Most of us know Susan Poulin for her work in theater. She studied theater at the University of Southern Maine, then helped create the Downeast Theater Collective, a three-actor team that performed in Portland. She worked in Portsmouth, N.H., for a bit, then concentrated on building her life and marriage.

But everything changed in the mid-1990s, when, while driving across the country as a newlywed, Poulin developed an idea that would become her next stage show: “In My Mind, I’m Thin.”

Soon after, the character Ida LeClair materialized. Poulin drew on her Franco-American roots and created a character with a good heart, a strong sense of herself and a lot of wit.

She debuted her first Ida stage show, “Ida: Woman Who Runs with the Moose,” in 1997. Since then, she has created five stage shows, an Ida blog and now an Ida self-help book, “Finding Your Inner Moose: Ida LeClair’s Guide to Livin’ the Good Life.” It includes good advice under such chapter headings as “What Did I Do Wrong to Deserve this Turkey Gobbler Neck” and “Feng Shui-ing the Double Wide.”

Yarmouth-based Islandport Press publishes the book this week.

Poulin, who was born in Jackman, lives in Eliot with her husband and collaborator, Gordon Carlisle. Ida lives in a fictional Maine town, Mahoosuc Mills, with her high-school sweetie Charlie and their dog Scamp. 

Q: I want to talk about your book, obviously. What made you want to put this together now?

A: I had been focusing on my character Ida, and I have a blog. I have been blogging once a week for over three years, first for Down East, and I moved it to the Islandport Press website this summer. There is so much I want to say as Ida. A book seemed the next logical step.

I wasn’t interested in doing a book that was just a collection of the blogs. I wanted to do something that was more interesting to me. I think that while how I express myself is unique, I am not unique in what I am interested in. I was interested in this concept of a character like Ida, who has a lot of good old-fashioned common sense but not a lot of book learning. 

Q: When you created Ida LeClair, did you envision her becoming a writer?

A: No. I was in this Yankee storytelling contest back in 1994 or 1995, and it was all of New England. I entered on a lark. I had one story called “A Stud Finder” — it was about taking a new approach to meeting a guy. I entered, and I didn’t think I should stood a chance, but ended up winning my category. I was on stage at the Colonial Theatre in Keene, N.H., and I was the only woman on the stage.

I was like, “You know, this does not reflect the incredible women I grew up with in Maine.” It had a very Yankee sensibility, and I was raised a Franco-American. I do not identify with the Yankee sensibility. To me, it was such a narrow scope. I thought it would be great to create a character. One day, I sat down to write, and I heard her voice in my head. 

Q: What’s in the book? 

A: It’s a Maine humor self-help book. I wanted something where, if you went to the shelf and looked for it, it would be the only one there. Each chapter is a different topic. It has Ida’s common-sensical approach, things she has learned from her friends and family. It also takes the attributes of a moose. The premise is, you can learn a lot about life from a moose. All the anecdotal stuff is Maine humor. 

Q: How did you choose to include some things and leave others out? What was that process like?

A: I had the basic premise of the play, the speech of the play, which is based around the moose attributes. But I had never worked with an outline, or ever written a book. Islandport was really great in helping me focus.

I organized it originally from the moose facts, and each fact represented a different thing. But one of my editors, Amy Canfield, said, “We need to organize it by topic.” That kicked it out of the play format and into more of a book format. That was the key. 

Q: Has Ida grown into the woman you envisioned when you created her?

A: She constantly surprises me. At the beginning, my pure motivation was to bring this different voice to the stage. She has ended up being a teacher and a friend. She is much more resilient than I am, and adaptive.

Writing the blog once a week has just been the best thing that ever happened to me. I just show up every week, and I write. Sometimes I have nothing, and I just make a start. The more I write, the deeper and richer Ida and her world become to me. I can get a hangnail, and its a blog. And it’s a life lesson.

Q: Where do you get your ideas?

A: I work at it. I show up every day. I really hone it, and I really work at writing the joke. My husband edits for me, and he keeps Ida sounding like Ida all the time. He’ll always call me on it if it gets too off the mark in terms of word choice and things like that.

Q: Does the publication of “Finding Your Inner Moose” alter or enhance the things you want to do with Ida going forward?

A: It really does. When you are performing, you can only reach a certain amount of people. We do about 40 or 50 shows a year, and half of my body of work is Ida, but probably three-quarters of my performance work is Ida. But you can only reach so many people. The blog opens that up more. But the book is a much bigger deal.

Q: What do you like most about Ida?

A: I like how smart she is and how in a common-sensical way she is very practical. She knows how to have fun. She is not working on her life all the time. She is living her life. That was in the first show, that is what I wanted to say.

Just because you are happy in your life doesn’t mean you are shallow or stupid. A lot of people of my generation — I am 54 and college educated — feel you have to be working all the time. I must work on my relationship with my husband, work on my relationship with my friends.

Ida just does those things. This is your life, you have to live it and not work on it all the time. Fun is the magic ingredient that makes it all work. That is the ingredient we sometimes forget about. I just love her.

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or:

bkeyes@pressherald.com

Twitter: pphbkeyes

 

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