Ask the Author: Susan Rivers
Answered Questions (5)
Susan Rivers
My paternal great-grandfather Walter Rivers is a mystery wrapped up in a conundrum, as they say, and he covered his tracks well enough that I've not been able to pin down his details even with the most modern digital sleuthing tools. He immigrated from England to America just as the Civil War was commencing, and fought in the Union Army as a paid replacement for a wealthy industrialist's son. The story goes that he was badly wounded as a calvary soldier and this resulted in his addiction to morphine, which eventually killed him, but I've found a letter from his brother-in-law which attributes the morphine to an injury received when he was in a railway accident. He claimed he was the black sheep in a wealthy London family, the son of a "lord," but there haven't been titleholders with the surname Rivers since the 14th century. One thing is clear: he was re-inventing himself by coming to the New World, and all the things he became beg the question of what he came from. If I could gain some objectivity on his life, and dig up a few concrete answers, it might offer the elements of a fairly good story!
Susan Rivers
In a small southern town live two spinster sisters who have outlived the other members of their family and have spent long years together tending a large, beautiful garden that is the pride of the neighborhood. The eldest sister becomes ill and passes away, and the day after her funeral, her surviving sister hires a man with a bulldozer to come dig up the garden -- every last camellia shrub, climbing rose, dogwood and daylily -- and dump them in the ditch that runs beside the property.
Susan Rivers
I'm often inspired by what I experience in the natural world; I'm a fanatical gardener, and the cycle of seasons and growth in my southern garden offers a wealth of themes and images. But I also hear powerful truths in what people say, in how they express themselves. For instance, I taught freshman English at local colleges for 9 years. I had a student in one of my community college classes who was bright enough but was unwilling to put any time into his studies. I called him in for a conference and told him he simply had to work harder on his assignments or he wouldn't be successful in the course. He told me I sounded just like his father, whose favorite saying to young Travis was: "don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon." Afterwards, I couldn't get that expression out of my head, because it begs the question: how's that working for the mule? The expression found its way thematically into the novel I'm completing now, which takes place in a cotton mill town in upstate SC in 1912, because it perfectly exemplifies milltown mentality: that the individual's only value is as a working unit, one that brings money into the family and sustains it. You never turn down work -- you just load your wagon and pull, no matter how heavy it is, and no matter what other interests or aspirations you have to set aside. Mill families depended on this compact applying to everyone in the household if they were to survive, and I understood that better after hearing what my student, a descendant of cotton mill workers, had been told by his own father. I was productively inspired by those very authentic words of wisdom.
Susan Rivers
The most obvious benefit of being a writer is having a strong identity. Jobs come and go for writers, as do the places where we live, work and raise our children. Writing isn't a terribly lucrative profession for the most part, and financial stress can often force us to question our choices. But the one thing that doesn't change for me in good times or bad, whether I'm trying to survive in Northern California or North Carolina, is my very clear belief that I was put here to write and writing is what I must do. I have moments of self-doubt, of course, when I wonder if I'm doing the best writing I possibly can, but I never doubt that writing is who I am. It's the whole megillah.
Susan Rivers
Be a good listener. I can't stress how important this is. In order to write about people, you have to be familiar with how they communicate, and in order to do that, you have to encourage them to talk (or be nearby when they're talking to someone else!) I never go anywhere without carrying a small notebook and a pen, and I write down everything I hear that is distinctive or seems to strike a note of authenticity. These brief notes often generate larger ideas when I write.
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