. In WINTER SISTERS, I moved the date of a catastrophic storm. The goal is an excellent novel, a vibrant invocation of the past, a story that haunts the reader after they have finished the book. Sometimes divergence is necessary.

RW: Did you know much about ship building before writing this book, or was that also part of your research? What made you decide that Samuel was a ship builder as opposed to any other possible trades he could’ve done at that time?

RO: I knew about shipbuilding because during the pandemic my husband and I were working with a shipbuilder to build our first boat. Some of the conversations that Samuel has about the craft are lifted directly from conversations with our shipbuilder. One of the goals of research for any novel is to find connections that strengthen the story. For this novel, in traveling to Scotland, I learned that the best ships in the world were built on the River Clyde, the river that flows through Glasgow. “Clyde Built” was the shorthand for excellence in late 19^th and 20^th century shipbuilding. When I learned that in 1879 Seattle there were three major shipyards in a town of only 3,000 people, Voila! Connection! So, Samuel got his profession.

RW: On page 106, you write, “Aside from Bonnie Atherton, the six hundred citizens of Newcastle were not welcoming.” I think that any community the MacIntyre family moved to would’ve had a a faction of gossipers that are unfriendly. But for those of us familiar with the Seattle Freeze, the stereotype that Seattleites are cold and unfriendly, it’s unsurprising that Hailey’s only friend is from California. Based on your research about Seattle’s history, how do you explain the Seattle Freeze? Do you think it’s true or an unfair generalization? 

RO: Ha! My personal experience living in the Pacific Northwest is that the Seattle Freeze is part myth and part function of the hibernation that occurs every Fall, Winter, and Spring due to the heavy rain, darkness, and gray skies. The effort of entertaining or socializing can be too much when there is too little light in the day. Summertime brings about the best in us, with its long days and big skies. Remember, in the novel, Seattle was made up of immigrants. The town was young, and Newcastle even younger. Neither could have formed a cohesive behavior or identity yet. I put it down to the weather. And in the MacIntyres’ case, a function of class. They arrived with the trappings of wealth to a primitive coal town recently cut out of the wilderness. The gap in social standing was significant, prompting division.

RW: On page 247, you write, “After an oppressive November and December filled with incessant rain, the whole town was astonished when six feet of snow fell over a period of one week in mid-January. The Indians had no collective memory of such an event ever occurring.” I laughed out loud because when I lived in Seattle in the winter of 2019, we had a major blizzard and everyone said the same thing: “This doesn’t happen here.”  I thought to myself, they’ve been saying that for over 130 years! Is snow something that really does happen more frequently than anyone wants to admit or is this a funny coincidence?

RO: Snow really doesn’t happen here that often. And six feet of it? Unheard of. Except for once. The storm in the novel was historic, a rare meteorological hiccup that did indeed bury Seattle and cause roofs to cave in.

RW: In Part 4, you write a lot about race relations in Seattle in the late 19th century. It varies from other parts of the country in that it is less confrontational, particularly from the south, but that racism is still alive and well. There is a lot of anti-Asian sentiment in Seattle in the 1880’s. When we fast forward to today, Seattle is known for being a super progressive, liberal city. When I lived there, I recall many neighbors with anti-racist signage in front of their houses, but I couldn’t help notice the irony that there isn’t much diversity there. Where I lived in Ballard had once been a white-only neighborhood during redlining. How do you think Seattle has changed or stayed the same culturally when it comes to racism? 

RO: I can’t speak for all of Seattle, obviously, but I will say that racism has reared its ugly head in many ways in Seattle’s history. The Chinese were abruptly expelled from Seattle in a riot in 1886 over (doesn’t this sound present-day?) fears they would take white people’s jobs. Never mind that the Chinese had almost single handedly built a great deal of Seattle’s early infrastructure and without their labor, Seattle would have been handicapped in its early ambitions. Whites then wrote a law to keep the indigenous Indians from their ancestral hunting, farming, and camping grounds within the ever-expanding city limits, forcing them to beach their canoes on an island of ballast in the harbor and visit the city only during the day. In 1879, there were by census only eight African Americans in the city, but you can bet there was a newspaper editorial printed about how if more came to the city they would get the same ugly treatment meted out to the Chinese. Interestingly, Henry Yesler, a city founder and major rascal, employed many native Americans and sold land to African Americans when no one else would. And James Colman, another mover and shaker, had an excellent relationship with Chin Gee Hee, who provided Chinese labor to much of the city. And now?  According to Data USA, In 2021, there were 3.84 times more White (Non-Hispanic) residents (451k people) in Seattle, WA than any other race or ethnicity.

