Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

Man I hope I spelled F.O. right.  I bet I didn't.
  

    

Martha, dearie, I'm reading your latest book.  You have a fertile
imagination.  Way fertile.  Tell us all about this book, and then we'll go
backwards.
  

    
All about the book?

In one post?

This book begins with the first story I wrote after high school (some years
after, as I'd decided I didn't know anything about writing and sat down to
ponder for quite a while), which I think is pretty brave of me.  It
continues in rough chronological order for roughly a decade, with the
stories I wrote after I took up writing at 25.

When I was in high school, and a voracious reader as I assume all future
writers to have been, I started reading the science-fiction anthologies of
the 70s: the two Dangerous Visions books; Damon Knight's Orbit series; Terry
Carr's Universe series; Robert Silverberg's New Dimensions series.  I became
very excited about what could be done in a few pages, using a fantastic
premise as a lens to look at the intensity of human experience.  An excess
of intensity is surely why I stick with the short form instead of sensibly
writing a novel.

It was a wonderful thing when, ten years later, I sold that first story to
Terry Carr's Universe (the penultimate volume; he died after assembling the
next one).  Everything since then is gravy.

That's as much as fits in one post.
  

    

Tell us why "not Flannery O'Connor."  I mean, why NOT Flannery O'Connor?  Do
you have a PROBLEM with Flannery O'Connor?



I used to read science fiction when I was a kid.  I don't know why I stopped,
really.  Maybe it was because I became a pothead and started being more
interested in the "real" world at hand.  Do you want to talk about the genre
and why it appeals to you?
  

    

Martha's book, by the bye, is called *The Arbitrary Placement of Walls*.
And Martha, if you're such a sci-fi smarty, can you tell me why my book has
flown off?  Where did I put it?

The first story, about actors inhabiting "costumes," I kept thinking, how
much do you have to work out the internal logic of this construct.  I think
I mean construct.
  

    
I don't have a problem with Flannery O'Connor.  I merely fear that people,
coming to my little stories with such an expectation, will snort "She's no
Flannery O'Connor!" and use the book to smoosh cockroaches.

I am on my way out to do painting prep on the Habitat for Humanity site
around the corner, and will ponder your questions while covering myself with
caulk.
  

    

Caulk on!

Soukup has been compared to O'Connor by pleased critics.  She has had all
kinds of pleased critics attention, some of which I threw into a simple web
page at:   http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/soukup.html

Just fabulous responses form a lot of smart people.
  

    

So, Soukup, where do you get all your ideas?
  

    
Found 'em buried in the back yard.

I am now covered with caulk, as promised, though from tomorrow I'm told I'll
be dealing more in grout.  "I was thinking, I don't really want to train
someone on floors who doesn't come back," Gloria said.  "Then I saw you and
I thought, She comes back!"

Like the cat.

And now I have a little Web site with my name on top, which it took Gail to
make happen, so thanks, Gail!

Um, what were the questions?
  

    
Talk about the genre and why it appeals to you.

Where is <plum>'s copy of your book?

You've answered the others, I think.
  

    
plum's copy of my book is in the fridge.

Well, I've talked a bit about the genre and why it appeals to me.  It does
appeal to me for the same reason it appeals to any other geek: the
intellectual game of it, of seeing an idea stretched as far as it goes.
This is fun done either for rigor, or for gonzo, and I've attempted it both
ways.  (Some rigor always give some spine to a story.)

But as a writer, my strongest attraction to the genre is the way you can use
it to write about anything.  You take a metaphor, you give it flesh, you
crank the hell out of it.  It's efficient, and efficiency is sexy.

That kind of thing goes way back.  Fairy tales: look at Sleeping Beauty, the
old version: she is ensorceled into sleep, sleeps a hundred years, a prince
drops by and rapes her in her sleep and leaves, nine months later one of her
newborn twins crawls to her finger, tries to suckle on it, and awakens her.
Not the version Disney could ever do, but pretty kick-ass, yes?
  

    
Not too shabby!
  

