7 Questions For: Author Sue Cowing

Sue Cowing was born in Illinois and now lives and writes in Hawaii. She earned degrees in history from Knox College and Emory University, then studied Chinese and Japanese history at the University of Hawaii. After teaching history and Asian studies at La Pietra School in Honolulu for sixteen years, she earned an M.F.A. in Writing (poetry) from Vermont College of Fine Arts and began writing full-time. Her poems have appeared in: Virginia Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, Wormwood Review, Bamboo Ridge, Chaminade Literary Review, Hawaii Review, Negative Capability, and in several anthologies, including The Denny Poems and Sister Stew.

Around 1990, Sue began writing for children and now writes most often for them. Some of her stories and poems and a nonfiction article have appeared in CRICKET and SPIDER magazines. The University of Hawaii Press published her Fire in the Sea: An Anthology of Poetry and Art in 1996. She has written two books for children: My Dog Has Flies: Poetry for Hawaii’s Kids (BeachHouse, 2005) and a debut novel, You Will Call Me Drog (CarolRhoda Books, 2011). 

Click here to read my review.

Sue has received Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards for Excellence from the Hawaii Publishers’ Association for Fire in the Sea and My Dog has Flies as well as the 2006 Cades Award for Literature, the Grand prize for fiction from Negative Capability, and the Children’s Christmas Fiction prize from the Honolulu Advertiser. She is Co-Regional Advisor of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators--Hawaii and has been involved with the Biennial Conference on Literature and Hawaii’s Children for fourteen years.


And now Sue Cowing faces the 7 Questions:


Question Seven: What are your top three favorite books?

Among my favorites are The Book of Everything, by Guus Kuijer; The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak; To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee; Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan; Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis, and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, by Gary D, Schmidt.


Question Six: How much time do you spend each week writing? Reading?

Seven days a week, I get up at 4:30 am to write, not because I’m disciplined but because it’s easiest then to get the uninterrupted quiet time I crave--when everyone else is asleep! Years ago, I also declared Wednesdays my hermit day.  Between 8am and 4pm on that day I don’t read email or answer the door or the phone or even speak when spoken to.   Those are the scheduled times, but I may be thinking all day any day about something I’m writing.  I read mostly in the evenings, but also sometimes when I’m supposed to be writing.


Question Five: What was the path that led you to publication?

I've enjoyed writing poems and stories since I was little, but as an adult I did a lot of other things before deciding I really wanted to be. . . a poet. I worked seriously at poetry—reading and writing, reading and writing some more, getting published in some journals—and then fiction ideas began creeping in, and I realized how much I  liked  inventing stories, first for adults and then for children.  I won a competition with an adult story, then published a few stories and poems in Cricket and Spider magazines and a collection of children’s poems.  But meanwhile I was working on novels.  I doubt if many authors’ first published novels are actually their first novels.  You Will Call Me Drog certainly isn't mine — I've got drawers full of manuscripts.  What finally led to publication was a stroke of luck.  On my first query to an agent I found the perfect match. Sarah Davies was a Drog fan from the beginning, and she found me the ideal publisher/editor for this book.


Question Four: Do you believe writers are born, taught or both? Which was true for you?

Well-written books (about anything) are the best teachers. I have a few talents and inclinations that I’m sure have helped me in writing: an ear for  the rhythms and textures of language, a tendency to think in images and metaphors, a curiosity about motivation.  But  you use what you’ve got.  For someone else it might be the kind of perfect schematic logic that can put the pieces of a complex plot together like clockwork and leave us breathless.  I do think there are a few genius writers, but that doesn’t mean nobody else can write a great book.  Mostly it’s love and honesty and hard work, putting in the 10,000 hours it takes to master your craft.  Even a writing genius may end up a one-book genius if he or she doesn’t commit and practice.


Question Three: What is your favorite thing about writing? What is your least favorite thing?

My favorite thing in writing is getting a new idea and dreaming about it, imagining those first words and the seemingly endless possibilities of the story.  My least favorite thing is all the paper I have to use before I’m done.  I revise and revise and revise, but I can’t do this on the computer.  I have to see in on the printed page and mark that up, then log back in.  I cringe when I think of all the print-outs I've done.  I use recycled computer paper, but still--sorry, planet.


