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.
name orleans somehow
New Orleans is still the place where you find out that you have a doppelganger and feel lucky - but somehow unsurprised - to learn that his name is Mad Bottom.
again fact lazy life novel sure time
There was a time in my life when I wasn't sure I'd ever write a short story again because I had started writing novels, and I am fundamentally a lazy person, and the fact is that a novel is a lazy person's form, really. That is, you can amble; you can digress.
books democratic library love loved miss mostly oddball various
There were a lot of things I loved about working in a library, but mostly I miss the library patrons. I love books, but books are everywhere. Library patrons are as various and oddball and democratic as library books.
baby expects express fine losing lost needed pain somehow takes though wrong
When you've lost a baby, everyone around you expects you to be fine once the new baby is born, as though that somehow takes away the pain of losing the first child. I needed to express how wrong that was.
classes earned last
In the last century, I earned my living as a librarian, and I loved it. I'd have to take some classes to get up to speed with 21st-century librarianship.
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.