On Writing:
Q: Have you experienced setbacks in your writing journey? If so, what can you tell us about them/it? What have you done to overcome? What can you offer to someone reading this right now who might be experiencing their own setbacks in their art?
A: My writing alternates between wild productivity and setbacks and has for the many years I’ve been doing it. I sold my first story in 1978. I wrote my first two trunk novels at around that time, much to the disdain of the college at which I was teaching. In 1980, I moved to New York, and while I was job-hunting, I wrote more and more and more. In 1985, I sold my first novel, began to sell a number of short pieces, and receive award nominations. I was also writing financial material at a series of Wall Street positions.
In 2006, all hell broke loose. I lost two novel publishers AND a vice presidential-level job at Citigroup. Not having a trust fund or a spouse or immense savings or a head for risk, I focused my energies on finding a new job and, once found, keeping it during the Great Recession of 2008. Because I was told to use a pseudonym and write a novel on spec, I very simply stopped writing fiction. After all, I was making quite a good living from my nonfiction, and if fiction publishers didn’t want me, then I wouldn’t want them either.
Yes, it hurt. Yes, I blocked. And I kept blocking until I retired in about 2000 and moved out of New York into exurban Connecticut. Since then, I have produced two novels (still hunting forever homes), a weekly Substack column, several nonfiction columns, and easily 20 short stories and novelettes, most published already or spoken for.
As they say in HAMILTON, “it’s quiet uptown,” and I am older and calmer. The change in environment gave me the peace of mind to write what I wanted, which chipped away at my writer’s block. I am writing faster and more skillfully than before – or so I like to think.
What does all this have to do with writers and readers? I believe that writer’s block occurs. It’s not a matter for shame, blame, or explanations of why it doesn’t exist. It’s a matter of circumstances and, sometimes, physical and psychological exhaustion.
That being the case, if you have what feels like writer’s block, rest. Take care of yourself. You cannot constantly dip from the well without refilling it. Read. Go to plays or concerts or museums. Travel, if you can. Get out and talk to people. As you recover, it’s been my experience that at some point, something in your writer-brain will go hmmmmm, and then follow that hmmmmmm with more ideas. Then, it’s time to start a file and start throwing these ideas onto it.
Take your time. Be gentle with yourself. You don’t get writer’s block for no reason, but you can definitely get over it with time, ideas, and rest.
For me, forgetting “journey” and “career” and focusing on “story” and “idea” all help me finish one project and start another. At present, I have a number of stories awaiting publication, more stories and reprints seeking homes, and files set up with ideas for another short story and at least three columns. That should keep me going for awhile.
On Horror:
Q: What do you believe horror does that no other genre can accomplish?
A.) Throughout my career, I have tended to write fantasy and science fiction of various types. I came late to horror because I found some of it just too squishy. For me, what inspired me to start writing horror was opportunity – a chance to write in the universes of H.P. Lovecraft, to start with – and increasing maturity as a writer.
What horror does for me – and it glides into my fantasy and science fiction, too – s link writer and reader to the darkest areas of their subconscious imagination. It’s like nightmares. THINGS happen that you wouldn’t imagine if you were fully awake or in your right mind. Horror gives you permission, as a writer, to focus on the ideas and creatures and situations that you might otherwise flinch from. It liberates a writer from the need to make things acceptable and sensible.
Personally, I don’t like horror that is too splattery. Can I destroy a secret base with green fire and describe people burning? Sure. I couldn’t do it on my own, but if Shoggoths are involved and Cthulhu is watching, of course I can. Otherwise, the sort of horror I like is Edgar Allen Poe, when you sense the denouement creeping up on you, you hear the telltale heart pounding, or see that filmy blue eye, or know that your enemy is stacking up bricks between you and your life.
Horror enables you to connect with your guts, not in terms of splash fiction, necessarily, but in terms of the things that Nice People and Genteel Writers do not talk about.
Hot Seat Question:
Q: Pick just one of your characters. They can be from Wolf’s Flock or another story. Tell us a little bit about them. If this character gave you a Yelp review as a writer, how many stars would you get? What would they say about you?
A: It doesn’t work that way for me. Having characters that I’m writing about is a lot like having a cat. You’re working away, and in comes the cat. It sits down. It stares at you. After a moment or so – because cats tend to think humans are slow to catch on – it signals, and you know what you have to do. Feed it. Pet it. Talk to it. Clean up after it, or face reprisals. You do what the character wants. The character focuses on itself, not on you except to say “No, that’s stupid. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do THIS. LISTEN HERE, STUPID.”
So my characters don’t review me. They command. And if they had one criticism it would be “too many typos.”
Story Specific:
Q: In your story, Wolf’s Flock, a young man who is seemingly ‘othered’ by the community for no other reason than his Nature sets off on a journey. We don’t want to give too much away here, but we are curious—were you more interested in redemption or in the idea that ‘monstrosity’ is a matter of perspective?
A: The hero of “Wolf’s Flock” is not “othered.” He is a werewolf. During the era of the Crusades, that’s not an other. That’s a monster. That’s damned. At the same time, during the times when the moon is not full, he is a young man of noble birth and religious faith who is inspired to go on the Children’s Crusade and serve as God’s werewolf. He knows that is presumptuous, but he is pious. He prays for a miracle during one of the most tragic events in Crusading history during which children are exploited and destroyed.
The problem is that I am a trained medievalist. When I’m writing in these time periods, I am thinking like a modern writer. At the same time, I’m diving into a mindset centuries old in which monsters are monsters. Also at the same time, redemption is the thing for which medieval people pray. So that’s what I wrote about.
Q: Looking at your bio, one can see that you’ve written an extensive amount of work that spans an impressive gamut. What non-fiction piece that you’ve written stands out to you? Why? What, if anything, did you learn from it that you hadn’t known before you researched the subject? Did it challenge your perspective or affirm how you already viewed the topic?
A: The nonfiction piece that stands out to me is my dissertation on the prophecies of Merlin and their relationship to political propaganda in the Plantagenet dynasty. It fused history, politics, and Arthurian story. It required one hell of a lot of Latin and a great deal of understanding what kingship, magic, prophecy, and politics meant from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. It was quite a set of discoveries. I finished when I was 27. I could do it better now. But I am older, wiser, and lazier. I doubt that I would.
More About Susan Shwartz:
“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne” opens Geoffrey Chaucher’s 14th-century poem, The Parliament of Fowls.
As a writer, I am always learning. One thing I have learned, however, is that to be a writer, you have to be a human being with a variety of experiences. One reason I love Chaucer is that he was a sane man of his time, with diverse experiences as a writer, a courtier, a traveler, a prisoner of war, a bureaucrat, and a mugging victim. He had a full life. He lived through plague, Peasants’ Revolt, and a variety of courtly and common experiences. Did he suffer for his art? I don’t know. I do know that while he was writing and working on other projects, he was reading, traveling, and busy living a very colorful life. We should all be so lucky.