Ask the Author: Agate Nesaule
Answered Questions (9)
Agate Nesaule
Although I know of countless beautifully constructed fictional worlds, all of them contain problems and conflicts. So, the only possibility is Genesis, Chapter 2, the Old Testament. I would convince Adam and Eve not to eat the apple. But then would we even have fiction?
Agate Nesaule
Being able to get private pain out of your heart and onto paper.
Agate Nesaule
In 1991 when the Soviet Union was breaking apart, Latvians and others living outside their homelands returned with huge suitcases crammed full of consumer goods unavailable under Soviet control. I shopped like a crazy person. The phrase “shopping for relatives” kept circling in my mind because soon I realized we were shopping not only for gifts to take but we were also inspecting our relatives, deciding with which ones we form a relationship and from whom we would part, in other words, we were shopping for people. I wrote a poem and a short essay about the double meaning of this phrase, but that was not enough. So I began using fictitiously my experience of returning to Latvia. I had no story and no characters, but they showed up eventually for Lost Midsummers: A Novel of Women’s Friendship in Exile.
Agate Nesaule
I do not get inspired to begin writing; I am just miserable and depressed that I am not writing, and so I begin. But I do experience those infrequent but wonderful moments in the midst of writing when I feel guided by something or someone greater than me.
Agate Nesaule
I am working on Coming Home: A Memoir about various returns: to Latvia after a fifty year exile, to spirituality after I lost faith in religion at age seven, to Indiana University from which I had to part in a painful way, to love and understanding of my Lutheran minister father, to Latvian society in exile, and to Latvian literature.
Agate Nesaule
Do not show your writing to others too soon. Not everyone is a good critic. You are likely to get useless and/or discouraging reactions born of ignorance and envy. Send out for publication only after you have polished a piece to the very best of your ability. Trust yourself and keep writing.
Agate Nesaule
Taking a walk, exercising, paying attention to my dreams and writing down the more significant ones, and rereading a few letters from readers. But mostly I just moan, complain to a good friend, wait, and pray.
Agate Nesaule
All night she had enjoyed talking to the tall stranger wearing a black cape. But when he bent over and kissed her, she felt the bones of a skeleton rather than the warm full lips she expected.
Agate Nesaule
-Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light
-Tove Jansson, The Summer Book
-Thomas C. Cooper, ed. The Roots of My Obsession: Thirty Great Gardeners Reveal Why They Garden
-Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins
-John Henri Holmberg, A Darker Shade of Sweden: Stories by Sweden’s Greatest Crime Writers
-Janina Kursite, Mitiskais Folklora, Literatura, Maksla (Myth in Folkore, Literature, Art)
-Sibirija Tapusas Vestules uz Berza Tass (Letters from Siberia Written on Birch Bark)
-Tove Jansson, The Summer Book
-Thomas C. Cooper, ed. The Roots of My Obsession: Thirty Great Gardeners Reveal Why They Garden
-Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins
-John Henri Holmberg, A Darker Shade of Sweden: Stories by Sweden’s Greatest Crime Writers
-Janina Kursite, Mitiskais Folklora, Literatura, Maksla (Myth in Folkore, Literature, Art)
-Sibirija Tapusas Vestules uz Berza Tass (Letters from Siberia Written on Birch Bark)
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