Interview

[pameladean]

I ended up doing two different interviews in the month of October. One was part of the work necessary for the interviewer's M.A. thesis, and I'll have the text of that up eventually. In the meantime, the spiffy shiny one is at The Dusty Shelf, featuring the brilliant raphaela, who deserved a less wimpy and persnickety subject than she got. I had fun with it; you might too.

P.

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I did have fun with it. Thanks.

Nice!

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Good interview!

[sdn.livejournal.com]

maybe it should be reworded to indicate that the secret country books are already reissued?

[pameladean]

Aiee, I can't believe I didn't catch that. Thanks. I'll drop an email in the right direction.

P.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

they fixed it. however, it would be really nice if they mentioned the publisher!

[jdfskpoi.livejournal.com]

Great interview. :-)

And, because of Tam Lin (which is one of those books that I must reread at least once a year, and usually more often than that), I went out and found a copy of The Lady's Not for Burning and I loved it (even wrote a paper on it for a Theater class).

[pameladean]

Excdllent.

What did you say in the paper? I have trouble with Fry, not as audience but as critic. It all seems so much of a piece that I can't really do analysis.

Hee. I suppose I've increased my chances of hearing anecdotes like that, which is very satisfying.

P.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

It's a good interview. My only advice is to stop fighting with your interviewers. Yep, you got asked a bunch of inane questions. Consider them the price of admission: if you want to be interviewed, you have to answer inane questions. The interviewee's trick is to turn inane questions into interesting answers.

You do that, although you need to sneer at the questions first. Look at the first questions from Part II of the interview. Your answer, after the first bit, is "As for the rest, I don't mean to be obnoxious, but the only honest answer is to...." followed by a long answer that you've just told the reader is dishonest. Instead, phrase your answer as a positive: "Regularly readers tell me what they've taken away from my books, good and bad." And so on. You're not directly answering the interviewer's question, but you are giving an interesting answer.

Two questions later, you begin: "I can never answer that kind of question," and then you answer that kind of question. Instead, start with the answer: "In literature, the fourth wall...."

Interviews are hard, especially if they're verbal interviews that are presented to an audience in written form. In any case, remember that you're not talking to the interviewer, you're talking to the mass audience. The interviewer is just a foil that adds rhythm and structure to your voice.

[pameladean]

I've just deleted a very ungracious and ungrateful response and two footnotes to it. Thank you very much for your advice. It wants adapting to what I am pleased to think of as my personal style, but I'll contemplate it carefully the next time I have an interview.

P.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Personal style is good.

B

[pameladean]

I do want to iterate, though, that really, the questions were not inane. (I am not sure if you said they were, or merely said I thought they were.) They are, in fact, really great questions for the fictional narrators of my novels. Narrators are sometimes essentially the author, sometimes a bit like the author, sometimes not at all like the author. Any of mine would have pounced happily on those questions. They were good questions to ask any of my narrators. It's an annoying habit of the writers of fiction to not line up well with our alleged voices.

P.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Enjoyed reading the interview so much that I sent the link to my sister (the high school teaching up in Winnipeg). I forget if I told you think, but I gave her a copy of _Rosemary_... after reading it and thinking how much she'd enjoy the kids.

Her "Futures" class ended, and she's now working on a Shakespeare unit (I believe they're reading _As_You_Like_It), and she sent me a quick outline of where's she's planning to take the class. Once I get her ok, I'll post it on my LJ site. If you'd like I can send it to you directly.

Ta for now. (Gotta go dig up my copy of _Tam_Lin_...)

[pameladean]

I remember about the "Futures" class, but not about your giving her JG&R. I hope she liked it.

I'd be fascinated to see where she wants to take her Shakespeare unit. There's no rush, so unless you think you might not get around to posting it in your journal, that works for me.

P.

[raphaela.livejournal.com]

=)
I still think you gave great answers. Made me think a lot, and that's really the point of reading interviews. I appreciated how much time you put into each answer--and you're still the hottest thing on the site ;)

[pameladean]

That's very gratifying indeed.

It's a good site; I've been poking around a bit more (and would have read it all if it weren't for this pesky short-story deadline).

P.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

::ahem::

[pameladean]

You should see what I'd say if I were posting more. It's just the natural process. Short stories don't agree with me. They argue all the time.

P.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I somehow missed this post.

Pamela, it was so much fun to read this interview with you!

"Spiffy shiny," all right!

And I'm glad to hear your writing is going well.