The Southeast Review Online

7/05/2008 [ interview ]

Quickie Quick Take with Steve Watkins

by Ashley Harris

Q. I read that you have a young adult novel, Goat Girl, coming out. Has your writing process changed from writing adult fiction to writing fiction for young adults? If so, How? Was one more challenging than the other?

I actually have two young adult books coming out. Down Sand Mountain in October of this year, from Candlewick Press, and Goat Girl a year or so after that, also from Candlewick.

Differences between adult and YA? Plenty. More present action in YA. More direct dialogue. Less back story. Fewer flashbacks. Young person’s POV. Mostly first person. Parents dead or absent. Faster pacing. Generally more optimistic. Generally lessons learned.

Haven’t noticed much difference in my writing process, though. Get up early before the kids. Drink coffee. Do the ritual stuff that one does. Reread whatever I wrote the day before. Hate it and doubt myself. Rewrite, reread, and rewrite more. Stumble into the zone. Write new. Feel exhilarated. Realize I feel exhilarated, which means I’m no longer writing. Realize the kids have been up for awhile and have destroyed much of the house and will soon eat one another if I don’t stop writing and feed them.

All genres are challenging. Just different sorts of challenges, all of which I both fear and enjoy.

Q. What kind of writing habits do you have? In the morning? With music?

No music. No nothing. I wish I had a studio like Georgia O’Keefe had when she was living in New York and painting clouds from her skyscraper view: plain, virtually no furniture, everything monochromatic, no distractions.

My “studio,” such as it is, is in our laundry room, and my desk is the size of the washing machine, only shorter.

Q. What is the question you wish people would ask about your work?

Gosh, Steve, how has winning the Pulitzer changed your life? Can we still be friends?

Q. Name a writer whose work is currently making you envious.

Julianna Baggott. How can you compete with someone who’s writing with both hands and both feet, publishing a book a month, raising cool hippie kids--and so photogenic!

Q. The living writer you most wish to have preserved for posterity (maybe frozen for later defrosting... a la Ted Williams...).

We’ll have to go with Tim O’Brien on that one. Or Toni Morrison. Or that deeply weird Edward P. Jones. And I’d like to at least get to have a chat some time with George Saunders.

Q. The writer—dead or alive— you’d most like to bury in the literary basement.

Dr. Seuss. I hate that guy, and his little books, too.

Q. What quote most often comes to mind? (Something a character says, a poet's line, a writer on writing, or a quote from someone at large that applies to writing...)

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett. Also, “… but always the moment came when no effort of thought could prevail against the sensation of being embedded in a jelly of light.” Ibid.

Q. The worst job you’ve ever had.

It’s a four-way tie: Roofer. Wrencher. Telephone counselor. Nurse’s Aide on a psychiatric ward.

Q. The job you’d want to have – other than writer, teacher.

Ashtanga yoga teacher.

Q. Favorite curse word.

A father loves all his children equally.

Steve Watkins’ collection of short stories, My Chaos Theory, has received national recognition, including citation in Best American Short Stories, winner of the Snake Nation Press Short Story Contest, and the Pushcart Prize. Watkins graduated from Florida State University and he is the author of the award winning non-fiction book The Black O: Racism and Redemption in an American Corporate Empire. Watkins has taught Vietnam literature, creative writing, and journalism at University of Mary Washington for the past fifteen years and he also teaches Ashtanga yoga. He currently lives in Virginia with his wife and four daughters. For more on Steve Watkins and his work visit http://watkins.elsweb.org.

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