Feature: Cheryl & Janet Snell Day 6

Cheryl's Day 6 Q&A

Q:
Tell us more about your collaborations with your sister. How has it flourished and what do you think makes you a good team?

A:
I think one of our strengths is that we resist the temptation to merge. We respect one another’s boundaries in genre and pov, so our collaboration reaches beyond me telling what Janet shows. Our surface sensibilities may seem different, but, like siblings who sing together, there is a twinship at the core.

Q:
When did you first have an interest in poetry/writing?

A:
I had always scribbled for my own pleasure, but began to take it seriously in my early thirties.

Q:
What is your writing process?

A:
I start with an image, a phrase, or an idea, writing on those long yellow legal pads. Then I switch to the computer, where I work for a long time on several poems at once, revising and shaping them until I’m empty of ideas. Then I switch to prose.

The change energizes me. I’m always amazed at the way a switch of focus can untangle a particular difficulty.

I write until my concentration frays. Fiction demands a different type of attention from poetry. There’s a sense of urgency to get the story told. The poetry feeds the fiction, though, gives the language color and character. “In the novel or short story you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival,” May Sarton once wrote.

Q:
Where do you write? Is Ambiance Important?

A:
Not as much as comfort! My bed serves as my desk, but my walls are covered with Janet’s art, and there’s a big bay window overlooking the woods.

Q:
Do you have rituals or habits when you write?

A:
I begin every day by playing Bach, either at the piano or on a CD. His harmonies ground me. That’s the good habit—the bad one is that, once I’m at the computer, I surf way too much.

Q:
Do you do poetry readings, if so how do you prepare for a feature poetry reading?

A:
I no longer read in public, but when I did, I prepared like mad. I rehearsed like it was for a piano performance. I even wrote my patter down. Once in front of the audience, though, I ad-libbed a lot. Good times.

Q:
How do you think your poetry/writing impacts the lives of others?

A:
We never think that it does, do we? I found out recently that someone had pinned two of my poems on his office bulletin board “for inspiration”, he said. And a waitress at the neighborhood coffee shop quoted a chunk of one of my poems to me.

Q:
How has poetry/writing changed your life?

A:
It gave my life back to me. I had a head trauma in my late twenties that left me with aphasia. Writing poetry helped me relearn how to choose the right word.

Q:
Where does your inspiration come from?

A:
Many things! Nature and science and situations and behaviors. Words themselves, watching them play. Old music and new art. Music and writing have many elements in common, and mastering a piece of music is not unlike getting a piece of writing right.

And ever since Janet showed me how to see, I have loved modern art. Looking at it loosens my ability to make connections between disparate things. Did I just define a poem?

Q:
Who are your favorite writers/poets?

A:
Alice Munro for her wisdom, Tolstoy for how he weaves the social fabric of a time and place into personal drama. The poets Levertov, Merwin, Rich, Emily Dickinson, and Tomaz Salamun. The essayists and storytellers: Kundera, Stegner, Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Erdrich, Italo Calvino, Arundhati Roy. I respond to anything that ignites the imagination with respect to ideas.

Q:
Who are your writing influences and what was it about them that inspired you?

A:
My husband, a mathematical engineer, is a great influence. He communicates a reverence for how things work that is very inspiring. His explanations of scientific principles are the underpinnings of both Prisoner’s Dilemma and Multiverse. He was raised in India, and details from that culture have given me lots of material for my novels Rescuing Ranu and Shiva’s Arms.

Janet continues to influence my writing, both directly:

Vein

She draws brush across canvas.

Her eyes go to her hand, which is shaking slightly.

The image takes shape anyway,

rising by layers out of surrounding space.


Is it the hand that creates it, or the eye

that gives it life?

What’s buried beneath: alizarin, vermillion, cadmium red

wings beating everywhere at once.

© Cheryl Snell


...and indirectly. We share books and music and pictures as well as DNA and history. My tastes have broadened thanks to her. I owe her a lot.

Q:
How do you deal with writer's block?

A:
Somebody once told me that writer’s block is a hoax. I don’t know about that, but personally I don’t get blocked. Maybe it’s because I’m willing to “kill my darlings.” I’m a big fan of the revision.

I really like the computer for that, the ease with which phrases can be moved around, sparking new ideas and fresh connections. These endless possibilities can lead to other problems, of course. Ralph Ellison couldn’t finish his second novel, and it grew to thousands of pages.

Q:
What advice would you give beginning poets/writers?

A:
Write every day, and read more than you write.

Q:
What is your view on self publishing?

The new publishing paradigm in which a poet hires an independent editor for a manuscript they subsequently self-publish has possibilities. If the poet has mastered craft, and some of the poems already been vetted through publication in journals, I don’t see why there should be a stigma. Perhaps it would give rise to more varied voices, and less homogenized work.

When the late lamented Lopside Press went under soon after Prisoner’s Dilemma was published, Janet and I expanded our book and republished it under the Scattered Light Publications imprint. We found the act empowering. Then, we put out a collection of new poems and paintings, Memento Mori. We were encouraged by the good reviews and general response, so we went on to publish Nanette Rayman-Rivera’s full length collection, shana linda~pretty pretty. We aim to publish one female poet per year under our imprint.

Q:
What impact do you think online social forums have had for artists, writers and musicians? (positive, negative, etc...?)

A:
The community, especially the workshops, is an effective bridge for many people. But there’s a glut of traffic now, everyone vying for eyeballs. Writers have to be mini-moguls, with publicity campaigns and platforms and branding, in order to be heard. The voice gets strident, or else hoarse.

Q:
How do you feel about the old saying "Write what you know"?

A:
I’m more in Flaubert’s camp, when he said, “I never know what I think about a thing until I’ve written on it.”