Interview with Poet Carol Edwards
1. Have you always been a writer?
Maybe? I’ve had an active imagination since childhood, expressed in daydreaming and playing pretend and such. For sure I’ve been an avid reader since I could read on my own. Writing took longer. I’m pretty sure I turned into a writer when I discovered diaries, so about nine or ten.
2. When did you realize that maybe writing was actually a "thing" you could do, get published and even sell?
Those were separate stages. I realized I “could do” writing during high school because I got high grades in English class, and often aspired to be a bestselling novelist. But high school is also when I discovered acting, so writing took a back seat.
Several unfinished stories and a couple decades later, I’d been published via different employers (maybe a hundred technical articles, not sure, and one creative article) and I felt proud of those, but selling my non-employment writing didn’t seem a real possibility until someone else nudged me into it.
3. What was your first sale as a writer and how did it feel to sell your work?
“Pterippus: A Riddle” in Space & Time was my first real sale, as in not written as part of my job. I submitted three poems in the hope they would pick one. It was both my first overall poetry publication and my first paid poetry piece. I felt…. Elated, dumbfounded. I almost didn’t believe it, but the email was right there in my inbox, the agreement form attached with my name and poem title in it. I ran squee’ing into the other room to tell my husband, then promptly cried.
That moment also had an astounding effect on my confidence. I tackled poeting with more enthusiasm, submitted poems for publication with greater frequency, and rejections didn’t dent my belief that there were people out there who liked my work; I just needed to find them.
4. How has writing helped you in other areas of life besides being something you could earn money from?
On the practical side, mastering the technical aspects of writing (grammar, punctuation, syntax, vocabulary, etc.) has helped me pretty much everywhere – jobs, school, creative expressions, resumes, social media and blog posts, emails and paper letters. The need to write well is all-pervasive. When you write well, you gain a reputation for professionalism, and with professionalism, competency.
From a psychological standpoint, journaling, story writing, and poetry have all helped me process life and the feelings and fears that come with it, and yes, acted as venting and escapism. Poetry, however, is unique of the three – it gives me a channel to create things beautiful and meaningful, sometimes horrifyingly so, out of painful experiences. It helps me believe that the worst times of my life aren’t wasted, and maybe someone will be helped by a poem I write.
5. What was your biggest accomplishment as a writer?
I have three – first, that I took the crucial step and submitted poems at all; second, I have a whole book published; and third, that I got a poem accepted into the same anthology as one of my heroes.
6. Who has inspired you the most in the writing field?
Linda D Addison. I met her November 2014 at TusCon (a small literary convention in Tucson, AZ) during her public reading panel. A mutual acquaintance afterwards introduced her to me as “a horror writer.” Hilariously, only in 2019 did I find out she’s a poet as well as a fiction writer. I promptly inhaled what of her collections I could find at my local library, and ended up buying all of them.
Linda has been one of the most supportive and encouraging people in my poetry journey. Publishing only became a serious idea when Linda heard me read at a poetry slam and told me I should start sending out my poems to publishers. She gave me resources to find where to submit, and when a publisher asked me to send them a whole manuscript, she took time in her busy schedule to give me a few key steps in compiling a collection. She even wrote a brief review for my book after it came out.
I’m a huge fan of Linda and her work, without a doubt, but more than that, her poetry inspires me to write, and to write better. It’s a joyous thing when you find an author whose writing inspires you.
7. What are some of the challenges you have faced as a writer and how did you overcome them?
There are many, but I’ll give you the biggest one, because it affects so many aspiring writers.
The Inner Censor. This is the voice or feeling in your mind that tells you things like, “That’s not very interesting,” and “someone else said that already,” and “no one will want to read this.” Your Inner Censor is mean, and it lies, and it will keep you from writing if you do nothing about it.
I could not overcome my Inner Censor by myself. I didn’t know what it was until I read Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write (“Inner Censor” is her term). I strongly recommend this book for writers at any stage, and most especially for people, like me, who have written with great sincerity and effort, but keep colliding with themselves and end up with writer’s block, or worse, writer’s stop.
Cameron’s premise is that everyone can write, and you don’t need a specialized education to do so. The book is broken up into very short chapters, and each one has an exercise at the end. If you choose the read the book, also do the exercises.
Your Inner Censor will also tell you a malicious half-truth – “this other writer is just so much better than me, I’ll never write like them, why bother.”
No, you won’t, which is the truth part. They are them, and you are you. But it’s a lie that someone else being more experienced than you is a valid reason to give up. You’ll get so much better at writing the more you do it. And you can practice things you see in another person’s writing – their phrasing, the words they choose that never would have occurred to you, the way they arrange thoughts and say things without outright saying them. With study and practice, you’ll get better at those things, too, but you will always be you, and that’s a good thing. A unique thing. It’s your work, your thoughts, your voice. Keep going. You’ll reach their experience level the more you DO the writing, and there are people out there who want to read your work, they just haven’t found you yet.
8. What is the best writing advice you have ever received and why do you feel it is important?
From Julia Cameron’s book The Right to Write: beginning writers should be very selective with whom they share their work. Our creativity is a fledgling thing and needs to be protected. People will offer critique out of a sense that they’re helping (or, sometimes, out of a sense that if it was tough for them, it should be tough for you), and can kill your creativity with a careless word.
