Name: Susan Drinkard
First clue you wanted to be a writer; summarize the situation:
I was very shy in school and had a huge crush on Mr. Rushmore, my junior high math teacher. I wrote an article for the school newspaper about how handsome and wonderful he was. I had attended 12 grade schools as a military kid and I didn’t ever have consistency in my math education. After I wrote that piece, I received special attention from him, and on some level I believe I understood there was power in the written word. I got attention, something I was starved for. Ultimately it bombed for me because I improved so much that they made me go to a higher-level math class with a teacher that was very fat and very mean and who told us most kids are born with tails, but they cut them off in the hospital.
Earliest remembered writing and publishing experience: I heard you didn’t have to take regular English if you got on the newspaper staff at my school, Watson Junior High in Colorado Springs, Colorado. So I petitioned and was selected for the newspaper, which we called THE BIG RED MACHINE. After a few editions were published, we were forced to change the name of the newspaper to THE WATSON BEAT because the school’s administration thought THE BIG RED MACHINE sounded “too Commie.”
I don’t really remember what I wrote, but getting something published was truly a self-esteem builder for me, who didn’t have much of that during those years. I was part of a team and it made me feel a little important. Plus, I didn’t have to do grammar like the kids in the regular English classes.
What part of your education helped you most on your path to writing?
I believe reading and writing helped me keep my sanity when I was young and moving sometimes three times per year. When my dad went to Vietnam and then we were transferred to the Philippine Islands, I was one freaked out fifth grader. I was a fairly happy little cheerleader in Oklahoma with long hair. We moved to the Philippines and during the first couple days there a “beautician” bloodied my neck with a knife in a beauty shop as she cut my hair off while rats ran around my feet. There were geckos on my walls and glass sticking up on the fence around our yard to discourage burglars. I fortunately quickly found the public library on base and started to read a book a day. It helped me through the transition because it seemed normal. And reading helps you learn how to write, even though you don’t know it.
I had a high school teacher at my horrid high school in Texas who required that we write five pages of journals each week about anything we wanted; that was quite unusual for the 1970s when it was mostly “Read the text and do the questions at the end of the chapter,” and mimeographed worksheets. I still have that journal. It’s very boring. I wrote things like “Thurman said ‘Hi’ to me,” and I kept good records of what we had for dinner. We had a lot of orange cake.
I worked hard creating my church’s youth newsletter in high school in Texas and then writing and editing my college newspaper, The South Coloradan at Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado.
Who influenced you most along your way and how?
Ted Nelson. He was the editor of my college newspaper. His writing proved so convincing that he got policies changed on our campus. He drilled me with his mantra: There is no job more interesting and exciting than being a reporter.
My crusty and brilliant editor of the Salida Mountain Mail, Ed Quillen, the only person I’ve ever met who types faster than me, taught me how to edit a newspaper, how to think in terms of story ideas, how to put a paper together in a morning.
Most satisfying piece(s) you’ve ever written----its audience: My grandfather was larger than life to all of us grandkids. He was a big hilarious bricklayer who wore those blue and white striped overalls every day with levels and Prince Albert Pipe Tobacco cans sticking out of his pockets, along with big pencils and string and measuring tapes and pipes. He was as strong as a draft horse even when he was old. With three pair of dime store glasses on his head, his big swollen fingers would untangle the tiny chains of my necklaces when I was a young girl. He was my hero. I wrote a column about him—“The Most Handsome Man I Ever Saw” when I was writing for the Daily Bee and sent it to him. I think it rocked his world. I’m glad I did that. When Grandpa died, we thought his picture should have been on the cover of Time.
Once when I was reporting for the Sandpoint Daily Bee, I interviewed several mothers who’d had their children stolen by their ex-husbands. It was as though their hearts were torn out. One’s ex had taken their son to Saudi and she hadn’t seen him for two years. Tim Tucker, an Idaho legislator at the time, read the piece and worked to get a custodial interference law passed in Idaho. He told me my story had influenced that, and it may have helped a few kids have better lives. I like to think so.
Writing a Q and A piece with Putlitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson last year for the Sandpoint Magazine was important to me personally. I savored her book, Gilead, and for me writing about it clarified many questions about church doctrine and spirituality. It made me feel better about my own spirituality and answered some deeply puzzling questions about theology.
Your publications or venues for writing:
I do long billing notes for my job. For every hour I spend with a client, I write about it for 15 or 20 minutes. If I couldn’t write well, I couldn’t do my work helping the mentally ill in Sandpoint because what I write gets me the paycheck.
Nuggets of advice for young writers in middle school and high school:
Turn off the video games and television; they are making your brain mush.
Read. Read. Read.
