Naomi Thompson is a transfer and a philosophy major, who very recently (December) graduated from Hollins. In her life she has took 6 months off to write, ending up with time-lines, birth charts, stories (200 + pages of text) and pages and pages of notes. She has taken ancient Assyrian and originally transferred from Nyack college in New York. Last but not least, she has plenty of writing experience (she was originally an English major) and book blogs, which has given her access to writing conferences rarely open to the public. This has given her an inside look into the world for writing. She advises students to take the classes that interest them. We sat down with her to ask a few questions.
Her Campus Hollins: What is your major and why did you pick it?
Naomi Thompson: I am a philosophy major. I actually really love philosophy – my friends call me Socrates – so it seems to be a good match. What I love about philosophy is that for me, it’s not about answering questions or finding truth. For me it’s about finding out what assumptions you’ve made and figuring out whether they were correct assumptions. So learning how to think more critically and more accurately and learning new things.
Her Campus Hollins: What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned?
Naomi Thompson: Everything? -laughs- There’s not really anything I’ve learned in philosophy that has not been interesting. The first classroom I went inside of here at Hollins, was asian philosophy. And I did really like that class and I ended up writing my thesis on an asian philosophy topic. . . . But I also really liked my continental philosophy class. We had an adjunct guy come in and he was great. And We just talked about Nietzsche and Heidegger. I just loved it! What I really love about continental philosophy is that it’s very poetic and it’s more literary, which ties in with my English background. And continental philosophy doesn’t care as much about giving you “this is the right answer”. It’s not as logo-centric. But continental philosophy is probably the one that will stick with me a long time, because it was very different. Continental philosophy is people like Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Nietzscht and Merleau-Ponty.
H.C.H: Where do you want to go from here?
N.T: I want to go and have adventures. I want to travel to random places, I want to look at architecture. I want to read books, I want to write books. I’m thinking about looking into doing voice acting or regular acting. I might work in an opera house.
HCH: Any hobbies or random skills?
NT: I actually do. I have random skills that I didn’t know that they were random, but apparently they are. 1. I can jump a car. 2. I can change a flat tire. Not very well, but I can manage. I can probably put down tile and put up wallpaper. I can paint a room, I can tell if a room is not painted correctly. -laughs- Because we did a lot of home improvement at my house with my parents. So I do have those random skills.
HCH: What is something you wish you could have done or changed in your life?
NT: I don’t believe in changing things in my life because if you change one thing, everything else gets changed. And good job you just ruined your life. I would need every single thing that’s happened to me to be at this point and I like where I am at this point and who I’m becoming. I don’t believe in any of this change nonsense. I’ve thought about that a lot in my life.
HCH: Pet Peeve?
NT: I don’t like Christmas songs. I don’t know if that counts as a pet peeve or not but whenever the normal Christmas songs come on I just get really violent inside because I worked in retail and retail ruins you. I worked in a calender store, by myself, in a corner in like the cold, dark part of the mall and we didn’t have music in there because it was a dark, tiny little store. And so the only music we had was the mall music. And the mall music had all of the pop . . . and I really don’t like pop to begin with unless it’s from a different country. . . .and so it was . . . I just don’t like Christmas music. Unless it’s like I am a Christmas Unicorn or something. Although this person on twitter sent me a song by the knives, which is about reindeer . . . and it’s really creepy and it’s great. But other than that, don’t sing Christmas music by me. OH! And the Sound of Music. I cannot stand when people sing the Sound of Music. And when people sing the sound of music, I just can’t . . . do it.
HCH: What interesting things have you done on campus?
NT: I have become part of the honor society for philosophers. I . . . have taken lots of interesting classes. . . . I have been a part of Bell, Book and Candle, which is a pagan/alternate spirituality group. Which is pretty awesome. And we’ve tried to meet every other week, this semester and I’ve gotten to work with two wonderful ladies and so that’s been cool. I’ve also been a part of SRLA which is the Student and Religious Life Association, which says something about me, that the only groups I’ve really been in were religious groups. I would have been a part of a philosophy group, but it DIED. And because the problem was that the two philosophy professors on campus and one has a little tiny child and just had a baby child and the other one had two small children, and so they couldn’t be as involved in extra curricular things, so a lot of the philosophy things just sort of fell along the road and fell apart. So now that their children are starting to grown up, they’re going to start trying to have a philosophy club again, and stuff. And if I had been here longer, and I was here in the spring, I could have helped revive the philosophy club. But I couldn’t – but I would have. Also, when I was a classics major we used to have classics parties. And we would play croquette. And I would watch them. [one other thing I’ve done is] My friend had a key into Talmadge Hall, where they have the music events and she could get into the piano and so we used to, every Sunday, we would go into Talmadge and she had a recording device and I wrote a musical. And so that was really cool.
