A New Yorker by birth, Sue Guiney has lived in London for nearly twenty years where she writes and teaches poetry, fiction and plays. She has published widely throughout the UK and the US and her poetry play, Dreams of May, was published by bluechrome and premiered in London’s Pentameters Theatre. Tangled Roots is Sue’s first novel.

Mark Thwaite: What gave you the initial idea for Tangled Roots?

Sue Guiney: Tangled Roots had a very organic development. It actually began as a single short story in the voice of one specific character – a feisty little old lady from Brooklyn. After I wrote that story, I wrote another in the same voice and then another until I thought I had a collection of connected short stories about a woman, Grace, talking about various episodes in her life. I eventually became convinced that this was, in fact, the onset of a novel. It was quite a surprise, to be honest, and it took me a while to start thinking of these “stories’ as “chapters.” I think that’s why the theme of the importance of story telling is still there lurking underneath it all, even though the novel went through many changes from that lurching beginning to what you will find today on your bookshelf.

Actually, Tangled Roots is two novels joined into one. I completed the story of Grace, calling it “An Unlikely Guru,” and then immediately started to write what I had thought would be my second novel, a sequel about Grace’s son, John, now a rather messed-up adult trying to make sense of his life and his world. But about halfway through I realized that you couldn’t really understand John unless you knew Grace and that, in fact, these were two aspects of the same novel. And that novel is Tangled Roots.

MT: How long did it take you to write your book? Is this about usual for you?

SG: The frightening truth is that, because the book started as one thing and then turned into another and then another, I was writing it over a very long time – 9 years to be exact! I sincerely hope this is not usual for me (or I’ll run out of time to write all the novels that are brewing in my head). But I actually don’t think that will be the case. I can already see that my new novel is moving along at a much more reasonable rate.

MT: How do you write? Longhand or directly onto a computer, straight off or with lots and lots of editing?

SG: Although I like to think of myself as pretty computer savvy – I certainly spend most of my life in front of the damned thing – I write the old fashioned way, with a pen and a notebook. The first draft of every chapter (or poem for that matter) is written with a special pen in a special “Black n’ Red” notebook. Then the first editing happens automatically as I transcribe the messy longhand scribblings into a neat and orderly computerized form, complete with correct spelling and punctuation. I’ll then, after a few days, print off what I typed, read the hard copy with my pen in my hand, make changes and then retype. With Tangled Roots I repeated that process sometimes up to 8 or 9 times with each chapter. Maybe that’s why it took so long! To be honest, writing Tangled Roots was really on-the-job training. But with my new book, I’m forging ahead after one or two read-throughs, knowing I’ll go back again after the whole thing is finished.

MT: Before we talk about Tangled Roots, your last book was a poetry play -- tell us something about that?

SG: I was working with a teacher when I started writing all those stories about Grace. And although I had always loved and studied poetry, and had written a bit here and there since childhood, she convinced me to start writing poetry more intensely while I was working on my prose. She told me that all good writing, no matter what form, should all be poetry anyway, and I’m convinced she’s right. So I began to write a great deal of poetry, getting some published, getting some rejections, and doing more and more readings. It became clear to me that quite often the poems that got the best response at a reading were not necessarily the ones to get published. So I began to think about the difference between reading and hearing a poem, and I started to look at my poetry as a whole with that question in mind – why are some poems more accessible heard rather than read? How are those experiences different? I then realized that I had been approaching my poetry very much in the same way as I approach my prose, ie via character. It is always character which interests me first, and so I came to realize that a certain group of my poems, when read together, could be seen as portraying the emotional journey of one specific character. Dreams of May grew out of that with the initial idea being that I would develop a cycle of poems which a person could experience visually and aurally, and then, by taking the text home with them, in the “usual” way by sitting quietly on their own and reading. The two very happy consequences of that was my entrée into writing for the theatre, which I am still doing today, and my introduction to bluechrome, who -- being just as quirky as I am -- agreed to publish the text. The play had its premiere in a two-week run in London’s Pentameters Theatre, and has since been performed at London’s Poetry Café, at various poetry readings and university classes, and will be featured in the “Polyverse Poetry Festival” to be held at Loughborough in July ’09. I should also mention that, thankfully, I am not the one to perform the piece. The wonderful English actress, Rosalind Cressy, has been the one to perform Dreams of May each time it has been produced, and she has very much made it her own.

MT: Writing a novel must have been very different, then, to Dreams of May and to writing short stories -- what was the most difficult aspect of writing your novel? How did you overcome it?

SG: It may sound strange, but for me the most difficult part of writing the novel was believing that that was, indeed, what I was doing. I had to be convinced that I had stumbled into that genre, and that the characters and themes actually warranted it. Once I believed that (1) I dared do it and (2) the piece required it, I just merrily rolled along. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.

Having said that, it was difficult learning when I was avoiding writing something which really needed to be explored, ie something emotionally difficult either for me or the character. I would often think I had written about it, only to find I had only written a very compressed, shorthand stand-in for something that really needed a great deal more developing. Learning when I was doing that, and forcing myself to dig deeper and open up those more emotionally difficult episodes was quite hard. How did I overcome it? By distance, humility, and having a brutally forceful editor.

MT: Your main character John is a forty-year old cosmologist and professor of theoretical physics. Are you fascinated by physics yourself? What did John's profession allow you to do and say as a writer?

