Ask the Author: Elin Toona Gottschalk
Answered Questions (6)
Elin Toona Gottschalk
You think about something else. If you have a Muse it will start to feel lonely and come back to you later. Don't forget you're a team.
Elin Toona Gottschalk
Being able to get out of yourself. This is especially true if you are writing about difficult times. By externalizing your traumas and inner-monologues you lighten your own load and that of your readers who have been there, done that etc. They have simply not thought to write about it. Writing is a solitary endeavor but you are never lonely or alone. You no longer own your bad memories and inner-monologues, they are no longer part of you but just another story out there with the rest of them. You don't even have to claim them but you will - and you will
feel good about it too!
feel good about it too!
Elin Toona Gottschalk
My advice is to WRITE AS YOU SPEAK. Tell someone what you want them to know about something that moves you and write it down at the same time. Keep the thought going for however long you think your listener wants to hear you. Stop when you start hearing yourself. - it means the listener is getting bored.
Elin Toona Gottschalk
I'm writing what I call my "Indian novel" based on an overland journey from South India to London's Victoria Station in 1963. I hitch-hiked the bus, a red London bus called the Indiaman. You can Google the bus and it's round trip journey between Colombo and London, UK. The Indiaman of Garrow-Fisher tours (Paddy Garrow-Fisher) joined up with an American bus from Penn Tours and we traveled together on a journey of a lifetime, also some dangerous territory that is again in the news
I met my husband Don on the American bus, and some incredibly interesting people. Were you there? I ask because I would love to re-connect with someone who took those journeys in the 1950s ad 1960s.
I met my husband Don on the American bus, and some incredibly interesting people. Were you there? I ask because I would love to re-connect with someone who took those journeys in the 1950s ad 1960s.
Elin Toona Gottschalk
I grew up alongside my grandmother, an artist and her older sister, a pianist. My parents were in the theater, so I seldom saw them. In order for the two old ladies to be able to could get on with their own creative interests and not have to 'raise' a child, they simply let me join in with what they were doing. Grandmother was the widow of a poet - Ernst Enno. To teach me reading we drew pictures and wrote poetry together. When aunt Alma had piano pupils we took long walks. For 7 years we lived quietly together to the strains of Beethoven and Bach while I practiced my abcs. All that ended when the Soviets occupied Estonia for half a century.
Elin Toona Gottschalk
There was no idea, no question, just a matter of life and death to escape the Soviet tanks. I was 7 yrs. old and simply held on to my grandmother's hand and we followed my mother to the beach. We got into a small boat headed for Sweden but ended up in war-torn Germany, then DP Camps and ultimately England. I started writing my diary in the DP Camp when I was 8 and that part became "In Search of Coffee Mountains", Thomas Nelson 1977 and Penguin 1979. Ideas come from life. You go with them, albeit, hand in hand and never know where you end up
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