Question Two: What one bit of wisdom would you impart to an aspiring writer? (feel free to include as many other bits of wisdom as you like)

“Read like a wolf eats,” as Gary Paulsen says.  Practice constantly.  Write for keeps, but don’t be in a hurry to publish—take years.  Don’t spend a lot of time reading books on writing--that’s mostly a neither/nor activity.  But there are a few great ones.  I cherish and re-read the timeless classic On Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande, as well as From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler, Stein on Writing by Sol Stein, The Art of Fiction by John Garner, and, for deepening an already drafted book, Novel Metamorphosis by Darcy Pattison.


Question One: If you could have lunch with any writer, living or dead, who would it be? Why?

That “crazy dreamer” John H. Ritter, “the baseball novelist,” because he is so real, present, and shining that even if you've just met him, you know him, trust him, and immediately begin talking with him about what matters.  And he’s so spontaneously funny!  Wait— I've already had lunch with him.

www.suecowing.com

Book of the Week: YOU WILL CALL ME DROG by Sue Cowing

You Will Call Me Drog is a great book for readers of any age, but I think it will especially appeal to upper grade school and middle school readers, particularly those readers whose parents either have divorced or are in the process of divorcing. So hand a copy of You Will Call Me Drog to the morose adolescent in your life whose parents don’t love each other anymore:) 

What a lot of middle grade books about divorce we’ve reviewed here, Esteemed Reader. Statistically speaking, children are still far more likely to experience their parents filing bankruptcy than filing divorce, if that cheers you up any:)

You Will Call Me Drog isn’t just about divorce, of course (with a horse at its source). But in a way, it reminded me of a dark version of E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. 6th grader Parker Lockwood is a boy who needs a friend to help him cope with his unresolved feelings from his parents divorce (feelings that will follow him around long after the scope of this book, I’m sure). What he gets is a hand puppet named Drog. What does Drog look like? Well, here’s a picture of author Sue Cowing modeling the latest in high fashion hand puppets:

Drog is loud and opinionated and never stops talking. The problem is, so far as Parker knows, he isn't making Drog speak. Drog gives every appearance of being his own sentient being:

“Ha, ha. That’s funny, Boy. Nothing makes me talk. I say what I please when I please. Which is a lot more than I can say for you.”

There’s just one other little problem. Once Parker puts Drog on, he can’t take him off again. Every time Parker tries, Drog squeezes his hand painfully. Parker attempts any number of methods to remove Drog, including attempting to drown him, which struck me as a bit morbid until I remembered puppets don’t have lungs.

I stuck one blade of the scissors into the puppet sleeve and squeezed the handle. Nothing. I squeezed again, and again, until my hand cramped. Why couldn’t I cut? It was only cloth, but I might as well have been trying to cut rock. The scissors broke apart on the next squeeze, and I threw the two halves across the room.

Drog has an opinion on everything and most of his opinions are decidedly negative, especially his opinions about Parker, whom he calls only “Boy." Some of Drog’s opinions about Parker’s parents in particular are just a little too close to Parker’s own secret thoughts for comfort. Could it be Drog is an outward manifestation of Parker’s subconscious desire to speak his mind?

 Is it possible Drog is really Tyler Durden (I never get tired of comparing children’s books to Fight Club), a split fragment of Parker’s mind that wants Parker to hit him as hard as he can (that totally happens a couple times before the book is over). That’s what Parker’s parents and friends and pretty much everyone thinks:

Late one night, Mrs. Belcher got one of her Great Ideas. She decided our class should make a puppet theater and put on a puppet play. Everyone could tell she was doing this to keep me from becoming the class weirdo, but I appreciated it.

So, it’s time to apply the principal of Ockham’s Razor and determine the most likely scenario: has a magical puppet taken control of Parker’s hand for the purposes of destroying his social life one piece at a time, or is it possible the whole thing is happening mostly in Parker’s mind. The brilliance of this story is that Cowing never tells us for sure which scenario is actually playing out. She provides plenty of evidence for both arguments, and though she strongly hints in favor of one, she never decides for the reader whether Drog is real.

