Q&A With Susan Coll 

USA Today Bestselling Author, Susan Coll is my current guest for this week. Susan is the author of 9 novels, some of which are Bookish People, Real Life And Other Fictions, The Literati & coming out on September 15^th,Word Salad. Susan’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, NPR.org, theatlantic.com, The Millions, and other publications. Her novel, Acceptance, was made into a television movie starring the hilarious Joan Cusack.

Q: Welcome to Book Notions Susan! Would you please give a brief description of each of your novels beginning with your upcoming novel, Word Salad?  Where do your ideas for your stories and characters come from? 

A: Thank you for having me! Word Salad is a social comedy set in a fictitious bookstore in Washington, DC. It is told from the point of view of Matilda, who is about to turn 30 and is struggling to find her place both in the world and in the workplace. She is a misfit of sorts, a not very bookish person who nonetheless finds herself working in a neighborhood bookstore. She finds the business of publishing mystifying – as many of us do! The novel is loosely connected to my previous novels, The Literati, a comedy about a Washington, DC nonprofit, and to Bookish People, which is also set at this same bookstore. 

My other novels are also what I suppose you would call social comedies, albeit not bookstore related. Real Life and Other Fictions has to do with a woman who is obsessed with the story of The Mothman and the catastrophic collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1967. The Stager features a home stager asked to prepare a house for sale in suburban Maryland only to discover that it belongs to an estranged friend. Prior to that I wrote Acceptance and Beach Week, both of which tried to capture the bonkers ethos of college admissions and child-rearing in the affluent suburbs. (Even though I wrote these books some 25 years ago, it seems not much has changed.) There’s also Rockville Pike, set in a discount furniture store across the street from the graveyard where F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are buried in Rockville, Maryland. My first published novel was karlmarx.com, about a young woman writing her dissertation on Eleanor Marx – Karl’s youngest daughter – while working at a think tank in Washington, DC.

As you can see from my brief descriptions, my ideas are inspired by my surroundings. Even when I think I’m writing historical fiction, as happened with my first two published novels, they wind up morphing into contemporary, settings-driven comedies.

Q: Before you sit down to write, do you begin each day with a cup of coffee and breakfast or even a brisk walk? Do you consider yourself a plotter or a panster where you write as you go along?

A: I do all of the above! It’s not necessarily part of any writing ritual, but I need my morning coffee, and I maintain an old-school first-thing-in-the-morning newspaper-reading routine. Since we have two dogs, my husband and I usually begin the day with a long walk. I am not a traditional plotter, but your question comes full circle because it’s during the morning dog walks that I try to figure out where my novel is headed. My husband is also a novelist, and we bounce ideas off one another as we walk and attempt to untangle our respective narrative problems.  

Q: How long does it generally take you to write a novel? What are some of the core messages and emotions you hope readers learn and feel once they finish reading your novels & why? 

A: My last few books have been written under tight deadlines, and I have managed to produce each of them in just over a year. Deadlines are a bit of a mixed bag for me – they force me to focus and be productive, but I’m not sure that writing quickly results in my best work. I’m planning to move more slowly on my next book, but that said, I hope that the absence of a deadline doesn’t cause me to lose focus. 

An editor once said in passing that she thought my novels were social documents, and that has stuck with me. While I hope to entertain readers and bring them into worlds they might not otherwise be familiar with, I also hope to capture something about the way we live now.

Q: Several of your novels are set in and around literary Washington, DC, where you work and live. How does your work life inform your writing?

A: I am evidently unable to separate my writing life from my surroundings, as hard as I try. My first (unpublished) novel was set in India, where I was living at the time. My next novel was inspired by my surroundings when I lived in London, and everything since then has been set in and around Washington, DC. I swore I wouldn’t write a book set in a bookstore, and yet: Bookish People. I can’t help but soak in the details of daily life, and they inevitably find their way into my work. 

Q: Are any of your books’ characters based on people you know in and around the bookstore where you work?

A: No! I go out of my way to be sure I’m not basing my characters on people that I know. I love my job and my colleagues, and I do what I can to keep my work life and writing life separate. 

Q: Your novel Acceptance was adapted into a movie starring Joan Cusack. That must have been amazing!  Was the adaptation to your liking? 

A: I was honored to have Joan star in the adaptation. She was truly hilarious. The New York Times review of the television movie described her as having a “deranged neurosis,” and went on to say “it’s a shame that she isn’t on screen for every second of the movie’s hour and 27 minutes with her brilliant Olympian-level jittering.” I thought the adaptation was very good. There were some things I might have handled differently, but I have no complaints.

Q: Have any of your other novels been picked up by Hollywood? If so, have they begun writing scripts or casting anyone yet? 

A: They have not been but I’m ever hopeful. ☺

Q: Are you currently writing your next novel now & can you reveal any details? 

A: I have three different ideas, possibly even four, so we will see what emerges once I finally sit down to write again!

Q: Susan, would you please provide social media links so that the readers of the blog and I may follow you and your work? 

A: Instagram: susan_keselenko_coll