Ask the Author: Susan Pashman
Answered Questions (7)
Susan Pashman
Aaziah,
I am so happy to help your granddaughter, especially because NYC is a fine place to start out as a writer. She should definitely subscribe to Poets & Writers Magazine. (This would be a great gift for her.) It is full of ways to get into the writing profession and full of listings of contests and little literary magazines that are looking for stories and poems. They have a website that is incredibly useful, especially for young writers.
The local Y's have writing programs. The West Side Y used to have a terrific one, and the 92nd street Y is one she should check out as well. NYU has a very good writing program and she might be able to take a course there as a H.S. student. There is also a writing program in the city that leaves its catalogs on their own kiosks which are scattered around the city. She should be able to find some of those around Washington Square. (I'm sorry I don't recall their exact name.)
Finally, she has to get used to the idea of rejection. And after that, she has to get used to the idea that everything that is published has been re-written numerous times. Take the advice of agents and editors and publishers. They know what you need to learn.
Finally, a writing teacher at the West Side Y once told our class: It's not about what you feel like writing; it's about what you feel like reading.
The writer has to put herself in the shoes of her readers and address their needs, not her own.
This is excellent advice for young writers who are very concerned with expressing themselves. They need to understand that they will have to translate--and often divert-- their own needs for the sake of their readers.
Please ask her to email me for more personal interaction.
I am so happy to help your granddaughter, especially because NYC is a fine place to start out as a writer. She should definitely subscribe to Poets & Writers Magazine. (This would be a great gift for her.) It is full of ways to get into the writing profession and full of listings of contests and little literary magazines that are looking for stories and poems. They have a website that is incredibly useful, especially for young writers.
The local Y's have writing programs. The West Side Y used to have a terrific one, and the 92nd street Y is one she should check out as well. NYU has a very good writing program and she might be able to take a course there as a H.S. student. There is also a writing program in the city that leaves its catalogs on their own kiosks which are scattered around the city. She should be able to find some of those around Washington Square. (I'm sorry I don't recall their exact name.)
Finally, she has to get used to the idea of rejection. And after that, she has to get used to the idea that everything that is published has been re-written numerous times. Take the advice of agents and editors and publishers. They know what you need to learn.
Finally, a writing teacher at the West Side Y once told our class: It's not about what you feel like writing; it's about what you feel like reading.
The writer has to put herself in the shoes of her readers and address their needs, not her own.
This is excellent advice for young writers who are very concerned with expressing themselves. They need to understand that they will have to translate--and often divert-- their own needs for the sake of their readers.
Please ask her to email me for more personal interaction.
Susan Pashman
I've never really been totally blocked. But there are tines that I feel reluctant to move forward with something I'm writing. At those times, It's useful to have a second or a third project to turn to so that the fingers and the writing mind stay well greased. The writing group where we write about anything that is put before us as a prompt is a way of assuring yourself that you ALWAYS have an idea of something to write about.
I have another trick that I use for anything I am reluctant to do, not just writing. I imagine myself doing this dreaded thing. Imagine every detail of it. Imagine myself going upstairs to my writing room, turning on the desk lamp, turning on my computer, sitting in the chair, adjusting the lumbar roll in the middle of my lower back, setting my fingers onto the keys....I imagine not only the look of things but the feel in my fingers...I keep playing that in my mind as I walk, slowly, to the stairs.....
I have another trick that I use for anything I am reluctant to do, not just writing. I imagine myself doing this dreaded thing. Imagine every detail of it. Imagine myself going upstairs to my writing room, turning on the desk lamp, turning on my computer, sitting in the chair, adjusting the lumbar roll in the middle of my lower back, setting my fingers onto the keys....I imagine not only the look of things but the feel in my fingers...I keep playing that in my mind as I walk, slowly, to the stairs.....
Susan Pashman
This book began during a single week with two disturbing conversations. The first, over a Thanksgiving dinner, was with a cousin who exclaimed gleefully that four “disadvantaged” black children had just been admitted to his son’s class for gifted children; he was delighted that his son would be “enriched” by getting to know kids who were not like himself.