That said, I believe I am not the best person to address current racism in Seattle. Better to ask someone whose life has been unjustly disrupted economically and socially by their ethnicity or color of their skin. I wanted to include the subject of racism in the novel because it was complicated issue for the town then, part and parcel of its being. I like to hold a mirror to the past so that we can view our present with some degree of perspective.

RW: I want to switch gears and talk about your experience at VCFA. When did you graduate and what were you working on when you were a student? How do you think attending VCFA helped your writing career? Are there things you wish you had learned in school that you didn’t find out until later about writing, publishing, publicity, etc?

RO: I graduated from VCFA in 2006. I worked on short stories and the beginning of what would become my first novel, MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER. I came to study at VCFA because I had taken writing courses at a community college and extension courses at the University of Washington, and still did not know what I needed to know. I had gotten an agent for a novel I had written, but it was rejected by several publishing houses. At that point, I decided that someone might know what it was that I didn’t yet know, so I went searching for an MFA program. I liked the pedagogical model of VCFA, applied, and was accepted. I learned everything I needed to know about writing at VCFA, without question. That said, a writer is always learning. Perhaps it’s best to say that VCFA taught me how to approach writing, how to think about it, how to find what I need to know so that when I left the program, I was equipped to go it alone. As far as publishing and agency, I had already learned that portion of the business by attending Writer’s Conferences that focused on the subject. It’s easy to learn that. Writing is harder. And as far as publicity? See below.

RW: Talk to me about your author platform. You are active on Instagram and Facebook. Do you find that you need to rely on an author platform in order to sell books? Is it a part of the job that comes naturally to you or do you find it a necessary evil?

RO: I am not fond of social media, and blowing my own horn is tough for me.  That said, I am active on the two platforms you mentioned. Regarding relying on those to sell books, I maintain that it’s hard to know what moves the needle on sales these days. Obviously, visibility is key in myriad ways. I’d like to believe that word of mouth alone works, but I’m fairly certain that’s no longer the case. I dabble in social media, really. I do what I can within my own values in order to maintain my sanity. That said, the publishing house has done extensive social media outreach, including bookstagrammers, which has helped with visibility. The mantra seems to be to do what is necessary to get the novel to those readers who will love it. As my publisher emphasizes, the landscape has changed, and the more adaptable you can be to social media, the better, within the bounds of your own willingness to engage.

RW: For readers who are unaware, you were inspired by an old stone house on San Juan Island. Can you tell me what about that house called to you? Why did you feel compelled to create this story to understand it?

RO: The ruins of an old stone house on San Juan Island intrigued me from the moment I first saw them. They are unlike any other architecture on the islands. The care it took to build that house remains evident in the ruins, which appealed to me because the house seemed to carry a story. Someone built the house with love. I knew I would put them in a novel one day.

RW: I always want to know a writer’s process. The research notwithstanding, it does seem that you prepared for this book and did a lot of planning. You were inspired by the stone house. How long did you percolate on this story before committing to writing a novel? How did the characters and their story come to you? Do you outline? How do you revise? Do you write and revise each chapter at a time or do you wait until the manuscript is completed before you go back through?

RO: The percolation time I can never really estimate because in this instance, I first came upon those ruins about a decade ago. Nor can I say the point at which I begin a novel, because the imagination process is ongoing. I will say that when I begin thinking about a story, I wonder whether it matters. Is it worthy of telling? What is at emotional stake for these characters who are beginning to occupy my mind? (Characters are mysterious. They appear.) Will readers care? (I never know the answer to that question, but I’ve decided that if a story is interesting to me, it might be interesting to others.) Then I begin to put words to paper. A scene here, a fragment there. Things build. I hit a roadblock in my knowledge base and stop writing to research. I discover something I had no idea existed, which gives me an idea (research gives me story) and then I imagine more, write more. Writing a novel is a process of combining the demands of novel structure with individual character desires and molding the story into a coherent, living thing which seems real, but isn’t. On many levels, my process is intuitive. Essentially, I feel my way, keeping in mind the demands of form.

