In the Service of Writing: 11 Questions With Novelist Scott Cheshire

Scott Cheshire

By Daniel Ford

I first became aware of Scott Cheshire’s High as the Horses’ Bridles after reading a feature on Grantland recommending the novel.

I’m a sucker for books that explore father and son relationships, so I was already primed to be a huge fan. An intriguing discourse on religion and the New York City setting made me run to my nearest Barnes & Noble.

I’m not the only one that felt that way. The flames of damnation envelop Cheshire’s cover, but they may as well be a metaphor of how hot this book is. In addition to Grantland’s glowing review (no pun intended), High as the Horses’ Bridles, the novel earned positive reviews from The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post, was a Time Out New York Critic’s Pick, and was an Amazon “Best Book of the Month” in July 2014. Not bad for a first novel!

Cheshire graciously answered some of my fan boy questions about his career, his writing process, and our shared love of Queens, N.Y. Boston-area readers eager to hear more from the author can attend his reading and Q&A at Harvard Book Store today at 7:00 p.m.

Daniel Ford: When did you start writing? Was it something that came to you naturally or was it developed over time?

Scott Cheshire: My earliest writing memory is a long handwritten letter, three or four pages, to my parents, making a strong defense for not cleaning my room. I was probably about 9 or 10 years old, which makes sense when I think about it, because while I spent most of my 20s and early 30s writing what might be called more typical stories, I seem to have returned to a more personal voice in my work. Thankfully, I am no longer addressing my parents. Instead, I’m talking to the universe. That came out as a joke, but I sort of mean it.

DF: What is your writing process like? Do you outline? Listen to music?

SC: Well, I’m certainly not the type of writer that “writes” every day, although almost everything I do is in the service of writing. I read every day, a lot. I have a reading schedule that is usually thematic, focused on whatever project I’m working on. As far as an outline, it’s funny, I was just talking recently with a writer about this. My first novel, which has an unorthodox shape and structure, was written in the dark (maybe all novels are). What I mean to say is I was learning how novels work while writing one, and was rather committed to that method. And so save for a few central ideas, I had no idea how the book would work. I did not outline. Whereas this new novel seems to be demanding one of me. I one day got a sense of the new book in its entirety, the outline of the book, which is a strange feeling.

And yes to music, always music. Lots of 1960s “free jazz” and noisy punk rock.

DF: When you first finished High as the Horses’ Bridles did you know you had something good, or did you have to go through multiple rounds of edits before you had something you felt comfortable sending out into the world?

SC: I thought I finished it several times. And I was always wrong, except once. When I finally got an agent, who’s a super reader, we worked some more on the manuscript. Same with my editor. As I said, the book has something of a strange shape, plus I worked on it for a long time (it’s so easy to get lost in the forest of your own work), so their input was welcome. I needed it. But I should also say the strangeness of the book led me to think I was working on something good, or at very least interesting. I also think my perspective, coming from a place of a particularly relevant religious disappointment, helped. I knew I was working on something that others wanted to read. I had to believe that.

DF: The book was named to Amazon’s Best Book of the Month in July 2014 and Grantland just ran a feature highly recommending it to readers. What have those positive experiences been like and has it affected the way you think about your work?

SC: It’s been wonderful, I have to say. The independent bookstores have been so incredibly supportive. Here in New York City, and as far thrown as Ann Arbor, Mich., Texas, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and Seattle. I had a chance to go west and read and found there a vibrant community of excited readers. Warmed my heart. But I also want to point out that Amazon has been super supportive of the book too because they are real fans of the book, which for some writers is a problematic statement. Including me. But I think it’s important to remember that Amazon, while largely monolithic, yes, also has individual editors that truly love books and care about book culture and are trying to better that system. I have met some of them. And they are people too it turns out. And readers thus far have very strong responses to the book. They love it or hate it. And I think that’s a good place to be.

DF: Your novel centers around religious belief and a father and son relationship defined in part by what they both believe. How much of yourself and your interactions with your family and friends did you put into the story? What was your inspiration for the story in the first place?

SC: I was raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and because most young men in the world train as child preachers, I was a child preacher, too. Knocked on doors. Stood on stages, etc. So that certainly informed the story. But at some point I became aware that my story was not enough, and I soon became aware the story was really about America, about humanity in general, about our desire to make meaning, to transcend. I’m no longer a “believer,” but I found the more I dug into our national religious history the more I recognized myself. And it was uncomfortable, to be honest. But that makes for good fiction. As far as family, well, you draw from what you know, and I did that, but at the same time this story hardly resembles my life. Thankfully, my family agrees.

DF: New York City offers a writer a character that is instantly recognizable to readers, but can also slip into cliché when applied the wrong way. Was that something you were conscious of when choosing your setting? Or as a New Yorker, did you intrinsically know what pitfalls to stay away from?

