The Interview with Emilie Staat Strong.

Hello to new subscribers and welcome to Sitting in Silence, a newsletter for readers, writers, and thinkers. The Interview has become a popular feature for the newsletter. I love talking to writers of all stripes regarding their journeys. They never disappoint. This issue’s conversation is with Emilie Staat Strong.

Emilie Staat Strong is a producer and writer. She’s written in every genre, including fiction and screenplays. She’s also worked in film, television, and podcasting. Emilie and I first met in the bustling literary community that was New Orleans circa 2009. She is a dear friend. Writers who are working to publish their first book should take note. Emilie has things to say.

By the way, Emilie, myself, and, our great friend, Jadi Mwendo started a fun podcast called the Did You Hear that Podcast? Podcast. It launches today! The show is just what the title says. We listen to a wide range of podcasts and recommend our favorites to save you time. Think of us as your podcast concierges. You can find the show on all the best services. Here's a link: https://feeds.captivate.fm/did-you-hear-that-pod/

Special note: Sitting in Silence has an app now! iPhone users are invited to download the app today.

Maurice: What are your earliest memories of reading? Writing?

Emilie: You know I don’t have the best memory, so I often rely on photographs and the stories of others (a theme in my book!). When my maternal grandmother passed last year, I inherited a bunch of photographs of myself, including this one: 

I’m younger than two here, but my mom says she picked this background because I already loved reading. She said I taught myself how to read from reading the same books (she says she only helped by pointing to the words while she read them). She says I was ahead of my kindergarten class because I already knew how to read.*

So who knows when I started writing? I feel like it’s a natural extension of my love for books and stories. If I taught myself to read, I taught myself to write by reading. 

I read Dean Koontz books at 10 and I know he was really influential because I got in trouble for not writing four-sentence paragraphs in school and I argued that if Dean Koontz could write a one-word sentence, so could I. 

It probably won’t surprise anyone to know my first word was “no.” I’m very headstrong. I was often told as a teen and young adult that this was a deficiency or a problem so I tried to be biddable and pleasing. But now that I’m 40, I’m realizing it’s always been my greatest strength. If it’s a problem, it’s a problem for other people, not for me. 

Maurice: What was the first creative thing you wrote then? Something in the style of Koontz? Or a page full of "no"s? And what compelled you to write it? Did you like what you wrote?

Emilie: That's a tough question (again, bad memory). I feel like I've always written, so it's hard to pinpoint the first thing I wrote. I know that a lot of my early writing was basically fanfic (before there was a word for it) for the books I was reading and shows I was watching. I was practicing by stealing, as a lot of us do when we're starting out. My mom says I wrote something to explain why I missed the bus once, the injustice of the bus being parked in the wrong spot. One of the first things I remember writing was in fifth grade when I kept finishing my assignments quickly and pulling out a book to read in class - my teacher assigned me and two or three other students who finished quickly a group writing project. She sent us to the school library and told us to write a play. I remember mostly writing it myself, though the other students may have contributed ideas. Then, later that week, the class read the play aloud and I (we) got to see my (our) play "performed" by our classmates, which was thrilling for me (I can't speak to how the others felt). I think it was the same teacher who told me I couldn't write one-word sentences or paragraphs. I get that she was trying to teach me the "rules," and I can appreciate her creative way of keeping me busy so I didn't read adult horror novels in class. I still have that play somewhere...

Maurice: That must have been frustrating getting so much push back in those situations. Did you feel more free when you went to writing school? Why did you decide to get an MFA? What did you write there?

Emilie: Oooh boy, what a triggering question. I didn’t feel more free in school or getting my MFA. I went straight through from undergrad (at the same school, which a lot of people say isn’t wise). I made the decision because of finances, a relationship and mostly, stasis. I made the choice in order to avoid making a bigger choice. I didn’t apply for other MFAs, even to see if I could get in, because I was afraid. By that point, I was fully entrenched in a biddable mentality, and it was hard to even ask myself “what do I want?” My parents, and other people, recommended a more practical major in undergrad (namely, accounting), so it was all I could do just to go to the MFA. That was the only will I could assert. I won’t say I wasted my time because I met some really formative people, both personally and professionally, but I joined all the committees and as our friend Jamey Hatley said, I “said yes before people even asked.” I didn’t use my MFA time as wisely as I could’ve so my recommendation to other folks is always “know what you’re there for, even if it changes later.” Have a goal that you focus on. 

I did have great teachers in the MFA and I think back on a lot of what I learned all the time. Moira Crone, for instance, was my fiction professor in both my first and last semesters of the MFA. I ended up sitting next to her at this big conference table in my first semester with her and I still remember her notebook – a huge, spiral-bound artist sketchbook with unruled pages that she scribbled notes and drawings all over, any-which-way. I remember being terrified by her, though awe is probably a better word in hindsight. That is freedom! Allowing yourself to take up space, not abide by lines and rules, to make your own way as a woman and a creative person. 

She’s painting! Her husband, Rodger Kamenetz, another of my MFA professors (nonfiction) sent an email about a gallery opening of hers tonight. 

Maurice: It's difficult to make a decision when you don't know what you want, isn't it? But it sounds like you made the best choice in the circumstances. How did you decide to write The Winter Circus, your epic novel? What soil did that choice grow from? Do you regret choosing to write it?

Emilie: I meant to point out that learning to identify desires, learning to assert those "selfish" desires, is also one of the themes of my novel. One of your notes on the previous version of The Winter Circus highlighted Zolly asserting her personality later in the novel - that wasn't a mistake, though it is awkward to write a novel where your main character doesn't know how to distinguish herself from the group/family unit she's grown up entrenched within. 

