Interviews

Interview of Maurya Simon by Dominique McCafferty

DM: According to my notes, you've lived in Italy , Sweden , Scotland , and India . You've lived all over Europe .

MS: Yes, I've been around. I was born in 1950 in New York , but my parents moved to California when I was an infant. I've spent most of my life in California —both in Northern and Southern California .

When I was four, my parents were fed up with the Eisenhower doldrums in America , and they yearned for the culture of Europe , so they decided to leave. They took me and my sister with them, and we lived in Europe for almost four years. These were post-war times, so the dollar was very strong. I remember my father taught periodically in American schools and gave private piano and violin lessons, so we were able to get by fairly decently living a kind of gypsy life.

That was a wonderful time in my life, very formative. My parents were always surrounded by writers and artists, so it seemed kind of unavoidable that I would yearn for the creative life. I was surrounded by role models, people who were exciting and passionate about their art.

DM: I think that's wonderful.

MS: It really was.

DM: Will you tell us a little more about your parents, talk about their work?

MS: Of course. My mother's name is Baila Goldenthal, and she's a visual artist living in Los Angeles . The artwork on three of my books is hers. She did a wonderful series of "Weavers" paintings, eighteen of them. The cover of my 2004 book, Ghost Orchid , includes one of the paintings from that series.

My mother and I recently published an ekphrastic book—ekphrastic is a Greek word that refers to poems based on works of art. It includes sixteen of my mother's "Weavers" paintings and sixteen poems that I wrote in response to the paintings.

My father's name is Robert Simon. He's a retired ethnomusicologist. He taught at Cal Poly Pomona for many years, and he's composing music these days.

DM: You have a sister, too?

MS: Yes I do. My sister, Tamara, actually began as a concert pianist and a visual artist, but then she decided to take a more practical route, unlike the rest of us, and went back to school to become a nurse practitioner. She's an OB-GYN now, and she's living and working in Orange County [CA]. But she's married to a concert violinist!

DM: A concert violinist with a rich sounding violin—I can imagine. As for your own work as a poet, do you recall when you first began writing on your own?

MS: I began writing poems when I was seven. I still remember one of them. It was really bad, but it was probably the first one my parents praised. I remember why I wrote it. We were living in Paris then, near the Bois de Boulogne park, and there was a wedding procession that was going down this really big boulevard, probably the Champs-Élysées. It looked like a fairytale had come alive to me.  There was a gold gilt carriage with six white horses, and the bride looked like a princess. There were men dressed up in brocade as if it were a Renaissance pageant. There were grooms throwing rose petals. It was so magical. I loved fairytales as a child, and I was simply transformed by what was taking place. And so at seven, I decided to write down this experience as a poem. I think it was my attempt at stopping time, preserving or suspending time. And as I was writing the poem, I really was aware that I was trying to do this—preserve something memorable in language. I wanted to save this spectacle I'd seen that had been so awe-inspiring and beautiful. So I do remember when I started writing, and I've been writing ever since.

DM: Did you write mostly poems, or did you write in other genres as well?

MS: Poems and stories, but primarily poems.

DM: I'm wondering, too, why you felt drawn to poetry? Why do you think you write poems and not, for example, novels? Do you know why, or is it a mystery?

MS: I do know why. I think it was partly because my father was a musician and my mother was a visual artist. I was also very much seduced by the creative life because of the milieu in which my family moved—I was surrounded by artists, musicians, dancers, and actors. But I remember that I really wanted to find my own niche. I didn't want to
compete with them. Even though I'd studied violin from the time I was four, and I grew up in my mother's studio and became pretty proficient as a visual artist as well, I really felt that I would be competing if I went into those areas. And so I thought about what was left. I couldn't dance, I couldn't act. And then I thought that maybe I could write. It was really quite a conscious decision on my part.

My parents also had a great library. They were real readers. That was another influence, I think. I remember one book—it was a really big, oversize facsimile copy of one of the really early editions of Leaves of Grass . It had wonderful illustrations, including that famous etching of Walt Whitman where he's wearing this hat on his head, and a big blowsy shirt, and he's got his hands on his hips, and a kind of jocular expression on his face. It's a very wonderful etching of him. I think I must have been seven or eight when I started reading Leaves of Grass . I didn't understand it, of course, but I felt something very
mystifying and powerful in those poems.

