About Susan DeBow

Susan DeBow’s work has appeared in a variety of publications including Family Circle, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune, The Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine, the Baltimore Sun and the Cincinnati Post. Strip Searched, a poetry chapbook was released in 2007. She and her husband live in Maineville, Ohio. She has a degree in Communications from Ohio University.

For more information, please check out the Cleaning Closets web site.

Author Interview with Susan DeBow

You've written poetry, essays and fiction. Talk about what appeals to you about the different forms.

Writing is not just about words. It has many different formats and genres. That is what keeps my interest. I like to challenge myself learning new formats and genres. I love poetry because it makes you concentrate on rhythm, be concise, play with words. It is skeletal. I sometimes use it to hone my thoughts. Sometimes the poems stand alone and sometimes they end up being an outline for an essay or fiction. I love essays/columns because they are 750 words and bye-bye. I love reading essays. I feel like I get to know people through their essays. It is having my voice be read that is fun. Subject matter can be hugely varied. Great fun. Fiction was my biggest challenge. I was afraid of it. A confidence thing. Editors kept telling me I could have a strong fiction voice. I sent them some snippets. But being a 750 word writer, the prospect of coming up with 120,000 words that made sense, told a story, held the reader's interest, and my interest, was daunting. It is like an elephant. But you still eat it one bite at a time. Of course, I had a little whine with mine called gaps of confidence. Ugh. And since I am pretty much of a self-challenge person, I wasn't going to let my fear beat me.

Tell us about how Cleaning Closets evolved.

Cleaning Closets came to me after I wrote a column for the Chicago Tribune about cleaning my closet. The event known as cleaning a closet is not a minor thing, at least for me. I have a walk-in closet. But I couldn't walk in. It got to the point that the stuff in it was growing like kudzu and spilling out into our bedroom. I had four different sizes of clothes; those I would never fit into again unless I was locked in a room without food for a year; clothes that on a good day I could dream about; clothes that if I got my act together for a few months, I could squeeze into; and the clothes that sort of fit because I had gotten them at Omar the Tent Maker. Looking at all these took me on a psychological roller coaster. I had failed. I had won. Yada, yada. My wedding dress was in the closet. My mother had made it. It was beautiful, but it was her vision of beautiful. And the headpiece she had sewn when she was in the hospital getting electro-shock treatments and I found the headpiece on a drinking fountain in the hall when I came to visit. Another person had swiped it from her room and had been wearing it around. You see, everything had a story. Children's school boxes. Unfinished craft projects that I hadn't been able to finish or throw out. I put judgment of myself into all of those things. Until I learned the art of the purge. Not the bulimic purge, the "thing" purge and "issue" purge. Then I came up with this character named Lydia Calypso. I loved her name and loved her from the get go. She had a story to tell and she wouldn't let me go until I told her story. And the vehicle I used to find out what was in her head, heart and life, were the closets in her house. Voila! Cleaning Closets.

What do you see as the central themes of Cleaning Closets?

Family is forever, in some form or another. Families are a stewpot full of personalities, genes, feelings, illusions, dreams, hopes, failures, high-expectations and heartbreak. And it takes a lot of work for families to survive and thrive. Another theme would be that we think we know people, what is in their heads and hearts and what is going on in their lives, but we only really know what we "think" we know. We only can see things in our context and how what they do affects us. There is a lot of forgiveness in the book, too. And letting go.

Cleaning Closets is a metaphor for getting one's life together. Do we all have closets that need to be cleaned?

I think so. Our closets might be in our houses, apartments, trailers, mansions or humble abodes. But mostly, they are in our minds. Some are in our hearts. We squirrel away feelings, thoughts, slights, hurts. They clutter the way we think and behave. They hold us back from living the life we have in our ideal. (Very Dr. Phil, don't you think?) These things cause conflict in our minds and that is where depression, isolation and loneliness come in. We wear them on our shoulders like a hangar bent with a too heavy sweater. At some point we have to decide if it's time to throw this stuff out with abandon and only keep things that move our lives forward.

