Rebecca's Interview with Susannah Ellis Wilds

Author of The Opening

From: Susannah Ellis Wilds:
Hi,
I just read your review of The Long Way Back on Amazon and thought you might like my new novel, The Opening. Thanks

Rebecca :
Yes, I would like to review your new novel, do you have a copy you could send for me to read? I'll also check out your website.

Susannah :
I'll be happy to send you a copy of The Opening. I'm down to the last of the early release. I'm on a tour right now. Thanks.

Rebecca :
Would you be willing to an Interview? By the way, your site is great! - lots of interactivity. I'm already itching to get my eyes on your story!

Susannah :
Your copy is on the way. I'd be very pleased if you would donate it to your library when done. And I'd be delighted to do an Interview. I have checked it out and would love to link to your interview for me when we do it.

Rebecca :
Am eagerly awaiting The Opening! Thanks for the donation - Cheryl, my favorite librarian, is as thrilled as I am! Let me take my first quaff from your book & I'll send you out some questions. Will tell Webmaster about link - do you have a photo on your book's jacket? If not could you get one to me? & what about publicity appearances so we can list them in Authors Sightings?.

Your book has arrived & I do thank you for personalizing it! I already am entranced - this is going to be a pleasure &, I have a feeling, inspiring!

Susannah :
I really love writing. Thanks.

Rebecca :
Could you expand on that love - the enjoyment - what happens to the rest of your life - how you are affected by the thoughts & words that come flowing through you....

Susannah :
Oh boy, that's a hard one to put into words. Writing fiction is almost like getting to lead other lives - better than mere immortality. People ask me if I'm Lucy in The Opening and the answer is decidedly 'No!' But ... I get to be of all my characters and I find it fascinating to discover why I like (or understand) some of them better than others. It's like discovering what you like best about yourself and others, what you are capable of being.

I also love the things that other people see in my work that I miss. The world becomes much more interesting when you realize how point of view changes the same event, no matter how small. The possibilities are endless. I find myself listening to other people much more carefully than I did in the business world where I tended to complete the sentences of others for them.

Now I'd like to ask you how that toddler felt when she heard those sirens. Was she old enough to understand and be afraid? Did you believe that the adults could protect you if you did what they said and crawled under a desk? Did a brush with death make you more fearless or more cautious? What if....

Rebecca :
Diving under my office desk happened when I was 23 after emigrating to Chicago. My train from New York arrived on a Wednesday. By the next Tuesday I was already at a new job when all hell broke loose as all the cold war sirens were set off in a practise run. I hadn't known I'd held those memories of the air raids sirens.

We had a bomb shelter under the tennis court in the back garden. When the sirens went off - usually at night - the Land Girls & the married couple who would adopt me at war's end would rouse all 17 children(15 were evacuees - I was one of them) out of our bunk beds, clutching blanket, pillow & favorite toy & in crocodile, hurry downstairs, out of the French door through the rose arbor & out to the tennis court where there was a lamp already lit inside. We would all tumble into our cement bunks there then the blackout curtain would be dropped just about the time the planes began roaring toward us. We'd have a mug of hot chocolate, sing songs, chant our times tables & fall asleep. Even when the 'All Clear' sirens went off we'd stay the rest of the night in our warm underground cave. At that age I really didn't have a clue what was going on. No matter how often I listened to the BBC broadcasts all I really understood were the emotions of the others around me. I was the very youngest one there.

What an immensely satisfying read The Opening has been! I have a beloved quilting friend from Georgia who now lives up here in the Pacific Northwest. I could hear Jane's voice everywhere in your book. Did all the friends arrive in your thoughts together or was there a core who then led you to the others? Did you have much of a say in what they would say & do?

Susannah :
I'm very glad you've liked it. It's hard to describe how the characters came about...it's almost like they found me. The main character, Lucy and her best friend, Becca, were easy. I knew I wanted to weave the characters from the lines of Kiplings" 'If', but I wasn't sure how. Polio was the AIDS of the '50's and in some way I wanted to bring that into the story. Kipling talks about the impostors triumph and disaster, so I thought about envy and pity ... the too fortunate girl and the unfortunate one... and Bobbie Jean and Wallee were born. Sally came easily then from some of the remaining lines of 'If' and one of my own poems. The hardest character was Millie. After I pictured them interacting, they told their own story. I found myself growing very fond of Wallee and occasionally impatient with Sally or irritated with Lucy. Bobbie Jean remains illusive; I suspect she's had a drinking problem.

Rebecca :
What an editor's joy you are! Lots of juicy insights - no wonder your book is like a ripe pomegranate! Yes, I remember the Polio epidemic at boarding school - Penelope was the only girl to contract it although we all swam in the pool down the road at the boys' boarding school. I remember her in her iron lung, reading to her, combing out her hair over the pillow & listening to that dreadful wheezing machine. Did you have difficulty separating memoir from fiction & was it important to do so?

Susannah :
Yes and yes. Since the story was inspired by, but not to be based on, a real reunion, I did not want it to be about our lives but about our time. I started with some nearly true events from childhood but even those became something new when they happened to these girls. What I kept from the memories were the simple things, like the description of the pleasant weather and the gentle noise of the TVs drifting from the dorms on the afternoon Kennedy was shot or the boys carrying old portable radios from class to class during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Rebecca :
I was in London calling my mother long distance in Sussex when the operator broke in & said : "They've killed their president!" That sort of killed our conversation as my mother was never enamored of anything American even though I was planning to emigrate there. Later that evening my boyfriend & I went to the movies in Leicester Square & at the end instead of the Union Jack flapping with the British national anthem, they showed the Stars & Stripes. Out on the streets The Daily Mail had put out a special issue(which I still have) & people were milling around reading over each others' shoulders & crying. In time we joined the long, long queue outside the American Embassy to write our condolences to the bereaved First Lady. How long did it take from concept to galleys? Do you remember how many times you re-wrote?

