Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCrackenis an American author...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
access days eight entirely hours locked turned work
I'm a higgledy-piggledy person in every way. On days that I work, I work for eight hours in a row, with my internet access entirely turned off, locked in my office.
books love president records reference self serving united wanting
I have a memory of my fourth-grade self wanting to be the first woman president of the United States, but I think that has a lot more to do with my love of world records and reference books than a love of serving my country.
bid buying means objects tweeting
Tweeting about objects means I don't need to bid on them, which is a blessing. Buying something is a way of saying, 'Look at this!' So is tweeting. So, I guess, is writing fiction.
difficult felt incredibly poetry understood wrote
When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was.
belongs comic curious elders peer strip whether wonder
A comic strip that your parents read when they were young is a curious thing: it's an heirloom, and it's also intimate. You peer through windows and look at the things that made your elders laugh, and then you wonder whether the laugh really belongs to you.
humor life motto speaking trouble
You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.'
believe differs god narrative statistics
You believe in God or statistics or the way your narrative differs from other people.
art graphic narrative wrestle
Some graphic narrative art presses against the panel: you wrestle with it at the level of the paper.
itself life outside whatever
Sadness was something I was thinking about in my life outside of writing, so it wormed itself into whatever I wrote.
characters felt revising scratched stuff touched
Revising stuff lately, I was shocked to see how often my characters scratched their ankles, felt their feet, and touched their own ears.
afraid birth dead given grieving recovering remember
Remember that a woman who has given birth to a dead child has given birth and is recovering physically, too. Don't be afraid of grieving parents.
good hard understood
Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.
constantly life likes
Life likes jokes; life is constantly making jokes, even at the most inopportune moments.
children hard protecting
It's hard to know which made me more aware of the impossibility of protecting children - having a child die or having had two live.