So I started reading poetry, fairly sophisticated poetry, at a very young age. I loved nursery rhymes, too. I memorized thousands of nursery rhymes. Even today I can rattle off hundreds of them. I think
it was the music of the nursery rhymes that drew me in. We were living in London at the time, and my mother bought a lot of nursery rhyme books. I think her intention was to try to encourage and entice my sister and me to learn how to read.

I love the musicality of the rhymes. I think kids are naturally drawn towards the sounds of poetry, the music of poetry. I certainly was. Going back to the very earliest time in my life when I was aware of poetry (although I didn't think of nursery rhymes as poems), if there was ever a time I fell in love with poetry, it was then. Probably when I was three or four years old.

DM: Nursery rhymes are wonderful. My mother raised my sister and me on nursery rhymes as well.

MS: They're like songs. Some of them are funny, and others are strange and dark.

DM: Even as a child, I remember thinking some of them were bizarre in the telling.

MS: Yes, they are intriguing. I think they especially made an impression on me because I was introduced to them while we were living in England . Most of them go back to the nineteenth century, the eighteenth, or earlier, and so I became aware of the fact that this
was a different world. This was a world where there were chimney sweepers, and orphans, kids who sang for their supper, and beggars in the streets. I first became aware of history through nursery rhymes.

DM: When did your family return to California ?

MS: We returned after a four-year spell in Europe and lived in Los Angeles ( Calif. ). And by the way, I have a quick, funny anecdote about that. As a child, I hadn't been schooled in the regular way, and my parents weren't happy with the schools in Europe , either. I attended a Catholic school in France , and I was a really painfully shy child, and I was so overwhelmed by suddenly being in class with all these French kids and not knowing much French myself. It was traumatic for me, and I just wept, so my mother took me out of the school.

Then they enrolled me in an army school, a GI school in Germany , which I hated, and so finally my parents decided they would just teach us at home. And so my mother taught me and my sister to read, and we learned math and history by visiting great cathedrals. We learned history through art and architecture. It was great. But then when we came back to Los Angeles (I was in third grade at the time), I was given my first IQ test and I flunked it. Well, the principal called my mother and said, "Mrs. Simon, I'm really sorry, but we think your daughter is retarded." We didn't use such terms as "developmentally disabled" then. He just said, "We think your daughter is retarded and will have to be placed in a special class."

DM: How did your mother react to this?

MS: My mother burst out laughing. She said, "Well... why?" And he said, "She didn't pass the IQ test." So my mother said, "Just give me the book, and I'll do some practice tests with her. She can take it again, and I'm sure she'll be fine."

Never mind that I could talk about Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa or Michelangelo with great knowledge and expertise. That didn't count!

DM: I'm relieved as you tell this story because I suffered through a similar struggle. And as a first grader I flatly refused to take their IQ test.

MS: Good for you!

DM: Yes, I folded my arms in complete defiance. They took me to my mother who was waiting in the lobby and said, "Mrs. McCafferty, we'd like to test your daughter but she refuses to answer the questions." I love to think that my six-year-old self was protecting me. And to this day I despise that sort of thing. It's interesting. I would never put a child through an IQ test—my own, or somebody else's child.

MS: Oh I know. They're ridiculous.

DM: Setting aside that awful experience with the principal, what were some of your more memorable, treasured experiences in school?

MS: In elementary school I had a teacher named Mrs. Strange.

DM: Oh!

MS: Yes, and she loved her name. She was this dynamic, charismatic person who was able to imbue educating children with joy. I think she really influenced me because she found so much joy in learning. She was able to pass this excitement for learning on to her students. I don't know that I remember anything specifically. I just remember learning from Mrs. Strange that finding out about the world could be joyous—even if it was hard work, it could still be a joyous process.

DM: What about your teachers in junior high and high school?

MS: I remember quite a few teachers from my high school. We'd moved to Hermosa Beach by then—

DM: Oh really? So your family moved from Los Angeles to Hermosa Beach ?

MS: Yes, I went to elementary school in Los Angeles and then we moved to Hermosa Beach which was more affordable at the time. This is the irony: my parents didn't have any money then, and so we couldn't afford to live in LA. So instead, we moved to this house in Hermosa Beach , and the house was about a block from the beach. We
could afford that! Isn't that absurd?

DM: You couldn't even begin to dream of doing that now.

