Does anyone have a question?
I have a question actually, Jenny.
It seems like a lot of your writing, especially the Peter
Pan book, puts me in a trance that I
don't want to get out of.
And that makes me wonder if you put yourself
into a kind of trance to write it.
And if so, how?
I was only halfway kidding today in Ander's class,
when I said that I receive communications when I write.
And I was speaking to Julie about this earlier,
about my writing process, and if I
still, as I said in a previous interview,
wake up in the morning and write, if that's when I write.
And I really can only compose upon waking.
So I think that incantatory quality comes
from having just arrived from the land of dreams
and trying not to dispel that cloud of a world
where things are possible, and nonsensical things
are possible, where you don't question certain actions
or behavior.
So I like to think about language holding
that type of possibility too.
So I'm not really one on self-editing.
I try to leave my prose as pristine as it occurs to me.
And I feel like I write by rhythm more than narrative.
So yeah, I think the dream world and the rhythm communications
that I receive from the unknown.
Thank you.
Do you listen to poetry from people that live on the street?
Do I listen to poetry?
From people that live on the street?
I'm not sure, maybe I have.
I have a poem from 1963, Jim Morrison.
"The Negroes in the forest are brightly feathered.
They say forget the night.
Come live with us in forest of azure.
Out here in the perimeter, there are no stars.
Out here, we are stoned, immaculate."
Thank you.
Very nice, thank you.
Stars are a very powerful conjurer of poetry.
Thank you for the reading.
I was really captivated by a lot of the imagery in what you
write.
And I'm curious to know of the places that you've lived
and what you've experienced.
Where are you now that, I guess, it's not necessarily
a personal question?
But when you write, what's your kind of setting?
Do you write in front of a window?
Are you in a small room with no windows?
I'm just curious, what kind of environment
you like to create for yourself when you write?
This question, I kind of made the space.
Because it's something that I'm trying to come to terms with.
Because I used to have very ideal writing conditions.
And I always used to tell myself, oh, I
have to have my desk in front of a window,
and there has to be a view, and it has to be beautiful.
And I have to look at trees and look at nature
and look at seasons.
And I don't even have a desk now I don't have a view.
And I don't have the time to write.
So my ideal writing conditions are
very incongruous to my actual writing conditions.
But if I did have my way, I would have a view.
And it would probably be in the Blue Ridge mountains.
And it would probably be springtime.
And there would probably be a lot of birdsong and lightning
bugs and gentle--
I guess it couldn't always be spring.
The lightning bugs are summer.
But it would be very ideal and scenic and beautiful.
But right now, I have uneaten pizza and baby socks and baby
diapers and a view of the street cleaner coming once a week.
It's not that ideal.
But I do believe that there is an intrinsic relationship
between creativity and environment.
And I probably could be more proactive and at least,
hang pictures.
It's not a functional desk.
It exists, but it's not functional.
Part of the question was also related
to because you're a new parent or you have young children,
the transition of that.
Yeah, it's very difficult trying to make time.
And there's this voice in your head
that says that you can't take time away from your kids
in order to do creative work, whatever that work is.
And I'm slowly realizing that I'm
a better mother if I take at least an hour a week
and try to do something creative.
So I'm trying to force myself to do that more, even
if it's something very short like 750-word micro pieces,
which Ander and I were talking about,
how some suddenly your new genre is short pieces once you've
encountered parenthood.
OK, we have a question over here.
I like in your writing how you inhabit
this headspace of wonder and youthfulness,
but also this headspace of wisdom and adulthood.
And I find that very appealing.
I'm wondering how you kind of strike that balance,
or if that's something that you even think
about when you're writing.
Wow, I haven't ever thought about that.
I think that at heart, I'm really impish.
And that might account for some of the more youthful moments.
And I think I always want to be better than I am and live
better than I am and be a better person than I am,
so that might strike the other chord.
But I think that I'm a prankster and a imp more than anything
else.
I think that's a great place to end--
prankster and imp.
Jenny Boully, let's give her a hand.