The nuts and bolts are that I write about six hours a day, sometimes more. I revise as I write, or not. I follow the narrative thread, explore other aspects of the story. Working at the sentence level is important. I have never once written a draft from beginning to end in a linear way. My process is not methodical. It is a dance.

RW: What do you hope readers walk away with after reading A Wild And Heavenly Place?

RO: I have no control over what readers walk away with. Art, literature, becomes a reader’s once they have taken in the story. I do my part by working as hard as I can, imbuing every sentence with meaning and beauty, employing the best diction for the moment and character, interrogating and perfecting every aspect of story, enlivening the characters, vitalizing the setting, and hopefully, through all of that work, elevating the theme. It is out of my hands once it is in the readers’ hands. At some point, the author has to let go.  

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Welcome to the inaugural interview of The Earthly Kitchen’s new, seasonal Author Interview series, featuring Sue William Silverman.

Sue William Silverman is a prolific, award winning creative-non fiction writer and memoirist. She’s had eight books published. Two are craft books on how to write memoir, including her newest, Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories To Ignite The Soul, two books of poetry, and four essay collections or memoirs. She has been published in many publications, including The Rumpus, and Brevity, and has appeared on TV, is a public speaker, has had a Lifetime movie, Love Sick, made based on her memoir of the same name, teaches CNF and is Co-Faculty Chair at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, from where I graduate in July 2024 with an MFA.

I first met Sue on the phone. It was fall of 2022, and I was coming back from a one year leave of absence after having my baby. I was dreading writing fiction, but excited for school. I love to read fiction, and have written a good amount of it, but it’s not my vibe anymore. Creative non-fiction, writing personal narrative, essays, and memoir are where I feel most compelled and inspired. It finally occurred to me to study CNF instead of fiction when I returned.

There is something about the world we live in today where readers need truth, we need soul. That is not to say that novels and short stories do not illuminate the human conditions we seek to understand—they do. But fiction has certain rules that aren’t applied to memoir (such as plot twist, sub plots, etc.). This allows personal narrative more flexibility of form and function that fiction doesn’t have, and I’m interested in that elasticity.

To prepare for my return to school, I took a 6-week Sackett St. essay writing class. The instructor, Xeni Fragakis, shared a chapter from Sue’s first craft book Fearless Confessions on “the voice of innocence vs. voice of experience.” I immediately recognized her name from faculty at VCFA and knew: I should be studying CNF at VCFA, and I should be doing it with this incredible writer, Sue William Silverman. She agreed to take a phone call with me and help me determine next steps. Here we are a couple years later discussing her newest publication, Acetylene Torch Songs, a craft book which launched this month for fellow creative-non fiction writers on how to write “true stories that ignite the soul.” Even if you, yourself, are not a CNF writer, I invite you to read our interview, where Sue shares how she survives the trauma of child sexual assault, sex addiction, and life through writing. We even talk a little about cars, my first true love.

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The Interview

Rachael: What you are aware of that readers aren’t, is I submitted these questions to you several days later than promised. It’s because I ended up doing a much deeper and closer read than I anticipated. Literally every page added some value or advice to how I think about writing. I highlighted, took notes, jotted down creative ideas. Even though it’s impossible to tell someone “how” to write a book, Acetylene Torch Songs truly is a how-to. I imagine a lot of writers can’t answer why they do/write certain things; it’s just intuitive. They write by feel. But you are very deliberate. How did you develop such self-awareness about how you write and why you use certain techniques, like sensory details, window motif, confessional writing, etc.? How did you become so deliberate and conscious? Do you ever write in a way that’s intuitive that you can’t put your finger on?

