Ask the Author: Susanne M. Dutton
Answered Questions (9)
Susanne M. Dutton
I grew up in the Silicon Valley in it's earlier days, before its population grew to what it is now, and before it took on that nick name. (Steve Jobs was at the same high school, one year behind me.) My mother, head dietician at Stanford University's Palo Alto Medical Clinic and never prone to fanciful imaginings, came upon a mystery on an early morning run in the hills above our town. She never gave it a name, but what she described to us was certainly what we now call a UFO or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. I often think of this event as part of a short nonfiction story, mostly because she explained as a matter-of-fact occurrence and not really any big deal. Perhaps the story would be more truly about her and not so much about what she met on her run.
Susanne M. Dutton
I'm wondering how many people will know this place: I'd like to be in the employment of the Cherryble Brothers in Dicken's "Nicholas Nickleby." In fact, I wish I were one of the Cherrybles, maybe a favorite niece. Of course the world in that story is 19th C London, with it's many pitfalls and horrors as well as wonders and creativity. In my fantasy, they'd be training me up to take over the business (with a few others) once they felt a need to retire. The world of the Cherrybles is a world of deep, but quiet personal kindness towards the people fate puts in one's path. Having said all that, I'm not sure if they'd take me on. Let's say this is aspirational.
Susanne M. Dutton
I've begun reading 'Simple Gratitudes" by KJ Hannah with Rivka Gross, a down to earth book about joy. So far, it rhymes with my own experience but I'm thinking there will be new insights here, too.
Susanne M. Dutton
Ninety pages in, it's a fiction story unpacking the idea of artistic license. I've also recently become fascinated by those old fashioned jump rope rhymes and, believe it or not, they are a part of this story. My favorites feature Lizzie Borden and "the lady with the alligator purse!"
Susanne M. Dutton
Writing is both the best and worst of times for me. The best? When things flow, when I get into the midst of a conversation between characters that almost writes itself and when that conversation wanders into further good story points, The worst? When my fingers feel leaden, characters feel flat, and even my typing skill seems disabled. My Pollyanna view of this is that both are somehow necessary. Something is going on in the dumb, slow, 10MPH times that is necessary to the magic carpet rides.
Susanne M. Dutton
Where? Specifically? On the second floor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, not that I was looking for ideas. I found myself in a collection of 18 Century French art and noticed that many were painted by a family "supposed" as the ancestors of Sherlock Holmes. Quite without realizing it at first, I must have breathed in a stray idea that soon sifted through my brain and fingers to my keyboard. As Sherlock says to Watson, "Art in the book takes the strangest of forms."
Susanne M. Dutton
It's as in the question about choosing a home: location, location, location. For writers, it's read, read, read. Read the "hard" books, too. Many of them take longer, but they are worth the time and the challenge. They build the writer's "muscle."
Susanne M. Dutton
My attention gets diverted, that’s for sure, but that’s not the same as writer’s block. If I don’t have a deadline, I let the diversion happen. The diversion might be just what's at the bottom of the block and just what the story needs.
Susanne M. Dutton
Ha! I was inspired to write by a fifth grade teacher, Sister John Maureen, an IHM nun from West Chester, PA, who read my spelling homework to the class when I was out of the classroom. Rather than writing the spelling words in sentences, I was a smarty pants and put them all into a story. In fact, she sent me out to be sure I didn't get a "big head" about it. Actually, I was trying to please her, as she was at a new school in California and told us repeatedly that "the children in the East would NEVER behave like this!"
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