TRUTH, IN A WEEK, PLEASE

Over the years I have helped lots of students with projects, but this questionnaire stands out from the crowd. Of all the “assignments” I have received, this one has to be the most challenging and, proportionately, interesting.

Here, minus the name of the sender, is the e-mail I received:

Hello, Ms. Springer. I am writing a paper for my high school English class that requires me to survey a certain demographic of people, and I have chosen authors. If you could take just a few minutes to answer my questions, I would really appreciate your insight! I need the responses back in a week if possible. Thank you!

Here’s what I sent back:

I found your questions highly intelligent and insightful but very difficult to answer concisely!

Name: Nancy Springer

Age: 65

Race: human

Gender: kinda wish that were irrelevant

Q: What qualities do you consistently put into the protagonists of your novels? Why?

A: Writing fiction is not putting qualities into characters. I mean, it’s not like baking a cake; let’s add some nutmeg and a dash of integrity. . . . It’s instinctive, intuitive, holistic, and if there’s any consistency in my protagonists, it’s only because they come out of me. I suspect, although I haven’t taken a survey, that most of them are either lonely or loners, because that’s how I am.

Q: How has being an author changed you?

A: Being an author literally saved my life and turned it around. I had clinical depression, I think since childhood, and starting in my twenties I had obsessive thoughts of suicide for years at a time. But in the process of writing fantasy novels, I gradually discovered who I was, stopped hating me, and learned to deal with life more positively. Writing is not a cure-all but it made a huge difference for me.

Q: How does love in the real world compare to fictional love?

A: It depends on whose fiction the love is in. I think many romance novels do readers a disservice by giving them unrealistic expectations of “being swept away by love.” In my early fantasy novels, the love relationships between characters are extreme, unusual, and probably unrealistic because of my psychological problems. In my later work, I hope, I depict love more realistically!

Q: If you truly had the power to change anything about the world, where would you start?

A: I’d start all over, tens of thousands of years ago, and have humankind develop in harmony with the world’s other living creatures and in profound respect for the planet we live on. I envision a world with far more forest and far less pavement. I’m a dreamer.

Q: What is the difference between reality and perception?

A: Once I was sitting in an airport watching an older woman, a younger woman, and a young man. I formed the preconception that the young man was traveling and his mother and wife had come to see him off. I saw them embrace him – or that was actually what I thought I saw until the young woman walked onto the plane. My perception was different than the reality. People tend to see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and remember things differently than other people having the same experience.


Q: What is truth?

A: I don’t know. I’ve spent most of my life just trying to figure out what is good or what is right. Truth is too abstract for me. I do know that Keats said, “Beauty is truth; truth beauty,” but I think he was wrong. I don’t like to favor beauty over ugly. They’re two sides of the same coin. Things seem to work by opposites. A great gift is a great burden. A strength may well become a weakness. Maybe truth is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.