Sue: I definitely wrote my first book, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, intuitively. This is embarrassing to admit, but, at that point (back around the early 1990s), the only memoir I’d even read was The Diary of Anne Frank—and, well, that’s Anne Frank! Up to that point, I’d only read, written, and studied fiction.

So when I started that first memoir, I had no conscious idea what I was doing. It just flowed out of me, the whole thing, in three months. Frankly, I knew so little (nothing) about the form, that I never even second-guessed myself. Which was not ego! Rather, it was complete ignorance. I barely revised it. True, I’d had a lot of practice writing, albeit fiction. But CNF? No idea. Miraculously, it happened to win The Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award Series, and was published.

Then came the second book, Love Sick, about struggling with sex addiction. That’s when I realized: Oh, I need to learn about this genre.

Here’s what happened: The first gazillion drafts of Love Sick were one train wreck after another. Why? Initially, it was all written in the voice of the addict. Well, believe me, that was seriously boring. Finally…finally, I realized what was missing: the voice of the author-narrator who could guide the reader through the quagmire of the addiction. At its heart, then, what I learned is that creative nonfiction needs two voices: The voice of the unaware narrator in the situation in the past, coupled with the more aware narrator who makes sense of this past situation—but in the present, i.e. the author-narrator—who discovers the metaphors of the experience.

All this said, I still write kind of intuitively in early drafts. Initially, I don’t think about metaphor or structure, and so on. Only in later drafts am I more deliberate, which is when I enter a state of Major Revision.

R: Over the course of the book, I picked out a few uncommon, but not unusual words: corporeal, ethereal, prurient, lacuna. How do you develop your language? Do you flip through physical or online thesauruses? Is it all just your natural vocabulary?

S: Oh, thank you. I actually try to avoid a thesaurus as much as possible. I find them to be more unhelpful and inaccurate than not. Mainly, I read and read and read. I think that must be how I developed my vocabulary. I’ve always read, avidly. I was reading the great Russian novelists, Faulkner, what were considered the “classics,” back in high school. I got terrible grades in school because all I did was read novels!

R: In your Overture, you write, “Chapters are accompanied by essays I specifically wrote to exemplify the concerns at hand. I wanted to ensure I could follow my own advice.” I truly love that you do this because when I pick up a SWS book, I’m here to read SWS, though I’m certainly not offended by your use of examples from other writers, particularly in a craft book. I wonder though, why do you feel compelled to prove yourself to your readers when you’ve already done so with successfully published memoirs and craft books?

S: I actually think I need to prove myself to myself! I mean, there I was writing this craft book offering all this advice. Then, at some point (I’d already written maybe two drafts of Acetylene Torch Songs before I realized this), I thought maybe it would be a good idea to see if I could follow my own advice.

Coupled with this was the realization that, by writing these essays to accompany each chapter, it would be a more hands-on way to show the reader what I mean. I could offer a little deconstruction by drilling down into an essay. That way, the reader of the book could learn by example. It’s another kind of showing and telling. Or, in this case, telling and showing. Let me explain what I mean by voice. Now, let me show you what I mean in this essay.

R: This is a follow up to Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide To Memoir. I’ve read both craft books and can see where you have further developed some original ideas. Tell us more about how you freshened up the concepts in Confessions, what you did differently this time around, and why you felt obliged to write another craft book on memoir? Would you ever write a craft book on how to write a craft book?

S: HaHa, I have to laugh about the thought of writing a craft book on how to write a craft book! But I’ll tell you a secret about how to do just that: To write a craft book, you teach writing in a place (Vermont College of Fine Arts, in my case) where you are required to give lectures at the residencies. Each chapter in the book, albeit in a very different form, was originally a lecture. In other words, the ideas in “Acetylene” evolved from a seed of a lecture. Then, after a gazillion revisions, blossomed into a chapter.

Anyway, back to the first part of your question. When I wrote Fearless Confessions I’d only, at that point, written two memoirs. Now, after many more years of teaching, plus writing two additional books, which happen to be essay collections, my awareness about the genre evolved.

For example, while I may have intuitively understood the concept that creative nonfiction is both microscopic and telescopic, I didn’t know how to articulate it. I now better understand how we examine the small details of our lives while, through metaphor and reflection, we offer a larger, more universal meaning.

