{"id":13130,"date":"2012-03-08T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T05:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=13130"},"modified":"2012-03-07T19:46:53","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T00:46:53","slug":"paul-elwork-the-terribleminds-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/03\/08\/paul-elwork-the-terribleminds-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Elwork: The Terribleminds Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, here’s Paul Elwork. He’s someone I don’t really know but, when I pinged for interviews, there he was. And I thought, okay, let’s take a look at his book and — well, from that point forward, I knew it was a good idea to get him here. Plus, he’s a Pennsylvania citizen, and that means he gets special privilege. And a hat made of cheesesteaks. Anyway. The paperback edition of his novel, The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead<\/strong>, is available now. Visit his website at: www.paulelwork.com<\/span><\/strong><\/a>. And check him on the Twitters (@paulelwork<\/strong><\/span><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There once was a man from Nantucket. Nice guy, but a little self-indulgent.<\/p>\n

Why do you tell stories?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Because it\u2019s what my inefficient brain does best. And because I feel most myself when doing it, as opposed to doubting myself, making excuses about why I should be doing something else, etc.<\/p>\n

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Write as often as you can. Form that habit\u2014fit it in wherever possible\u2014just write and write. I\u2019m a really big offender on this point, in that I often \u201ccan\u2019t\u201d write unless the conditions are ideal, and it has cost me untold hours of mistakes and discovery and great stuff I couldn\u2019t have imagined I had in me. I have to teach myself this lesson over and over again, for some reason.\u00a0 Damn inefficient brain.<\/p>\n

You live near Philly, yeah? What’s your favorite\u2014and least-favorite\u2014thing about the city?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I think the noise and bustle of the city\u2014of any city\u2014are both my favorite and least favorite things, depending on my mood. That\u2019s why it\u2019s great to live so close on the outskirts, only a short drive even from downtown Philly. But I can turn around and hurry back to where it feels like I\u2019m living in the woods out in the hinterlands.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The best thing is probably the excitement of a new idea, one you know has legs. It\u2019s like Friday evening driving home from work\u2014full of possibility. That sense of renewed hope, as if all your battered wishes could be fulfilled with this shining thing, this idea. What sucks is the inverse; the feeling that you\u2019ll never have a good idea again, and that it may as well have been someone else who had the past ideas. And the waiting. All of the waiting inherent to the writing life sucks.<\/p>\n

The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead<\/em>\u2014where did that book come from? What’s the originating point for you?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The idea for the book came from two places: the true story of the Fox sisters, the claimed spirit mediums who started the Spiritualist movement in the nineteenth century, and a historic riverside estate at the edge of Philadelphia, Glen Foerd on the Delaware. I borrowed heavily from Glen Foerd as the setting\u2014taking the garden playhouse pretty much straight from the estate\u2014and in using the germ of the Fox sisters\u2019 story, I recast it, moved it in time, and fictionalized everything.<\/p>\n

What does this book say about death?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The book definitely proceeds from the idea of death as an end. The story concerns itself with how the living deal with each other and those they\u2019ve lost in the face of mortality, and the roles of grief and belief in doing so. It\u2019s also about secrets, or maybe more precisely, about the secret lives people lead.<\/p>\n

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cRidiculous\u201d seems to be my favorite word. Over the years I\u2019ve been made fun of for using it a lot. My favorite curse word is easily \u201cmotherfucker.\u201d Those consonants kick.<\/p>\n

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don\u2019t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I love India Pale Ales. I love beer in general\u2014and wine and the occasional single-malt Scotch or vodka martini\u2014but if we\u2019re talking about favorites, I have to say a nicely textured IPA. There are so many great ones, but I\u2019ll throw Stone Brewing\u2019s Arrogant Bastard Ale on top of the pile. Make of that what you will.<\/p>\n

You don’t get away with just one IPA recommendation. Recommend three more good IPAs folks should try.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Ah, IPAs\u2014so many good ones. Dogfish Head\u2019s 90-Minute IPA (sometimes called an imperial IPA) clocks in at 9% ABV and is absolutely fantastic. Each one packs a little wallop, though, so careful about knocking them back. Victory Brewing\u2019s HopDevil IPA is very rich and complex\u2014definitely one to try if you like such things. I also have to mention Yards Brewing\u2019s IPA, now an old favorite of mine. And all of this beer talk is making me thirsty\u2026<\/p>\n

Recommend a book, comic book, film, or game: something with great story. Go!<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I\u2019m going to sound like your middle-school English teacher, but I recommend Great Expectations<\/em>. The pure storytelling of Dickens\u2019s novels still astounds me, and this one has got to be my favorite. If this book seems like kid stuff in your mind (and boring kid stuff, at that), consider this passage: \u201cAnd then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.\u201d Oh man, I really am like your middle-school English teacher.<\/p>\n

What skills do you bring to help the humans win the inevitable zombie war?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I\u2019ve never fired a gun, I\u2019m not very handy, and I don\u2019t have even a Cub Scout\u2019s wilderness skills. Really hoping they\u2019ll need someone delivering smartass asides amid the horror and gore.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve committed crimes against humanity. They caught you. You get one last meal.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Salmon stuffed with crab and covered in B\u00e9arnaise sauce. That would be a high note at the end of a murderous career.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next for you as a storyteller? What does the future hold?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

My sons have asked me a number of times if I\u2019ll ever write a book for kids\u2014especially my older son, who\u2019s eight. I love so many children\u2019s books, and it is a dream of mine to write one. So right now I\u2019m doing that\u2014writing a creepy book for my sons and for the kid that was (is) me. We\u2019ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

You’re writing a kids’ book? What’s the trick to storytelling for children?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I think the literary\/storytelling values are pretty much the same. It\u2019s still about Faulkner\u2019s line regarding the \u201chuman heart in conflict with itself\u201d for me. You want to infuse the work with your best conception of truth in a thousand ways, even while providing excitement and adventure, even if supernatural elements are at play (as they are in the book I\u2019m writing). If you\u2019re writing for 10\u201312 year olds, say, you don\u2019t want to write too far over their heads. I\u2019ve found that this makes me strive even harder to say things simply, which I can\u2019t help but see as a good thing. My prose is sort of stripped down, anyway, so I don\u2019t find this to be too confining stylistically.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, maybe the bigger danger is dumbing the work down too much because you think kids can\u2019t handle it. Obviously it makes you think differently about adult issues in whatever you\u2019re writing\u2014and any violence gets special handling, as well\u2014but it can\u2019t be condescending. The classics for children we keep returning to\u2014in books, movies, anything\u2014don\u2019t present themselves as if for little imbeciles. Kids have complex emotional lives, too. They share the strange compulsion of adults to lose ourselves in narrative even while grappling with the complicated and confusing elements of our lives within these narratives, however they are staged or play out. And it seems to me, if we\u2019re not striving to achieve both effects\u2014in any kind of fiction writing\u2014then why bother?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, here’s Paul Elwork. He’s someone I don’t really know but, when I pinged for interviews, there he was. And I thought, okay, let’s take a look at his book and — well, from that point forward, I knew it was a good idea to get him here. Plus, he’s a Pennsylvania citizen, and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-3pM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13130"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13134,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13130\/revisions\/13134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}