Ask the Author: Sonya Lea
Answered Questions (8)
Sonya Lea
Thelma & Louise. Because it's about women outlaws, and we need more of them in the era in which we are living. It's a relationship story with politics intact. No one has to devolve to the other's story. The film came to me in 1991, when I was still drinking, and it would take me six more years to get up the courage to stop hurting myself, but these characters planted something in me that was a beginning. Writing my memoir was a way for me to understand and make whole my experience. It's still revolutionary to tell the truth about women's lives.
Sonya Lea
I'm working on a fiction novel, about three sisters and their lovers. It's set in Kentucky, where I'm from.
Sonya Lea
Writing is something I desire so fully, like eating delicious food. I don't have to wait for inspiration. It happens. I spent a number of years reading before I wrote, and I think having stories to muse over for a time made that force, that desire.
Sonya Lea
Read master writers. Give up other distractions for reading. Write something every day, and make it applied to a piece you are working on, not just a diary, an active working toward something.
Sonya Lea
Being able to work at home. I'm really influenced by environment, and I adore the quiet, so I get to sit in silence, usually in my kitchen, looking out at the beautiful evergreen, watching the hummingbirds dance.
Also, I like the peace that writing brings me. Without a chance to express myself in words, I feel unhealthy. Writing brings me back to what I am, over and over.
Also, I like the peace that writing brings me. Without a chance to express myself in words, I feel unhealthy. Writing brings me back to what I am, over and over.
Sonya Lea
I wrote an essay that Bret Lott published in the Southern Review. It was about how I experienced the changes in our relationship after my husband's anoxic insult. Readers asked for more, and I began to consider that it might be a book.
Sonya Lea
I don't tend to experience writer's block, since I move between screenwriting, essays, and books. I usually have four or more projects going at once. There's a natural ebb and flow to my writing, and I need days of dreaming and wandering to begin a project. When momentum takes over, they just keep going in my mind.
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