What does this look like? Let’s say that even if you haven’t, for example, been on a misguided search for spirituality (as I wrote about in The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew), you probably have felt the underlying emotions such as alienation, loss, a seeking to belong—which is at the heart of that book. If readers relate to these abstract feelings, then the hope is that they will relate to the experience that prompted those feelings. We write universally when we incorporate metaphor into our narratives. In this instance, therefore, the pop music icon Pat Boone is a metaphor for the narrator’s misguided search for spirituality.  Therefore, by microscopically gazing inward (in this case, my own search), we’re also, at the same time, projecting universal feelings (feelings we all share) outward to our readers.

R: Tell me more about your mediocre fiction? How do you know it was so mediocre if it wasn’t actually published? How could you feel the difference in the quality of your writing when you discovered CNF?

S: Oh, it was totally mediocre. Embarrassingly so. Well, ok, the writing probably wasn’t that bad: sentence to sentence. But the protagonist, in each novel, seemed stuck in one emotional state: melodrama. I swear I don’t know how to fully realize a fictional character.

The moment I began my first memoir, however, I felt as if I’d literally fallen inside this deep, sacred vessel of truth, of emotional authenticity. I physically felt it. I was Home.

R: I imagine most readers of this interview are like you and love literature. How did you come to love literature? What about it do you love specifically? What has it meant to you in the past and what does it mean to you now as a prolific author?

S: Initially, I’m sure I loved it because it was an escape from the confusion and trauma of my childhood. I entered other worlds and, voila, I was in that world, a distant place from my own.

At the same time, I felt a sense of truth and honesty (regardless that I was reading fiction), that, I intuited, was lacking in my own life. I mean, my father mis-loved me, but I couldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even understand what it meant. He told me he loved me; I believed, back then, that he loved me. Yet, yet, surely I sensed that wasn’t love. So, as I say, this literary world offered me emotional truths that I experienced nowhere else.

And now? I’m simply dazzled by language, by all the forms of creative nonfiction, by the elasticity of the genre. I love to encounter all the varied aesthetic visions. Plus, I absolutely love how creative nonfiction has given traditionally underrepresented voices a platform to speak.

R: I love that you wrote your essay collection How To Survive Death And Other Inconveniences like a “road trip.” Readers who know me know I love cars and driving. Naturally, I noticed that you mentioned several cars in this craft book by make, model and color. For someone who doesn’t know “anything about cars,” as you’ve told me in the past, you make connections to them, or at least you infer something about them. You mentioned your gold Plymouth from Death, and in this craft book you mention both your husband’s Honda Civic, and your green VW Beetle. What do these signify or symbolize? Is it socio-economic? Prosopon, or persona? Specificity of detail?

S: That’s an interesting insight that I hadn’t previously considered. Well, my first car was a green VW Beetle. I bought it second-hand for about a thousand dollars. And I loved it, even though it had no heating system and the engine, over its lifetime, needed to be rebuilt twice. Anyway, when I bought it, I felt so, well, adult! I owned a car! I could go anywhere. So, yes, that car, in particular, was/is a prosopon (or mask) for the me who wanted to feel a sense of freedom, of control: I could go anywhere I wanted.

R: Twice in the book, you emphasize you don’t consult with friends or family to verify details or memories, that you trust the truth in your own story. Are there any occasions that you are curious about someone else’s assessment of a shared memory, or that their discordant view might create an unexpected and interesting perspective you hadn’t considered? Does it matter? If you did ask, would you write about it?

S: This is probably completely shallow of me, but I honestly don’t want to know someone else’s assessment of a shared experience—at least in terms of my writing. As a friend or a sister or an ex-wife I might be curious. But, when it comes to writing, I need to stay in my own lane, remain in my own vision.

That said, I see your point that it could create an unexpected perspective. Yet, here’s the problem: My sister (I hope she doesn’t read this) never thinks about the past. She pretends it doesn’t exist. She has zero introspection. Ditto for my two ex-husbands. OK, that sounds mean-spirited, but, I swear, they don’t reflect on anything too personal. In short, I don’t think any of these theoretically significant people could deepen my perspective.

