#ThisorThatThusday Author Interview with Margaret Montet
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I’d like to welcome Margaret Montet to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday!
Things you need for your writing sessions: I need Sharpie pens in many colors and a notebook. All of my first drafts are written in longhand. My first revision happens when I type up my sloppy, colorful mess of a first draft.
Things that hamper your writing: Noise and hunger.
Things you love about writing: I love the act of putting my ideas onto paper in order to tell a story in a unique but logical way. I love talking about my writing, answering questions about my writing, researching ideas, and meeting other authors and finding out their processes and ideas. I love reading books about writing.
Things you hate about writing: I hate when I don’t have time to write when a clever idea occurs to me, and I have to wait until I have a way to put this all down in detail. By then there are probably fewer details.
Favorite foods: I like pizza, burritos, Boston Cream donuts, blackberries, and lately, chicken & waffles.
Things that make you want to gag: Coffee, Brussels sprouts, fish
Favorite music or song: I love classical music (including opera), Bruce Springsteen, Prince, the Glenn Miller Band and swing, Dexter Gordon and saxophone jazz.
Music that drives you crazy: Country (except Johnny Cash)
Favorite beverage: Diet Coke, Chocolate Egg Cream, Shirley Temple, spring water
Something that gives you a sour face: anything with coffee mixed in: mocha is not an approved flavor.
The last thing you ordered online: Drawer dividers for the kitchen in the beach house.
The last thing you regret buying: That black winter coat with the soft fake fur around the neck which is plenty warm, but the zipper that worked in the store refuses to work in real life. It has snaps, too, but the zipper would be better.
Things to say to an author: I’ve read your book many times, and it becomes more meaningful with every reading.
Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: How long did it take you to write this?
Favorite places you’ve been: Cape May, NJ; Philadelphia, Manhattan, Colorado, Brooklyn, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona
Places you never want to go to again: I can’t think of any. I’d go anywhere again just to see if it changed, or I noticed something new!
Favorite books (or genre): Nonfiction, memoir, literary fiction (I read pretty broadly)
Books you wouldn’t buy: horror, fantasy, romance
People you’d like to invite to dinner (living): Bruce Springsteen, John McPhee, Colin Firth, Elizabeth Gilbert, James McBride
People you’d cancel dinner on: Miley Cyrus
The nicest thing a reader said to you: “I read a lot of your book on the beach, and it made me LAUGH!”
The craziest thing a reader said to you: “Margaret probably has a lot of money because she writes commercially.” Actually this probably wasn’t a reader, just another writer in my circle. It has been a couple of years, and I am still trying to figure out what she really meant.
About Margaret:
Margaret Montet's narratives of place feature music, memoir, culture and occasionally genealogy. Also a college librarian, Margaret holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, teaches public speaking, and presents multimedia music-centered lectures at lifelong learning venues. Her creative nonfiction has been published in many journals and anthologies. Margaret’s first collection of travel essays is Nerd Traveler (2021). Brooklyn Family Album will be published in September 2024.
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