Hello, friends! Today’s interview is with Samantha Tetangco, Plume’s upcoming featured writer for November. I met Samantha (or Sam, as she tends to go by when not publishing) at the beginning of my MFA program in the fall of 2007. Right away I knew I had met a kindred writing spirit. Sam is such a hardworking and talented writer, one who is always willing to share ideas and support other writers. We were delighted when she agreed to extend that spirit of creative sharing to the Plume community!
Plume: When did you know you were a writer?
Samantha Tetangco: Wow! That’s a tough question. On one hand, I feel like asking me when I knew I was a writer is like asking when I learned how to breathe! Writing (and reading) have always been a part of who I am. I was scribbling stories in notebooks and sharing them with friends before I learned we were supposed to feel insecure about it all! And I think wanting to “be a writer” was probably the thing I wanted most as a kid (that and owning a pet store…).
On the other hand, I feel like owning that title, “writer,” is such a difficult one! This summer, I taught at the Martha’s Vineyard Creative Writing Institute, and Alexander Weinstein, the conference founder, verbally declared us all graduates who could claim the identity of “writer.” “Go ahead and call yourself a writers,” he said. “If you need me to write you up a certificate so you can own the word, then I can! But you are now allowed to call yourself writers!” Okay, so maybe he didn’t say it like that (but that was the general idea!), and maybe he was talking to the students and not the instructors, but it wasn’t until maybe that moment that I could say I was a writer without hesitation – and that was AFTER getting an MFA, AFTER getting stories and poems and essays published, AFTER teaching writing, AFTER writing and writing and writing for years. I mean, why did it take me so long to be able to claim something that I claimed as a child without hesitation?
So yeah, the answer is – I knew I was a writer immediately, and then spent my adult life remembering.
P: Where do you get your ideas?
ST: Ah, I love this question. I think ideas are everywhere and, honestly, it depends on what I’m writing. The story that’s included in this [November] Plume box, for example, was inspired by real-life events. Much like Susan, my protagonist, I was co-teaching a freshman writing class and my partner teacher learned he was a potential target for a student reported as having shooter fantasies (things he would do to faculty members who had wronged him). Because we shared that classroom, it meant that I also had to be on guard! And so, I wrote “Parrish Hall” mainly as a way to work through my panic! (And while some of the things in the story reflect the things of my real life – for example, I really was attending mediation training when this was happening – the characters and their struggles were fictitious).
BUT that inspired by real events thing isn’t my usual approach (at least not in fiction.) Typically, the connection between myself and my characters is less about external circumstances and more about internal ones. The novel that I’ve been working on for the last decade, for example, comes from my own obsession with relationships – when do they work, when do they not work, what makes someone cheat, what keeps people from being happy – and as I wrote the book and lived my life, my feelings on these things changed. The novel also changed through the various revisions. In that book, none of the actions were inspired by real events, but rather through my own internal questioning.
AND, lastly, I want to say that my poems come from somewhere else entirely. They are VERY autobiographical – they engage more with my dailiness, whether it’s a trip to the dentist or a hike in the Sandias. I also love art museums and so many of my poems come from an (ekfrastic) engagement with those works as well!
P: Where do you write?
ST: I am a coffee shop writer. I love treating myself to something tasty and have done a very good job of training my brain to switch over into creative mode as soon as I sit in a coffee shop space. I must admit, though, that I’m trying to be one of those people who write at home.
P: Do you have any writing rituals?
ST: I read once that as writers we can use writing rituals to trick our brain into switching into the creative mode faster through external stimuli, and so I’m a big fan of writing rituals! Like I said earlier, I’ve got the coffee shop atmosphere down! I don’t do work stuff at the coffee shop; I don’t go down the Internet rabbit hole; I don’t check facebook or other social media things. And so when I am at the coffee shop, I am able to dive in as my mind knows what it is supposed to do. Home is a whole other story – it is all about being distracted by things! So, I make a cup of tea and turn on a lamp. I tell myself that once those things are in place, all the other stuff has to be shut off. I’m not very good at this routine yet, but I’m working on it! This is part of why I keep going to coffee shops!
P: What are some of your self-care practices?
ST: For me, writing IS a self-care practice. It is how I process the world. If I’m reading the news, for example, and I see more awful things about awful people doing awful things and feel overwhelmed, writing this into a poem (or story) often helps!
I also am a fan of hiking – alone or with other people. For me, that is a way to disconnect from technology, from all the bad stuff, from all the negative self-talk and criticism and remember my smallness. That might sound weird, but I find it important to recognize and remember that I’m just a small person in a huge world AND, more importantly, that the world is made of more than human concerns. Plus sunshine. And trees.
P: What is your favorite book about writing?
ST: There are a lot of great books on writing out there, but I am a bigger fan of TED Talks about writing. Perhaps my favorite is by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche on “The Danger of a Single Story.” It is less about the act of writing and more about the importance of telling stories. For me, as a person of color who often doesn’t see stories like mine represented, it really struck a chord and lit a fire under my butt to do more! It’s also great if you find yourself feeling like your writing doesn’t’ matter! It does – way more than you think! That TED talk changed my life – and helped me to articulate something I’ve known intuitively for some time.
In terms of more technical TEDs on writing, I really like Amy Tan’s “Where Does Creativity Hide?”, Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Your Elusive Creative Genius,” and Young-ha Kim’s “Be an artist, right now!” (This one is subtitled, so people rarely watch it, but it really is one of my favorites, especially if you are someone who has a day job that is unrelated to writing!).
P: What are you currently working on?
ST: Currently, I’m taking a bit of a fiction hiatus while I shop around my novel. In the meantime, I have been writing a lot of poetry. I have a goal to have a poetry collection finished by the end of the year – fingers crossed for that one!
I don’t know about you, but I feel like I learned so much just from this brief interview! To read the short story Sam referenced, as well as her featured letter, check out the Plume shop so you can subscribe in time to get her edition in the mail.
Samantha Tetangco is a Filipino-American writer and teacher. Her short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in The Sun, Foglifter, Gargoyle, Phoebe, Gertrude, and others. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico where she served as editor-in-chief for Blue Mesa Review. Currently, Tetangco lives in California’s Central Valley and teaches at the University of California Merced and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute Of Creative Writing. She is also president of the AWP LGBTQ Writer’s Caucus. To learn more about Samantha, please visit her website.