MS: Oh no, never. Oh, but it was great. I learned how to surf. I was terrible at it. But during those years I really lived in the ocean. I spent so much time swimming and bicycling—just being outdoors. It was a very healthy life, although nobody wore sunscreen in those days, so my skin is really messed up now. I was overexposed, something I regret now.

DM: I don't notice, Maurya.

MS: Oh, well I do!

DM: How old were you when you moved to Hermosa Beach ?

MS: I was around nine years old when we moved there. And we lived there until I was seventeen. I went to U.C. Berkeley when I was seventeen.

DM: Before we move on to your experiences at U.C. Berkeley, I was hoping you would talk about some of your influential high school teachers.

MS: That's right. Let me see—

When I was living in Hermosa, I went to Redondo Union High School , and I had three teachers there who influenced me. One was a man named James Van Wagner—he was a poet. And there was another student poet named Mark Jarman in the class.

DM: Oh, that's amazing. Mark Jarman is also listed on the Academy of American Poets website.

MS: Yes, he's become quite well known. Mark Jarman was a year behind me. He now teaches at Vanderbilt University in Nashville [ Tenn ]. He's a terrific poet. And Mr. Van Wagner took me and Mark aside. He knew we both loved poetry, and so he would give us both special assignments. He gave us lots of great poetry books to read.  (And I gave Mark a volume by T.S. Eliot, as I recall.)

DM: Aren't those wonderful teachers, the kind that lavish you with books?

MS: Yes, absolutely! He was great, Mr. Wagner. And then there a journalism teacher, and we called her "The Great White Bird." Her name was Miss Sinsabaugh. She was an elderly lady even then, but she loved and respected young people so much, and she demanded a lot from her students. Her students just revered her. We were sure to do our work because we wanted her affirmation, her approval.

Another of my teachers, Mrs. Blakeney, was almost from another era—the maiden teacher. She was unmarried. She was both virtuous and rigid.
But I adored her because she knew Latin so well. I think she was brilliant. She probably should have been teaching college, not high school. I think about my own studies in Latin. I was pretty good at it, though it wasn't my strongest subject. But I think it's aided me as a writer in that I learned the roots of words. I've always really loved etymology.

I do want to mention a few other teachers because they were socrucial. Do we have a few more minutes to spend on this?

DM: Of course. It seems like the perfect question to ask you, really. You've had so many wonderful teachers. Most of us are lucky to have one or two.

MS: Oh, I know it. Well, this particular teacher was so crucial in my development as a poet, and this was when I was studying at Berkeley . His name is Richard Tillinghast. He's recently retired from the University of Michigan . He had a huge effect on my writing because he took it seriously. He was a wonderful mentor to me, and we're still friends, though he lives in Ireland now.

DM: And what was it like studying at Berkeley during those years you attended?

MS: I went to Berkeley towards the end of the sixties, the beginning of the seventies, so it was a really tumultuous time to be there. It was both intense and exciting. Actually, I came right after the free speech movement of the early and mid-sixties at UC Berkeley. And it was both alarming and exhilarating because politically there was so much going on—all the anti-Vietnam war protests and the brutal police reactions to them. The campus was a kind of cauldron of political, social, and cultural activity. It became increasingly difficult to go to classes because there were so many strikes, and so much political turmoil. There were times when I felt conflicted because I had to cross the picket lines in order to go to my classes. Most of the issues that protesters were addressing I felt sympathetic towards, and actively supported, but I also loved my classes. So I was really torn. I ended up joining the marches and demonstrations about half of the time, and spent the other half trying to go to class.

It was a wonderful place to go to school—partly because it was the sixties, and there was so much going on culturally. It was the beginning of the feminist movements, and black power movements. It was a time when young people felt they could change the world—that it could be done.

But I loved my classes, too. I sat in on a class with Angela Davis. I remember one day walking into the student union and there was BB King. He was giving a talk, but there were only about five people present because someone had failed to advertise the event. After the talk, I walked up and thanked him, and he said, "Would you show me around
Berkeley ?" And so I spent the afternoon with BB King!

DM: What a neat story!

MS: Yes, things like that would happen there that were just wonderful!
I remember the time when folk singer and activist Pete Seeger was at Berkeley , and again, there were just a handful of people present. I talked with him afterwards, as well.

