Interview: Sue William Silverman
More and more, I think about how, at its base, creating art is not a solitary experience but one meant to be shared with friends and like-minded people.
In her recent craft book, Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul, Sue William Silverman not only offers a meticulous and engaging approach to writing nonfiction but also creates a welcoming sense of community. Silverman uses examples from her own life and writing to reverse engineer the processes that carry writers from life events and memories to essays and memoirs. While diligent and almost scientific in her engagement with nonfiction writing, Silverman approaches the reader with understanding and kindness.
Yet Silverman doesn’t shy away from approaching difficult subjects—her book’s title, which evokes imagery of craft (acetylene torches are used in welding) and danger, acknowledges the risk that nonfiction writing holds for an author, especially one who writes about traumatic events. However, Silverman wants other writers to know that they are not alone. With this book, she intends to encourage writers through exercises and prompts while also nurturing them and inviting them into an artistic community. In the interview below, Sue William Silverman generously provides additional insight into her writing techniques and teaching approach.
—Sabina Abd Livadariu
Sabina Abd Livadariu: You start the craft book by mentioning the concepts “show” and “tell” as they appear in your childhood memories, and then as writing approaches for fiction and nonfiction writing. Can you elaborate on how the concepts are reflected in the two different literary genres?
Sue William Silverman: I began as a fiction writer, which resulted in about five bad unpublished novels! My writing teachers drilled the show-don’t-tell mantra into me, but I never fully grasped this concept.
When I switched to creative nonfiction (CNF), however, and wrote about childhood, I rediscovered how, in kindergarten, I had enjoyed a show-and-tell activity. We’d show a souvenir, say, from a summer vacation, and then we’d tell our classmates what it meant or represented.
With that, I realized I wasn’t meant to be only a “show” writer. I was also a “teller,” key to CNF. We show our stories using tangible sensory details to exemplify actions; then, with our authorial awareness, we tell or reflect upon them. We ruminate. We conjecture. We question and speculate. This constant interaction of showing and telling enhances the narrative until we discover deeper emotional truths: the story behind the story. Exploration of the self and the world around us, in this comprehensive way, enhances essays and memoirs.
SAL: You speak about how the individual reflects the universal in CNF. “A story seemingly about me must speak, universally, to others.’’ How do you think emerging writers should approach their memories and the impulse to write about them in order to achieve this connection to the universal?
SWS: CNF writers achieve the universal through metaphor—the pulse of CNF. It transforms life into art.
Here’s an example of metaphor from my memoir Love Sick about my recovery from sexual addiction. As a freshman in college, I had an affair with a man old enough to be my father. He wore a maroon cashmere scarf, which I coveted. One evening, when he dropped me off at my dorm, he gave it to me. The written scene begins:
…I press the scarf against my nose and mouth. I take a deep breath. The scent is of him—leaves smoldering in autumn dusk—and I believe it is a scent I have always craved, one I will always want…. I don’t understand why the scent of the scarf…seem[s] more knowable, more definite, more tangible than the rest of him.
In real life, this man’s maroon scarf was only a scarf.
However, once I added the sensory detail of leaves smoldering in autumn dusk—a scent more knowable than the man—the scarf became a metaphor depicting loss, longing, desire for love. This man was married. I could never have him. All I could have was the scarf, which became a stand-in for the loss I felt around the man.
A metaphor gives a tangible quality to abstract, universal emotions, like loss. If I just wrote that I felt loss, you couldn’t feel that abstract word. We can’t feel abstractions. However, through writing, I showed the reader my loss by using slanted sensory imagery, in this case the scarf. Once the reader metaphorically feels the loss, via the scarf, the feeling becomes greater than the self. It becomes universal.
SAL: You mention that in writing, an author must take risks and abandon the fear of being judged. I’m wondering how an author can write about their trauma with the vulnerability needed but also without re-traumatizing themselves.