SC: I was lucky because I found myself writing a story about character falling away from belief, no longer privileging a world to come, and now falling in love with the given physical world. And so Josie (the narrator) is looking, always looking at what things surrounds him. And it often feels like the first time he’s seen a chain link fence, a beach, a telephone pole, etc. And so I needed to be hyper-vigilant about avoiding cliché. Not to mention, I wanted to write about Queens (I’m from Queens), and there are not many writing about Queens. It seemed wide open territory.

DF: I lived in Queens, N.Y., for all of the 11 years I was in New York City and I loved every minute of it. What was it like growing up there and what’s one of your favorite Queens stories that didn’t end up as part of the novel?

SC: I love Queens. And I love Queens writers and writers who write about Queens (like novel-ists Victor LaValle, Bill Cheng, Matthew Thomas, John Weir, the poet Todd J. Colby, not to mention Kerouac and Whitman. Alas, these are all men, but are just a few off the top of my head…). And as far as a favorite story…that’s a fantastic question. I have a hundred. But here is a good one:

When I was about thirteen or fourteen, walking down 101st Ave., in Richmond Hill, headed for school, headphones on, listening to new wave, I’m sure (until very soon after I discovered Minor Threat and was changed forever after). I had my head down, bobbing it, not paying attention to what was in front of me. Until I walked right into somebody, almost knocked the guy over. I looked up…and there stood mafia don John Gotti (they were very present in my part of Queens). I looked around. I was surrounded by muscle, bear-sized men in tracks suits. I was lifted into the air, and thrown against a brisk wall by one his guys. My feet dangled. Gotti walked over to me (headphones now around my neck), looked me up and down, and laughed. He said, “He’s just a kid. Leave him alone.” I took the day off from school that day. Then again, I did that a lot.

DF: Tell me a little about your work with the Tottenville Review and the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop.

SC: I don’t work nearly as much as I used to with Tottenville Review, mostly because I’m writing a new book. It’s a great magazine with a great mission—to bring attention to books that might fall beneath the media radar. I was the interviews editor there for a few years, which basically meant I begged writers to talk to us and facilitated conversations between people. I paired up people to have a talk. As far as Sackett, Julia Fierro’s organization, it’s a fantastic New York institution. I teach small groups, nine or 10 people, and we meet in bars, bookstores, apartments, and we workshop work. We also do a lot of reading. We read and discuss short stories, in addition to the workshop stories, every week. I enjoy it immensely. Lately, I’m doing more one-on-one work, editing, manuscript notes, etc.

DF: What’s next for you following the success of High as the Horses’ Bridles?

SC: The next book is a thriller set in Queens, again and is about a family falling apart after their daughter goes missing. It’s shaping up to be rather dark. And funny. Hopefully dark and funny.

DF: What advice would you give to up-and-coming writers?

SC: Read like hell.

DF: Can you tell us one random fact about yourself?

SC: I’m right now staring at one of the ceramic-cast idols actually used on the set of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." One of these:

I treasure it. (Bad pun).

To learn more about Scott Cheshire, check out his official website, like him on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter @ScottCheshire.

The Writer's Bone Interviews Archive

The Editor is In: 9 Questions With Grammar Guru Patricia T. O’Conner

Patricia T. O'Conner and her husband Stewart Kellerman

By Daniel Ford

I’ve always believed that to be a good writer, one needs a great editor.

I don’t understand writers who get pissy about their stuff being edited. Writing is personal, but if you want to hack it as a writer, you need to embrace the samurai sword of a usually much wiser and objective wordsmith. I consider my first editor to be my college professor, the late Kalev Pehme, who required every one in his copy editing class read a grammar book of our choice. Most of the class opted for The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, but I did some research and ended up choosing Patricia T. O’Conner’s Woe is I. That’s really when I found out I knew nothing about grammar.

But O’Conner’s book patiently led me down the right path and I can now realize when I’m making dopey grammatical mistakes. I can also admonish others for using “due to” and “hopefully” incorrectly (although socially acceptable) and have the facts to back it up.

I was lucky enough to talk to O’Conner recently and get her thoughts on writing and editing, her career at The New York Time Book Review, and what it’s like being married to another editor.

Daniel Ford: When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Was it from birth, or was it something you discovered over time?

Patricia T. O’Conner: My original ambition, at age 9 or so, was to be a cowgirl—Annie Oakley was my inspiration. But practical considerations intervened. When I first realized I had to actually earn a living, writing seemed the least painless option. Little did I realize just how difficult it is to write.

DF: As someone who studied journalism in college I have to ask, what was the graduate journalism department at the University of Minnesota like? What were some of the things you covered while you studied urban journalism?

POC: This is a long time ago—the early 1970s. And back then, being in a graduate journalism program was absolutely thrilling. Between classes, we gathered in the student lounge to watch the Watergate hearings. Newspaper reporting seemed the most glamorous, heroic pursuit in the world back then. We were pretty full of ourselves!

What an exhilarating time that was for a young aspiring journalist. This spring marks the 40th anniversary of those nationally televised Senate hearings. People were throwing around terms like “dirty tricks,” “deep throat,” “inoperative,” “smoking gun,” “follow the money,” “the plumbers.” Journalism has never been the same.