My education wasn't just academic. It was also an education in how to be an activist—both a social and a political activist. It was certainly an education in drug taking, too. I took a lot of drugs in those days as well—and to my own detriment, I think. Of course college for any person is a time to come into your own, to discover who you are as a person, and I think that was part of my willingness to take drugs. And in the sixties and seventies, taking drugs was seen as a mind-expanding act. I think the whole culture of drug taking has changed—especially among middle class people.

The other thing about Berkeley was that there were wonderful students. There were students from all over California , students from small farm towns across the state. I remember how difficult it was for those students who came from rural communities to negotiate getting an education with what was happening culturally and politically.

DM: What was your major in college?

MS: I started off as an entomology major.

DM: Really?

MS: Yes, I think it was a response to my extensive exposure to the arts.

DM: I would have loved to have studied entomology as well. I just think bugs are so fascinating.

MS: Aren't they great? They're absolutely incredible.

DM: I hadn't even considered the possibility when I was an undergraduate. I was so immersed in literature myself.

MS: Oh, I know. Well, I did take classes for about a year and a half in the sciences, and I was writing poems about insects. But I knew all along, because I loved to read literature, and I loved and excelled in all of my English classes. I must have changed my major to English in my sophomore year.

I had some wonderful teachers at Berkeley , but there were many that I missed. I regret that I didn't study with the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. I was so clueless in some ways. I didn't know how to find out whom I should be working with. There were several poets I would have loved to study with that I didn't realize were there. I think Robert Haas was there at that time. Josephine Miles was also at Cal then. She was a wonderful poet and I didn't take a class with her! I often think that if only someone had nudged me. I wasn't assertive enough as a student to take advantage of those opportunities. I was passive in that regard.

DM: You were shy.

MS: I was shy. And I regret those missed opportunities. I had other great opportunities, though. I became very interested in hiking. I took lots and lots of walks in Tilden Park . I went to Big Sur during spring break.

DM: You've been to some really beautiful places.

MS: Yes, I've been lucky. I really feel blessed that I've been able to travel, and to travel as a child when my view of the world was forming. I've been fortunate.

DM: And then to be surrounded by so many interesting people.

MS: I was very lucky to be at Berkeley , too, and to be there at that time, as difficult as it was. And then I went to India my senior year.

DM: On a Fulbright, correct?

MS: Yes and no.  Twenty years later I went on a Fulbright, but I frist went to India with my parents, during what would have been my senior year, and it was a fabulous experience. I also met my future husband there. He was in the Peace Corp. The original
plan was to finish up my BA at Berkeley when I returned from India . But having met Robert, and given that he was finishing up his stint with the Peace Corp and was returning to graduate school to finish up his degree in Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania—I just had to move to Philadelphia to be with him. I went back to Berkeley initially, but I missed him so much, so I decided I was going to have to postpone finishing up my BA.

And while in Philadelphia I worked for NASA. I had actually worked for NASA as a student at Berkeley . I'd worked with a group of scientists who sent the first monkeys up in space. And because I had that job as a work-study student at Berkeley , I was able to get a job with NASA in Pittsburg —this time working with a group of scientists who were sending plants into space to study the effects of zero gravity on plant growth. So I worked at NASA for a while, and then we got married, and I had my first daughter. And things kept coming up that prevented me from going back to school. I'd actually applied to Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore and was accepted to both, but the catch was that I was accepted with full scholarships that were available to me only after I completed my first year, and we just couldn't afford that. So I wasn't able to finish my BA for almost ten years. When we moved back to California many years later, and I'd had my second daughter, I went to Pitzer College [ Claremont , CA ] and finished my BA—in 1980. Pitzer was a very interesting experience because I was older. And I had a professor, Barry Sanders, at Pitzer who was an amazing teacher. He was  so instrumental to my growth as a writer. He encouraged me to be a poet. He invited wonderful and brilliant writers to Pitzer—people like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Tillie Olson, William Gass, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Grace Paley.  Equally important was another Pitzer College professor, Bert Meyers.  He introduced me to an array of Latin American and European poets I'd not yet encountered: Zbigniew Herbert, Paul Celan, Osip Manelstam, Octavio Paz, Julio Cortazar.  And he had the deepest reverence for Emily Dickinson's work.

DM: Maurya, I'm wondering if we can switch gears and talk about your recent collection of poems, Ghost Orchid . It was nominated for a National Book Award, after all — such a lovely honor!

