Defne Suman: “You write what you read.”

Today I bring you a dialogue with the writer Defne Suman from FILIT, a.k.a The International Festival of Literature and Translation in Iasi. We talked about her writing in general, but also about The Silence of Scheherazade which has recently been translated into Romanian by Irina Bojin at Humanitas Fiction Publishing House. Our conversation is entirely in English without a Romanian translation and it took place in a room at The House of Museums in Iasi. Enjoy our conversation and please look up her amazing novel about the city Smirna and resilience.

Azi vă aduc un dialog cu scriitoarea Defne Suman din inima FILIT-ului, a.k.a Festivalul Internațional de Literatură și Traducere Iași. Am vorbit despre scris în general, dar și despre Tăcerea Șeherezadei recent apărută în traducerea Irinei Bojin la Humanitas Fiction. Acest interviu este în întregime în engleză, fără inerpret în română. Ascultare plăcută și sper să vă motiveze să-i căutați romanul „Tăcerea Șeherezadei”, despre orașul Smirna și reziliență.

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A few of the things Defne Suman says in this podcast:

I need to have my hand working for my imagination to work. The imagination is activated by hand.

As a writer I am always interested in what people do in the backside of their houses.

The mind works in many layers in those moments (when writing by hand). In either case, hand writing or computer writing, the thoughts are always faster,, so how do you catch them? It’s a race.

You write what you read. (…) You have to write a book you really want to read in life. You have to write it because it doesn’t exist.

Some stories don’t belong to you.

Stories are out there looking for the authors. The moment you find the right story, (…) that’s not enough. Now you have to work hard.

As writers, we don’t want to create dramatic scenes unless they really happened.

Writing a novel is a little like a theater play. You have the decor, the background is the historical facts (…). They never become, in my fiction at least, the main character. I don’t take a real person and make them my fictive character. I draw the line very clear there.

The crime is putting the suffering under the soil.

I don’t believe happy families exist. We have our tragic moments and we have our happy moments. And we are never similar in that way and we are very similar in that way. Tragedies happen to our families.

The way you experience your past is your truth.

Literature is like philosophy. Philosophy doesn’t come up with conclusions. It asks the questions. It gives you certain answers. But it gives you also the opposite answers. So it gives your mind room to do gymnastics. Literature is the same.

First draft is giving birth. Second draft is just nursing the child.

**Muzica de intro /outro vine de la https://mixkit.co (Rock the Game/by Ahjay Stelino)