Spotlight On…

I have three interviews left to share with DSM readers before I officially bow out. Today, it’s my great pleasure to bring Laura Ellen Scott to the stage. My deep affection for Laura Ellen Scott is perhaps peculiar. We haven’t met and have had only sporadic contact in Cyberville. Yet I admire her and her work a great deal. She’s original, intelligent, pithy, quirky and delightfully herself. Read her wonderful responses below and you’ll see just what I mean. Thank you, Laura, for taking part.

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

A collaboration is in the works, with three other women writers who also dabble in weirdness. I finished a brief collection of gothic vsf called Curio in March, which was a great experience, so when I complete the revision of my Louisiana novel (which is largely comic), I want to get back into that darker mood. I’m thinking novella — tight, green, passionate. I love the linkages and fractures of Curio and how they accumulate, and I want to take that sort of thing even further. But I guess that won’t make sense to anyone until I find a publisher for Curio. Several of the stories have appeared in great places, but the stories were conceived as a set, and together I like to think they potentiate the bother.

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

Did you ever come across the rumor that the windows and doors of the entire third floor of the Old Ursuline Convent in New Orleans are fastened shut with 8000 screws blessed by the Pope? 8000 screws blessed by the Pope. Go ahead, you try it.

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

I don’t write from the heart, but I think people expect that of writers, especially women writers. I write from my liver or some other giggly-bad place. I don’t explore depression or inadequacy or nostalgia, I write fantasies.

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

I age. I eat and drink. I do those things when I’m feeling pretty good about myself too. Regrettably, I’ve still got an arthritic ambition monkey on my back. Her values are bloody and non progressive. By which I mean I cope through competition. Ugly, I know, but when you get in a bar fight at AWP you want me to have your back. And by you, I mean you.

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

I don’t have kids, so it’s not a problem. The only thing I can’t do is make arrangements by phone. That has nothing to do with your question, though. Editing is the new gig. I’ve done a few guest things, and I’m on staff as fiction editor for Prick of the Spindle. It’s thrilling work, but my hatred of –ing formations has become pathological.

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

Net fiction is where the action is for the short forms. There’s no need to argue the point anymore, especially since you can see how short fiction in print follows the aesthetic lead of web-based literature. For novels, I prefer trade paper. I read novels on my Ipod, too. I also like small format books coming from presses like Publishing Genius, PANK, and Willows Wept — gorgeous things I can jam into my purse or set my wine glass on. I took Light Boxes, Easter Rabbit, American Gymnopedies, and How to Take Yourself Apart/How to Make Yourself Anew to workshops I directed, and it was like a revelation to the participants — they were grabbing at the books like candy. These days a print book should be an object that a reader feels great about, something to take with rather than go to. If you ever see a Riverside Shakespeare at my house, you’ll know that I’ve hollowed it out to hide contraband.

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

I’m a very uncomfortable teacher. I actually prefer my advising duties.

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

Pretty sure I’d be in science, probably field or lab work. There’s a Laura Scott who works for NASA, did you know that? I’d be her and my old man would be way happier.

Please tell us your favorite, and why:

Musical

A Hard Day’s Night. He’s very clean.

Fable/Fairy Tale

The Snow Queen.

Movie

Lately, Jaws. I’d like to see a shot by shot remake with women in the roles of Brody, Quint, and Hooper. If I can’t have that, I’ll take a graphic novel based on the same idea.

Painting

The cover of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy LP.

Place

The Spotted Cat in New Orleans.

Please do a five minute free-write with the word “angels,” and share.

First of all, you wouldn’t want to know what I had to say about angels under thoughtful, revised circumstances, so you certainly don’t want to see what I’d do to them freestyle. What are angels, anyway? Okay how about this for a gag — a couple in their 40s having their first/only baby hire an artist to paint angels in the nursery, only they get Kate Bush and she puts Gabriel on the front wall, Raphael on the back, and Michael and Uriel on either side. Then she surrounds the
crib with fire. It could be worse.

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Laura Ellen Scott teaches fiction writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and she is Fiction Editor for Prick of the Spindle. Her recent fiction has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Corium Magazine, The Northville Review, and Wigleaf. Look for “The Brewsters” in Moon Milk Review # 9, due to go live October 11. She blogs at Probably just a story.