An Interview with Catherine Lucille Sharpe

April Murphy: I discovered your writing when "One Thousand Kittens" was a finalist for Cutbank's Montana Nonfiction Prize in 2011, and then went on the hunt for more essays from your unpublished collection Ambition Towards Love. What I found surprised me. 

Some essays of yours, like "Proxy" and "Somewhat Organic" are what I think about as being kind of traditional memoirs, but then there are essays like "Shades of Gray" and "Another Lesbian Space Fantasy" that seem to break out of old ways of thinking about the CNF genre - blending the imagination and a sense of magic without the same authentic and honest (and charming!) voice that characterizes your longer work. Can you talk a little bit about these different forms your writing takes? 

Catherine Lucille Sharpe: I am certain that the distinction between fiction and nonfiction is important, for reader and writer alike.  It must be important; people get quite upset when they discover that the writer has cheated--stepping outside the bounds of "literal truth" to copulate with fiction.  But why don't people get upset when nonfiction parades around as fiction? I am guilty of this.

The Ambition Towards Love collection deliberately flows back and forth between fiction and nonfiction.  Whatever the genre, I continue to circle the same ole boring human stuff--love, loss, more love, more loss, lies, less love, gain, a little more loss, joy, heroism, duplicity, frailty, failure, growth, shrinkage, doubt, love again, loss again, truth, etc..  The usual.  

As a writer and self-avowed nutpouch, I've clearly been trying to sort one or two things out on the page--the mere two dimensions of the page seem so much more manageable than the infinite dimensions of my head and heart. 

I know that the distinction between fiction and nonfiction is important to me because I take the trouble to know the difference line by line, paragraph by paragraph.  In my nonfiction, I might forsake a perfectly good "real" detail, simply because it does not add to the meaning of the story, or what I want to emphasize in the story.  And guess what!  I might include that same detail in a short fiction because it creates ambiguity--one of the best ways to make fiction seem just as true and confusing and unknowable as real life.  

The decision to approach an idea through fiction or nonfiction profoundly affects my writing process, even when there are thematic congruities.  I've noticed how the struggle to craft readable fiction has improved my nonfiction writing, in both predictable and surprising ways.

Predictably, being forced to dredge up a believable character is good practice for bringing your Great Aunt Susan to life for the nonfiction reader.  She's the one who always sucks the knuckle of her pinky finger so that she can twirl her wedding ring.  It doesn't fit on her ring finger anymore, and anyway Uncle Frank's dead, so it doesn't much matter where she wears it.  There's something pathetic and familial about all that saliva, and now the reader gets Aunt Susan, too.

Unpredictably for me, engaging in fiction demands that I suffer a vulnerability I don't necessarily feel in the process of nonfiction.  In fiction, my judgment must fade way, way back, allowing the story to emerge from its mysterious place, a place I hardly control.  It can be frankly terrifying to tap in to my subconscious--my id whines, my ego hits, and my superego makes me write the same sentence a hundred times on the chalkboard.  The reader, even as she nods her head vigorously, agreeing that she's reading fiction, is still coming to some conclusions about the writer.  She can't help it!  If the writer goes on and on about cup size, the reader is not going to mistake the writer for a leg man.  Or a leg woman.  (Boy, I can't make that sound right.)

When you read my fiction, don't you dare tell me I'm lonely, or wimpy, or flailing, or crazy-in-love with my offspring (thus doomed to suffer), or bitterly angry, or actually quite sad at times. 

When I am writing the truth, or at least my nonfiction version of the truth, it is so much easier to control what the reader thinks about me.  The persona is deliberate, calculated, securely insecure, always ready with a deflective quip.  The reader will certainly mistake my persona for me, and thus I am safe from scrutiny.  I believe that I am in charge.  Which is, of course, a different kind of fiction, but luckily, the kind I reserve for therapy sessions.

To my dismay, all of this precision about fiction and "truth" does not ultimately prove useful to me in the real world.  Some people tell the truth only to discover later that they lied.  Others lie only to discover the truth.  Some don't even bother to lie, they just keep their mouths shut, suddenly go on diets, go to work early, come home late, and wait to be caught.

Your resumé is one big piece of creative non-fiction.

My Amibition Towards Love collection approximates the experience of a whole story--one where the reader swims through truth, both designated and actual, as well as the lies we call fiction.  Nonetheless, like me, the reader still has to figure out what really happened.

But by the time the words hit the page, it’s all true.

AJM: Do you think that queer writers are obligated to write queer nonfiction? I suppose since nonfiction is about personal experience, the subject matter is inevitable is one is queer. The writer, then, gets to figure out how their queer identity is expressed what (if any) resonance it will give to their more 'universal' life story. 

