Susan Schoenberger
Susan Schoenberger is the award-winning author of A Watershed Year and The Virtues of Oxygen. With a linotypist as a grandfather, she has ink in her blood and worked as a journalist and copyeditor for many years, including The Baltimore Sun and 12 years with The Hartford Courant. She currently serves as Director of Communications at Hartford Seminary, a graduate school with a focus on interfaith dialogue. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her husband Kevin. They have three grown children and a small dog named Leo.
Twitter: @schoenwriter
Instagram: @schoenwriter
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
In my wasted youth, I would attend author events and wish desperately that I was the person on the podium telling humorous stories about how my characters insisted on a different outcome than what I had planned for them. But the only way to get to the podium to tell those stories is to suffer alone, in a quiet room, staring at a blank screen, coming up with words and sentences you will inevitably delete, and forcing yourself not to check Facebook. My uncle likes to say everyone claims they want to write, but they really want “to have written.” That is so true, and I include myself!
What do you worry about?
Everything. I worry about the smallest things and the biggest. I worry about why my cuticles are so dry and flaky, and whether an asteroid will hit the planet. And I’m a mother, so I worry about my three kids and how they will make their way in a world that seems to have so many troubles. I imagine that most writers are worriers because they notice things and tuck them away and fret over them, only to see them emerge in characters that are an amalgam of all their worries. My characters are often driven by worry.
What piece of clothing tells the most interesting story about your life?
I love this question. I just gave my daughter an ancient T-shirt from Yellowstone National Park that my husband bought when he worked at Old Faithful as a college student in 1980. Coincidentally I worked at Yellowstone in 1983, and when I met my husband in 1985, it was something we had in common. My husband eventually passed the T-shirt along to me, and I wore it for years because it was so soft and comfortable. Then it sat in my drawer for decades because I couldn’t bear to throw it away, and I’m not generally that sentimental about clothing. When my daughter asked us if we had anything from our days in Yellowstone, I pulled out the T-shirt, and she was thrilled. She’s wearing it now, which tells you something about how the quality of T-shirts has changed. I don’t think one produced today would last 40-plus years.
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
My writing has been influenced by the Golden Age of television. Think about the shows we’ve had with incredible writing: The Sopranos, The Wire, Veep, Flea Bag, I could go on and on. I’ve been watching Fargo lately, and I’m just blown away by the dialogue. I sometimes try to picture the screenplay – the words on a page – and imagine the different ways the actor could have delivered them. It’s something that I try to emulate in my work, though I fall short every time.
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
I love modern art museums – work of arts themselves -- because they test the notion of what art is and what it can be. I grew up near Storm King Art Center in New York, which is an enormous outdoor museum with colossal structures. When I go there, I’m continually amazed at how modern artists push the boundaries of art and make us think about what it means to be human. Maya Lin’s “Wavefield” is one of my favorites. It’s actually a field of grass that was sculpted by bulldozers and other machinery into “waves.” Strangely, it’s very peaceful, like looking at the ocean.
