Spotlight Interview with author Susan Avitzour

Q1: Thanks for participating in our Authors.com Spotlight Interview series Susan! Please introduce yourself and your book to help our readers get to know you.

A: My name is Susan Avitzour. I was born in Coney Island, but for the past thirty-plus years I’ve lived in Israel – Jerusalem, to be exact. I’m a clinical social worker and psychotherapist, though in the past I’ve had careers as a lawyer, a mediator, and a translator. I’m also very much a mother, having raised seven children (six girls and a boy), and am now a grandmother as well.

 In 2001, I lost my eighteen-year-old daughter Timora to leukemia, after a six-year struggle.  My memoir, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, is about my sixteen-year journey with, then without her.  It comprises a narrative that tells the story of her struggle to lead a normal life as she battled cancer, and a journal in which I explore the personal, philosophical, and spiritual implications for me of her illness and death.

Q2: Please explain how you came to be a writer, what inspired you to write your book(s) and how long it took.

A: I’ve been writing since I was a child. I wrote my first story in second grade; it was called “Susan the Clown,” and was inspired by my experience of being the odd child out among my peers.  I’ve been writing creative fiction and nonfiction on and off ever since then. I knew very soon after Timora died that I wanted very much to capture my experience both as the mother of a child with cancer, and as a mother who lost her child to cancer, in a way that may help and possibly even inspire others who have experienced or are experiencing hardship, or who are interested in how others overcome life’s challenges. But my grief was such that I couldn’t even contemplate writing about her until three and a half years after her death.  

 Once I’d made my mind up to write, a hit another obstacle: It seemed impossible to decide where to begin. When she was born, when her first symptoms appeared, when she was diagnosed…? Finally, I decided to go ahead and just start, and began keeping a blog in which I recorded my memories, questions, and reflections on Timora and on our experience (hers, mine, and our family’s).  The blog ended on the fifth anniversary of her death, after which I began transforming it into a book – editing the blog into the journal, and adding the narrative. The entire process, from my first blog post to publication, took six years.

Q3: What did you enjoy most about creating this book?

A. Creating the book was a double process for me. On the one hand, it was therapeutic in that it forced me to dig deep into aspects of my experience which I’d been avoiding, and to explore various facets of their meaning for me.  That part was quite hard, but ultimately strengthened me.  On the other, the process was deeply artistic in that I had to decide how to take my raw experience and put it into language, and fashion into a whole with integrity – a work that would be meaningful to others besides myself.  I very much enjoyed this second part of the process – choosing my words for accuracy and for flow, and structuring the text for maximum impact. For this reason, I loved being edited.

Q4: What facets of your life, both personal and professional, are woven into your book, if any?

A. People who read my memoir often remark on its emotional honesty; they come out feeling that I’ve put “all of myself” into its pages. Of course, no one can put every part of herself into a book, but I’ve brought as much as I could express of my emotional experience as the mother of a daughter with a life-threatening illness, and my reflections on what it means to love a child, to lose her, and to go on living after such a loss. My book also reveals facets of my relationships with my husband, my other children, and my friends and religious community, as well as the change I made in my professional life in light of all that happened.

Q5. How did you get published?

A. I teamed up with a small Jerusalem-based English-language publishing house; I subsidized part but not all of the publishing cost. The publisher was recommended by a local literary agent.

Q6: Did you have any surprises or hiccups along the way during the book writing and/or publishing process?

A. I found that I needed to pay privately for a content editor. At first this upset me, but in the end I was very glad to have been forced to find my editor, Chris Noel, who did a wonderful job of helping me make this book the best it could be.

Q7: What one thing did you wish you'd known before you started this project?

A. I wish I’d known just how obsessed I’d get with the book. While I was writing it I’d sometimes get out of bed to jot down a new idea I had, or even a particular word I thought would be better than another in a certain part of the text.  After it was published and printed, I remained obsessed; I couldn’t stop thinking of better ways I could have expressed myself.  It drove me a bit crazy.  Had I known all this, I would have prepared myself in advance with ways to get my mind off the book at when distraction would have done me good.

Q8: You're a fly on the wall when readers are discussing your book. What would you hope to hear them say about it?

A. That they found the narrative compelling and the language beautiful, and that they believe my reflections will help them if and when they are confronted with a very difficult life-challenge.

Q9: Tell us one thing about you that most people don't know or would surprise them.

A. Most people who meet me and don’t know me well see me as a serious and staid type. They’d be surprised to know that once a year I appear in our synagogue’s annual Purim play, where I get in touch with my “inner vamp” by dressing up in flashy clothes and belting out what my fellow performers like to call my “big number” – a solo with racy lyrics.

Q10: What single piece of advice would you give new authors?

A. Don’t get discouraged by rejection – it’s the norm at first.  Remind yourself how much you love to write, and persevere!

Q11: Share a short summary of a typical day in your life with us please.

A. Each day of the week is a different “typical,” but here’s my usual Tuesday: I wake at about 6:30 to walk for an hour with a few women friends on a nearby promenade, and enjoy the greenery, the flowers, and my friends’ conversation.  When I get home I say my daily prayers. After eating a light breakfast, I go to my clinic to see my morning clients. I come home for lunch and spend some time at my computer, checking and responding to email and, if I have a long enough break, working on my blog or on a story.  I then go back to work and see my afternoon clients.  My husband Daniel and I have our weekly dinner out, and when we come home I spend another couple of hours reading, writing, or both. Interspersed among these activities are usually phone conversations with one or more of my children or, if I’m lucky, my two-year-old grandson.  I go to bed at 10:30.

Q12:  Describe where you do most of your writing. What would I see if I was sitting beside you?

A. Daniel and I share a very small (4½- by 8½-foot) glass-enclosed porch with two stone walls and a marble-tiled floor. Covering my desk is a mixture of psychology articles to read, lists of things I need to do, various kinds of office equipment, a phone, a speakers-and-headphone set, and a camera-and-microphone set.  At its edge sits Akiva, the soft, pink stuffed flamingo that Timora liked to make up voices for when she was hospitalized.  To my right, one of our printers sits on a low cabinet with three drawers; the other printer hangs on a shelf on the wall behind me.  Various files squeeze onto the two shelves that share the wall to my left with a bulletin board covered with bills to pay, prescriptions to be filled, and various other reminders of real life. Daniel’s desk and chair sit a little over a foot away; often, he graces the chair.

Q13: What's your motto or favorite quote you like to live by?

A. I have two:

“Nobody’s perfect!” – Some Like It Hot

“Ah, but in such an ugly time, the true protest is beauty.” – Phil Ochs

Q14: Is there anything else you'd like to share with us in closing such as your website, an imminent book launch or what you're working on presently?

A. Readers are more than welcome to visit my blog, “Loving, Losing, and Living” (http://fiveyearslater.blogspot.com/), where I continue to share my reflections on the subjects I touch on in my book, and (especially) on resilience – that stubborn refusal to let adversity get the best of us.  Interested readers can order my book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Twice-Marrow-Her-Bones/dp/9659146426

Susan Avitzour on Authors.com - http://www.authors.com/profile/SusanPetersenAvitzour

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