The 5-Question Interview: Amy Wallen

The writer talks about perpetual guilt, the sound-proof room as muse and not wanting to be on a team that doesn’t want her.

Amy Wallen is the founder of DimeStories–3-minute stories read by the author–now heard on NPR stations. She is also the author of the novel MoonPies and Movie Stars, a Los Angeles Times Bestseller.  Amy is a frequent book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times and a columnist at The Faster Times. You can also read what she has to say about audio and short fiction in The Writer (October, 2009, and upcoming in December). She also writes our Voice Lessons column right here.

Meredith: Why do writers so often struggle with what appears to be such a natural thing –creation, creativity, expression of the deepest self? It’s really a struggle against oneself, in a way. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature. This is what Julia Cameron says in, The Artist’s Way. What’s your take?
AMY: Is it natural for everyone? Maybe it’s innate, but has to be pulled out of our psyche and dusted off.  When we’re younger, some of us are drawn to right-brain activities and others to left brain, some both.  As we, dare I say it, age (!) we often lose touch with the creative if that’s what we were drawn to earlier on.  So, like any unused muscle, or hinge, or motor, to get it to work again we have to stretch it, oil it, or crank the starter.  If only there were Rustoleum for Writers.  Wrustoleum.  I’d buy it by the case, or in mondo-size spray cans at Costco.

Meredith: Tell us about your relationship with the muse. Is it love-hate? Up-down? Boy-girl? Animal-vegetable-mineral? Does it feel like a part of you or something you have to catch?
AMY: See Wrustoleum reference above.  I rarely ever consciously wonder about a muse, per se.  I’m a big skeptic about most things ethereal.  But when I have visualized a muse, I always pick the Greek Muse Calliope because she has that cool-shaped guitar.  I don’t know what a musical muse would do for me though.  I don’t play any music when I write.  In fact, if anyone in the household has it on, I completely tune it out.  When I was a kid, my mother would crank Neil Diamond up as loud as he would go on the stereo while she did her ironing.  I guess Neil was her ironing muse.  The house would shake it would be so loud. I learned to go to a quiet place in my head and not hear it.  Because of that “talent” I can write any place anytime.  That’s not to say I do, but I don’t have to have a special quiet place when I have an idea or inspiration. Maybe that’s my muse–the sound-proof room in my head.

Meredith: If conflict is an essential part of every good story, what would you say the running conflict in your life is, the one that keeps your writing and creating at its peak?
AMY: That there isn’t enough laughter. I feel a certain responsibility to make people laugh, no matter how serious it is.  When I feel my writing is bogging me down and I can tell no one will be interested in what I have to say because I’m not even interested in writing it, I try to come up with a humorous perspective.  That switch usually makes me more interested and then the writing is easier, and the end result hopefully is better and makes folks laugh, and thus the world is a tiny bit better place.

Meredith: As a writer with many projects in motion, many platforms at work and many works in the public eye, how do you balance the left-brain activity of promotion with the right-brain activity of creation?
AMY: I consider everything procrastination for everything else.  So, just when I start getting involved in promotion for DimeStories, then I feel guilty I’m not writing enough. When I get really entangled in my writing, I think I better touch base with editors so I can sell my work. Then I think I should read more so I can be a better writer.  When I’m reading a book for a review, I wish I was working on my own novel instead. Perpetual guilt. But to answer your question, switching from right brain to left brain at first was a lot like what I imagine a schizophrenic multiple personality disorder feels like.  For the longest time, my “behind the mic” persona seemed like someone I didn’t know, an act, a character I had made up, and that my “behind closed doors” writer self was nothing like her.  But gradually they melded into one person and I realized they were sharing the same brain, not two separate brains.  The end result:  I argue with myself a lot.  But fortunately, everyone in my head has the same Just Do It (whatever It is) attitude.

Meredith: What purpose does rejection serve us in the process of creation?
AMY: Rejection is the 2nd best thing that can happen to us.  Without Rejection we wouldn’t have Acceptance.  In grade school, not only was I always picked last in gym class, but when I was the last one on the bench and the gym teacher would assign me to the team with fewer members, the team captain would start to cry.  I kid you not–I was that bad.  Did that make me become a better athlete?  No.  But I learned that I don’t want to be on a team that doesn’t want me–a situation that would just make all of us unhappy.  What we forget about is how subjective the creative world we live in is. Rejection is not: you are a loser, you should not exist.  Instead it’s just saying, you suck at basketball because you always walk the ball and pass to the other team, maybe you should consider entering the science fair instead. (My bug collection got red ribbons in the Science Fair).  Rejection is just about finding the right place.  Not everyone likes bugs, and I’m not sure why anyone would like basketball.

AMY lives in San Diego where she is at work on a new novel and making it her business to laugh as much as possible and enjoy the process of writing. Check out her website and get to know her a bit more.

Tagged as: Author Interviews

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