Writer Bites with Shuly Xochitl Cawood
Getting to Know...
Shuly Xochitl Cawood, Author of A Small Thing to Want (May 3rd, Press 53)
"Suzette didn’t like it when Mig called Dr. Rowan “Patricia,” but she didn’t say a word about that. She had picked Dr. Rowan out of the list of marriage counselors based on the string of credential abbreviations trailing like children after Dr. Rowan’s name, and the fact that Dr. Rowan’s office sat exactly halfway between Suzette’s own office and Mig’s. Well, Mig liked that. He was always about halfway, taking turns cooking, splitting the check down the middle, rotating who hauled out the trash. Suzette would have made the drive all the way from Chapel Hill to his office in Raleigh had it mattered—all the way to anywhere, really. She didn’t say anything about that, either."-Excerpt from "Happy"
Have you ever fallen in love with a book?
I’ve fallen in love with books as well as an essay (“Goodbye to All That” by Joan Didion), countless poems, and a short story (“Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton). I must have read “Roman Fever” in college, and it’s only recently that I realized what a strong impact it has made on my short story writing. It’s a quiet story on the surface, about two friends talking about old times, but it has a turn at the end that surprised me and that made me view the whole story differently. I like when stories do that, and I realized that some of my stories take a slight turn at the end as well. I’m no Edith Wharton, but I appreciate any small thing I have learned from her wonderful writing.
How do you choose the names for your characters?
They name themselves—the names just come into my head in an instant, as soon as the character does. I am definitely not a writer who plans out who characters are or what they will do—they run the show entirely.
What is your least favorite part of the writing process? Your favorite?
My least favorite part is when I know a piece of writing isn’t working, but I cannot pinpoint why—because if I can pinpoint the problem, I can usually solve it. My workaround is setting it aside for weeks or months until I can see it anew. My favorite part of writing fiction (as opposed to poetry and memoir, both of which I also write) is the surprise of where characters take me, what secrets they reveal. Discovering is incredibly fun, and getting to live inside someone else’s head for a while and coming to understand someone very different than who I am has been a gift.
What is your favorite form of procrastination from writing?
Walking. That’s also a time when writing happens in its own way, even though I am not at my writing desk. I often get story ideas while walking, or an idea for a poem, or if I am struggling with, say, how to reorganize a story, the solution often comes to me on my walk even if I am not thinking about it. A lot of things happen while I am walking. Something about the movement and fresh air makes things appear. I often use the “Notes” feature on my phone to remember things that surface on my walks.
In your eyes, what does it mean to be a “successful?”
I think it’s easy to get caught up in how many reviews your book has on Goodreads and Amazon and how many stars, etc. With my first book, I kept track of all that, and I read somewhere that you needed to have at least 50 reviews on Amazon, so anytime someone told me they had read my book, I would ask them to review it. I got tired of corralling—even family members who loved my book wouldn’t get on Amazon to review it. Later, I realized that there were books I adored that had only a handful of Amazon reviews. I stopped keeping track after a while, and I do my best to avoid reading the reviews (emphasis on “do my best”). I think it was Roxane Gay who said that reviews are for readers, not for the writer, and I took that to heart. Now I try to focus my idea of success on whether I loved writing the book (I definitely loved writing this short story collection), but I would be lying if I did not admit that I feel successful when people reach out to tell me they enjoyed something I wrote, especially if it helped them in some way.
Shuly Xochitl Cawood, Author of A Small Thing to Want (May 3rd, Press 53)
"Suzette didn’t like it when Mig called Dr. Rowan “Patricia,” but she didn’t say a word about that. She had picked Dr. Rowan out of the list of marriage counselors based on the string of credential abbreviations trailing like children after Dr. Rowan’s name, and the fact that Dr. Rowan’s office sat exactly halfway between Suzette’s own office and Mig’s. Well, Mig liked that. He was always about halfway, taking turns cooking, splitting the check down the middle, rotating who hauled out the trash. Suzette would have made the drive all the way from Chapel Hill to his office in Raleigh had it mattered—all the way to anywhere, really. She didn’t say anything about that, either."-Excerpt from "Happy"
Have you ever fallen in love with a book?
I’ve fallen in love with books as well as an essay (“Goodbye to All That” by Joan Didion), countless poems, and a short story (“Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton). I must have read “Roman Fever” in college, and it’s only recently that I realized what a strong impact it has made on my short story writing. It’s a quiet story on the surface, about two friends talking about old times, but it has a turn at the end that surprised me and that made me view the whole story differently. I like when stories do that, and I realized that some of my stories take a slight turn at the end as well. I’m no Edith Wharton, but I appreciate any small thing I have learned from her wonderful writing.
How do you choose the names for your characters?
They name themselves—the names just come into my head in an instant, as soon as the character does. I am definitely not a writer who plans out who characters are or what they will do—they run the show entirely.
What is your least favorite part of the writing process? Your favorite?
My least favorite part is when I know a piece of writing isn’t working, but I cannot pinpoint why—because if I can pinpoint the problem, I can usually solve it. My workaround is setting it aside for weeks or months until I can see it anew. My favorite part of writing fiction (as opposed to poetry and memoir, both of which I also write) is the surprise of where characters take me, what secrets they reveal. Discovering is incredibly fun, and getting to live inside someone else’s head for a while and coming to understand someone very different than who I am has been a gift.
What is your favorite form of procrastination from writing?
Walking. That’s also a time when writing happens in its own way, even though I am not at my writing desk. I often get story ideas while walking, or an idea for a poem, or if I am struggling with, say, how to reorganize a story, the solution often comes to me on my walk even if I am not thinking about it. A lot of things happen while I am walking. Something about the movement and fresh air makes things appear. I often use the “Notes” feature on my phone to remember things that surface on my walks.
In your eyes, what does it mean to be a “successful?”
I think it’s easy to get caught up in how many reviews your book has on Goodreads and Amazon and how many stars, etc. With my first book, I kept track of all that, and I read somewhere that you needed to have at least 50 reviews on Amazon, so anytime someone told me they had read my book, I would ask them to review it. I got tired of corralling—even family members who loved my book wouldn’t get on Amazon to review it. Later, I realized that there were books I adored that had only a handful of Amazon reviews. I stopped keeping track after a while, and I do my best to avoid reading the reviews (emphasis on “do my best”). I think it was Roxane Gay who said that reviews are for readers, not for the writer, and I took that to heart. Now I try to focus my idea of success on whether I loved writing the book (I definitely loved writing this short story collection), but I would be lying if I did not admit that I feel successful when people reach out to tell me they enjoyed something I wrote, especially if it helped them in some way.
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