Susan Kelly On Writing

On Overcoming Writer's Block

2005-03-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

In an interview with novelist Josephine Humphreys published in November 1999, she and I discussed writer's block. The conversation seems worthwhile repeating here.

For background, you should know that at the time, Humphreys was writing two novels simultaneously.

Kelly: Well, when you get tired of one, do you work on the other?

Humphreys: Yes.

Kelly: That always seemed to me the advantage of having two things going at once.

Humphreys: Yes, because at least you have one thing you can be working on even if the other isn't going so hot.

Kelly: Is that what you do to get unblocked?

Humphreys: Well, I do that. Also I have a little list of other things to do. One is to read poetry. It's funny, but I often go back to that old John Donne--George Herbert stuff. And although I have to be careful with it, music is another thing. I'm not a musical person, but music is almost painful to me at times.

Kelly: Is that why you have to be careful of it?

Humphreys: Yeah. It can be--well, I don't want to sound like a complete nut, but music can be too sad for me. But that's why it works for unblocking--if it's just a little bit sad. If it's too much, then it's too much. Travel is another great kind of jiggler for me. It jiggles me out of those kind of closed-down times when I can't get any work to come out. Just going somewhere helps.

(End of transcript)

I never used music to get unblocked, although I did write fiction while listening to music. (Jazz, if you care.) Joyce Maynard apparently does something similar: she once remarked that all of her novels had a soundtrack. She compiled a CD of the songs she'd listened to while writing Where Love Goes.

Like Humphreys, I've always found that going somewhere, even if it's only for a walk, is useful for getting unblocked. Perhaps it's just that physical activity is so far removed from the purely sedentary process of writing. I don't know. Once, when I was really stuck, I went for a hike. It was a typical midwinter New England day--cold, with a low gray ceiling of clouds. The landscape was sere, lacking even the softening of a snow cover. I put one foot in front of the other.

At the end of the hike, I knew what I had to say and how to say it. So I hurried home to write.

On Being Rejected

2005-03-17T16:51:00.000-08:00

If you're serious--I mean really serious--about writing, you have to believe that one day you will be published. Just keep that in mind as your goal. Assume eventual success.

And prepare to be rejected en route to success. There's no shame in this. Everybody gets rejected. It's certainly not a negative assessment of your talent. All it could mean is that the editor to whom you sent your manuscript got out of the wrong side of bed that morning.

My work has been turned down many more times than it's been accepted. That being the case, I thought I'd share with you my top five favorite rejections. I promise you, these are all word-for-word true. Like the man said, you can't make this stuff up.

My commentary, in italics, directly follows each entry.

Fifth Favorite Rejection: "This book is written from multiple points of view. Only Truman Capote is allowed to do that."

Breaking News: Truman Capote died in 1984.

Fourth Favorite Rejection: "I was looking for something a little more bloody and foreign."

In the first chapter of this novel, there's an ax murder. And with respect to a foreign setting, the story takes place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which occupies its own galaxy.

Third Favorite Rejection: "This book has wonderful prose, great characters, and brilliant dialogue. But it needs a bit of editing, and who has time to edit?"

I thought that's what you got paid to do.

Second Favorite Rejection: "Susan Kelly is not sufficiently well-known for us to market this book successfully."

Well, excuuuuuuuuse me.

First Favorite Rejection: "This book is too well-written to be commercially viable."

Words failed me.

So there you have them. Keep the faith, babies.

Some Background

2005-03-16T16:13:00.000-08:00

Before I could write, or even read, I was writing. About age three or four I began making picture books. The pictures therein were mostly of the then-love of my life, Mickey Mouse. For the text, I inscribed little squiggles beneath my drawings. The squiggles looked exactly like adult handwriting to me, so I acted as if they were. If anyone asked me to read the text aloud, I'd just make it up as I went along. That actually describes pretty well how I lead my life.

When I went to school, and really learned how to read and write, I began churning out fiction at a great clip, mostly science fiction and horror stories. In the sixth grade I produced a lollopalooza about the mummies in the Metropolitan Museum of Art coming to life. I also recall an opus about interplanetary travel in which every student in Mrs. Zahn's class had a role, if not as a star at least as a featured player.

Writing fiction got harder as I went into my teens. (I realize now that this was because, having exhausted the literary possibilities of dead Egyptians and live Martians, I had nothing to say.) When I was a junior in college, I decided that I had no talent for fiction. But...I still wanted to write.

This might have presented an insoluble problem had I not simultaneously developed an interest in the Middle Ages. I decided I'd go to graduate school, become a medievalist, and write articles about medieval literature. Problem solved.

Well, anyway, I did the grad school bit and wound up teaching college English. I produced three articles about the Arthurian literature of the Middle Ages. And then, and then...I found myself yearning to write fiction again.

I suppose this time around I had something to say. My first novel, The Gemini Man, was published in 1985. TGM was followed by The Summertime Soldiers, Trail of the Dragon, Until Proven Innocent, And Soon I'll Come to Kill You, and Out of the Darkness. The six books constituted a mystery series, the central character of which was a freelance crime writer named Liz Connors. Liz bears a truly astonishing resemblance to me. The other characters in the books I made up out of whole cloth. Liz I based on myself just to make the job, and my life, easier.

I also wrote a non-fiction book about the Boston Strangler case entitled The Boston Stranglers. No, that's not a typo; it's an intentional plural. The premise of the book is that Albert DeSalvo, who took the rap for eleven murders committed in eastern Massachusetts between June 1962 and January 1964, was responsible for none of them. The hardcover edition of the book came out in 1995; an updated paperback was published in 2002. As far as I know, it's still in print.

I've also published articles in The Writer, Anglia, Folklore, The Country and Abroad, Boston, The African American Review, Literary Onomastics Studies, and the Japanese edition of Penthouse.

Well, that's more than enough about me. Back later.