MS: Thank you. And in fact, what happened was—

Usually the publisher nominates a book they've published in a given year from each category: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, children's. And my publisher actually apologized and said, "We'd like to nominate your book but it's kind of expensive and we'd have to pay for you to go to New York , and we don't have the money. Is that okay?" And I said, "Sure, that's fine." And then a few months later he called and said, "The head of The National Book Award judging committee called me and said that the judges want to nominate your book."

DM: Oh!

MS: So that was the real honor. It's very unusual.

DM: Yes, how wonderful for you!

MS: I sent them some additional copies of my book. Yes, it was a really nice affirmation. It can get depressing sometimes, because poetry isn't that important to most Americans. I think it's a shame, because I think it can help people get through their lives. Poetry can show us how to better understand and enjoy our lives-- or how to endure them.

DM: When making selections for the poetry section at the library, I feel terrible passing up what look like so many wonderful collections of poetry. They're poets who haven't had a chance to build up an audience. But we have a limited budget. So what I'll do is I'll read one or two of the poems from the volumes I don't choose—I want to honor their work.

MS: Oh that's wonderful that you do that. But you know, it's partly because poetry is taught poorly in schools more often than not, and I think young people get scared of it ­ as if it was this difficult, erudite conundrum. It's off-putting. It makes them feel intellectually inadequate which is too bad. And maybe it's changing to some degree.
But it's too bad, because kids love language. They love rhymes and puns and metaphors, so there's no reason kids can't love poetry the way they love to sing or dance.

DM: Yes, the musicality of poetry you mentioned earlier.

Out of curiosity, Maurya, what have you been reading lately?

MS: What I've been reading—

DM: Incidentally, I love to read several books at once, but a friend of mine recently said that her reading is too fractured when she has several books going at the same time.

MS: Hmm. But you know ­ I don't do that with a book that I'm really engaged by. I put everything else down, and I only read that book until I'm done.

DM: Ah, lovely.

MS: I'm doing that right now with Ian McEwan's novel Saturday . He's such a good writer, I think. And the book is about our times. The whole thing takes place in one day—the same way Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway did. The book is about a neurosurgeon, a day in the life of a neurosurgeon. It's also the day of the largest anti-Gulf War march in
England and in Europe . It takes place around the time when the UN was doing investigations to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction, and it was very clear that we were on the verge of declaring war against Iraq . So there's this whole political aspect to this novel because the protagonist is having these debates with a co-worker and with his daughter about the morality of the war.
It's a wonderful and haunting novel, and I haven't wanted to read anything else this past week. I don't have much time these days, but I've been reading it at night before I go to sleep. I don't want anything else to distract me. Even when I'm not reading the book, I want to think about it and have images and scenes in the novel surface in my mind, and I want to relish them and dwell on them.

I don't know if you ever do that?

DM: Oh, yes. If it's something that really speaks to me. I'm thinking of one book in particular by Paula Sharp called, I Loved You All .

MS: I Loved You All ?

DM: Yes, and everything else I'd been doing up until then came to a screeching halt, and I was just reading that book. Ahab's Wife was another one.

MS: It's really great when that happens. You get so involved. And that's what really good writing does is it transports you, and you dwell within that other place as much as you can imaginatively.

DM: The worlds they create are so real. You could almost swear by this.

MS: It's the magic of literature I think. Or, one of the magical things about literature.

DM: Who are some of your favorite poets?

MS: I remember telling you that I grew up in a house where my parents loved books, and that there were several volumes of poetry in their library— Leaves of Grass and Dylan Thomas.

DM: And do you read a lot of poetry in your spare time?

MS: Actually, I don't read a lot of poetry. I mean, I do read some poetry, but one of the reasons why I don't read a lot of poetry in my leisure time is because I read so much of it during the academic year. I read lots of Masters Theses which are book length works of poetry. And then the seniors have their theses. I usually have ten students a year with whom I work on compiling a manuscript of poetry. And then I have friends and colleagues who are poets from across the country who send me either new books that are in progress that they want feedback on, or who send me new books that are about to be published, for which they want me to write a blurb. So I have ­ between the academic work and the work of my friends and colleagues across the country ­probably twenty or thirty books of poems that I read. So no, I don't often seek out additional poetry, unless I'm teaching a new poetry course. If I read a review in a poetry magazine, or someone says, "Wow, I just read this poet from Arkansas ," then I'll look for it. But otherwise, no. I think a lot of times when I'm reading poetry, I'm reading it really critically, which is alright, but it detracts from the pleasure. I'm reading it very analytically. Whereas, when I read fiction, or non-fiction for that matter, I read it for the sheer pleasure of reading it, and I'm not so critical. I may be analytical about the content, but not the crafting of it. It's a different kind of endeavor—prose as opposed to poetry.