HCH: What was the musical called?
NT: I wrote . . . it’s called Sadistic Soulswitch. It’s really violent. It is inspired by Repo, the genetic opera, I watched Repo about 7 times in a week and then I wrote a musical. Which I don’t recommend. . . . It’s basically that there is a world above and a world below and the world above is where all the perfect people are, and the world below is where all the rejects go. And this one girl, she wants to spend one night to get outside her parents’ rule and she goes down to the world below and she ends up getting murdered. And her soul escapes her body and ends up in her murderer’s body, and so now she has a decision of whether to become her murderer . . . there’s a lot of transmigration of soul stuff . . . it’s sorta weird. And dark. There’s some humor going on that is unexpected. There’s this guitar guy who is really creepy. Which is fun.
HCH: Any writing tips?
NT: Don’t be afraid of not being good enough – which is almost impossible to do as a writer. But continue writing, try to find people to read your work, so you can get feedback, so you know what’s working and what’s not, because they’ll notice things that you don’t. Even small things, like “I don’t think the word adorable is working here,” things like that. Don’t be afraid to try new things. One of things I’ve really learned is that I tend to be more “safe” in how I write and I’ve taken a couple of risks with what I’ve written. I wrote a paper that really pushed at the boundaries of how we write essays and . . . I got an A on it, which was exciting, because the professor said, “when I get a paper like this, I look to see if the author knows what they’re doing and I think you do”. And I had a short story like that too, that went kind of twilight zone-ish and I played with point of view and I decided to take a risk with it. And it came out really well and the professor enjoyed it. So I say again, don’t be afraid to take risks with your writing – I mean, make sure you know what you’re doing first, learn all of the basics, write as much as you can, read as many different genres as you can, and read as much as you can and as many books as you can, because that’s where you’re going to learn what you’re doing. And also, another thing, try your very hardest to learn screenwriting and play-writing, because they will teach you a lot about book writing, if you’re writing mainly books. Because I’ve been able to take both play-writing and screenwriting and especially because I’ve talked a lot to authors who are annoyed at how books get turned into movies, but they don’t actually know what that process entails – it’s basically taking two hundred pages and turning it down into fifty, which is really like 25. That’s a LOT of things to cut and get rid of. Another thing. If you are actively interested in being published, you need to immediately go online and find some sort of social media. You don’t have to do all of them, but pick one that you connect with the most because you’re not just selling your work anymore, you are selling yourself, to some degree. And I know that makes a lot of authors really uncomfortable, trust me, I’ve dealt with them. I’ve freaked some out a little, but you need to know what the industry is doing. You have to treat it like a business. And if you don’t want to, you’re either going to have to get by on luck, you’re you’re just not going to be published, because that’s sorta how the world works now. But don’t be afraid of learning what publishing is, like learning what agents are like, learning what publishing companies are like, because they’re all different. They all have their own personality.
HCH: And how do you learn about that?
NT: The internet – it is a really cool place. Also, if you can go to conferences – you might not be able to in college because money – but once you’re outside of college, there’s almost always some sort of conference going on. A lot of bookstores and libraries have people coming in and giving speeches. I’ve been able to talk to LG Going who’s publishing multiple books. She lives in New York. I have been able to meet a lot of people by going to BEA, which is Book Expo of America, but I’ve also spent a lot of time online. I’ve read Nathan Bransford’s blog, I’ve read agents blogs, I’ve looked up authors that I’ve liked and seen if they had a blog, who their agent was, sometimes I’ll just read books by an agent, Edward Necarsulmer IV, I’ve read a lot of his books because I really like his work. I really like multiple publishing companies. So just learn things and find out information.
HCH: Something you’ve always wanted to try?
NT: I want to learn Finnish. Actually I’d like to learn all of the languages. -laughs-
HCH: Who do you admire?
NT: I admire Tolkien – a lot – I think I’m a lot like him. Most everything he wrote is connected in some way which is what I do. I also admire Terry Pratchett because he takes philosophy, literature, politics, religion and makes fun of everything which is kinda what I do. He also has inter-related stories.