How do you see Lydia?

Lydia is a woman who has lived the life she thought "The Rules of Life" book told her she should. Of course, this book only existed in her mind. Then she perpetuated it onto those around her including her husband and kids. She hadn't held her life up to close examination because that would have been, what she thought would be, too self-absorbed. She focused on her family and what she thought and wanted her family to be. Without knowing it, she set herself up for disappointment. But she also learned it wasn't too late for her to change, to dig deeper into life. She also realized her relationship with God needed to change. That He gave her freewill, a brain, desires and the ability to build a fulfilled, interesting life.

Is Lydia's relationship with her children anything at all like the relationship you have with yours?

Oh geeze. Do we have to go there? A little humor! Lydia is many voices. In my mind she is every woman. Part me, part my mother, part voices I have heard in restaurants, doctor's offices … anywhere I hear women talk. Lydia is like me in that I love family. I feel like even though my children are adults, two with families of their own, it still takes a lot of work to keep the family together. I don't move in the same way Lydia does. At one point, perhaps I did. But I believe I have grown past how she was. I love having my own life and have so many interests that my fear is that I won't learn or do everything I want to do before I die. I love to talk to my kids. I love to hear their voices. They just make me happy. They are really grand adults.

Sugar is one of the more complex characters in the book. How do you think readers will view her?

I think at first readers will think Sugar is a pain in the drain. And she is. She is complex. But she has also been carrying a huge burden, one that would cause the best of us to be a bit off balance. The guilt, the responsibility. Buddy put a lot on her. I think that even without all of that, Sugar was going to kick things up. I loved Sugar though and felt for her. She is interesting.

Can the Calypso's ever give up on each other?

No. They better not! I would have to give them "what for" in a sequel!

Who are your writing influences? What inspires you?

I am most influenced by nonfiction writers. I love strong voices. Frank McCourt, Rick Bragg, Haven Kimmel. I do enjoy Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Conner, Joan Didion. Anyone with a strong sense of voice. I love a good memoir.

What are you working on now?

Selling Cleaning Closets! I still do essays for newspapers and magazines. I have a couple of ideas for another novel. I'm also putting together my essays and columns into a collection. I am anxious to bite into another novel, take what I learned doing Cleaning Closets and up the ante. I am also doing workshops. I am at the point where I love teaching others to find and strengthen their writing voices. and pass on the knowledge I have learned in the last dozen years.

Are you a Bunko player?

I have subbed in my neighborhood group. But the joke is, if they started playing at 5 or so and were finished by 8, I would do it. Those women stay up til midnight! I turn into a chamber maid at midnight. So about once a year I go. It is fun. Really nice women. It's fun to catch up.

Will we see Lydia in future work?

That depends on if readers want to know what Lydia is up to. I'd love to. Her family has become so real to me. It is funny. When I read a few scenes to people in Ireland, the next morning at breakfast, someone said, "I am really concerned about Lydia," like she was sitting in the other room. That is when I really knew I had a fleshed out character. And It think in many ways, her journey and the journey of her kids, is just beginning.

How long did it take to write Cleaning Closets?

It took about a year. The writing wasn't the issue. It was the confidence. It blew in and out like thunderstorms. Finally, Lydia just took over and kicked my rear.

What is your writing process like?

That is always a work in progress. When I do a column that is on deadline, I am not allowed to have writer's block. I just work. It isn't inspiration that gets the words on the page, it is perspiration. I am a morning writer. I might play around with a poem. Or go right into a column. I will usually open my newspapers online and see what is going on in the news, see if there are loopholes in thinking and try to look at what is going on in the world through the eyes of a reader. I look for angles the media miss. Then try to connect events to my life and the lives of others.

When I write fiction, such as the novel, I go to a different place. I plot in the early hour before I get up and then go to my computer and write. I wrote from 6 in the morning to late into the evening when I was in the throes of Cleaning Closets. The most fun is when I didn't realize how much time had gone by. I was in the zone. The zone is transcendental. Dodododo. Great fun.