I went to college to study drama where I discovered I had no talent and after a period of dropping out majored in cultural anthropology which of course meant more masks and dancing. I studied what interested me and so I had to become a writer because my education had left me unsuited for a decent well-paying job.

Elizabeth Hand

Categorized in : Drama Jobs College

But talent—if you don't encourage it, if you don't train it, it dies. It might run wild for a little while, but it will never mean anything. Like a wild horse. If you don't tame it and teach it to run on track, to pace itself and bear a rider, it doesn't matter how fast it is. It's useless.

horse running mean

There is a love of wood, as of other things that do not answer to... by Elizabeth Hand

There is a love of wood, as of other things that do not answer to our touch.

woods answers

I never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book.

suspense-novels book thinking

The irruption of the supernatural into our world is a much more enticing notion to explore than the same thing happening in some past time, or in a wholly imaginary world.

notion our-world past

Real myths are often strange and startlingly unfamiliar, and don't always give up their meanings easily; you have to tease them out, and for me, that's one of the pleasures of reading older collections of lore.

giving-up real reading

I wanted to have very strong female characters. I just thought it was always the way the world should be.

strong character world

It sounds creepy, but I always liked the idea of disappearing then becoming something new. That of course was before I disappeared.

creepy sound ideas

Endless longing; a face you'd known since childhood, since birth almost; a body that moved as though it were your own. These were things you never spoke of, things you never hoped for; things you could never admit to. Things you'd die for, and die of.

childhood body faces

You build a character, a shell, and if you build it right, someth... by Elizabeth Hand

You build a character, a shell, and if you build it right, something comes to live inside it.

shells ifs character

I was a tomboy as a kid - I was skinny and had cropped hair and was often mistaken for a boy - and up until I was about six, I had my own very fluid ideas of gender in that I believed that, somehow, an individual could choose whether or not s/he wanted to be a boy or a girl.

gender girl hair ideas

I didn't read much SF as a kid - I was a total Tolkien geek - but I started reading Samuel Delany and Angela Carter and Ursula LeGuin in high school, and I was definitely taken with the notion that here was a literature that could explore various notions of gender identity and how it affects the culture at large.

gender identity culture school

I read '1984' at a precocious age, like 8, and when I did the math, I realized that Julia, Winston Smith's lover, was born the same year I was, 1957. I read that book over and over again with the 1960s as a backdrop: anti-war and anti-bomb protests and this general pervasive sense of doom.

year born age book

I still love it. I love lots of other music, too, and always have, but punk's the soundtrack of my youth. I think you never escape the music you're listening to and seeing when you're seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old.

you youth music love

I love artists. I find them fascinating. To me, there really is a... by Elizabeth Hand

I love artists. I find them fascinating. To me, there really is a genuine magic in what they do.

me genuine magic love

I've always wanted to write an airport book. by Elizabeth Hand

I've always wanted to write an airport book.

airport write always book