We electronically sat down with Sally Cooper, author of Smells Like Heaven (ARP Books), to talk about writing rituals, Severus Snape, and following your nose through life’s tough choices.***PSST: Smells Like Heaven is 20% off today and tomorrow, so what’s stopping you from diving into this interconnected collection of short stories that take place over thirty years in the small, fictional town of Fletcher? (Discount will be reflected at cart.)
By:
ALU Editor
Share It:
All Lit Up: Is there one stand-out moment or experience you had that helped you realize you wanted to become a writer? Sally Cooper: In grad school, I signed up for a Canadian Literature course with a stellar reading list and revered professor. When I asked another Can Lit major if he’d signed up, too, he said no, because the prof was a tough grader, and he wanted to get into a top PhD program. I was floored, having followed my nose all through university, taking courses featuring books I wanted to read with no thought to a future. Once it sank in that “academics” was a career, that if I continued I’d have to think like my friend in order to survive, I had a revelation. I wasn’t there because I loved taking apart works of art, finding meaning, adhering to theories, building my ideas on the spoils of another’s. I was there because I plain flat-out loved books and I burned to write them. Curiosity, envy and ego fueled me: how did she write that? Can I? Then I knew, really knew, I wanted to write books so others could have what I had when reading. ALU: What do you enjoy reading? SC: I’m a peripatetic reader. I enjoy literary thrillers, domestic fiction, short story collections, memoirs, thick, engrossing literary novels, slim well-crafted literary novels, rock and roll biographies, writing about television and film. ALU: Do you have any rituals you abide by when you’re writing? SC: My rituals are so simple: Cup of tea, bar of dark chocolate. Get the social media browsing out of the way, read over what I wrote the day before, remind myself to get up and move once in a while. Once, I used music compulsively, playing the same three albums as I wrote then declaring myself done. Now I don’t bother.Sally’s workspace.ALU: What’s the most surprising thing about being a writer? SC: A few things surprise me. How alive my characters are to me. How much love I feel for some, and empathy for others. How scenes I’ve created live on inside me next to memories. Not to be confused with but every bit as vibrant in how they present to me when I think of them. How I can accidentally erase a chunk of my manuscript or lose it in the cyber-ether then remember what I’ve written almost verbatim. I’ve tested this phenomenon before when the missing manuscript fragment turns up.ALU: Who is your favourite fictional character? SC: Severus Snape. I’ve read the entire Harry Potter series aloud to my children over the past four years, my first time through it. Early on, I had a feeling about Snape, and loved teasing my daughters, saying, “I don’t know about that Snape,” and inciting a barrage of Boo Snape! comments. ALU: What are you working on now?SC: I’m working on edits of my third novel, coming out in 2019.ALU: Describe your perfect writing day.SC: It’s one where I can’t wait to start and am still going full speed when I have to stop. Immersive.Sally’s writing advice.ALU: Have you ever experienced writer’s block? What did you do about it?SC: A few years before I published my first novel, I felt blocked, or rather, I felt cornered. The words mostly wouldn’t come. When they did, they died on the page, empty. I wanted publication. I craved creative flow. I yearned for acknowledgement. Yet, I couldn’t see straight. Every attempt to write left me feeling cramped and tight. So I let it go, just stopped writing altogether and put my energies into making right with my life, my relationships, my employment, my living situation. It took two years before I felt the drive again to write. When I did, I eased in slowly but it was all there. Within two years after that, I’d completed and sold my first novel. * * *About Sally: I live in a former worker’s cottage near Hamilton’s Dundurn castle surrounded by overgrown gardens on a corner lot. I have a hound dog and a streetwise tom cat. My favourite local restaurants are August 8, Mesa and Pho Lac Vien. I love noshing on Donut Monster at Ark & Anchor and on the Mulberry Café’s Hello Dolly squares. My musical tastes are wide-ranging and I go in and out of obsessions. Queen, Rolling Stones, Lucinda Williams, Bruce Springsteen, Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams, Prince, Bowie, the Nashville soundtracks come to mind. My favourite travel destination has been Taos, New Mexico, which I’ve visited three separate times, once for three months. A third of my new novel will be set in New Mexico. Devon in Smells Like Heaven visits Taos, too.My previous novels are Tell Everything (Dundurn, 2008) and Love Object (Dundurn, 2002).My website is sallycooper.ca, and you can also find me on Twitter and Instagram.* * *Thanks so much to Sally for answering our questionnaire (and submitting those A+ photos!). Don’t forget, her book Smells Like Heaven is currently 20% off, but only until Friday, August 25, 2017 (discount reflected at cart).For more writer’s block, click here.