One of the things that's refreshing about your writing is that the central struggle isn't your queerness - the narratives don't get their tension from a 'coming out' plot, nor do they have a political abrasiveness despite the fact that they are about gay marriage/divorce/reproduction - instead your work exists in a world where all of this is secondary to the love you have to give your daughter and yourself. 

CS: As far as I'm concerned, nobody is obligated to write anything. Well, unless contracts are involved. I do, however, this it's Super Nice when people write about stuff they really care about. The form - fiction or nonfiction - is less important than the question at stake for the writer. When I'm reading, I'm engaged in the investigation that the writer is making into the subject matter, so it better be a real question the writer has, with some juice.

I'm totally way flattered that you find my work refreshing in its absence of Queer Identity Conflict, which I'll just call QIC for our purposes. I haven't written much specifically about QUIC because it is not a painful enough question for me - plus I already know the answer. I'm special. 

When I say I'm special, what I really mean is that I'm like everyone else. That makes me special, because not so many people realize that. And I've decided to worry less about being original and worry more about being average. And writing about that instead.

I'm really, really, really, really, really interested in what it is like to be human. More precisely, what it is like for me to be human. My current line of inquiry is how I am like so many others, not how I feel apart from these other creatures.

AJM: It seems like you really have a focus when you're creating your persona. So, how do you navigate your real lesbian identity with your lesbian narrators? 

CS: Poorly. They are all mixed up inside. Therefore, I try not to think about it too much. The idea of a continuum of truth - from lies (fiction) to truth (nonfiction) - is inept at best. Truth is a blob, a DNA strand, a froth of delicate, short-lived moments. I've had perfectly good fiction turn into nonfiction on me more than once. On the page and in real life. Freaky.

AJM: As someone who didn't enter academia after completing your MFA, can you tell us a little bit about what your writing life is like now? 

CS: Oy.  I’m scattered and slow. I’m undisciplined about my creative work. I prefer black pens and write longhand in a college-ruled spiral notebook.  Usually early in the morning. Sometimes my daughter has to borrow my notebook for drawing or math or to teach me something by diagramming.  For now, I let her because she can’t really read cursive (this is de-emphasized in school now, did you know?). Also, I like what she inserts into my ridiculous musings.

For my paid work, I write all day (or at least sit in front of a computer all day as if I’m writing) for a corporate healthcare services entity. Sexy.  Adjectives are discouraged, as are complicated sentences that involve semi-colons; apparently these are too difficult to follow. It is a constant struggle to avoid being sucked into the undertow.  I have to remind myself that writing has saved my life—connecting and re-connecting to that source is an end in itself even when progress on new creative work is slowed down to a drag-drag-crawl-sob-crawl.

Sharpe wrote mostly for live performance in San Francisco before turning her attention to gay marriage, in vitro fertilization, gay divorce, parenting, dating, fiction, and nonfiction.  Her first collection of interlocking essays and fictions Ambition Towards Love hasn't been published, but you can read some excerpts in Opium Magazine, A cappella Zoo, Word Riot and CutBank, among others. A couple of pieces have even been included in anthologies and she almost won several prizes--one from Montana and one from North Carolina. If you would like to know if she actually ever wins a prize or publishes her collection, join her email blast list by sending a note to catherinelucillesharpe@gmail.com. Put "join email blast" in the subject line.

An Interview with Sarah McCarry

April Murphy: When you began blogging as The Rejectionist, you were anonymous - and the persona you created was pointedly bombastic and irritable. Eventually, this kind of melted away, evolving into a more reflective and sometimes-even-soft Le R, that suddenly, revealed itself to be you - owning up to your real identity and your past and your (exciting/literary) future. I'm curious, did the anonymity help you find your writing voice? Or, once you revealed your identity, did you suddenly feel the need to start writing about your life? 

Sarah McCarry: The funny thing about that is that the early persona of the blog is really what's uncharacteristic for me as a writer, and the personal stuff is more like what I've been writing all along. I've been writing a personal zine since 1998 or 1999, and although obviously (well, hopefully) my writing has evolved a lot over the years I've always used the lens of my personal experience to examine whatever it is I'm thinking about. Everything I've published up until now has been some form of personal essay. When I moved to New York I thought, very briefly, that I wanted to work in publishing, and the blog started as a lark and a sort of escape valve as I was flailing around in that endeavor. But I realized pretty quickly that that wasn't an industry I wanted to stay in, and I really don't like writing about publishing--or writing, for that matter--and so the blog shifted back to the kind of writing I've always done. 

Although I've never thought of that early persona as particularly constructed--I mean, there's certainly a lot of me in there. I'm a cocky bitch. It's a big advantage, especially if you're a woman writing on the internet about yourself, to come across as terrifying. 