I did, however, not too long ago, have the opportunity to see my high-school boyfriend, Jamie, whom I write about a lot. I had to ask him if he’d loved me way back then. Or if I was significant to him. He said “yes.” And that made me feel good. But that’s kind of an anecdote and not really something I’d write about.

R: In your chapter, “Behind The Mask,” you suggest that once you write about something that haunts you, it tends to stop haunting you and you can let it go, move on to the next obsession. You write, “What to do after one face you wear [story] gets worn out, which typically happens after you finish writing one book or essay? As a writer of creative non-fiction, you change it. You explore a new face. You don a different mask.” What happens if the face you once wore, the book or essay you wish to tell, has already worn out, is no longer an obsession—before being written?

S: I’m thinking that, in a deeper sense, it hasn’t really worn out, that the obsession remains, albeit “hidden.” I’m guessing that the writer simply hasn’t found the “right” portal into the experience, hasn’t found the “right” metaphor. There are times when I’m writing and think to myself “so what?” Well, what I really know to be true (for me) is that I’m skidding on the surface of experience. I haven’t yet plunged down to the depths. So I need to find the portal in, and mine those metaphors as far as they’ll take me. Then, that obsession, maybe once perceived as dried up, blooms with life.

R: In the chapter “Come Together,” you guide readers on how to assemble a collection of essays. You write, “An essay collection is a comprehensive and sustained inquiry—composed of many different actions—revolving around one common theme or variations on a theme.” If you’ve read Burning Questions, an essay collection by Margaret Atwood, she missed the memo on this. A lot of her collections are separated by the time or era she wrote them. Do you feel that there are any exceptions to the rule about thematically linked essay collections?

S: Yes, there are exemptions! And, to be honest, the main exception is for those writers who are very famous. They absolutely get those disconnected essay collections published. In other words, someone named Margaret Atwood could pretty much publish anything. Which isn’t to say that a collection of unconnected essays is bad or not worth reading. They can be brilliant!

But, in terms of publishing (unless you’re Margaret Atwood or someone of her ilk), virtually all presses want a collection of thematically congruent essays. Let me hasten to add, however, that is not the only reason to write one in this vein by any stretch of the imagination. Frankly, to me at least, it’s more interesting to write (and read) a congruent essay collection! It gives you the opportunity to fully explore a theme from many different angles. With each essay, you turn the camera’s eye, or the lens, a bit, and examine (re-examine) this theme, this subject, using different actions, different metaphors. This process makes for a more interesting book.

R: In the chapter, “Respect,” you go full tilt memoir-writer-as-activist, saying that writing memoir is an act of resistance, that it’s political. I love this. A few of your sentences read: “Through our words we say not just #metoo. We also say #stop. We say: if you do this to me, I will write about it. #I will speak up and speak out. #I will resist… #Metoo means you’re not alone, we’re in this together… you already survived… So, as white male power structures erode, as women and others in the resistance break the glass ceilings, even more will change.” Sue, your hippie is showing. Tell me more about how writing is an act of resistance, of change. What is the power of the written word? Define yourself as a hippie.

S: Yes, I’m totally, in my heart of hearts, still a hippie flower child. Which is probably why I still miss my green VW Beetle. (Dang, I now drive a Toyota RAV 4, which my hippie self hates.) Anyway, I think, after being raised in a patriarchal home, full of silence and/or lies, once I began to write, I couldn’t, well, STFU. I’m a peaceful person, so I’m not going to become a gun-toting revolutionary. But I believe in the power of language, of voice. I believe personal narrative matters. I truly believe that the #MeToo movement would not have happened if it weren’t for the explosion of memoir, which started around the mid-1990s.

These memoirs, it’s important to note, were written mainly by women and others who had been traditionally silenced. If I see an injustice, I feel compelled to right/write it. Or “plead” that someone else write it: thus, a reason I wrote Acetylene Torch Songs. I want everyone to write their narratives! Injustices can be rectified through the power of the written word; in “Acetylene,” I encourage you, and you, and you to write your true stories to ignite the soul.

