The Beatrice Interview


Maggie Estep

Diary of an Emotional Idiot


interviewed by Ron Hogan

While writing the early drafts of Diary of an Emotional Idiot, Maggie Estep came up with over a thousand pages of material. Then she boiled it down to just about 200, but that's about 200 of the most electric pages you'll read this year. To save me from trying to explain it to you, here's a sample:

"Hello, my name is Zoe and this is my book. It is a document of Emotional Idiocy told in two parts. There is the "then" part, which explains how I got here, and there is the "now" part, which documents what I am doing here. At the moment, I am sitting at my desk naked but for some man's boxer shorts and many silver bracelets. I like to see myself in men's underwear. Men in women's underwear is also acceptable. Other women in men's underwear doesn't do so much for me. However, if someone were to bring a tribe of women clad only in men's underwear to my house, I might find it slightly exciting. I might not kick them out of my house."

RH: I was interested in the oral qualities of this novel, which seem like a natural extension of your spoken word career.

ME: I wanted the book to feel a little bit like a chick sitting around gabbing, so when I was writing it, I'd go to open mikes and read sections. It does have a rhythm to it, but it's definitely written for the page, unlike some of my earlier stuff which was written just for performance. It's as close to merging the two styles as I think you can get. When I read at book signings, though, I still edit it for performance, skipping over stuff when I know it'll move quicker for an audience.

RH: What made you want to tackle a project of this size?

ME: I'd been starting novels and not finishing them for a while. The spoken word thing was actually an accidental offshoot of that. And I got a lot of attention for it, which gave me time to write a novel. Now I'm on to my second one. This is what I've always intended to do, the thing I love doing the most. I'm lucky because doing spoken word performances and records brings attention to my books.

RH: You definitely come to the table with a reputation established.

ME: I'm very fortunate for a first-time novelist, most of whom don't get book tours, because of my reputation. It also works against me in terms of being taken seriously as a writer. People say, "Oh, she's just a pop figure."

RH: And publishing gives you a lot more freedom of expression than, say, MTV did with what it would accept in your videos.

ME: I do whatever I want now, which is how it should be. (laughs) MTV's a very useful tool; I wouldn't be here if it weren't for MTV. Yeah, I had to take some of the 'fucks' out of my videos back then, but you have to do stuff to get where you need to go. I cringe when I look at some of that stuff, but it was very useful and I'll probably do it again.

RH: Given how little time many of us have for reading, if you really want to get out there as a writer, you almost have to have something that can be read quickly.

ME: I didn't sit down thinking about that, but it did become a natural part of my process. Part of why I love what I do is because I get to communicate with people and meet people. It's very much about that, and to be that inclusive when I'm writing a novel, I have to write so that more people can read it as easily as they can hear me.

RH: And from the open mike scene, you're probably used to having to fight for people's attention.

ME: Oh, yeah. They're just not going to shut up for you unless you're saying something there.

RH: So you'd walk away from that environment, if you were successful, with a lot more confidence in your ability to get your work out there.

ME: The open mike stuff taught me how to write. It taught me how to finish things and it gave me confidence to finish a damn book instead of stopping halfway through or three quarters of the way through. And I still use that tool; I read the book I'm working on now at open mikes.

RH: Are you going to continue to straddle the two?

ME: I want to. I love the tradition of the troubadors, centuries ago, going around storytelling, and I'd like to do that. But I also love to spend months holed up in my house writing.

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All materials copyright © 1997 Ron Hogan