Spotlight On…

Lately there’s been talk about literary crushes. I have one on Sean Lovelace. It’s his name, for one. Sean Lovelace. I think it’s also his “bad boy” image. That man spits nachos and hard truths, holds nothing back. I should be intimidated. I’m not. His writing gets stranger and stranger, flips the mother bird at “rules” and “tradition.” I should be turned-off. I’m not. He’s liable to do or say anything. It thrills my Irish Catholic girlie soul.

–Ethel Rohan

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

This question sounds like a Joyce Carol Oates story [smooth]. I am now working on two projects.

One is Drinking & Ebaying. A series of flash fictions and short stories built around this activity (example:http://www.everyday-genius.com/2009/09/sean-lovelace.html). I used to do a lot of drinking & Ebaying. I once bid $9000 for a Sherlock Holmes action figure [Rohan sees bad boy + money, swoons]. Another time I bought a pillow for a dollhouse. I do not own a dollhouse. So far I have written 3 pieces for this project, but, hey, summer is right around the bend.

The second project is a series of flash fictions about universities. There are 26 of them, University A to University Z. Again, I have written 3 of them. One is about blood, one about tree limbs, one about a herd of tame antelope, but all set on universities.

After that I have no idea where I am going.

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

I’m not sure but it’s never been a problem. I just let ideas arrive. I like to keep things light and engage with the world and let imagination flow to me. I think we are all connected. A girl wades into the ocean in Australia and a sea urchin balances its checkbook and suddenly I get the idea to write about Charlie Brown. In my office I have Pee Wee Herman dolls and Bruce Lee dolls and Male Nurse action figures and NACHO ZONE signs and I like to disc golf and marathon and bow-hunt and fish for smallmouths and canoe rivers and play roof-ball (a game we devised) with the kiddies and just let writing be something I do, no pressure. Throw yourself into the mix of the world.

Also reading helps. Reading inspires and gives you something to rip off.

What’s the last thing you read that deeply affected you?

East of Eden made me cry. Damn, that woman is mean in East of Eden.

I was recently editing over at SmokeLong Q and this moved me: http://smokelong.com/flash/mollygiles28.asp

Rachel Zucker’s new book of poetry moved me.

Most anything Kendra Grant Malone or Arlene Ang writes online I seek out and read and it all affects me.

I am currently reading all of Hemingway’s newspaper columns from when he wrote for a Toronto newspaper. They don’t deeply affect me, but they are strange. He’s 20 years old and writing exactly like Hemingway. Many of the pieces are basically his short stories, only he twists the stories a bit into fiction techniques, but mostly it’s all there. Odd to see a 20 year old writing Hemingway stories.

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

That’s a big question for me because the Internet opened my writing life, opened my development as a writer. One day it dawned on me, the difference between online and print publishing: People read your work online. I started publishing online and people emailed me and asked me to write things and suddenly I had all these offers to submit/edit/interview/etc. That never happened while I was publishing in print. Then I started blogging and meeting other writers and it all gained momentum and now I am still blogging and writing for HTML Giant and reviewing chapbooks for Chapbook Review and it just goes on and on. Now even print mags contact me because they have read my work online. So, for me, it’s been amazing.

And I can read so much great literature at my fingertips! I’m really into flash fiction and here it all is, all these writers, all these words. This electronic anthology that never ends. And now, with the blog and other venues, I get a chance to be a citizen of writing. To make it not about me! More writers need to get off themselves, Jesus [Amen]. Now I can glow about others on my blog or HTML. I can review others. I can send an email thanking them for a flash or a poem they wrote. I can spread the word, elevate, discuss other work. In a community. The Internet makes all this possible. Also, now I drink and buy literature, as opposed to the Ebay thing. Odd books arrive at my door.

