Barbara Shoup Interview

ETCHINGS: What would you say to budding writers struggling to finish and revise a longer piece of work?

BARBARA SHOUP: Be patient. Writing a long piece takes a long time if you do it right—sometimes years—and revising is extremely challenging because there are so many things (and questions) to consider. You need to switch to the analytical part of your head to answer these questions—which doesn’t feel creative at all. Yet it is an important part of the creative process. I find it useless to try to revise by going through the manuscript, correcting as I go. Eventually, I start skimming, missing things, and when I get to the end, I know only vaguely what I need to do. So, I use a spreadsheet to track characters, threads, and whatever else I think I need to track for any given novel. When I’m “finished,” I have a list of very specific revisions to make. Then I make them, checking them off as I go. Finished is in quotes because I almost always go through this process numerous times before I think a book is ready to send out. Then, when it’s bought, the editor will have her own ideas about what the book needs, so I go through it again. This sounds awful, I know. But I actually love revising. Getting the first draft down is the hardest part of writing to me.

E: How do you work through moments of discouragement?

BS: I talk to other writers, blow off steam in my journal, do yoga, take my dog for a walk. I remind myself the moment will pass. I. Keep. On. Writing.

E: Through your work with the Indiana Writers Center, you have supported many emerging writers. What advice do you have for Greyhounds interested in revising their work to prepare for the world of publishing?

BS: Never, ever send a piece out as soon as you’ve finished it no matter how good you think it may be. An editor only gets one first look at a manuscript and even if she’s willing to reconsider the piece with revisions, the ghost of what she read first will always get in the way. So let it sit a while. Stuff that needs to be revised will jump out at you when you take a second look. Take a second pass, but it probably still won’t be finished because you can’t know what the words on the page are doing because you can’t read them without bringing what’s in your head to the page. This means you need good critics to help you see the dif10 Etchings

ference between what’s actually there. So, lose your ego! Toughen up! Give the piece to readers you know will tell you the truth (probably not your mom or best friend) and ask them to look for what doesn’t make sense, what’s missing, what doesn’t belong, where there’s not enough, where there’s too much, where you’re telling instead of showing. (Of course, it’s also good to ask them to tell you what works—and why.) Writing is revising. Self-discipline is a kind of talent. I’ve interviewed dozens of writers over the years and have found that the better they are, the more likely they are to revise (and revise and revise). Make sure your piece of writing is as good as it possibly can be before you seek publication.

E: In your experience, what has been the most effective way to market your work?

BS: Honestly, I’m horrible at marketing. I always think I’m going to get better at it but I don’t, even though I know I owe it to my work. I’d always rather be writing. Writers who are good at marketing send a piece back out the day it’s rejected—and keep the cycle going until someone says yes. Writers with books coming out begin preparing for publication months—even a year—before the pub date, setting up interviews, posting on social media. One thing I am good at is posting about/promoting books by writers I know and admire. Cathy Day calls this being a good literary citizen, a term I like. I do it because I really want people to know about those books, but it often turns out that those writers will post something nice about mine. In that way, it’s a good marketing tool.

E: From teaching creative writing to working at the Indiana Writers Center, how have you seen your work evolve over the years? What has been a major influence in your writing?

BS: Teaching creative writing for twenty years at Broad Ripple High School Center for the Humanities and the Performing Art taught me pretty much everything I know about writing because I had to figure out what to say to my student writers about their work. Same with every other kind of teaching I’ve done. There’s often a moment, a struggle to explain something, that a light bulb goes on in my head and I say something I didn’t know I knew. I love when that happens! Teaching has also been an influence in my work, especially the young adult novels. Bits and pieces of my students and their lives often turn up one way or another in them. But the major influence in my writing is my own life—looking “sideways” at it by way of fiction, trying to understand all that happened and why, and how (for better or worse) it made me who I am.