Susannah :
I first started thinking about writing a novel based on a teenage prediction late in 1998, I saw the first book in mid-March of 2000. The novel as a whole went through one re-write or re-work. After the first draft, I drew up a timeline and realized several things were out of step and several holes needed filling. The last two chapters went through at least four separate re-writes. After I knew what was to happen, I tried four different voices and points of view: Millie's, Lucy's, an author's, and finally Wallee's.

Rebecca :
As you wrote The Opening did you share it with a writing group?

Susannah :
Yes, my writing group here in SC helped me with several chapters but not all. The women who inspired the real reunion also read it in first and second drafts. They agreed to only ask for changes if I got too close to their real lives. No one did.

Rebecca :
You are my first author who belongs to a writing group & shares her writing with same. Could you expand on that experience?

Susannah :
There seem to be several different kinds of writers' groups. Mine is composed of about 20 different writers, but at any one meeting we have from 8 to 12 present. Some groups have speakers or discuss one subject at each meeting, but we always meet to critique 5 to 10 pages from each of 8 to 10 members. We try to keep to a discussion of content, pacing, word usage, spelling, and grammar, but occasionally we talk about the subject even though that's supposed to be off limits. I like the diversity in our group. We don't always agree and I get as much out of hearing the discussion of the others' works as of mine own. I have also gotten a better understanding of other aspects of the publishing industry, such as poetry and short stories for magazines or contests, and what's happening at the local colleges and universities.

Rebecca :
What are your best hours to work on a project? Do you have music playing in the background? Was it all computer written?

Susannah :
Well, I am best early in the morning... but the story frequently comes in the middle of the night and I just get up and write. One day I was trying to play golf with my husband (I'm an awful golfer) and I got a great idea so I started writing on the back of the score card. Other than inspirations at odd moments, it was all computer written. I usually play music while I'm doing something else, like dusting or loading the dishwasher, but keep it quiet while writing. I like music from the period.

Before I wrote a word, I watched dozens of old movies and tried to remember what it was like to see Pat Boone singing "April Love" the first time or how I pretended to be Natalie Wood in West Side Story doing "I Feel Pretty." I even watched a really old one, Jeannette McDonald in The Merry Widow. I used to sing a song from this when I was a little girl, only I thought the words were: "Deliah, oh Deliah, the witch of the wood..." I found out the words really were: "Dear love, oh dear love, I wish that you would...."

Rebecca :
By the way, I was moved by your own poetry which heads each chapter - your love of living & writing shines through! I too had to memorize Kipling's If poem - only as a duty to my father, who had been an underage engineer in WWI & designed munitions factories during WWII. While I thought it a rousing poem I was always disappointed that being a daughter meant nothing in our household, to society at large and to an author whose work I admired. I was in the Poetry Club, acted in school plays & all our times tables were learnt by rote - the entire classroom chanting them out loud. With the advent of computers do you know if students still have to memorize anything in school?
 
Susannah :
Not like we did.

Rebecca :
Coming up in the 1950s & matriculating in the '60s was a unique rite-of-passage - one foot in the post WWII mindset with the other heading toward the Moon. The Cold War in the form of missiles from Cuba were much more real for people in the South than anywhere else in America, although the hair stood up on the back of my neck when I was sunbathing on Chicago's Elm Street beach when a missile came up out of its silo not 100 yards away from me. The first time the sirens went off on Tuesday mornings I dived under my desk - the last time I'd heard that sound was when I was a toddler! Morality seems to be a major pressures for all girls everywhere yet in the South there's something else added to it, can you explain that & what pressures do you think Southern girls have today?

Susannah :
We kind of slipped from Mortality to Morality there and I almost missed it. I think it (morality) has been a part of keeping women in their place. If you're on a pedestal you can't get dirty. So you can't be part of business or politics, not because you aren't smart enough but because you're too pure to do "what must be done." And of course, if you are good at business, that's proof positive that you aren't a nice girl. I'm not sure Southern girls are that different today from other girls. Time is pressing today's young woman. They want families but they know they have to be able to support themselves. I think their starting expectations are too low. They need to demand more from the beginning and expect to get it. Especially, they need classes that are relevant. They don't have time to waste.

Rebecca :
I enjoyed the networking among mothers so that each girl got a truly well-rounded education. I had a couple of other mothers in whose homes I was both welcomed & enjoyed. How would you say suburbia has affected that community of women & daughters?

Susannah :
I'm not sure it's suburbia. I noticed that we were much more reluctant to do for others' children because of the law. Parents seem to fear being sued for all sorts of things: letting a child leave a party under the influence (even if they came that way) or negligence when a child is injured in their care; even being the target of accusations of child abuse. Map of the World was scary because it was so nearly true.

Rebecca :
Ah the dreaming! I too had dreams of flying, soaring, making height & swooping under street lights. At first I was uncomfortable reading Lucy's dreams & then I remembered who & where I am, sat back & relished them. Very well done! mm-good! How difficult is it to write about sexuality? Knowing it's "going public"?

Susannah :
This is something like separating fiction from memory... it's another facet of getting inside another person and remembering you're not telling your own experience but what that character experienced. It's just that you have no way to really validate that experience. I think I worry more about the sex not seeming to fit the character more than being "fittin'"

Rebecca :
My dear Susannah - it's been a pleasure.


(Published June 11, 2000)