AJM: This reminds me of something Rachel Maddow said recently in an interview with Rolling Stone. Maddow was referring to a confrontation she'd had with Alex Castellanos where he said he liked how passionate she was when she called him out on denying the gender wage gap. In the interview she's quoted "I wanted to say, 'Are you saying I'm cute when I'm angry? But I didn't, because when you're a woman on television, you can't even say the word angry."  I think you could substitute 'woman writer' and Maddow's remark wouldn't ring any less true. 

One of the things that I admire about your writing is that you aren't afraid to let people know when you're angry - and you make no effort to conceal that you have strong opinions about how women are treated both in the publishing world, how they're treated by writers, and how they are treated at large. I understand it's nearly impossible to answer "What advice can you give to women writers, people who talk about women writers, and people who write women?" and you've been tackling these very questions for years, but what can you tell them about anger? 

SM: I think anger is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me; I think anger can be constructive and instructive and it can make you into a force and it can keep you alive. It has kept me alive, certainly. It's the thing I recognize in other people and it's the thing that tells me how much I'm going to love someone, whether we are angry in the same ways about the same things. It can make you totally fearless. But also I think anger is something you have to learn to live with carefully--for me that's been true, anyway. It's also important to learn how to take care of yourself and give yourself permission to take breaks from it. Anger for me is like a sort of tiring houseguest; sometimes you have to be like, "Dude, take a walk so I can clean my damn apartment and read some trashy books and drink a beer." I don't know what to say about it exactly; if you are a woman your anger will make people scared of you, for sure, but the angrier you are the less you'll care, and the people who understand your anger and make a space for your anger and are angry with you are the people you want around you anyway. 

AJM: When I was in undergrad, one of my professors upon hearing a student say they'd been accepted into a graduate writing program exclaimed that "Dante didn't need a degree to write the Divine Comedy."  This has always bothered me, probably because I fear the truth in it. As someone who escaped the MFA/PHD/BA/etc.circus (for a more exciting and literal circus), what has your experience trying to break into the writing world been like?

SM: The short version is that it was about fifteen years of fucking up and going nowhere and then when everything came together for me at last it came together very quickly; like I woke up one morning and the universe had left me a unicorn, pretty much. I knew when I was very young that I didn't want to do an MFA; I took a couple of writing classes as an undergrad before I dropped out of college and I had no patience for it. I am so bad at workshop, I can't even tell you. I don't mean to disparage MFA programs at all, I think they can be wonderful for people who are suited to them, and they can be amazing spaces to get a lot of work done and hopefully find people who understand what you're trying to do and read your writing well. But I go totally bananas and say hateful things and make people cry, and I think if you're that sort of person it's fine too. Just don't inflict yourself on an MFA program. 

This is going to out me as a total hippie but I think it was hard for me for so long because I wasn't ready; when I started taking myself seriously as a writer and telling people I was a writer, when I started taking my blog seriously and treating the things I was writing as though they were real essays and not just running jokes, that's when things started to happen for me. I think it's absolutely true that, MFA or no MFA, if you are moderately talented and willing to work your ass off and never, ever give up, at some point it will pay off for you. There's no one way to do it. 

AJM: Vivian Gornick, in The Situation and the Story, describes a similar process. She says that sometimes you can't write the right story until you've decided who you must be to tell it. Do you any insight into this process? 

SM: Well, I wish I had something very deep and insightful to say about this process, but honestly it happened to me by accident and I have spent most of my life being terribly impatient and frustrated with myself and ecstatically self-flagellating and all that other awesome stuff that comes from being a human. Things didn't start happening for me until I was ready for them to happen, but that place is so different for everyone. Some people get there when they're 23 and some people get there when they're 63 and either way is fine. I can say for sure that right now is the most amazing place I've ever been in my life but I never would have gotten here without aggressively running my life into the ground for a while. If you can get to self-love and dream achievement without epic mismanagement that's probably a way more advisable route. I've been pretty much the same person since the womb but it took me a long time to figure out how to love myself and have faith in what I'm doing. I've also been really, really lucky, and there are a lot of incredible people in my life who have supported me in so many ways. Anyone who tells stories is telling them as part of a community and I have been tremendously blessed by the community that I have.

AJM: Serious question: preferred whiskey?

SM: Bulleit Rye. 

Sarah McCarry is the author of the novel All Our Pretty Songs, forthcoming from St. Martin's Press in 2013. She has published the zine Glossolalia since 1999 and blogged at www.therejectionist.com since 2009. She is the editor and publisher of Guillotine, a series of chapbooks focused on revolutionary nonfiction (http://souslespaves.bigcartel.com).