Q&A with Author Kimberley Cetron
Q: What inspired you to create your latest work, Fractals?
When we are talking about the book, people usually ask me to explain what a fractal is. Fractals are patterns, and they are everywhere. The easiest places to see them and understand them are in nature and in our bodies, but they are also in the movement of crowds and in cloud formations and stock market market fluctuations. To be fractal a pattern has to be self-similar in shape, have infinite reiteration, and fractal dimension. That sounds harder than it is. I usually tell people to think about the branching pattern of a tree — it is established at the first branches and continues to the smallest branches. So the shape that each branch makes is self-similar, from the largest branches to the smallest ones. If the tree grew into infinity, that same pattern would keep repeating. We have those same branching patterns in our lungs and in our circulatory systems. Cancer specialists can use this principal for early detection — they determine what the body’s branching pattern is, and then look for deviations. The deviations are places where a cancer has set up an independent system.
Q: What themes will readers find out in your book?
People also think that fractals are too difficult to understand, but everyone can understand them on some level. I am limited in my understanding of them mathematically, but I was able to learn how they apply to nature, art, philosophy, history, science, music, technology, and many other fields. The explanations in the book are easy to grasp, and there are great resources provided in the book, some of which are children’s books. The idea of fractals may be new to people, but anyone can understand them — and once you know what they are, you start seeing them everywhere. That’s what makes them an “invisible world made visible.”
Q: What inspired you to create your latest work, Fractals?
In 2016 my friend Meredith Barnes contacted me about collaborating on a show with her —she was choreographing dances on the theme of fractals, but she wanted to enter the show in the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington DC, and they required it to be a theater piece rather than a dance concert. I scripted and directed the show, and was asked by many audience members for a copy of the script, so I saw the need to publish it. The script and the movement are what made the concept of fractals available to our audiences. Once I started writing the book, I recognized that there are not many resources for people who want to do theater-dance collaborations, particularly ones where actors dance and dancers act, so I explained how we did that and researched other examples. I wanted to situate us by genre into the work being done by others, but there was nothing available that provided an overview of this type of work —so I wrote one. I also wanted to understand collaboration better, so I spent a lot of time researching that. Toni Morrison famously said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I needed the information in this book and it wasn’t all in one place — so I put it in one place.
Q: Describe how your expertise in teaching and your hobbies have influenced your writing.
I take dance class almost every day, I do cross-training, I play several instruments —but I have been involved in professional theater since I was a young adult, so those are more along the lines of professional development than hobbies. I taught full-time for 19 years and did a lot of teacher training during that time, so I recognized the need to make the material in this book accessible for educators. Many teachers see the value in STEAM education (applying the arts to academics — the acronym stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) but are not sure how to go about it, and hesitate especially if they don’t have a background in the arts. It is easier to do than you might think. The students are rarely intimidated —they are dying for creative outlets and tend to jump right into the work. I describe in the book how work such as what we did in ‘Fractals’can be used for any type of interdisciplinary education, arts education, or writing education. I am available to workshop with people who want some hands-on experience with this approach.
I tend to gather a lot of information and then do a zero draft, which is the draft before your first draft, a brain dump. I just pour the information onto the page, and then revise and edit to make it clear. Sometimes I pre-write, but I find outlining suffocating so I never do that. I believe that content drives form, and outlining imposes too much form on the work too early in the process. Sometimes I print what I have written and cut it into sections, and then rearrange them to see if I can improve the clarity or organization — and sometimes you make some interesting discoveries that way. My friend Karen Zacarías says she has to “work from a place of inspiration,” but I am more of a day laborer. I just show up to the work. Sarah Hepola describes this in her book, ‘Blackout,’ doing the kind of writing that feels like moving bricks across the room. If I waited for inspiration I wouldn’t get anything done. I do find that once you are involved in a project you problem-solve all day, even when you are away from your desk. And you notice things you might otherwise miss.
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring writers in your genre?
Interviewing is essential. Learn to ask questions, and to really listen to the answers. People are always the richest resource for information, but you have to really listen without interruption and you have to ask good follow-up questions. Always ask people what else they have to say, what they are thinking about that you haven’t asked — the best information often follows this question.
Q: How many books have you written so far?
This is my first book — I have written a lot of journal articles in the education field — I wrote book reviews for awhile. My father-in-law was a futurist —we collaborated on several projects that integrated futurism/forecasting and education. I have written a lot of poetry and done some playwriting —I worked for several years as a dramaturg, so I learned playwriting inside out, by seeing what worked and didn’t work for other people’s plays in development.
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring writers in your genre?
Interviewing is essential. Learn to ask questions, and to really listen to the answers. People are always the richest resource for information, but you have to really listen without interruption and you have to ask good follow-up questions. Always ask people what else they have to say, what they are thinking about that you haven’t asked — the best information often follows this question.
You also have to free your writing. Julia Cameron teaches the practice of morning pages — three pages of freewriting where you just clear your mind on paper in order to free up space for creativity. I do this every morning and always have writing students do it first thing in class. No stopping, no editing, just a clearing of whatever is on your mind, large or small. I also love the advice I got from my doctoral adviser, Joseph Maxwell, to sit down without notes and write everything I know about a topic. Just write it as though I am telling a friend about the subject. That is a great way to generate a zero draft. If you are not worried about “writing,” if you are just telling it, you’ll be amazed by how much you know. And you will discover what you don’t.
Q: What future projects are you currently working on, if any?
My dissertation centered on fostering cross-cultural communication through a theater technique pioneered by Anna Deavere Smith. I want to make this curriculum available to educators, because I used it successfully for many years before designing research around it — and I used it in Social Studies, English, and Theater classrooms, so it has a broad application. When I sat down this spring to start working on it, the context of the current moment overwhelmed me — how divided and argumentative we have become as a culture, and how great the need is to learn to communicate with people with whom we disagree. So while the next book does contain the curriculum, it has become a clearinghouse of information for readers who are not necessarily educators but who want to learn how to communicate across differences, how to engage in dialogue and how to listen, how we all have a way of understanding things until it no longer works for us, and how we change once we reach that point.
I was also in a cult for 15 years, and I have a play in progress about that experience. I have been working on it on and off for a long time. It is right on the verge of showing me what it wants to be.
Q: Where can readers find you and your work online?
For now, the very best place to find me and lots of articles, videos, and other related information about the book is the Fractals page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/FractalsByCetron). Readers can message me there as well. They can use any search engine to find the book — I find it is easier if you search ‘Fractals Cetron’ because there is so much information about fractals out there. It’s available wherever you buy books, for e-readers and in paperback. There was no way to capture more than a slice of the information in the book, so I hope readers will contribute more — and I hope readers will let me know how I can work with them to make the information useful to their specific purposes.
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