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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
How did you get into performing yourself?
At Naropa I started writing very short prose pieces and reading them out loud. I loved the immediacy of standing at that mic. The performance stuff was so alive. When I finally got a contract to write a novel, I worked very hard at bringing some of that immediacy to the written word.
It's a long way from Naropa to Lollapalooza.
Everything that's ever happened to me has been an accident. That was no exception. I went back to New York and people started paying me to read -- 20 bucks here, 50 bucks there. In 1993, I got on a PBS spoken-word show and "Poetry Unplugged" on MTV. Then a record company offered me a deal, so I put together a backup band and made a CD ["No More Mister Nice Girl," 1994]. Next thing I knew I was on the Lollapalooza tour bus. That was the most fun ever -- oh man, it was just delicious. I got to watch and hang around with some amazing musicians, and all I had to do was get on a stage three times a day and scream out my rants. It was the pinnacle of the '90s, and I was traveling in style.
But then?
I got tired of the limitations. I was doing the same 12 pieces all day every day, and I didn't have time to write. It was fun, but it wasn't a writer's life. I did a few more spoken-word tours, did Woodstock II. Then in '95 I hung it up. All I wanted to do was sit down and write for five years straight.
How did you get your first book deal?
One day there was a big piece in the New York Times about me. The next day I got calls from five editors wanting to meet with me -- none of whom had seen a word I'd written. I signed with Shaye Arehart at Harmony because she was the only one who wanted more than a one-off confessional about my rocker life. She seemed interested in seeing me develop as a novelist. Shaye published my first book. She's still publishing my novels.
Was it daunting to face a novel after writing two-minute-long poems and songs?
I wanted a complete shock to my system. I got it. In retrospect, that first novel is kind of a mess. But all I'd ever wanted to do, really, was finish a novel. I learned a lot as I stumbled through it.
The heroine of that novel, a woman not entirely unlike yourself, writes porn novels for a living, an avocation not unknown to you.
It all started as a joke. I wrote a rant called "Fuck Me." Then a poet I was reading with challenged me to write about sex from the point of view of a man. I did it, and that story turned into my next book. After "Soft Maniacs" came out, Nerve.com asked me to write for them. Susie Bright anthologized some of those stories. I love writing about sex, but it's too easy now. Time to push it further.
Besides publishing poetry, crime novels, erotic fiction, short stories and essays, and now writing journalistic nonfiction, rumor has it that you also own a Steinway and play classical piano, bike ride 30 miles a day, do yoga daily, and enjoy passionate relationships with your dog and your boyfriend of three years. Am I missing anything?
It seems like most of the time I'm sitting at my desk staring at my feet. [Pauses.] Oh. I swim, too.
That's some pretty prolific foot-staring. Is it always the same Maggie Estep hopscotching across all those boxes?
I don't like it when things are easy, I guess. That may destroy the trajectory of my career. [Laughs.] When I was doing spoken word I was being sent on auditions for big Hollywood movies and TV shows. If I'd stayed with that ... but ix-nay on Hollywood, I became a crime novelist. My career path is hard to follow. That might be bad.
But there must be some connection.
Oh yeah, it's all wildly connected. My earliest influence was Camus, whom I read as a kid in France. He writes so simply. That was my aim, and spoken word taught me how to write the way I wanted to: simple, clean sentences that are direct but have some beauty in them as well. Then it became a matter of getting older, embracing my roots -- which are horses and horse people. I love them. They're insane. It's natural that that's what I'm writing about.
