From Here to ETERNITY PHILOPS: an interview

Over @ ChickLitGurrl: high on LATTES & WRITING (website), I interview Eternity Philops whose wonderful collection of poems and prose - VISIONS OF A CRYPTIC MYSTERY illustrate love, loss, and life.





Here's a TASTE of the interview:


CLG: When did you know that writing was something you truly wanted to do?
EP: Hmm…wanted to do as in professionally? Honestly, I’m not seeking to be the next big writer or anything like that. I do it because I enjoy it, because I have a talent for it, and I wish for others to enjoy it. But I figured that part out gradually as I grew up. I’d read books and think to myself, “I can write like this”. After I thought that over and over, I guess it finally hit me that if I thought I could write, then maybe I should.


CLG: What's your favorite thing about VISIONS OF A CRYPTIC MYSTERY?
EP: Truthfully, my favorite thing about it is that I DID IT! I wrote and published my own book, my first book. Everything about VISIONS, its cover, the editing, everything, I was able to do. It’s really something to hold something in your hands that you created. It is an accomplished goal, and that alone is something I take much pride in, despite whether or not anyone else enjoys it.




CLG: Do you have a standard process to your writing? Are you an outliner or a jump-right-in writer?
EP: For stories I develop the basics in my head first. I know how I’ll start it, and I know how it will end because there’s normally a message or tone I want to convey. Getting from beginning to finish is usually planned out, but not written in stone. As I write an idea may come to me, so I might have to back track and change a few things. But normally, with a story, I don’t sit down and write it physically until I’ve written it mentally. For example, with “Other Side of the Moon”, I was able to pump out the story itself within two hours, with very little editing done to it since I originally finished it.Poetry, on the other hand, is a labor of love. Sometimes all I have is a title, which I jot down, and then it may sit for months until the rest of it flows out of me. Or I’ll begin with one thing in mind, but by the time I’m finished I’ve written something completely different. The poem “Historian” was like that; I began it as a lover’s loss poem, and it ended being a Black perspective piece. Poetry is much more complicated, because if it doesn’t flow right, it’s no good.



To read the rest of the interview, head over to CHICKLITGURRL (website) now; leave comments!