{"id":456,"date":"2020-09-21T17:01:13","date_gmt":"2020-09-21T22:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/?p=456"},"modified":"2020-09-21T17:03:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T22:03:09","slug":"q-and-a-with-howling-bird-press-author-lisa-van-orman-hadley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/2020\/09\/21\/q-and-a-with-howling-bird-press-author-lisa-van-orman-hadley\/","title":{"rendered":"Q and A with Howling Bird Press Author Lisa Van Orman Hadley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Author<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What is it about writing that\nenergizes you? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\noften say that I don\u2019t like writing but I like having written. The actual\nwriting is sometimes transcendent, sometimes painfully hard, and most of the\ntime it\u2019s just okay\u2014like life, I suppose. But I just don\u2019t feel right when I\nhaven\u2019t written. I am taken over by a general malaise. When I\u2019ve written, I\nfeel better. It\u2019s the feeling of finally having your ears pop on the way down\nfrom the mountain after being at a higher altitude. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are common traps for aspiring\nwriters? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well,\nI know one trap for me was thinking I had to make everything up. I thought\nthat, in order for my writing to be worthy, everything in it had to be 100\npercent invented, 100 percent original. I don\u2019t believe that anymore. We just\nneed to have an original voice. Basically, stop worrying so much about having\nsomething to say and figure out a way to say what you already know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is your writing Kryptonite? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-doubt.\nI can always think of a million reasons why my voice doesn\u2019t matter.\nUltimately, I have to do it for me and hope it matters to someone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What other authors are you friends\nwith, and how do they help you become a better writer? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most\nof my author friends are people I met in my MFA program. Because we all came up\nin the program together and we\u2019ve been pals for quite some time now, there\u2019s no\ncompetition, just camaraderie. They are humans to me first, writers second. We\nexchange work but mostly we commiserate. The main thing I usually need is\nemotional support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you want each of your books\/stories\nto stand on their own, or are you trying to build a body of work with\nconnections between them? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m\ntrying to do both. I want each story to have its own legs, but I also want it\nto be able to get into that line and kick like the Rockettes along with all the\nother stories in my book. I\u2019ve only written the one book, but I like to think\nthat when I do have a body of work, all the books will echo off of each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did publishing with Howling Bird Press\nchange your process of writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ndon\u2019t think many writers get into the profession because they are really jazzed\nabout marketing. Turns out writing a book and selling a book are two completely\ndifferent animals. I am completely inept at the latter. And maybe the former,\ntoo, but shhhhhh. What publishing with Howling Bird Press taught me is that,\nalthough writing is, by nature, solitary, getting a book out into the world is\nvery much a collaboration. I have depended so much on the expertise and hard\nwork of the press. It\u2019s such a relief to not have to go at it alone. It takes\nthe pressure off and lets me focus on the actual writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What have you done since you won the\nHowling Bird Press prize? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weathered\na pandemic. Seriously, all of the events I had lined up were (rightly!)\ncanceled. But that\u2019s the case for every writer, every artist right now. It\u2019s\ngood, in a way. There\u2019s only one thing to focus on: new work. And my day job.\nAnd taking care of two semi-feral kids. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a writer, what would you choose as\nyour mascot? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nhouse cat. Cats do not care what anyone thinks of them and they do what they\nwant when they want. They start licking themselves in random places out of\nnowhere. They can be purring and rubbing up against your legs one minute and\nthen clawing and biting your ankles the next. They cough up hairballs and don\u2019t\napologize! They find joy in the slightest wiggle of a string. They take lots of\nnaps. And they are deeply weird. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many unpublished and half-finished\nbooks\/stories do you have? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two\nhalf-finished books, I guess. But half-finished would be a generous assessment.\nOne is a memoir and the other is a work of fiction. But lately, I\u2019ve been\nsampling from one to use in the other, so maybe just one. Two disparate halves\nmake a whole, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What kind of research do you do, and\nhow long do you spend researching before beginning a book? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nmostly research random things that come up, like \u201cWhat did the little adoption\ncertificates that came with Cabbage Patch dolls say?\u201d or \u201cHow would you drive to\nGraceland in the 1980s and how long would it take to get there?\u201d I did a lot of\nresearch for the story \u201cIrreversible Things\u201d\u2014which is based on a real murder\nthat happened on the side of my house when I was seven\u2014but I didn\u2019t end up\nusing much of it. Maybe a partial line from an article in the newspaper. The\nresearch was mostly because I wondered whether the way I remembered those\nevents was accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you read your book reviews? Why or\nwhy not? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do\nbecause I can\u2019t not look. I have to know what people are saying about me! I did\nhave one friend forward me an email his mom wrote in response to my book and I\ngave it to another friend first so she could make sure there wasn\u2019t anything in\nit that would break me (there wasn\u2019t).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you hide any secrets in your books\nthat only a few people will find? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh! I\nlike this question. I guess the biggest secret of my book\u2014the thing people are\nmost curious about\u2014is what is truth and what is fiction. Even my family members\ndon\u2019t always know the answer to that question. My lips are sealed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is it about writing that energizes you? I often say that I don\u2019t like writing but I like having written. The actual writing is sometimes transcendent, sometimes painfully hard, and most of the time it\u2019s just okay\u2014like life, I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[24,25,28,26,22,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":459,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}