I’m not worried about the book. The book is a technology. It’s not even that old of a technology. The book and the Internet will merge now. The book will spill off the page. That’s OK. But for those who want the book to remain static, those who want to ignore or disdain the online lit world, you are in major denial. And I am a teacher, too, so denial is not an option. My students are plugged in, and it doesn’t serve them well to pretend literature isn’t plugged in, too. It reminds me of bloggers. All the journalists, not 5, 10 years ago, were laughing and shaking their heads at those bloggers, the guy in his mom’s basement joke, etc. Now those people are bloggers themselves, or in some way online. If not, they are probably out of a job. I can’t stand it when a writer is not online. I need a sample before I buy your book! Anyway, writing and the Internet are in love, so no worries. The Internet is a tool to elevate literature. It’s not a threat. Listen, people: The Internet is words.

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

Great question. I’m tempted to say, So, what if I didn’t write? But then I keep writing, don’t I? Writing is play to me. I know it’s weird to say, as a CW professor, but writing is not my passion. Or it isn’t my only passion. If I write today or play disc golf today, either way I’m Ok with the day. Sorry. But it is interesting and intellectually fun to write. Reminds me of a time when I was a serious chess player. And I do keep doing it, this writing. So. What would my life look like? I don’t have a good answer. I mean I just write and it feels good so I’m going to keep on writing. Also, I love so many writers. Especially the online community. I’d hate to spend years interacting with a writing community and then not write myself! What a fraud.

Oh, also, ever heard the term, “publish or perish?” It’s a university term. If you want tenure, publish. Luckily, I do publish, often (and have a book out in 2011 from Publishing Genius Press!). I love my job! I want tenure!

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

Hmm…OK.

I am a registered nurse.

I refuse to eat any animal I didn’t personally stalk down and kill.

I was writing a poem one day and couldn’t think up the ending line. I revised and revised. I made coffee. I procrastinated. I surfed the web. I was on Jac Jemc’s most excellent blog (http://jacjemc.wordpress.com/) and she is very funny and she had this blog post that ended with, “Anyone want to make out? I’m bored.”

God, that was a funny line. So I ripped it off and ended my poem. No lie. (Here is the poem: http://killauthor.com/issuesix/sean-lovelace-2/)

(Oh, and I told Jac I stole her line.)

See how writers are?

Do a five minute free-write with the word “sustenance,” and please share:

Oh shit. Five full minutes on sustenance? 5 minutes is a long time, and a short time. I mean if I was canoeing a river and came to one of those very low bridges, those tunnels, where you have to go UNDER the bridge and LOWER your body straight into the canoe and it’s dark and your flowing by under there and it’s cold spells and darkness and ivy and spiders and the murmuring water and you just keep waiting to get to the other side, to flow out the pipe so to speak, there, under there, 5 minutes feels like forever. Then there are video games and reeling in a large fish and downhill skiing and snorting crushed Dexedrine in a basement bathroom with a strange girl. Hell, 5 minutes feels like a sneeze. Speaking of coffins, ever been in an MRI? My first and only panic attack was in an MRI. I do things like throw myself off roofs and spinal cracks/clicks whatever concussions and so many MRIs and one day I’m on that steel tube and they are clanking the magnets over your head, like your head in a garbage can and aluminum bats clanking and I guess the monitors and the heartbeat and the hyperventilation and someone gets on the two-way, gets on there and says, “Hey, you OK in there?” And I say, “Hell no. Get me the fuck out of here!” and they pulled me out and I’m crying and embarrassed and there’s this cute nurse and me crying. So now they give me Valium or I will just skip my MRI and never call them back or I’ll get the earliest appointment and then take the Valium at 7 am in the parking lot and suck it down with 3 beers in the parking lot (This makes me weird?) and I’ll wobble into the MRI and pass out in the steel coffin, the stainless tunnel.

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A field all rumpled, all happily rumpled to have no meetings or thoughts about, “Am I doing this right, this field thing?”

A mouse fitting itself through the eye of a chain link fence. Possibly spying Cheetos!

A river laughing at me right now. Laughing last year. Laughing later too.

Cheetos!

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Sean Lovelace teaches creative writing at Ball State University. HOW SOME PEOPLE LIKE THEIR EGGS is his award-winning flash fiction collection by Rose Metal Press. His works have appeared in Crazyhorse, Diagram, Quick Fiction, Sonora Review, Willow Springs, and so on. He blogs at seanlovelace.com. He likes to run, far.