There are a couple books of poetry that I've read and enjoyed of late. One is a book by Chris Abani, Dog Woman. It's his new-ish book of poetry. I have bought but haven't yet read Jack Gilbert's new book, Refusing Heaven. He's only written three books. He's in his seventies, I think, so every time he publishes a book it's an event.

DM: Though he's not written hundreds of books, he has stayed focused. It reminds me of the story my poetry professor Larry Kramer told me about Donald Justice, where one day he asked Donald Justice how his poems were coming along, and Justice replied, "Well, I have been working on two."

MS: On two?

DM: Yes. And Justice's words really made an impression on Larry. He said he got the feeling he'd been working on those two poems for a long time.

MS: I really admire Donald Justice. He didn't produce a lot of books. Philip Larkin and Elizabeth Bishop didn't, but if you look at Bishop's work, or Larkin's or Justice's work, you see how astoundingly well-crafted their poems are. A poem, I think, really gains a lot from that kind of meticulous attention paid over time.

On the other hand, Ginsberg was famous for his "first thought, best thought" dictum, for claiming that he never revised. Whatever came out was what was published. Actually, there are people who have said that having looked at some of his manuscripts, it's obvious that he did indeed revise.

A lot of people think a poem has to flow spontaneously from the soul, from the heart, but appearing to be spontaneous is part of the craftsmanship of the poem, and the poet, to imbue the poem with a sense of spontaneity or urgency, can only do so by working on it intensively and with great skill. It doesn't mean, if a poem is much labored over, that it isn't going to feel somehow natural and spoken with ease. Actually, I think the best poems, the great poems, are those that have a sense of inevitability about them. They had to be written that way.

DM: Do you associate yourself with a particular school of poets, Maurya?

MS: No I don't. I think I have an affinity with the imagists like Hilda Doolittle, Ezra Pound, and Amy Lowell, but in a very contemporary way. I think I've always been acutely visually oriented as a poet. And I think that's probably due to being the daughter of an artist, and partly because I love the world. I love looking at the world. But it's not
just my affinity for the visual that makes me align myself with the imagists. I think it's also that I see in poetry how the images can be recharged. They're very powerful. They can be so resonant. I guess I equate them with metaphors. I think these two aspects of poetry, the metaphoric use of language and visual imagery, make the most brilliant poems what they are. But other than having a kinship with the imagists, there is no school. I'm not a neo-formalist, though I like to write formal verse sometimes. I'm not a surrealist. I'm not a post-modernist. I just write poems.

And I like to think that I'm ever evolving as a poet, too. I like to think that as soon as I start having a kind of identifiable style or aesthetic, that it's time to move on, for it means that I've ceased to grow in some ways. I feel I'm repeating what I know how to do, and it's time to take another approach. I'm therefore pushing myself to take risks that I hadn't taken before.

DM: Do you have any advice for writers, budding or otherwise?

MS: As a teacher I work with so many people who want to be published, and I think it's a perfectly fine goal, but it seems, ultimately, that it's much less satisfying than the actual writing process. When you get published, it's a kind of validation that you have what it takes. And of course there's a huge range, in terms of the quality of the publication in which your work appears. One may be happy to be published in an obscure literary magazine, or one may say, "I will not consider myself successful until I've published a poem, or an article, or a story, in The New Yorker."

Ultimately, I think what's most gratifying is writing something that you think is interesting.

DM: Yours are such generous words. I've read a lot of interviews where well-established writers are critical of those writers who want so badly to be published. And I think, "Well you're published!"

MS: That's right. I think it's hypocritical. Everyone wants validation for what they're doing. Everyone needs that. So it's perfectly natural to want to be published.

DM: My, that is so kind of you!

MS: Well, I think it's true. Don't you?

DM: I do.

MS: I think people see it as an ego trip, and it isn't that at all. We want to be seen, to be acknowledged as existing. And not only that, but I want to hear what you have to say. Your ideas are important enough to hear, to think about.

It's the same kind of impulse as the child in kindergarten who makes a painting, and when he or she gets home, wants to have it hung on the refrigerator. It's recognition of what you've done, an expression of who you are.