R: In the chapter entitled, “You Don’t Own Me,” you gently touch on the idea of cancel culture, calling it censorship. You write, “From my perspective, a particularly insidious form of censorship is silence. We’ll ignore this book or piece of art because it doesn’t mesh with our own view of the world.” You are referring to critics of memoir, both professional and amateur. How do you think identity politics have morphed into such “insidious” authoritarianism even amongst the liberal left? I’d love to read a whole essay on this alone (that’s an assignment), but a brief answer here is acceptable.

S: Right: Ultimately, all we can do is tell our truths. What else do we have? Some people absolutely do not want to hear these truths. Well, too bad. We speak/write them anyway. For example, I got a lot of backlash for Love Sick among male members of the media who were generally angry that the book didn’t have more sex in it! I mean, they wanted to read the sex acts of a sex addict. Of course the book is about recovering from an addiction.

Anyway, on live radio, I was asked completely inappropriate (humiliating) questions like, Sue, where’s the kinkiest place you’ve ever had sex? I kid you not. On live radio. Well, that was tough. So much so that I subsequently wrote my first poetry collection; I knew no one would interview me about a poetry collection!

In short, they wanted me to have written a completely different book! Anyway, I’ve probably gone off topic here. Just write what you need to write, what your soul tells you to write, and don’t worry about the rest. Or call me, and I’ll talk you through it.

R: In this chapter, you also bring up the important point that not everyone is going to like your work and that you will, no matter what, no matter who you are, receive backlash. It’s so important that you included this, particularly for a “how-to” book because, while we talk about rejection a lot, rejection from lit mags, editors, agents, etc., we don’t talk about it much from readers. Thank you for pointing this out and acknowledging that while it can be difficult, it’s part of the job as a writer and to not let it get in your way of writing.

S: Here’s an example: I was giving a presentation to a Jewish organization, with my first book, about growing up in my Jewish incestuous family. A couple of rabbis in the audience stood up and claimed that incest doesn’t happen in Jewish families. Well… Whew. I tried to calmly point out that incest happens within families of every religion, culture, socio-economic group. Let me hasten to emphasize, though, that I was invited to this Jewish organization by women who know incest happens in Jewish families. So overall I received a lot of support.

Oh, during question-and-answer sessions at other readings, I’m sometimes asked: why dwell on unpleasant past events! Really?! So there I am explaining that the idea isn’t about dwelling. The idea is to make sense of the past, understand it, claim the narrative and the power that goes with it. Ironically, by doing so, by getting the story out of you, offers the opportunity to not dwell. Once I make sense of an experience, once I write about it, then I’m better able to let it go.

Here’s the key: While you are writing, I strongly encourage you to not think about the outside world or how your book might be perceived. First and foremost, it’s crucial simply to get the words down on paper. Tell your narrative in the way that’s right for you. Only think about the outside world after you’ve finished writing.

Or don’t worry about the outside world! By now, I no longer worry about outside reactions. I know what I have to do to emotionally survive: Write!

R: In “Do You Want To Know A Secret,” you further discuss the criticism of “confessional writing,” or naval gazing. Why do you think literary fiction gets a pass, when it’s literally fiction but to write about the human condition from the perspective of a real, living, breathing human is problematic among the supposed literary elite?

S: Because these misguided critics (part of the patriarchy that, sadly, includes some women who support it) simply do not, do not, do not want to hear truth. If I say how traumatic it was to be sexually molested by my father, and let’s say you were molested by your father, but you don’t want to admit it, or don’t want to admit to the damage it caused, then you will try to ignore/deny my truth.

Or, if you are a man who engaged in domestic violence or sexual assault (the Harvey Weinsteins and Donald Trumps of the world), then you have a lot of emotion invested in denying the creative nonfiction/truthteller writers of the world.

Sadly, the truth scares many people. All the more reason for us to write it.

R: I think it’s “for fuck’s sake.” Did you ever get confirmation on this?

S: HaHa, no confirmation. But you must be right!

R: Thank you for writing this book and joining me for this interview. I love Acetylene Torch Songs and I love you!

S: Aww, you’re such a sweetheart. I felt as if we were having an in-person conversation. Great questions. Thank you. And I love you, too!

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