EDY If you want,
I'd love to trade some questions and answers in a kind of informal interview

Elizabeth Crane Sure,
I'll answer questions for you.

EDY Alright, let's
start this off: Why is your mom on
youtube (has since been taken down), Why does your dad feel the need to fake smile, and why is your dog
tired?

EC Awesome. My
mom is on youtube because she fled the town of dwarves to become
an opera star. My dad fake smiles because he doesn't think it's funny. My dog
is tired from opening all the presents. Duh.

EDY I saw you made
a haiku for featherproof books. Can you write one for everyday yeah?

EC Took me a
second to figure out what you were talking about, I forgot they put that on
their site. Sure, I will but I gotta run to school - will work on it.

Later…

Haiku for
Everyday Yeah
by Elizabeth Crane
Gnomes live over here,
eat your snacks, talk about you,
and never clean up.

EDY That was
really good. Everyday Yeah really appreciates your creativity and use of
gnomes. Speaking of gnomes, what's your feeling about lawn gnomes and/or
what was the summer like after fifth grade going into sixth grade?

EC Thanks, my
pleasure. I don't see enough lawn gnomes
around here, quite frankly. I'd like to see a lawn covered with
gnomes. I'd do it if we were homeowners, but we just rent. We're
not homeowners or gnomeowners. We're gnomeless. Also, I think it's
time for The Bachelor: Gnome Edition.
Let's see, the summer of 72, I graduated from PS 166, I was listening to the
Jackson 5ive on my Toot-a-loop and worrying that private school kids would be
snobby. I'm pretty sure that Lik-m-aid, Wacky Packs, and Archie comics
were present. I had a new baby sister, and I changed her diapers and made
her laugh for the first time. Maybe I wasn't good at it.

EDY I like things
I don't know. I like Toot-a-loop and Lik-m-aid. I refuse to look
these things up. I prefer ignorance.
Why is everything awesome in your opinion?

EC You should
look up Toot-a-loop, because you'll want one. It's an S, it's an O, it's
a crazy radio. Well, fine, everything isn't awesome. I
get stomachaches. Still my life is pretty awesome. I have the
perfect job and the perfect husband and my dog is almost perfect even though
he's medium smart. Our furniture and every item in our living room is
currently in a neat vertical pile in the center of the room. How awesome
is that?

EDY The furniture
sounds amazing. Let me stop for a second and
reflect. I apologize for the direction this interview is going. I
wonder if anyone will want to read it. I am a failure when it comes to
interviews. I should have told you from the beginning. Let's try
questions like:
When did you first learn to write?

EC My dad tells
people I learned to read when I was three, but even if that's true I doubt if I
could hold a pen very well at that time. So I'm gonna say first grade
like everyone else. But - my writing career began solidly in third grade
when I read Harriet the Spy. I kept spy notebooks for several years after
that with keen observations like, "Juan Henriquez is wearing a poncho
today. Consider."

EDY What are your
thoughts on cursive?

EC I am
completely terrible at it. When I was in grade school I got all
excellents except for penmanship: poor.

EDY When did you first learn to sharpen a
pencil?

EC I don't know,
but you know those kind of marking pencils where you peel off the paper to
expose more of the pencil? Who doesn't want to just unpeel the whole
thing at once? When I was a kid I thought that was the future of all
pencils.
EDY What's your favorite book?

(Note: I really
apologize for asking this question. I
don’t know how it slipped in there. I
feel like this is one of the worst questions you can ask someone.)

EC Oh for the
love of god. Just one? Not possible. If you held a gun to my
head, after I asked you nicely to put it down and you didn't, I'd say Harriet
just because it had such a big influence on me.

EDY What do you
do when you really want to write, but you're tired or you can't think of
anything and all you want to do is press your head into your monitor so it pops
out the other side?
EC I sew curtains, clothes,
embroider, play scrabulous, and go back to bed.

EDY If you were digging for gold and a walrus
tried to steal it would you hit it over the head with a shovel?

ECNot unless it
hit me over the head with a shovel first.

EDY On plane rides do you eat the
complimentary peanuts?

EC What, the
three peanuts that come in a bag that just remind me I have nothing to eat for
the next three hours? No way. Plus I could take or leave peanuts. I
usually eat the three pretzels but then the next three hours are rough.

EDY What do you
think of the new legislation?
EC I think it's terrible.

EDY Do you even
know of the new legislation?

EC Not really.

EDY What do you
think this new legislation is if you had to take a guess?
EC Vote no to violence on violence
against walruses?

EDY Have you ever
been on a date with a blind man?

EC No. Have
you?

(No.)

EDY Are you
opposed to bringing a toothbrush on blind dates and brushing your teeth at the
table if it isn't going well? etc etc

EC No, I think
that's a great idea. I wish I'd thought of that while I was still dating.

EDY What do you
think 'etc etc' implies here?
EC Flossing and mouthwash, duh.
I'd also like to say that you are not a failure. Say that to yourself a
few times a day until it sticks, willya?

(awww. How nice)

EDY Did you like
the Harriet the spy movie? Also, did you
catch the Nancy Drew movie? I kind of
liked that one.

EC I couldn't see
the movie. I heard it was good, but I didn't want anything to interfere
with my idea of it. Rosie O' Donnell as Ole Golly? No way. I didn't see the Nancy Drew movie. I used to
watch the TV show back in the day...

EDY What would be
your dream book talk experience?

EC I'm confused
by the question - dream book talk experience? That sounds like there
should be a painted Volkswagon bus and some acid involved.

EDY What's
teaching like?

EC I love
teaching. It's a lot of work, but I'm
really fortunate to be able to teach at some excellent schools, and classes
tend to be filled with very thoughtful, creative, engaged students. So I get pretty jazzed by it.

EDY Do you ever
have students who like to take the bathroom pass four or five times in one
hour?

EC Maybe not
quite that much.

EDY How do you
deal with such rebels?

EC I shun
them. But usually I unshun them so fast
they don't really notice the shun.

EDY Would you
ever name a pet 'gerund'?

EC Probably not.

EDY What about a child?

EC Definitely
not.

EDY Why or why
not?

EC I'm not
against unique baby names but gerund is just a weird-sounding word.

EDY If you could
redo the definition for gerund what would you make it?

EC A tiny old
person.

EDY How many
bunnies did you strangle yesterday?

EC Who would
strangle a bunny?

(This was asked on the
day after Easter)

EC My husband ate
a chocolate one, does that count?
EDY How many eggs did you steal and
eat?

EC I stole
nothing. I ate easter m&ms.
EDY What other holiday do you wish
the easter bunny showed up at?

EC Doesn't the
easter bunny come to all your holidays?

EDY I apologize
for the question about strangling bunnies. Maybe I'm in a bad place in my
life. Maybe I once saw a bunny get run over while waiting for the
bus. Maybe I was trying to be funny and you taking the question as a serious
one set me in my place. In other news I believe this calamity has gone on
far enough. I like how you were so patient with my idiotic
questions. It was nice. The last question will be about a
novella. It will be something like, when is your first novella coming out
and what is it about. That will be the last question. Thank you
again.

EC I didn't take
it seriously. I'd like to write a
novella. I like novellas. I don't know what it would be
about. That's always hard to say until I've actually sat down to do it.

Elizabeth Crane wrote this book, this book, and this one. She also blogs here.