The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #13: Laurie Stone
"Every sentence better be a surprise, or why bother?"
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the thirteenth installment, featuring author of six books and the newsletter . -Sari Botton
Laurie Stone is the author of six books, most recently Streaming Now, Postcards from the Thing that is Happening, long-listed for a PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for the art of the essay. She writes the column “Notes on Another New Life” for and is a frequent contributor to Paris Review and Evergreen Review.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I am 77, and I’ve been writing professionally since I was 25.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
Streaming Now, Postcards from the Thing that is Happening (Dottir Press, 2022)
What number book is this for you?
Six
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
I write dramatic narrative. That describes the way I write fiction stories, memoir stories, art criticism, social commentary, and hybrid collages of several genres. A narrator is talking to the reader and seeming to have thoughts and associations in the moment—like a sollioquy in a play by Shakespeare or a standup comedy monologue.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book? (Up to one paragraph.)
Fall in love with the way I talk on the page, or read someone else.
I write dramatic narrative. That describes the way I write fiction stories, memoir stories, art criticism, social commentary, and hybrid collages of several genres. A narrator is talking to the reader and seeming to have thoughts and associations in the moment—like a sollioquy in a play by Shakespeare or a standup comedy monologue.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
I think writing for me is “I gotta tell you this great thing that happened and the things I felt and the associations that formed in the past, when the thing happened, and now, as I’m talking to you.” The narrator is always comparing the way a self in the past felt about something back then and the way the narrator feels now, in the moment of looking back.
I think all writing is about recreating a moment on the page with as much sensual and concrete detail as you can muster, so the reader feels the story is about them. It’s a trick of narrative to make the reader feel this, and this is the trick: The narrator can’t ask the reader for love or understanding. The narrator can’t lead the witness to confirm a set of values and understandings. The reader gets to feel whatever the reader spontaneously feels from what you’ve created for them.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
Jennifer Baumgardner, the publisher, and I were already collaborators. I was writing a column called “Streaming Now” for her feminist journal, Liber. She is the publisher of Dottir Press, and we thought it would be fun to produce a book that would partly gather the columns I’d written and prompt me to write new material.
I love writing on deadline, and I loved every aspect of working with Jennifer. The book is a beautifully designed object because she made it that way.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
Oy. I’m a train wreck where this question is concerned. I have lost tons of friendships. I don’t run things by other people because I don’t want their opinion of what I’m doing and I don’t want to write to please them. If you are feeling ill in New York City, fall down on the sidewalk in front of me, I will tend to you lovingly until you receive help. Otherwise, if it’s a choice between your needs and what I want to write, I’m probably not going to protect you that well. On the other hand, I write lovingly because the love the narrator feels for what the narrator is writing about is the thing that seduces the reader to keep reading. The things I say about other people aren’t vengeful or meanspirited. That doesn’t mean they have to like what I say. Most people would prefer they never crop up, no matter how disguised the form, in your writing, and I don’t blame them.
I think all writing is about recreating a moment on the page with as much sensual and concrete detail as you can muster, so the reader feels the story is about them. It’s a trick of narrative to make the reader feel this, and this is the trick: The narrator can’t ask the reader for love or understanding. The narrator can’t lead the witness to confirm a set of values and understandings. The reader gets to feel whatever the reader spontaneously feels from what you’ve created for them.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
The writers I steal from in one way or another include: Spalding Gray, Édouard Levé, Constance Debré, Lydia Davis, Grace Paley, Olivia Laing, Jonathan Raban, Geoff Dyer, and many more.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
I don’t think anyone needs to publish a book, necessarily. If you want to be a writer, find places to publish your work, and never ever pay anyone to consider your work for publication. These practices are predatory and deceitful. Don’t pay people to read your work, even for competitions. It demeans professional writing for everyone.
If someone says to you, “You should write a book about that,” realize you probably don’t need to. The desire to write has to be in you. It can’t come from someone’s suggestion. Also, if you hear the phrase, “Everyone has a story,” please understand this is a collossal piece of stupidity. Everyone has memories and experiences, but a story is not about what happened, it’s about what the narrator makes of what happened. And for that work, you need a whole lot more skill than being alive.
Most important: worry about whether readers think you are a good writer, not a good person. It’s not your job to be a moral model on the page. You will bore people to death, and anyway the only real subject is some form of contradiction that can’t be resolved.
What do you love about writing?
I love everything. Writing is erotic to me. I like playing with language to see how it can produce a feeling in the reader. I never start with an idea. I don’t have ideas. I start with a strong reaction to something and go from there. Writing for me is action in the moment, to see what associations and thoughts can build. I develop a piece at the level of the sentence, wondering what sentence A can produce for sentence B . . . and on from there. Not knowing things ahead of time is exciting. It’s all an experiment, and when I start to write, I’m in a lab.
What frustrates you about writing?
Honestly, nothing. Maybe I set a low bar.
What about writing surprises you?
Every sentence better be a surprise, or why bother?
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
I can write at any time of day or night. I learned to do it writing for The Village Voice for 25 years. You’d sometimes have to go to a performance or an event, come home, and write about it for the next three or four hours, and file it the next morning. I practiced letting things come and trusting the voice speaking to the reader in an easy, confidential way. I have a check list to see if a piece has hit these marks: start in the middle (with a dramatic moment), fail to arrive, remember to love something, make the reader hot, make the reader laugh.
Writing is erotic to me. I like playing with language to see how it can produce a feeling in the reader. I never start with an idea. I don’t have ideas. I start with a strong reaction to something and go from there. Writing for me is action in the moment, to see what associations and thoughts can build. I develop a piece at the level of the sentence, wondering what sentence A can produce for sentence B . . . and on from there. Not knowing things ahead of time is exciting. It’s all an experiment, and when I start to write, I’m in a lab.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
That’s a great question. I share a writing practice with my life partner Richard Toon. Often in the morning, he’ll come up to the bedroom where I’m working these days, and we’ll write to a prompt for about 20 or 30 minutes. Then we read the pieces to each other. I often develop these “writes” to post on social media. Then I develop the posts into finished pieces for my Substack or another publication. Richard and I also walk every day in Hudson, where we live, and the conversations we have seep into our work.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
Yes! I think the title of the next book will be Growing Pains. I think it will feel to the reader like it has a unity because of the age I’ve arrived at and the way that age affects the way I’m seen and the amount of space and time there is to consider in a backward glance.
At every stage of life, we look back in exactly the same way: turning our necks and comparing what we saw and felt and tasted back then to what we think and feel now. It doesn't matter if the backward glance is five minutes ago or 50 years ago, the process of comparison is the same at every stage of life. And at every stage of life, no matter how old or young you are, you can enter a moment for the first time as if it's a mansion holding all the experiences that are yet to come. I'm describing writing narrative, but this is also how we're alive all the time, at every age.
A generous interview. Thank you both!
"The narrator is always comparing the way a self in the past felt about something back then and the way the narrator feels now, in the moment of looking back." I identify with every word of this, which you rightly speak of once more toward the end. In both my latest poetry and my latest nonfiction books, this matter of perspective --the now as opposed to the then, the how I feel about it looking back vs. how I felt then-- is somehow primary. Nice to have an excellent writer look on that as a positive thing to do. Now I gotta go subscribe to your Substack!