SWS: Soon after beginning my first memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, I realized, to be emotionally authentic, I had to enter my dark, scary spaces—in this instance the experience of incest. At the same time, I had an epiphany: My father no longer had power over me. I, as a writer, now had the power. I owned the narrative. I owned my words. I owned my story. This realization greatly lessened any potential re-traumatizing.
But, that said, on a day when you’re particularly scared, write just one page. Or a paragraph. But write. The only way through scary material is, well, through it. Learn to sit in that dark place. Ask for help while you’re there. Many are sitting there with you. You’re not alone. We’re all in this together.
It’s also crucial to remember that whatever you write has already happened to you. You already survived. Now, empowered by language, you have the opportunity to organize your narrative, make sense of your life, transform it into art.
If you don’t write your story, it’s lost forever. (Please see Lisa Cooper Ellison’s blog for additional insights about self-care when writing trauma.)
After I finish writing such material, I always feel lighter, less burdened. Now, those words live outside of me on pieces of paper. I no longer contain the weight of trauma inside me. I have sent it out into the world.
Also know that once your words are out in the world, your narrative can help others to heal. My first book was published in 1997, and I’m still receiving emails from women thanking me.
SAL: I find the concept of wearing a mask in writing fascinating. In Acetylene Torch Songs, you write: “When writing creative nonfiction, I choose from a variety of masks that best represent my real selves.” There is so much depth of thought and truth in this sentence. Can you expand on the idea of “masking” and the process it suggests?
SWS: In order to capture the complexity of the self on the page, I envision and implement the use of metaphorical masks.
Here’s how it works:
With each essay or book, I develop a unique mask that’s written to artistically represent myself in that particular narrative, both externally and internally. Each piece I write sounds different, employs different sensory details, conveys different metaphors—all resulting in a different narrator and her mask. For example, the narrator in my first memoir wears a mask designed to show a young, wounded girl mis-loved by her father. The narrator in Love Sick, on the other hand, wears the tough, edgy mask of a sex addict.
When writing, we don’t hide ourselves by putting on a mask; instead, we reveal a particular aspect of ourselves. Paradoxically, then, we’re more honest, not less. Only when writing Love Sick—only when illuminatingly masked as a sex addict—did I unveil that particular struggle.
In short, I am an artistically masked representative of the real me. As I move from essay to essay or book to book, I’m constantly shape-shifting and morphing into a narrator more truthfully equipped to understand and reveal the situation and metaphors at hand.
Walt Whitman writes, “I contain multitudes.” I add that we contain a multitude of masks—eloquent, seeking, searching, and suggestive.
SAL: You write about alternative structures and speculative nonfiction, which I find intriguing since nonfiction is often seen as a less experimental genre. Can you elaborate?
SWS: It’s true that many memoirs written in the 1990s (when the first wave of memoirs hit the bookstores) were traditionally structured. Certainly, my first two books rely on straight-through narrative arcs. However, my two subsequent books, The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew and How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences, which are memoirs in essays, are more experimental.
One of my goals in Acetylene Torch Songs is to show how the genre has evolved. I wrote sample essays for each chapter of the book, many of which are speculative nonfiction embracing alternative forms such as the hermit crab, segmented, mosaic, list, meditative, and lyric essays.
Writing speculative nonfiction affords authors a greater opportunity to experiment, not just with structure, but with voice, masks, and memory. Alternative forms push the boundaries of perception. By speculating, our consciousness expands. We observe experience from new and different angles.
Dreams, fantasies, myths, reflections, signs and symbols, might more fully illuminate a core truth than a traditional narrative. We use our imaginations. We forecast. We create magic.
Experimentation frees a writer to enter new portals, revealing previously hidden worlds to the reader.
SAL: You mention several other writers in your book, among them Jorge Luis Borges, known mostly for his fantastical short stories. This is such an intriguing connection, I would love to hear more about your thoughts on this.
SWS: As I mentioned, we dream and fantasize. We have visions. These imaginings are as much a part of our lives as, say, going to the grocery store. We are all fabulists to some degree. To say these aspects of life are not a part of CNF would be to diminish the genre.
