Spotlight On…

I’ve become a fast and hard fan of all things Kirsty Logan. It’s true, I haven’t met a Scot yet I haven’t liked, but there’s something very special about Kirsty. Alas, I only know her through Cyberville, but there’s no doubt she and her work are wonderful. I hope we can meet someday and she can read me one of her stories in that gorgeous Scottish accent.

This, for me, is one of the most moving Spotlight Series to date. Thank you, Kirsty.

– Ethel Rohan

Writing wise, where are you now? Where are you going?

I’m working on the second draft of my novel, Little Dead Boys. I just spent a week at a writing retreat, so I got a lot of work done on it. It’s with my editor now – I’m letting it sit for a few weeks while she reads it over. I am nervous about that.

I’ve just finished putting together a chapbook of poetry and flash fiction, You Look Good Enough To Eat Me, which will be coming out later this year. I am hopeful about that.

I co-edit a new flash fiction magazine, Fractured West, and our first issue was just launched so that’s keeping me busy too. I am spending a lot of time in the post office for that.

From October on I’ll be teaching a couple of evening classes at Glasgow University: one on writing from mythology and fairytales, and another on writing fantasy, science fiction and horror. I am reading a lot for that.

And I want to do a bit more traveling, and I should really read more online lit mags, and then there’s my determination to beat xTx and Roxane at online Scrabble. And hopefully I’ll sleep at some point too.

What informs your creative process? How do you keep inspired?

It’s hard not to be inspired. Misheard song lyrics, trees shaped like dinosaurs, that guy who always orders a large espresso then adds four sugars and doesn’t drink it. Stories are everywhere. The only problem is lassoing them into a coherent structure.

How do you feel about the label writer? Woman writer?

It’s only in the past year that I’ve begun to call myself a writer. Before that I’d say I want to be a writer, or I hope to be a writer. I thought that a person could only be a writer if they earned a living wage from writing. Then one day I thought fuck this shit, I write and so I am a writer. I spend more time and thought on writing than any other thing in my life.

‘Woman writer’ is technically accurate: I am a woman and I write. My writing is informed and affected by my gender, just as by my geographical location, age, sexuality, physical abilities, parents’ jobs, etc. Even my tips at work affect my writing – more tips means I have to waitress fewer hours, which means I have more time to write. But would anyone call me a minimum-wage writer? A tea-drinking writer? A listens-to-trip-hop writer? Just like ‘woman writer’, they’re all technically accurate but incomplete.

Do you struggle with self-doubt? How do you cope with those feelings?

Of course. Sometimes I have to wake up at 6:30 am for another dull-as-shit waitressing shift and I look at my life and think ‘Seriously? I have two university degrees and I make goddamn lattes for a living?’ But then I get home and I have three days off and all I have to do is write stories, and maybe there’s even an email in my inbox from someone who read my stuff and liked it. I have to remind myself that I have chosen this life, that I have chosen to give certain things up so that I can write.

As a boost, I have a text file called ‘Nice Things People Have Said’, which I look through every month or so. I think everyone needs that occasionally, to be told they’re amazing. Also my girlfriend knows exactly when I need a hug and when I need to be told to ‘get a fucking grip’.

You sport many sexy hats. Do you worry about spreading yourself too thin and diluting the quality of your writing, editing, teaching, and living?

No. Everything I do feeds into everything else. The more I edit, the better I get at editing my own writing and understanding how the editing and publishing process works. Teaching encourages me to examine exactly how and why things work, and reading students’ stories always inspires me. And without living, I’d have nothing to write about.

How has the Internet impacted your reading and writing? What is the future of print publication?

I read a lot. I have always read a lot. Now I read more on screens than I used to, but it doesn’t really make any difference.

We all love print, but it’s no good pretending it’s the 1900s. People read on their phones, like it or not, and publishers need to give readers what they want. Personally I don’t think print is going to die. But you know what? If print dies, then it dies. We’ll all still keep reading and writing. The format doesn’t really matter.

Tell us something that most people don’t know about you?

I have seen the film Drive Me Crazy at least ten times. And I’d watch it again right now.

If you didn’t write, what would your life look like?

I’d need some sort of creative outlet, so I’d play the cello or sew cushions shaped like insects or make elaborate six-foot-tall cross-stitches of famous battles. Those actually sound like fun. Maybe I picked the wrong career.

Please tell us your favorite, and why:

Musical

Chicago, because I love angry-dancing (this is also why I love Lady Gaga videos, and also the one for Michael Jackson’s Beat It).

Fable/Fairy Tale

I’m a huge nerd for fairy tales and myths so I have a lot of favorites, but lately I’m obsessed with the Inuit myth of Sedna. I’m fascinated by what it opens up about female power and sexuality. I’ve been trying to write about it for a while but it’s not really coming together.

Movie

Rain. It’s a New Zealand film, a coming-of-age about a teenage girl relating to her little brother and her glamorous mother – deciding whether she’s ready to be a woman, and what exactly that means. It’s like a more contemplative, heartwrenching version of Bonjour Tristesse, which was my favorite book when I was a teenager. Rain is based on a book by Kirsty Gunn, which is utterly beautiful and a constant inspiration. Also, she’s the only other writer called Kirsty I’ve ever seen.

Painting

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Dorothea Tanning. I love surrealism. My mother gave me a postcard of this painting when I was about thirteen, and I think it’s affected me and my writing in ways I don’t even know.

Place

Wherever I am.

Please do a five minute free-write with the words “big headphones,” and share.

I used to wear big headphones because I had a lot of crap pierced around the edges of my ears: hoops in my tragus and rook, a stud in my conch, a long barbell connecting two holes at the top of the cartilage. It was no good trying to insert little earphones through all that scaffolding, so I just clapped headphones on over the lot.

I’d walk through the city, letting it unfold around me, a movie to the soundtrack in my ears. Buses slid by, the adverts on their sides making lines of poetry just for me. Fights broke out, flickered, broke up, all in mime. People’s mouths moved at me, making shapes that were not words. I kept my feet away from the gutter and turned up the volume.

Even if I fell it would be okay. The headphones were so big they were practically a helmet, and I was so little inside them. I would have liked to be littler. I would have liked to pucker right up until I was just a scrap, just a glitter of girl in the palm of someone’s hand, just like Thumbelina. I was a teenage girl, and teenage girls do not want to be Amazon goddesses. They do not want calves like ham-hocks and a thousand-yard stare. They want to be little, and pretty. They want to curl up and have someone place a blanket around them. Gently, gently.

But my body doesn’t like piercings, and every time I got the flu it would decide that the piercings were to blame and push them out. I’d wake with a bit of silver on the pillow and a scar on my earlobe. By the time I turned 18, my ears were naked. There was no point having the big headphones if there was nothing for them to protect, so I put them away. I still have them, but the black covering is flaking off the padded parts, leaving shreds like insect wings on my shoulders.

Now I have tiny little earphones, so small you can hardly see I’m wearing them. I walk down the street, and I push out my chest, and I am tall.

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Kirsty Logan writes, edits, teaches, reviews books, and works in a teashop in Glasgow, Scotland. She is the co-editor of Fractured West and the reviews editor for PANK. She is currently working on her first novel, Little Dead Boys, thanks to a grant from the Scottish Book Trust. Her poetry chapbook, You Look Good Enough To Eat Me, is forthcoming from Forest (forpub.com) in 2011. Say hello at kirstylogan.com.