In the program I was in, we covered the same things the Minneapolis Star covered—police, courts, legislature. We went out on assignment (when we weren’t busy watching the news on television!), then returned to the journalism building to file our stories on deadline. It was hard work, but not nearly as hard as being a working reporter later.

DF: We’re big fans of The New York Times Book Review here at Writer’s Bone. What was your experience as an editor for that publication like and what was the most memorable book review that crossed your desk?

POC: Working at the Book Review was like no other job in the world. I was there for 11 years, and I learned more in those 11 years than at any other time in my life. There were so many brilliant—and funny!—people crammed into those little offices on the eighth floor of the old Times building on West 43rd Street.

Everybody who was anybody wrote for the Book Review, all the best minds of their time. Even so, their prose often needed tweaking! As a copy editor there, I tried to make sure the writing was as elegant and fluid and accurate as it could be. A review had to make sense and it had to be fair—that is, everything said of the book and the author had to be true. Sometimes the authors complained about how they were reviewed—more than once, Norman Mailer came up to the office to yell and pound on somebody’s desk. So everything said in a review or essay had to be defensible.

I can’t pick a “favorite” review, but one of the best I can recall was a piece Eudora Welty wrote in 1981 about a collection of stories by Elizabeth Bowen. Flawless writing on the subject of flawless writing! I’ve looked up the review, and here’s one of Welty’s sentences: “As it ends the story can be seen to be perfect, and the perfection lies in the telling—the delicacy, the humor, above all the understanding that has enveloped but never intruded upon it, never once pricked the lovely, free-floating balloon.”

Of course, there was bad writing on the Book Review as well—stuff that landed with a thud. But the wonderful writing more than made up for it. You can see why I loved my job there. I also got to write things myself. I wrote reviews and essays.

DF: I remember reading Woe Is I for the first time in college and being blown away by all the things I didn’t know or was doing wrong all my life. I would go to parties with the book and explain all the grammatical things I was learning. What made you decide to start writing books about grammar, and do you think grammar has gotten better or worse since you first published it?

POC: One day in 1994 I got a call at my desk at the Book Review. Jane Isay, who was then the publisher at Grosset-Putnam, asked me if I’d be interested in writing a light-hearted grammar book. At the time, this was a contradiction in terms!

I said yes, and started to compile lists of all the grammar and usage problems I’d run into during my years as an editor at the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier (Iowa), the Des Moines Register, The Wall Street Journal, andThe New York Times. There was a lot of material to work with. For instance, even some senior editors at the Book Review couldn’t get their minds around the concept of the dangling modifier, as in “walking through the woods, a mountain sprang into view.”

So I collected all these problems and set about to explain them in the simplest possible terms. My idea was to avoid the grammatical terminology as much as possible, and to make the examples amusing.

DF: In your experience and research, what’s the biggest grammatical mistake that people make? What’s the most obscure piece of grammatical trivia I can use at the next party I attend?

POC: Pronouns seem to account for the bulk of the grammatical mistakes. Then verb conjugations—people get tenses wrong. The most common problem I notice is the tendency to use “X and I” for every purpose, even when “X and me” is appropriate.

But people make even the most obvious mistakes, using object pronouns like “me” and “him” as subjects. Most notorious example: I was once invited to appear before a large group of school teachers and administrators in suburban New Jersey. A high school principal and one of his colleagues approached me beforehand to apologize because, as the principal said, “Him and me will have to leave early.” This is a true story. My husband, who was standing next to me, is a witness!

DF: I had a professor in college spend a whole class on why email was spelled “e-mail” and not the way it is now. Language is constantly evolving in the digital age, so how does grammar keep up with it? Why are some rules okay to change, while others need to stay the same?

POC: Historically, hyphenated constructions tend to lose their hyphens. This isn’t a grammatical issue, it’s one of style and usage. And the “rules” of style and usage change much more readily than grammar—the bedrock of the language. That’s why there are three different editions of Woe Is I—the book tries to stay ahead of the curve on style and usage. In fact, I have a file of material to use in case I’m ever allowed to do a fourth edition.

DF: We normally ask writers what their process is like, but I’m more interested in finding out what your editing process is like. Do you need absolute quiet, or do you prefer to listen to music while you edit?

POC: The quieter the better. No music. I am a musical person, and I get distracted by what the musician is doing.

DF: You manage a website and have written several books with your husband Stewart Kellerman, who is also a journalist and editor. How have words shaped your relationship and who would you say is the better editor?

POC: It’s sometimes a challenge to keep my cool as Stewart tells me something I’ve written is gibberish. This is a real test of a marriage (we’ve been married for 26 years). Even as I write this (under duress), he’s editing one of my blog items and tearing it to pieces. He’s probably the better editor—as I’m sure he would tell you.

DF: Name one random fact about yourself.

POC: I’m dieting (have lost 11 pounds in the last two months) so I’m cranky right now. As you can perhaps tell from my last answer!

To learn more about Patricia T. O'Conner, check out her official website www.grammarphobia.com or follow her on Twitter  @grammarphobia.

The Writer's Bone Interviews Archive