SAL: In your book, you talk about memoir writing as an act of resistance and connect memoirs to the #MeToo movement. How does writing give voice to those who have been silenced for millennia (in what you call “domestic wars”)?
SWS: The outpouring of memoir that began in the mid-1990s was an indisputable sign that women, and those considered “other,” no longer accepted the silence imposed on us by the white male patriarchy. We’d had enough.
When our books and voices shattered the silence, we disturbed this power structure. We shook it up and, subsequently, experienced backlash from some mainstream critics who pejoratively labeled us “navel gazers.” But this disparagement shows we hit a nerve. They are scared of our voices, our truths, our visions. So, we write about domestic violence, sexual assault, racism, homophobia, our mental and physical differences, and more, as a form of resistance.
Each book written by someone outside the power structure is its own #MeToo story; each book is saying #MyVoiceIsImportantToo.
SAL: Your approach to craft advice is almost clinical; you perform careful and detailed dissections of your own work in order to illustrate the creative concepts you mention. To me, this method is an indicator of an uncommon authorly cognizance; you seem to be highly aware of the inner workings of your writing. Can you talk a little about how you manage to blend these different aspects of yourself, a vulnerable nonfiction writer with a sharp theoretician?
SWS: My “secret” to writing is simply revision, revision, revision. My early drafts (one of which, a short essay, is included in Acetylene Torch Songs) are complete wrecks. The key to writing is tenacity. I simply don’t give up until all elements cohere.
In terms of my process, I begin by writing from my heart—to capture the feeling of the draft—before “allowing” my brain access to explore the inner workings of the piece.
By the time I reach the final drafts, I’m writing with a bit of emotional distance. I critically examine the piece until each sensory image (such as that maroon scarf mentioned earlier) reveals its metaphoric intention, until each sentence is stripped of unnecessary words, until each moment deepens the theme to turn life into art.
SAL: I was impressed by the efficacy of your writing suggestions and also by your kindness. When it comes to teaching, people often forget how much easier learning can be made by a teacher’s kind approach to the material and students. Can you talk more about your teaching philosophy as a college professor and also as an experienced writer?
SWS: As a child, because of the incest I experienced, the words I most needed to speak scared me. I lived in a family of silence and lies. I never told anyone my secrets. I had no sense of self, no voice, no personal language. I was a terrible student. No teacher encouraged me to succeed in anything. For years, I was lost.
But it was from this ragged life I knew I had to write—and then to teach. To make up for my own lack of nurturing and safety—my own fear of the fragility of the written word—I offer a safe place for my students to write, for their words and their courage to blossom. If my students write from a wound, I “sit” with them in that wound and help them find words to understand and heal it. My belief in the importance of their narratives never wavers. I teach in the low-residency MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and my goal as a mentor is to assist students in embracing their own vision in a piece of writing. Together, we explore their memoirs and essays until they reveal their true intentions.
Of course, I also push my students to grow. So I guess I’m both rigorous and empathetic in order to best honor the author’s journey.
In Acetylene Torch Songs, I offer a similar philosophy. This book avoids an academic complacency that would claim I know all the answers. I don’t. No one does. Instead, the book is meant to guide, nurture, and encourage. I share what I’ve learned along the way, including my mistakes. I mean for the book to be writer-friendly and welcoming. As writers, as artists, we’re all in this together. We struggle together. We learn together. We write together.
SUE WILLIAM SILVERMAN is an award-winning author of eight works of nonfiction and poetry. Her most recent book is Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul. Her previous book, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences, won the gold star in Foreword Reviews INDIE Book of the Year Award and the Clara Johnson Award for women’s literature. Other works include Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, made into a Lifetime TV movie; Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, which won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award Series for Creative Nonfiction; and The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew. She is cochair of the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Find Sue on Instagram @suewilliamsilverman.
SABINA ABD LIVADARIU is a writer and artist originally from Romania. Her written work has appeared in Clamor and her visual work has been part of an exhibit at Common Area Maintenance (CAM) in Seattle. Sabina is an editorial assistant for CRAFT and lives in Seattle.