I made this mistake when I was young, and it crippled my inclination to write poetry for a few decades. A few years ago, I made the same mistake again, but thankfully, I regained my poetic footing because I had my Safe Reader (another concept from Julia Cameron) who kept telling me all the things she loves about my poems. She helped me remember that one person acting like a jerk is just the one person, and in my case, his criticism spoke more about his character (being harsh with my work because a professor was harsh with his) than my skill.
9. What sort of writing do you do now?
Outside of work, pretty much only poetry, though I have a couple flash fiction pieces lurking around I’ll eventually submit.
10. Where can we find some of your work online?
www.practicallypoetical.wordpress.com, but I post there sporadically. I do, however, keep the intro page updated with all the places I’ve been published, both print and digital. Several publishers have free PDF versions of issues or anthologies folks can download.
11. What advice do you have for aspiring writers thinking of taking the leap of getting their work published?
1. Rejection is unavoidable (I get more rejections than acceptances) and often it has nothing to do with you – your piece either didn’t resonate with the publisher, or it didn’t fit with what the publisher wanted for their issue/anthology/whatever.
However, that doesn’t mean a piece you thought was finished is actually finished. Several times when I’ve had a poem rejected, I reread it and discovered I could improve it. Then, when I submitted the revised piece to a different publisher, it got accepted.
2. If you use someone’s work as inspiration for yours, credit them. I’ve written poems based on art and photography and other poetry, and if my poem is ever published anywhere, I state under my poem title “inspired by [piece title] by [artist/author name].” I’ve seen other poets put “after [artist/author name]” under their poem title to convey the same. I’ve also seen “in response to [piece title] by [artist/author name].”
3. Publishers/editors are not infallible – they may tell you to change something that doesn’t need to be changed; be patient and courteous when correcting them.
a. However, you are also not infallible – a publisher/editor may call out a change and they’re right; thank them.
b. There may be a middle ground between a publisher’s suggested edit and how you want your piece to read. It’s OK to offer an alternate revision back to them.
4. You should not have to pay a publisher to read your work – publishers that have a “reading fee” may guarantee monetary compensation to their contributors, but there could be a few to several hundred writers also submitting. It’s essentially a gamble, but ultimately your choice.
a. Publishers that have no reading fee often do not pay monetary compensation, and that’s okay. Again, it’s your choice if you want to submit to them.
i. Such publishers are usually up front about being “non-paying,” and they often offer something else instead, like a free digital copy of the issue/anthology/etc. Some publishers offer a free print copy, and I love it when they do.
5. Read any publishing agreement carefully multiple times before signing.
a. A standard contributor publishing agreement should state that you, the author, retain ownership and rights to your own work, and that you’re granting the publisher first publishing rights (sometimes they get specific, like first North American publishing rights, or first English-speaking publishing rights, or first electronic publishing rights, etc.), but all rights revert to you after publication, either immediately or a reasonable time period.
i. I’ve had contractual time limits anywhere from 1 month to 1 year, but never longer than 1 year.
6. You should not have to pay a publisher to publish your book. A publisher asking you to “invest” in publishing your book by paying them, or to pay them the difference if your book sales fail to offset expenses, smells strongly of a scam.
a. I urge you research any publisher’s reputation before you send them a manuscript.
7. It’s OK to ask a publisher to alter a draft book contract.
a. You may feel anxious to sign as-is because you desperately want to be published, but if you want a clause changed, you can ask them to change it.
12. What are your final thoughts about being a writer?
· Most published writers have other jobs to pay bills. A very few are lucky enough to support themselves solely through writing; if they do, it’s a lot of hard work.
· Trying on another writer’s style for a while is an excellent way to find out what works for you personally, and what doesn’t. This is how your writer’s “voice” evolves.
· Editing is your friend. I have never written anything perfectly the first time; all my writing – poems, stories, emails, this interview – gets multiple layers of edits because editing allows me to improve and clarify what my subconscious throws at me.
·Keep going. You can do it. I believe in you.
ABOUT CAROL:
Carol Edwards is a northern California native transplanted to southern Arizona. She grew up reading fantasy and classic novels, climbing trees, and acquiring frequent grass stains. She currently enjoys a coffee addiction and raising her succulent army.
Her poetry has been published in numerous publications, both online and print, including Space & Time, POETiCA REViEW, Panoply Zine, The Post Grad Journal, The Wild Word, Written Tales Magazine, and Lit Shark Magazine, and in anthologies from White Stag Publishing, Southern Arizona Press, Red Penguin Books, The Ravens Quoth Press, and Black Spot Books. More of her work is forthcoming in Playlist of the Damned (Weird Little Worlds), Mother Knows Best: Tales of Handmade Horror (Black Spot Books), Frisson (The Ravens Quoth Press), and About Time (Red Penguin Books).
Her debut poetry collection, The World Eats Love, released April 25, 2023 from The Ravens Quoth Press, available in ebook and print formats. You can follow her on Instagram @practicallypoetical, and on X/Twitter and Facebook @practicallypoet. Her website is www.practicallypoetical.wordpress.com.