    
Plum's copy of your book WAS in the fridge. But Doc broke in, ate some 
chicken, stole the book, and is now reading it. 
  

    
Doc the dog?
  

    
Never to forget the subtlety while you're cranking the hell out of your
metaphors though.  Over-the-top subtle, that's what I'm after.

Maybe.

Doc the dwarf?
  

    

Doc the dog.  Well known for stealth missions.  I asked you, Martha, about
the costumes in the first story.  That was so good.  How do you well, figure
out all the logic?
  

    
The secret of science fiction: you don't have to figure out ALL the logic.

"Dress Rehearsal" had to be in the book, because not only is it my first
published (and written) short story, it's the story that got me to trying to
write stories again, after I gave up at 17.  I was in an amateur, sometimes
semi-pro, theater troupe in Chicago called Moebius Theatre: one of the many
improv & script blackout-sketch comedy groups inspired by Second City.  We
did science fiction: about one one-hour play a year (I wrote one of those),
but mostly sketches, which we performed at science-fiction conventions and
in little storefront theaters for teeny little audiences.

I was in Moebius for years before I even tried to write a script.  We had a
couple of excellent sketch writers, hardly needed me.  One day I was really
angry about something, so in that angry mood I wrote a goofy little romantic
silly bit.  Then I kept going.

Now, Moebius Theatre was an egalitarian sort of outfit.  Since our material
was sf and fantasy, we didn't have to worry about writing gender-blind.
Only pieces with a het romantic aspect would certainly call for someone to
be male for a part, someone to be female for a part.

I was never much of an actor really.  Couldn't help notice, though, that
plays and movies usually have two good male parts or more for every female
part.  Really this is something I'd noticed since childhood, as who
wouldn't.  But there are other casting limitations: you're too old, you're
too young, you're too small, you're too big, you're the wrong race.

You're the wrong sex.

So actually it'd been a fantasy of mine since childhood that technology
might make it possible for any actor to play any part.

You can't write a story without more to it than the fantasy gimmick, though.
I wrote "Dress Rehearsal" as a Moebius Theatre sketch--uncertain how a
definitely non-comic sketch would go over with people in the audience for a
comedy show--because it eventually struck me that a technology that let you
inhabit a different (artifical) body was also, well, the ultimate drag.  You
could occupy any physical kind of person.  So what does that reveal about
your self-image?  Real things, false things?

I dunno.  The story's more a question.

And the sketch got me to start writing prose fiction, because while it did
go over well on stage (and they even managed a videotaped production), I
became megalomaniacal about the story.  Theater is collaborative.  In prose,
you are a tyrant.  (Of course each reader collaborates differently with the
prose, but never mind that.)

I do run on.  And I could continue.
  

    
Tell me what you start with.  Is it the germ of a character, a situation, a
didactic point you want to make?

(Damon Knight once answered that question in my presence by pointing to a
spot behind his lower back and saying "it's an annoying itch right
_there_.")
  

    
Yes.
  

    
Thank you for your considered opinion.  Okay, let's try this: Do you prefer
Tinky Winky, Dipsy, La La, or Po?
  

    
Po.
  

    
Anyway, it's all of the above.  Though the points I want to make are rarely
didactic.  It's not that I don't appreciate interesting didacticism, it's
just that the things I know I'm not certain about vastly outnumber the
things I am certain about.

The vague thing to say is that it's an image, but "image" can mean so many
different things.  It can be a scene or a moment from a scene.  It can be a
stfnal or fantastic gimmick.  Whatever it is, it has to have an emotion, or
it's not a story.

I can carry an image around for a long time before emotion, character, and
situation accrete around it.
  

    

fiction is hard!
  

    
Dying is easy!
  

    

Do you have many endings?  Do you know the ending first?  With
journalism/humor, I know kinda where I want to be but never quite.
  

    
Sometimes I start at the beginning, sometimes in the middle, sometimes with
the ending.  (In my head, that is; I always write the story from front to
back.)

Sometimes I've written toward an ending and the story wasn't going there.
That's how I got "A Defense of the Social Contracts" out of the story I
stubbornly did produce later, "The Spinner".