SG: I have always been fascinated by science, by the concepts, which always have seemed beyond me, but also by the people who devote themselves to thinking about those concepts. Scientists, and especially physicists, experience the world through numbers in the way that I experience it through words, and that is just amazing to me. So turning John into a physicist allowed me to read widely about the newest theories in the field, and to explore the ways in which religious and scientific imaginings overlap. I have always had trouble with “facts” – remembering them, believing in them. For example, while I was writing Tangled Roots, Pluto was proclaimed NOT to be a planet anymore. Now, I remember having to memorize the names and number of the planets in school. That was an early piece of the foundation of my education. And now all these yearslatyer, “they” are saying that that “fact” isn’t a fact anymore. And that happens all the time. I find it both infuriating and, somehow, encouraging at the same time. Now John had spent his life rejecting the unprovable theories of religion and God, and yet, he had spent his life examining the same ideas, just in a different way. Time, the past, the future, our place in the cosmos, is there more to us than what we see... writing about physics allowed me to explore all of that. It was great fun!

MT: Your theme is a mother/son relationship -- are you writing "close to home" here!?

SG: Ah—the eternal autobiography question. On the one hand, yes – I have two sons and the elder one was in the depths of adolescence while I was writing the bulk of the book. And I do believe that although the relationship between a mother and a son is perhaps the closest and most complex relationship one could have, I also have to admit that a mother can never really understand the effect her actions have on her son. Nor can a son ever really understand why a mother does the things she does. It is that inevitable disconnect that I was writing about. Thankfully, the lines of communication are more open between myself and my sons than were the case between Grace and John, but writing about something allows you to “live” the extreme “what if” of something without having to deal with the consequences.

MT: Your novel is often poetic and impressionistic -- is style as important to you as content?

SG: Yes, style is paramount. I touched upon that earlier, and although I also said earlier that I approach my writing through character first, the truth is that once the fuzzy outlines of a character are in my head, I breathe life into that character via language. I aim for poetry to be present in everything I write, but I define poetry rather loosely as finding ways to employ (or even exploit) the beauty of this language that we are lucky enough to be working in. I suppose I can say I try to write with my ears, as much as anything.

MT: What do you hope readers will take away from reading your book?

SG: To be honest, I’m not trying to teach anything with my book. I would hope, though, that a reader will feel as if he/she has experienced something true and genuine, that he/she has met characters that are understandable and “real,” and has been given the chance to think about things in a new or interesting way. If all of that can happen while the reader is also stopped in his tracks and forced to proclaim “wow, that was beautifully said,” then bingo!

MT: What do you do when you are not writing?

SG: Besides hanging out with family and friends and seeing as much theatre as I can, my main hobby is playing the violin. I’ve played since I was five and I still practice and perform with a wonderful semi-professional orchestra called the Kensington Philharmonic.

Also, and very importantly, I am Artistic Director of a not-for-profit arts organization called CurvingRoad. We find and launch the careers of artists across all disciplines who have not necessarily taken traditional paths towards the development of their art. We try to be their first bit of luck. To that end, we are producing our first play, a new piece by a new playwright – and in London’s West End! – this autumn. Watch out for details to come!

MT: Did you have an idea in your mind of your "ideal" reader? Did you write specifically for them?

SG: I suppose my ideal reader is me – I can only write things that I myself would like to read and I suppose that means a novel full of real characters with depth, interesting ideas to explore, and language that is painstakingly written. But isn’t that everybody?

MT: What are you working on now?

SG: I am nearing the halfway mark of the first draft of a new novel set in modern-day Cambodia. I also have a full-length play in development which will be workshopped in September and, of course, poetry. Always poetry quietly pushing along in the background.

MT: Who is your favourite writer? What is/are your favourite book(s)?

SG: I always find this such a hard question because my favourite authors are not necessarily the ones I try to emulate or who I think are “the best.” But having said that, Grace Paley, the American short story writer, has been the greatest influence on me as a writer, and I DO believe she was the best of her generation. She never was comfortable writing novels, but her short stories teach you everything you would ever need to know about writing, and life for that matter.

I also love Anthony Trollope. Reading one of his very many novels makes me feel like a little girl sitting by a fire being told a wonderful story by my favourite uncle. I try to allow myself that pleasure at least once a year.

And there are two novels which I read as a rather introspective adolescent which remain incredibly influential: Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel and (dare I say) Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Both of those made me understand the beauty and power of literature, and gave me a pathological respect for literature while instilling in me a secret dream to one day follow in their footsteps (it took me over 30 years to let that secret out, though).

MT: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?

SG: Yes, several!

1. Don’t be afraid to say out loud to the world that you are a writer. A writer is someone who spends his/her time writing – not necessarily someone who is published. If you take your work seriously others eventually will, too. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you.
2. Set aside a time and, especially, a place that is just for you and your writing, even if it’s only your bed between the hours of 10 and 12.
3. Read constantly – classics as well as contemporary, and don’t be afraid to decide that you don’t like something even if everyone else does, i.e. develop your own ear.
4. Learn to love punctuation, take the rules deep into your heart – how else can you break the rules if you don’t know and respect them?

MT: Anything else you would like to say?

SG: Just thanks for asking all these questions and letting me ramble on about my answers. You know, during the process of trying to sell Tangled Roots, we were told by one publisher that people don’t read literary fiction any more and so more and more publishers were going to stop publishing it. I thought about putting my head in the oven at that point, but I’m happy to say that you and your readers are very much proving him wrong. Hallelujah!