Ask the Author: Kelly Grey Carlisle
Answered Questions (8)
Kelly Grey Carlisle
Dear Susan,
I am sorry it took me so long to write back. I didn't see that the notice that you had asked a question until I got a notice for another question. I hope you will still get this.
Marilyn got me off to a good start for a good life. I learned so much at college and it changed my life. My friends in college helped me learn what healthy emotional reactions and relationships looked like. Ben, whom I met in college, and his family showed me that too. I worked a lot of "dead end" jobs right after college, but they all taught me skills I needed and introduced me to a variety of wonderful mentors and friends from different backgrounds and identities. Graduate school made me realize that I wanted to write and teach. I could probably write a whole other book about that time, but it probably wouldn't be that interesting. A lot of the changes I underwent was the same growth and maturation process most young adults go through, even if it looked a little different.
Please give Eric a hug when he comes back from Africa.
Kelly
I am sorry it took me so long to write back. I didn't see that the notice that you had asked a question until I got a notice for another question. I hope you will still get this.
Marilyn got me off to a good start for a good life. I learned so much at college and it changed my life. My friends in college helped me learn what healthy emotional reactions and relationships looked like. Ben, whom I met in college, and his family showed me that too. I worked a lot of "dead end" jobs right after college, but they all taught me skills I needed and introduced me to a variety of wonderful mentors and friends from different backgrounds and identities. Graduate school made me realize that I wanted to write and teach. I could probably write a whole other book about that time, but it probably wouldn't be that interesting. A lot of the changes I underwent was the same growth and maturation process most young adults go through, even if it looked a little different.
Please give Eric a hug when he comes back from Africa.
Kelly
Kelly Grey Carlisle
Yes, I am. I am in England now, researching a book about Durham Cathedral, a church that is almost 1,000 years old.
Kelly Grey Carlisle
What a thoughtful question; thank you! And thanks for reading. I had always known they were interesting characters, but YES, absolutely, writing about them did make me realize how much they did for me. At the end of the book I mention how when I was young I thought these people were kind to me because I was somehow special, but that now I realize it was because *they* were special. Writing about them was what led me to that realization. One of the things I'm proudest of with the book is that I could share their acts of kindness with the world. I hope my children have an equally varied "village" in their lives and I hope that I (and they) are parts of other people's villages.
Kelly Grey Carlisle
Um. Hogwarts, duh.
Fly a broom, duh.
Fly a broom, duh.
Kelly Grey Carlisle
I don't. I just let myself be blocked. Sometimes I stress eat. Sometimes I go for a swim or a walk. Sometimes I just bump around the house in a bad mood.
Kelly Grey Carlisle
Read a lot, carefully and voraciously. Skip what you don't like. Don't be afraid to not finish a book you started. Personally, I think some of what you read should be craft books, a lot of literary novels from all different time periods and languages, some more plot-focused novels, and poetry. If you write memoir or personal essays, you should read those too, but novels have always been my favorite thing to read.
Then write a lot. Then read some more. If you want a short cut, pay to to take a class with a good instructor.
Then write a lot. Then read some more. If you want a short cut, pay to to take a class with a good instructor.
Kelly Grey Carlisle
Right now I'm working on mothering my second child, who is eleven months old, and getting ready for my book coming out. I think my next book will be about Canterbury cathedral in England, the place where Chaucer's pilgrims were headed and the place where Thomas Becket was martyred. But that might change, because just as I finalized the text for my memoir, my cousin sent me a box of my mother's journals from when she was a child. I haven't worked up the courage to read them yet...
Kelly Grey Carlisle
I think the best thing about practicing writing is that it trains you to look at the world in a different way. You pay better attention to the details that make life rich and tragic and gorgeous. There's a saying that you love what you pay attention to; writing helps you love the world, in spite of its horrors, because you see its profound beauty as well. This happens whether or not your are published; what matters is that you practice.
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