As a participant in The Great Interview Experiment, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Sarah author of the blog Pink Cereal and Raspberries and This Girl Can Write. It was great fun, and here’s how it went:
Q1: Cool blog title! How did you get it?
The blog used to be called Quarter Life Crisis when I started writing it in 2002. After a couple of years though, I certainly felt my life was no longer in crisis, and I needed a new name. My favorite breakfast treat at the time happened to be Pink Cereal and Raspberries (a strawberry flavored Frosted Mini Wheats and actual, fresh raspberries on top), and I thought that the blog about my life should be positive and upbeat and should remind me to enjoy the simple pleasures in life…simple pleasures like pink cereal and raspberries.
Q2: I see you actually have 2 blogs. Why the separation?
My other blog, “This Girl Can Write,” is mostly fiction, and if not fiction, it’s more “creative” writing than just my random thoughts on the world. I wanted to keep this separate from my real life as a way to encourage me in my creative writing.
Q3: Do you blog openly or secretly? In other words, do mom, dad, and Wine Guy know about/visit your blog? Why or why not? If so, do you find that you sensor yourself? Do you ever wish it was the other way? Does Wine Guy blog? Do you read it?
I blog openly – in fact, several of my “real world” friends are regular readers…some even comment on a regular basis and two even have blogs of their own on my blogroll! My parents and Wine Guyknow that I blog. My mom reads and comments. My dad is treated to selective pieces, particularly the ones where I write about how great he is, haha. Wine Guy has seen the blog and teases me about writing a blog that’s all about him, but he’s not a regular reader (that I know of!).
I censor myself to a degree, and there are those in my life (like my dear friend Irene, who even has a “tag” devoted just to her) who get the full-on uncensored version.
WG soooo does not blog…oh that question made me laugh.
Q4: You knew this was coming, so I have to ask: What is your favorite book? Your favorite author? The book that you recommend to everyone? A book that you feel is soooo overrated?
In all honesty, my favorite book growing up was Sixth Grade Can Really Kill You by Barthe DeClements. I checked that out of every library I could. Now, I have a bit more mature tastes, haha. I tend to recommend the brit lit/chick lit authors like Anna Maxted, Jane Green and Marian Keyes, because I love the fact that they make these “women’s” topics into something more meaningful than a harlequin romance, and I like the British lingo.
I also like to dive into non-fiction and just finished a biography of Harper Lee and will soon read a (possibly) depressing book recommended by a fellow librarian about the Holocaust called If This Be a Man by Primo Levi. I like to be entertained, I like to learn, I like to laugh, I like to at least feel like crying. I read quite a bit, as you might imagine, and a few friends and I swap books around, so I get a wide variety.
Overrated? Oh, just about anything by John Grisham lately.
Q5: When someone comes into the library and says something to you like “can you help me find the new Danielle Steel book” is it everything you can do not to throw him or her on the ground and beat them; or, alternatively, suggest about 4,852 books (off the top of your head) that are better than anything Danielle Steel has ever written?
Honestly, I’m so thrilled if someone comes in and knows the author’s name that I jump all over it and find the book. I can’t tell you how often I get the question, “Can you help me find a book? I don’t know the author or the title. Or what it’s about.”
Q6: Did you always want to be a librarian? If not, what were your other choices? Why did you go the librarian way? Do you think you will ever have a different career and, if so, what?
No. Well, if we go all the way back, I’ve wanted to be a cowgirl, a doctor, a fashion designer, an actress…I was a girl of many ambitions (and could usually be found wearing cowgirl boots or running barefoot through the backyard!). In all seriousness, I’ve considered journalism and teaching. I went the librarian way, because it offered an appealing exit from a not-too-awful, not-too-great job as the assistant to a library director. I didn’t want to be a secretary for the rest of my life, and I knew that I would get an amazing education with a library director as my mentor. I would still like to pursue a career in journalism or publishing AND a career as a fiction writer.
Q7: I haven’t read a ton of your blog, but I have read quite a bit. It looks like your family consists of you and your parents. Do you have siblings? Did you ever wish you did? Do you know why your parents did not have more children? Do you want to have a lot of children? What’s “a lot?”
It’s just me, and YES, I always wanted siblings. Although I accept the fact that I’m an only child, there are times when I long for the most improbable thing: an older brother. And as much as I’d like to believe that tag line given to other only children that my parents saw me and just knew they couldn’t repeat perfection, I know that my parents wanted a houseful of children. My mom had health problems that prevented her from getting pregnant again.
I used to want a houseful of children, too…then I started working in a library, and I see, when I watch some of the stay-at-home moms visit the library with their three or four or six kids, just how much work that would be. I would love to have two, or maybe three, children, but I also want to give them an amazing life, provide a college education AND pursue my own dreams. A lot is four and over, and if that happened, I would handle it with grace (I hope!), but ideally, two or three and bunch of pets would make my family complete.
Q8: You write a lot about how much you admire your parents. What quality do you admire most in each parent? What quality of theirs do you see most in yourself?
Oh, lordy, that’s a beautifully difficult question, or a couple of questions, really. In my mother, I admire her ability to finally recognize that she matters. I admire that she was able to walk away from an unstable, unhealthy and unhappy family situation and find the love and happiness she needs in the world. In my father, I admire his tenacity, his refusal to step down in the face of a challenge. It took my dad over a decade to get his bachelor’s degree, because he was in the military, he had a family to support, and he had to take one or two classes at a time, but he did it.
I am my parents’ child, through and through. It’s pretty obvious where each and every one of my traits comes from. I am most like my father, and I see in myself the desire to learn about the world around me, the desire to push myself farther than my body should be pushed and a very stubborn streak. From my mother, though, I received the ability to nurture, a refusal to settle for less than I deserve and a tendency towards being a chatterbox.
Q9: What question do you wish I would ask you? Answer it.
Well, I liked the question I asked to my interviewee, which was, what’s your greatest fear? I do fear failure, though I know that I need to embrace it. My fear of failure has, to this point, brought me very little but a very “safe” life. I’m hoping to embrace a fear of failure more wholeheartedly and live a more adventurous life…starting…soon.
Q10: Congratulations on writing a novel – that is amazing, even if it was unpublished. It is a dream many people have, but will not make it as far as you did. Tell me a little about the novel – a line or two about the story line. Do you think you will do any work on it and resubmit? What’s your ultimate goal as a writer?
Thank you! It’s sometimes hard for me to admit I’ve written a failed novel, but hey, all authors get rejections. The novel is a fictionalized account of a particularly challenging point in my mom’s (and by extension my family’s) life when she was dealing with some painful memories from her past. I have re-written the novel into a novella and given it to my mom to read. It’s hers, and if she ever decides she’s okay with my publishing it, then I’ll pursue that path, but it’s really her decision to make.
My ultimate goal as a writer is to be able to make it my living.
Q11: If no one ever read your blog, would you still blog?
Absolutely, but it helps to see my statistics each week and know I might be reaching someone :).
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The problem with an interview, for me, is now that she has answered these questions I have ten more. However, since she probably doesn’t want to answer e-mails forever, I’ll let her off the hook.
I just had to add one final comment: Maybe I should have done it privately to Sarah, but I decided it was important enough to write publicly. Sarah speaks of her novel as “failed” which doesn’t feel right to me. Her novel was “unpublished” but I think anyone with the courage, determination, and focus to write a novel has succeeded in something that many of us dream of, but will never do. I think it is an amazing accomplishment and I hope you stop thinking of it is a failure, but as an amazing success. You may want to check this book out of your library.
Thanks, Sarah, for your candor in answering these questions. This was great fun!