I, alone, was irritated by this news. How, I wondered, would this cousin feel if his son were chosen to be one of four white children in an all-black school, participating in a program to provide black children with an opportunity to get to know kids who were not like them?
Several days later, I had a chance to find out. Over pizza with an old friend, I learned that she had decided to enroll her child in a local public school where he would be one of very few white students. He would be in a “special enrichment” class, she said, and so she was certain his education would not be compromised. She was very proud to be doing what she could to advance the liberal social agenda she and her husband had fought for as student radicals.
“But you are using your own child to advance your politics,” I cried.
“I have to do what I can,” was her rejoinder.
I lay awake that night wondering about these two very well-intentioned parents. Well into the wee hours, I thought about what could go wrong. Mostly, what I came up with had nothing to do with the children involved; children were, as their parents assumed, blank slates who could become the colorblind people their parents were hoping for. But the adults who were their parents: Could they be counted on to abandon old resentments and distrust? If some small crisis developed, would the parents be as advanced in their thinking and actions as they hoped their children would be?
The next morning, I began this novel.
I was beaming with joy as I watched Barack Obama stride out onto that platform in Chicago on the glorious night when he proclaimed victory in his first presidential election. But, tempering my pleasure, was the thought that the election of America’s first black president probably spelled doom for the book. I’d begun writing. Racial tensions would soon be resolved; the era of racial strife was about to end.
I am not happy to discover that what I had suspected all along has, indeed, come to pass, and that we are no closer now to a colorblind society than we were when I started this novel. We have raised our children, as the novel’s narrator says, “in a whole new way,” but the grown-ups have simply not caught up with the ideals they so hopefully taught to their children.
There is so much left to do. Actually, we are only just getting started.
I, alone, was irritated by this news. How, I wondered, would this cousin feel if his son were chosen to be one of four white children in an all-black school, participating in a program to provide black children with an opportunity to get to know kids who were not like them?
Several days later, I had a chance to find out. Over pizza with an old friend, I learned that she had decided to enroll her child in a local public school where he would be one of very few white students. He would be in a “special enrichment” class, she said, and so she was certain his education would not be compromised. She was very proud to be doing what she could to advance the liberal social agenda she and her husband had fought for as student radicals.
“But you are using your own child to advance your politics,” I cried.
“I have to do what I can,” was her rejoinder.
I lay awake that night wondering about these two very well-intentioned parents. Well into the wee hours, I thought about what could go wrong. Mostly, what I came up with had nothing to do with the children involved; children were, as their parents assumed, blank slates who could become the colorblind people their parents were hoping for. But the adults who were their parents: Could they be counted on to abandon old resentments and distrust? If some small crisis developed, would the parents be as advanced in their thinking and actions as they hoped their children would be?
The next morning, I began this novel.
I was beaming with joy as I watched Barack Obama stride out onto that platform in Chicago on the glorious night when he proclaimed victory in his first presidential election. But, tempering my pleasure, was the thought that the election of America’s first black president probably spelled doom for the book. I’d begun writing. Racial tensions would soon be resolved; the era of racial strife was about to end.
I am not happy to discover that what I had suspected all along has, indeed, come to pass, and that we are no closer now to a colorblind society than we were when I started this novel. We have raised our children, as the novel’s narrator says, “in a whole new way,” but the grown-ups have simply not caught up with the ideals they so hopefully taught to their children.
There is so much left to do. Actually, we are only just getting started.
Susan Pashman
I belong to a writing group that meets every other week. We give each other wild and crazy prompts. The idea is just to write. Many of the short stories I have published have come directly out of that group.
Susan Pashman
My current work is on a non-fiction book which is part memoir and part philosophical examination of the moral bases of Sabbath-keeping. You should understand that this is possible because I am, first and foremost, a philosopher.
Susan Pashman
The pleasure of organizing your thoughts and creating something out of what seemingly is nothing. But that is just one tiny part. The rejection letters and re-writes and all the work to get a book out to the public is the hard part.
Susan Pashman
Rewrite incessantly. Put the work away and take it out three months later. And re-write again. My new book involved 14 years of rewriting, re-submitting and listening to critics. Other people know a lot more than you do about how your characters come off.
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