And what difference would it make if she did? Whether Drog is alive in the world or only in Parker’s warped imagination, the result is the same. Drog is funny and you’re going to love him. He enjoys creating a bit of anarchy now and again, has a proclivity for belly dancers, and above all he says what he wants when he wants without regard to social taboo. 

In one hilarious scene, Drog drags Parker to a strip club (don’t worry parents, they never get past the front door). In this scene, at least, I prefer to imagine Drog is real because it amuses me to wonder what interest a puppet without a lower half would have in naked ladies. And, of course, there’s no chance a 6^th grade boy would ever have a subconscious desire to go to a strip club:)

Real or no, Drog says the things Parker can’t. Things that maybe need to be said. One of Drog’s most memorable comments is made to Parker’s estranged father:

“Let’s face it, Daddy-O.” Drog said. “Parker and his mom, they were your practice family, no? And now you've got a new wife and a new kid, and you've got it down. So Parker’s just kind of an embarrassing first try, am I right?”

It strikes me that so many of the books about divorce I've reviewed here have featured lousy fathers, most memorably Dear George Clooney, Please Marry My Mom. Oh sure, there’s the occasional lousy mother, such as in How to Survive Middle School, but for the most part it’s lousy fathers. I wonder if this disproportionate percentage has anything to do with disproportionate percentage of female middle grade authors to male:) In my writer’s group of 6, I’m one of 2 boys—just saying. 

Note to self: when writing own middle grade book about divorce, make sure and let mom have it:)

In a way, Drog is a nearly perfect metaphor for a writer. I’m not sure if Sue Cowing intended this or not, but what is a writer’s story if not a hand puppet independently saying the things the writer isn't ready to say directly? 

I would like to have been a fly on the wall when Andrew Lloyd Webber showed his much younger wife Sarah Brightman The Phantom of the Opera script in a which a creepy old (and totally gay, or why does he collect all those candelabras) guy lusts after and tries to manipulate a young soprano, only to have her leave him for a younger, straighter fellow. “Why, yes, I think our marriage is built to last, Sarah. Why do you ask?” Similarly, I would have killed to see the look on Joey Lauren Adams’ face when Kevin Smith asked his very “liberal minded” girlfriend at the time to star in Chasing Amy.

It isn't me, the writer will insist. It’s the characters that say these things, it’s the plot that motivates them. Mrs. Ninja knows to read any manuscript of mine featuring a black woman married to a goofy white guy very closely:) 

Writing is a form of hypnosis, both for the reader and the writer. The writer convinces himself that he is writing a story unrelated to his own life at all, or maybe it’s a little related, but that’s just a coincidence. The story is a hand puppet that’s come to life and just happens to be saying the things I really want to say:) 

I've always said I don’t know how I really feel about a topic until I write a story about it. There may be some people capable of examining their subconscious thoughts and desires without need of an intermediary object, but we writers mostly need our hand puppets.

And that’s going to conclude our Drog blog:) You will read You Will Call Me Drog and you will enjoy it. Make sure you come back Thursday to see Sue Cowing face the 7 Questions and join me the next two weeks as we have two more books to discuss before I again descend to my smoke and candelabra filled dungeon beneath the opera house to compose The Middle Grade of the Night. But for now, say you’ll share with me some favorite passages from You Will Call Me Drog (love them, that’s all I ask of you):

I didn’t want to hear any divorce-for-kids version…

I wanted to believe that, but it was easy math. If Mom had loved Dad a little more or me a little less, then one plus one plus one would still equal three. Together. Any way you looked at it, I was a factor.

Dad. Ringing the bell of a house that used to be his house, even though he knew I was the only one inside.

When I opened the car door it hit me, the smell of him in the car, the brown smell. That sounds awful, but I mean the smell of warm coffee and leather and cloves and cinnamon—from his shaving lotion, I guess—all mixed together. The memories in that smell surprised me, made me feel like a little kid again, and I wished I could cry for myself.

“Do you ever wash your pants, Boy? There are some nasty bits in your pocket I don’t appreciate having my nose shoved into.”

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Book of the Week is simply the best book I happened to read in a given week. There are likely other books as good or better that I just didn’t happen to read that week. Also, all reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.