Home, Heart, Head, Courage--Cynthia's Questions

People who journal online have been interviewing each other.  I have stepped in—below are the rules: 

 

Leave me a comment saying "interview me." The first five to leave a comment requesting to be participants will be interviewed. I will respond by asking you five questions. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some) Fun and easy right?

The following interview questions are from Cynthia (Sorting the Pieces).

1) Your novel is set in North Carolina, your former home state.   How strong were the cultural influences in what is a deeply personal novel?  And do you see yourself as "Southern" writer?

 The novel is my attempt to understand what it meant to live in the South during the Vietnam Era and beyond, to grow up in a military town, to come to sexual awareness in a completely patriarchal atmosphere and to somehow survive it.  I wrote the South because that's what I knew best, but I think I've spent a lifetime trying to run from my Southern roots.  While my work, the vast majority of it, is set in the South, I don't consider myself in the same league as the towering women writers such as Flannery O'Connor and Dorothy Allison.  I think it's because I always felt like an interloper (we were a military family) in the South, like I had landed there but didn't truly belong there.  So I could never write the South like O'Connor or Allison. 

2) I know that you hate confrontation.  What situation can you imagine where you would enjoy confronting someone?

I think would enjoy confronting someone who has intentionally hurt other people, someone in power who used that power for ill.  But, then again, even that might prove too distressing.

3) Do you have routines, rituals or strong preferences that you exercise when you write?  This could be a preference for the computer or longhand, a time of day, a way of preparing yourself or getting into a good mindset for writing.

I don't have particular routines.  Every writing task seems to have a different need.  I write both in longhand and at the computer.  Many of my ideas start out as a handwritten note to myself.  But others begin in a letter to someone.  Or in the margin of a book I'm reading.  I have written whole stories in longhand in my bathtub.    Usually when I'm working full blown on a project, I require big blocks of time.  I read once that when Annie Dillard was working on Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, she worked on it for hours, days, weeks, during which time she was so focused on the writing that all her houseplants died.  When I get into my intense mode, it's like that for me.  I forget to eat, even.  And I usually work from late afternoons and through the night.  And then sleep during the day.    The only thing that is consistent is that I need complete quiet.  I can't be bothered by anyone or anything. 

4) You've mentioned that you have several uncompleted projects, some of which deserve to be unfinished.  How do you recognize that point where a project calls for you to either finish it, drop it or put it on hold?

If the writing is too much like swimming through mud, I know it's time to do something else.  I have to trust that through doing something else, my unconscious will continue to work on the writing problem and provide me with the answer I need.  It is rather like the characters in fairytales who go to sleep, and then the little animals come and do their work for them.  The little animals are the agents of the unconscious.  You can't force those ideas, these truths.  You have to give them freedom.   However, if that doesn't happen, if the little animals never arrive, I have to trust it [the story] just wasn't meant to be.    All writers have tons of unfinished work lying about.  What is most urgent will, hopefully, rise to the top of the heap.    Always work on what makes your blood run hot, I say, even if it means leaving something else unfinished.  That's when you do your best writing, when your blood is up for it, and hot.

5) You have an expressed interest in personality typing, especially the Briggs-Myers format.  How have you used these in your writing?

I use the David Keirsey Temperament Sorter from the book Please Understand Me II.  It's based on Briggs-Myers, although there are a few differences.  A social scientist would understand better than I do what the differences are.  

Briggs-Myers has been used for years in the work force, and not always in positive life-affirming ways, unfortunately.  I believe the information from the Keirsey sorter (or Briggs-Myers) should be used as a general guide, but that people are wonderfully complex social creatures and not easily pinned down.  You can't use the information in a didactic or dismissive way.   

The Keirsey book was given to me by a colleague, and it has helped me in my writing in many ways.  It's one of many tools I use to understand the mystery of our differences and our motivations.   

One way it helped me is by showing me what my own preferences and tendencies are, showing me my inherent strengths, as well as the challenges I bring to the writing process.  I am the INFP, which Keirsey calls the Healer.  When I read the profile of the Healer, I felt a great sense of relief.  I felt he got it right.  And I suddenly understood why I have always been drawn to art and what kind of stories I should be writing.  I had been denying all the time what my heart was telling me to write.  I now saw that  I was denying what was unique in me, and that I had been trying to be someone else.   I understood that I naturally see life as a quest, as a series of transformations.  I understood that I saw life as a movement through various inner thresholds of experience.  In a flash I understood the true meaning of all those literary techniques I had been studying.  Epiphany.  Character shift.  Climax.  Tension.  Suspense.  Before, it had seemed so technical.  However, when I saw myself in my true light, as a Healer, the process of writing was suddenly meaningful for me.  I got it.  I got what it meant for me.  

The other way it has helped me is in understanding character motivation.  It's easier to keep my characters consistent.  I often will find myself remembering what Keirsey says about how each character in the Wizard of Oz  represents one of the four temperament types:  Dorothy is the Guardian, because she dreams of home.  There is a special kind of intelligence that is rooted in our concept of home.  The Tin Man is the Idealist because he is in search of a heart.  This is the intelligence that comes from feeling, from empathy.  The Scarecrow is the Rational because he is in search of a brain, the intelligence originating from the head.  The Lion is the Artisan because he searches for courage.  This is the intelligence of being able to protect at a moment's notice, to take care of business quickly and efficiently.   Home, Heart, Head, Courage--each is a particular and necessary form of intelligence.   

We have all of these traits, these forms of intelligence within us;  But most of us have a distinct preference for one of them.  And this is how we wish to confront in the world, though this form of intelligence.   

When we can function according to our preference we can feel more comfortable and more fulfilled in the world.  That was the whole idea behind Plato's Republic, each person functioning according to his or her strengths and preferences. 

However, modern life keeps us from functioning according to our preferences, causing tension and conflict--and it's within this tension and conflict that good stories are made.   

Cynthia, thanks so much for asking such thoughtful questions!