Today I’m conducting a session with…Laurel Peterson! GIVEAWAY! *Leave a comment for Laurel and share this post to be eligible to win an e-copy of Shadow Notes. Feel free to use the handy dandy click-to-tweet links! Me: Tell me about an experience that had a profound impact on your life. Laurel: Getting a teaching job. It was a pretty tumultuous time: I was getting divorced, with a year of alimony as a cushion. I was adjuncting at three different places to try to bring in as much money as I could, while sending out applications for every academic job I could find—which meant Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Missouri, nothing near my friends and family. In addition, if I couldn’t find a teaching job by the time the alimony ran out, I would have had to find some kind of corporate writing job, and the idea of going back into that atmosphere felt soul-killing. I didn’t like the petty competition, the focus on money, the lack of thoughtful, intellectual discussions. (Well, then there’s academia! LOL.) I had interviewed the year prior for a position at the college where I was finally hired, but hadn’t gotten the job. I changed my interview strategy substantially, with the help of one of my grad school professors. When I got the job offer, I cried. I almost couldn’t tell the dean (on the other end of the phone) I was accepting the job because I was so relieved and happy. That position has allowed me time to write, to take on my town’s poet laureateship, to edit a collection of essays on women’s justice, to write three poetry books and a mystery novel, and to meet so many interesting students who have enriched my life with their ideas and words. I am deeply grateful. Me: What personality trait of yours helps you most as an author? Laurel: I’m dogged and obsessed. I work really hard, almost all the time. It’s exhausting. Me: What personality trait of yours hinders you most as an author? Laurel: I’m dogged and obsessed. I work really hard, almost all the time. It’s exhausting. Me: What was your high point as a writer? Laurel: I was happiest when I got my mystery novel accepted by Barking Rain Press. I had for some time been trying to get agents to take it, but although they said good things, “the market” was never “right” or it just didn’t make them “fall in love.” Revising in response to that is… impossible. I finally tried an independent press, and got lucky! I love working with them. My publisher and editor are both wonderful. Me: What was your low point as a writer—a time when you questioned your path? Laurel: Just one?? Ha. Prior to the acceptance of the mystery novel, I was getting lots of rejections of both poems and mystery. I even wondered if I could stop writing, or if I could embrace a unpublished life. After that acceptance in short succession, I was chosen as my town’s poet laureate, and had a full-length poetry collection accepted by Futurecycle Press. I try to remember that the literary life goes in cycles. It takes hard work, fallow times when nothing seems to be happening, times of great productivity when everything comes together, and then fallow times again. I know the fallow times will come again, but I’m really grateful for all these opportunities in the meantime. Me: If you had to pick a mental disorder to have for only one day (purely for writer research purposes), which one would you choose? Why? Laurel: I would choose psychopathy. Then, maybe I would better understand the guy with the orange hair, and how to stop him from permanently damaging my beautiful and beloved country. And in case you are interested, there is a fascinating book out there called The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson, a journalist, with the psychopath checklist in it. If you would like to know what the checklist includes, check it out here: http://www.minddisorders.com/Flu-Inv/Hare-Psychopathy-Checklist.html. In addition to more fully understanding corporate greed, power-hungry political barons, the occasional academic dean, and the woman who leaned over my airplane seat to talk to her friend proclaiming that no one in Washington was going to take away her corporate bonus because she’d earned it, being a psychopath for a day would help me to create stronger and more nuanced villains in my stories. Me: What’s the worst piece of writing advice you were ever given? How did you get beyond it? Laurel: I had a graduate school professor who told me I should “get beyond the domestic.” (Tell it to John Cheever, lady.) She was a well-meaning little thing, but she played favorites, and I obviously wasn’t one of hers, evidenced by the fact that when she wrote me a recommendation letter for something or other, she didn’t bother to proofread it and the address was full of typos. I’m not bitter. I’ve gotten beyond it by telling all my students to ignore all advice that doesn’t ring true to them, even mine. I tell them no one knows what their intentions are better than they do or what their obsession is (John Updike: sex; Mark Doty: death and what happens after it). I tell them that every obsession is worthy of deep exploration, and that they should spend all the time they want thinking about, looking at, exploring whatever it is that means the most to them. I was going through a divorce at the time that professor said this to me. Last Saturday, I read a couple of those divorce poems at a public event. Later, an attendee emailed me to ask for those poems, saying they had really touched him. So much for advice. Me: What book do you wish you’d written? Why? Laurel: Ingrid Hill: Ursula, Under. It’s expansive, poignant, intelligent, beautiful, thoughtful. Me: Tell me about your mystery, Shadow Notes. Laurel: Clara Montague didn’t want to come home. Her mother Constance never liked—or listened—to her […]