The first version of The Winter Circus was a short story I wrote in David Madden's fiction class my last semester of undergrad at LSU. The short story was entirely from Thomas's point of view, the man who falls in love with Zolly without knowing about her past as a circus performer. A few months later, when I was in Moira's fiction class, she wanted us to select a short story (or write one) that we wanted to expand into a novel. I immediately knew I wanted to continue to work with short story about the girl who ran away from a family circus. It's a coming-of-age story, as most first novels are, and it's got a lot of me in it, but not in the places where people might expect, which is the beauty of fiction. 

I don't regret choosing to write it. It's the second novel I've written (I wrote a novel when I was 17 as a lonely teenager who'd just moved to Louisiana), but in many ways it was my "starter novel," the novel where I got to teach myself how to write, who I am as a writer. As you know, I abandoned it for a few years, moving on to develop a T.V. show (I was going to produce the pilot in 2020!) and now, podcasting. 

But even after I put the novel away, I felt bitterness and regret for a while. I needed that break from such an all-consuming project (it was my primary project for over a decade!) and I'm happy to say that I've completely restructured the novel and sent it to an interested agent. But even better than that, I fell in love with The Winter Circus again. I *like* it, which is definitely important for promoting it if it does ever sell. It's an epic novel, almost 400 pages, and old-fashioned in a lot of ways. But I'm prepared to defend and promote it because I like it. I have to believe some readers will, too. 

Maurice: Ahem. WHEN it sells. We're talking about a future classic here. You mention teaching yourself how to write. I believe that's the mark of a writer. What does teaching yourself mean to you? And what have you learned about the craft? What did you unlearn?

Emilie: Thanks for your confidence in me and The Winter Circus - it means the world. 

I taught myself to write by shamelessly stealing from the books and shows I was watching, writing my versions of stories I found engaging. Since I did this when I was young and too full of myself, I didn't ask permission to do it, I just did it - I think that's teaching yourself.

But the writers of the stories I admired were also my teachers, including Dean Koontz, who is a genre writer. I felt a little like a duck out of water in the MFA because we tend to focus on "literary" writing, whatever that means. I think I've learned structure and speed from genre books, among other things like how to write sex scenes. My teachers at LSU taught me about structure as well, especially Rick Blackwood, Michelle Benoit and Mari Kornhauser when they taught me screenwriting and the fabulous Sharon Andrews, Laura Mullen and Ava Leavell Haymon, who taught me poetry. 

This isn't so much a reflection of my teachers, but perhaps my memory or what I took from what I was being taught, but I feel like MFA programs often focus too much on "good" or "bad" writing without enough focus on genre, format, or audience. I was lucky that I had teachers who did discuss genres like screenwriting and nonfiction, in addition to fiction and poetry. But there was no dissections of science-fiction, mystery, romance, or Westerns. Old genre stories that last the test of time become "classic literature" (literary, aka "good"). I'm thinking about True Grit by Portis, or anything by Agatha Christie. Even as a young adult, I could see the transformation Alice Hoffman's work had in the publishing world - from pulpy paperbacks to hardback releases first (I think Alice Hoffman may have had a similar path). And I was working at Barnes and Noble when Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books were still shelved in romance - now they're just in regular fiction. 

The biggest lesson I've learned is that anyone, any story, can be your teacher. I learn so much from reading romance and young adult novels. 

You know I also worked as a literary agent, briefly, while I was at LSU. I learned a lot from that experience, but it also made me think about the end product too early. So I had to unlearn letting critical voices in while I was writing the first draft. The first draft is for playing and exploring, not for often arbitrary concerns about where in the bookstore readers will find the book. Every first draft is shitty and every first draft is special. 

Maurice: You were way ahead of the curve! That bias was still in MFAs when I arrived later on. But today programs seem to be much more open to work from all genres. I love your point about learning from everywhere and totally agree. What would you tell a writer who is experiencing self-doubt or is stuck? Have you experienced these? What did you do?

Emilie: You know I experience self-doubt first-hand because you've supported me through many bouts of it. My advice is to build a network of other writers and creators - start with an accountability buddy and then show up at readings and build relationships with other writers. Not to sound transactional, but a big part of literary friendships and community is supporting each other through self-doubt. 

Anytime someone says something positive about your writing, or how it makes them feel, cut and paste (or capture the essence) into a file on your phone (or journal) to refer back to. But also, I suggest doing something like NaNoWriMo or a prompt, something that is so quick and urgent, that you don't have time to worry about whether the writing is good or not - NaNoWriMo might've been the first time I felt free in my writing after the MFA. I had to move so quickly, the critical voices and self-doubt couldn't keep up. 

Listen to the advice of people who are joyful about writing (like Maurice Carlos Ruffin). I was writing a really heavy, epic novel for over a decade and even though I grumbled a lot about your positivity, watching you enjoy writing really helped me seek the playfulness and joy in my own writing practice. 

Maurice: Why do you love cats so much? And what connection does that love have to your writing?

Emilie: Who says I love cats? You know I’m allergic! I guess I like that they’re independent and full of themselves (sound like anybody you know?). They exist to relax and enjoy life, they don’t really work like some dogs and humans. That’s admirable, right?

Anyway, this is a silly question, but I want to say thank you for this conversation because it’s lasted all day and reminds me of the early days of our friendship when we would swap emails while we were both working job jobs. And here we are, doing the same thing all these years later - talking about writing via the quicker-than-letter-but-slower-than-text format that is email. 

[*Post Interview Note from Emilie: The first question about reading - I want to add that I know the first book I read by myself. It was Danny the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/858037.Danny_and_the_Dinosaur]

Thumbnail photo credit: Che Yeun.