quarterly
conversation

cheryl diane kidder
...a conversation about what to do when the page is listening to you...

Okay, Cheryl, first things first - why do you write?

I write because I always have.

I write because I can.

I write to make the images in my head flesh.

I write because the paper always listens.

The first thing I ever wrote was a one-page western. It made perfect sense to me at the time. I loved westerns. I was born and raised in California, as far west as you can possibly get. After that first story, everything I write now still feels like a western to me. There are some great standards and rules to follow when writing a western: you must always have one identifiable good guy, one bad guy, one woman who embodies both good and evil, a dance scene (can be switched out with a party scene), specific costumes (that change with the decade), modes of transportation (in my west, cars, everyone drives), and the general theme of civilization overcoming the wild (with mixed results).

What do you hope to accomplish with your writing?

I hope to create something from what I live through every day.

I hope to leave some evidence of my being here when I’m gone.

I earned my B.A. in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University in 1980 and finished all my course work, including my thesis for my Master’s in 1988. I applied and was accepted to attend the Breadloaf Writer’s conference that year but instead gave birth to my daughter, Ellie Rose. I never stopped writing and slowly but surely my stories and poems have been published both online and in print.

What advice do you have for beginning writers?

Read everything that calls out to you.

Listen to yourself.

Take writing classes that support your work.

Find other writers you admire and get a writing group together.

Learn how to critique your own work.

Trust yourself when you write.

Allow yourself to be as wild and uninhibited as possible when you write.

Sometimes listening to the advice of other writers is not such a good thing. What works perfectly swell for one writer might be a perfectly miserable experience for another. The best thing is get to know what works best for you. Do you thrive in a classroom atmosphere where you can present your work for critique in a relatively safe environment and are guaranteed an audience? Or, do you work best alone, polishing your story until you know it’s right and then sending it out for publication? Only you know what makes sense for you. Also realize that just because you don’t write for a given length of time, doesn’t mean you stop being a writer. Writers need time to dream, to walk through their lives and pile up the mulch that will become their work when the time is right. Never begrudge yourself that time.

Finally, Cheryl - what motivates you?

When I read something amazing.

When I see a film that takes me somewhere I’ve never been.

When I hear new music that conjures up strong emotion out of nowhere.

When I get some free time to sit down at the PC. As soon as my hands hit the keys, I’m gone.

I believe we all tell stories every day: to explain our lives, to get by, to make someone laugh, to express anger, to record our dreams, our fantasies, our history. This is why there is always room for more stories: because we never tire of listening to the many images of who we are and what we dream about, and because every one of us has a completely unique take on it and as long as there is another new story, the picture of who we are, the trillion-faceted portrait that is always expanding, always turning, always changing, ultimately gives us hope and a hunger for even more stories.

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CHERYL DIANE KIDDER completed her B.A. in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University and is close to completing her M.A.. Her fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Reed, Amelia, Dog River Review, Alchemy, Sandscript, California State Poetry Journal, insolent rudder, August Cutter, Outsider Ink, Three Candles and The Clackamas Literary Review. Her work was also included in Meg Files’ book Write From Life.