 Author Profile
Susan Cutsforth and her husband, Stuart, are ‘ordinary’ people living an extraordinary life. They both work full-time: one is a teacher librarian of thirty years, and the other, a middle-level clerk in the public service. But, as Susan recounts in Our House is Not in Paris, they own a holiday house, Pied de la Croix, in Cuzance, a small village in the Lot in south-western France
Our House is Definitely Not in Paris now available through Amazon as an e-book is the third memoir in the 'Our House' series, following 'Our House is Not in Paris' and 'Our House is Certainly Not in Paris'.
The French countryside has again been poetically evoked in this delightful, charming and captivating memoir. 'Our House is Definitely Not in Paris' is about the cadences of daily life in a French country village, permeated by the clanging of church bells, enveloped in the endless golden light of a French summer.
Q&A with Susan Cuthbert author of Our House Is Definitely Not in Paris.
At what stage in your life did you decide to write?
Since I was young, I’ve loved writing and playing with words. However, before my first memoir, “Our House is Not in Paris”, I’d only ever written children’s picture books as gifts for my nephew and friends’ children. My students at school used to illustrate them.
What helped me to become a ‘serious’ writer was our sea change from Newtown to a village on the south coast, nine years ago. I wrote long descriptive emails to my family and friends, about the utter beauty of finding myself living in a little piece of paradise. We’d lived in a grand, imposing terrace in Newtown and then I found myself living in a decrepit old shack, perched high on a hill with a distant view of the ocean, and occasionally, the gasp-aloud sight of dolphins. There were fifty-nine steps to even arrive at our new home surrounded by lush rainforest.
The house was tumbling down, had mould and at times, even leeches found their way inside, including once to my horror, in the bed! However, nothing compared to my utter horror of returning home from school one day to discover the contents of our furled-up Kilim on our wooden floor. Assuming our cat, Twig, had been cavorting during the day, I shook it out, and...a snake flew out.
My emails described such events in my new life and other evocative pieces such as my drives of delight to school along the coast road, the glorious beaches and charming villages. Living here was like going back in time to a quieter, more gentle way of life.
It was a few years later that we had our first trip to France and the next year, bought our old farmhouse. When we got back from the first trip, I wrote a long email to friends about all our adventure and from this, the idea for a book was born. However, I never dreamt that just a matter of six years later, I would be working on my fifth book. I really didn’t even set out to write my first, it just seemed to happen...Then, once I’d written that, I didn’t plan or expect to write another, let alone now be working on my fifth.
What do you love and hate about the written word?
There is nothing I hate about the written word as such, except when people use it ineptly I find it inordinately frustrating, such as incorrect spelling – and misuse of apostrophes! Now, that really irks me. What do I love? I love using it creatively in my every day life; in conversations; emails and texts – and of course my writing. I’ve noticed as I’ve grown as a writer, with three books now published (three years in a row!) that my style has evolved enormously and I think I am now far more eloquent, evocative and poetic, particularly in my descriptions.
How are you inspired?
As my books are memoirs, I’ve drawn on our privileged experience of having a house in France where we have been fortunate to spend several months a year, each northern hemisphere summer for the past five years. I write about our experience of renovating it, the French friends we have made, and descriptions of life in France; our department, the Lot, the landscape, markets and food. It is everyday life in France that inspired me and now, life’s unfolding events.
What are the three top priorities in your writing?
To craft my writing as carefully as possible through the drafting and editing process. The more I write, the more conscious I am of this; it’s a huge, time-consuming process and now, after my first book, I also get a number of trusted readers to read and check my first drafts. I then transcribe their corrections as well as my own. I can only properly proofread in hard-copy and I print two to three hard-copies along the way. Throughout the process, I also email friends with selected descriptive passages for their thoughts and feedback. So, working between the original in Word, back and forth as corrections are made, printing, checking, clarifying, correcting. I spend about a year on it before even sending it to Melbourne Books for another final edit
How does a writing day start for you?
Most of all I like writing first thing in the morning when I am at my freshest and sharpest. So, this is when I now like to transfer all my notebooks onto the computer. In doing so, as is it months after being in France, it makes me feel I am back there again, so it is like having the experience twice. However, I now write all the time. I try to always carry a notebook to capture things as they happen and as I remember them. I need to write ideas ,sentences and even paragraphs down as soon as I think of them, or their original essence and integrity simply disappears. In France, I write in my notebooks whenever I can seize the moment in between renovating; it may be over coffee in a cafe (I’ve even scribbled on brown paper bags from the boulangerie if I didn’t have my notebook), or even last thing at night before I go to sleep, with my notebook propped on my knees in bed, gazing out at the French sky before the light finally fades at ten. If I don’t capture it all as it is actually happening, the moment has moved on to the next...
When I get back from France, I then type everything up from my notebooks. As I’m a very inept typist, this takes months. What is fascinating however, is a number of things. I hardly ever change anything from my notebooks written months prior; secondly, as I read some particularly evocative paragraphs I actually pause in amazement to discover that I’ve written something that almost seems like it was written by someone else...and thirdly, sometimes, I think as I’m typing and a memory is triggered, “Oh, I’ll add this here.” I glance ahead in my notebook – and months previously, had already in fact written something along the same lines.
How many stories do you still want to tell?
Well, the book I am currently working on is not one I ever expected to write...I’ll have to be cryptic for now, but I know my readers will also find it entirely unexpected. I’m expecting, when I publish it in about four years’ time, that it is going to quite possibly be both my most successful and popular of all. I’ve long had the dream that a movie may be made from my books. If it’s going to be any, I have high hopes that it may be book five. It will be an all-revealing memoir that moves in a new direction and on to a new dimension entirely.
Something that delights and touched me enormously is that I now have readers in the world who I don’t know, yet they are following my series and are waiting for the next to come out. Perhaps one of the most amazing things of all to me about becoming a writer, is when readers go to the trouble of actually sending me a message through my Author Facebook page to tell me how much they have been enjoying my books and are waiting for the next. I am always moved by such messages and I always reply to them to let them know that.
What is your favourite word?
Passion.
What is your least favourite word?
Boredom! In a world that holds the infinite joy of an infinite number of books, when people say they are ‘bored’...It is beyond my comprehension.
Which word would sum up your work as a writer.
Driven
Which writer do you admire the most?
Marisa de los Santos.
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Melbourne Books literary highlights for April
Apr 2-6: Swancon, Perth, WA. Spec fic.
Apr 10-12: Supanova, Melbourne, VIC. Pop culture.
Apr 17-19: Supanova, Gold Coast, QLD. Pop culture. |
