Click Here To Purchase Men, Children and Grass Farming--A Suburban Life

Today, Norm Goldman Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest Joyce Fetzer Schutten author of Men, Children and Grass Farming: A Suburban Life.

 Good day Joyce and thanks for participating in our interview.

 Norm:

 Can you tell our readers something about yourself? When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? 
What keeps you going?

 Joyce: 

I have always loved writing but mainly wrote letters and bad poetry.  In high school, I was asked to stand up before the class and read out my papers.  I never took this very seriously or thought of myself as an auteur.  In college, I was co-editor of the poetry magazine.  I loved the editing part, but my own poetry was so bad. Much later, when two essays were published, then I wanted to do a book. 

Norm:

How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?

Joyce: 

I had excellent teachers and exposure to the best literature.  In Junior High my English teacher was a Brit.  We diagrammed sentences every day except Friday, when he read poetry or humorous essays to us.  Our weekend homework was to write a short story on a title he would supply.  I think Roald Dahl was taught to write in that fashion and it’s fun.  In High School I had expert training in literary criticism in Latin, French, American and British authors.  I switched my major to English at Vassar because it was just so easy for me.

Norm:

How did you come up with the title Men, Children and Grass Farming: A Suburban Life.

Joyce: 

I wanted the title to describe the content and express my attitude.  Originally the subtitle was “How I Threw My Life Away.”  I decided to change it as I felt it diminished my life and was too sarcastic.

Norm:

What do you want your work to do? Amuse people? Provoke thinking? Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?

Joyce: 

My first readers were women at the print shop.  They loved my book and loved working on it.  They modestly said things like, “It’s true.”  The receptionist loved it.  People who like my book love it.  When they see me their faces light up.  They tell me they devoured it in one weekend or one night.  Or they save it so they have one essay for “their time” at night.  They buy one for their mother or two for friends.  That kind of response makes me happy all day.

Norm:

If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor? Why?

Joyce: 

No mentors, but I admire Didion immensely.  At her best she is taut, incisive and colloquial.  I first started thinking about writing myself when I read Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies.  “I can crack wise,” thought I.  Then I discovered I had more scope than I thought: memoir and social comment and literary chat.  The essays of Michel de Montaigne have given me permission to ramble.  He wrote about social and domestic situations, travel, politics, family and literature (classics).  I suppose the first personal essayist was St. Augustine.  As Philip Lopate points out, the personal essay is rarely the genre for thirty-year-olds, as they don’t have much to say.    

Norm:

Did you learn anything from writing your essays and what was it?

Joyce: 

After homeschooling my two sons, I was looking for a way to get health benefits for our family.  (My husband had quit his advertising job to freelance.)  I was complaining to a neighbor about a hellacious temp job I had and she said, “Why don’t you write?”  I had heard this many times.  In the next month I wrote nine essays (first drafts).  I guess I had a lot bottled up.  Two were published right away and then I became very ill for a long time.  When I emerged, I returned to the essays and excised most of the sarcasm.  They have been infinitely revised.  I also learned that it’s important to me that every footnote be right, every sentence the best I can do.  I learned that publishing and marketing a book is very hard.  And I love it.   

Norm:

What do you think makes a good story? 

Joyce: 

I don’t write fiction, but I do read it.  Tolstoy and Dickens both wrote noble themes from people and circumstances they knew well.  There is great integrity involved in that effort.

Norm:

Do you feel that writers, regardless of genre owe something to readers, if not, why not, if so, why and what would that be?

Joyce: 

I am shocked at the lack of editing at the major publishing houses.  My first job was as an editor and I worked hard with the author to rewrite and make something good.  Someone once asked Hemingway what he was doing when he was standing up and typing.  He replied, “Getting the words right.”  Writing should be as perfect as the writer can make it. That’s hard but worth it. My essay on Hamlet involved a lot of scholarship.    

I think the worst thing that has happened to writing is laptop writing.  I see it a lot.  It’s chronological, contains details that are not pertinent such as “what I ate today.”  Worse, it is not integrated into a whole.  The writing remains episodic with no transitions, just cute little dingbats or phrases the writer hopes will tie it together. 

Norm:

What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?

Joyce:

 If you are out of love, you are out of subject matter. Then, perfection in execution.  Of course, we all read for entertainment and are happy for the potboilers, chick lit.  I recently read that in France in the early nineteenth century women were publishing four books a week.

Norm:

What are you upcoming projects?

Joyce: 

I am half done with a second book which is completely different (a secret).  I have a third project in mind but I could not do it as an indie publisher.

Norm:

Is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered and where can our readers find out more about you and your book?

Joyce:

My book is currently available on Amazon and at Garrison Keillor’s bookstore in St. Paul, Common Good Books. 

Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

Click Here To Read Norm's Review of Men, Children and Grass Farming-A Suburban Life

Click Here To Purchase Men, Children and Grass Farming--A Suburban Life