American River Review 2019 - Flipbook - Page 79
5. Did you have any other conception of what your
future would be like, or have you always held the
desire to write?
I have always wanted to know what other people are
really like. And I have always enjoyed making stuff up.
My first creations were not on paper, but were stories I
made up to tell my little sister. I got stalled out as a writer
by trying to be a gritty beat poet in college, which I’m
still not. I have written most of what I’ve written basically for fun. Sometimes I have an axe to grind, but I try to
work it out with the characters and learn something in the
process.
6. At what point did you discover the power of
language and what it could hold for you? Did that
knowledge empower you in a positive manner or did
you find yourself distanced from it because it felt so
close to the heart?
Hmm. One very early turning point for me was when
I realized I was hurrying my stories, trying to get it all in
there before the audience got bored and went away. I’m
not saying that makes any sense, but it was a real belief
in the back of my psyche somewhere. So I decided to just
take my own sweet time in telling a story -- to say whatever I felt like saying -- in essence, to be my own reader.
And today I still have the feeling that I’m reading at the
same time I’m writing. Just one word behind, or maybe
ahead of the flow.
ful, just intense. For me, the hardest part of the process
of writing is to quit writing: letting it go and remembering to keep appointments, feed the cats, etc., in real life.
It makes me spacey. The hardest kind of writing for me
to read or write is nature writing. Trees and stuff. Some
writers call them by name: chamisal, rabbit brush, coyote
grass. But I mostly just call them trees, bushes, grass. I
have to make myself write about setting in general.
8. Did you find that publishing your first piece
changed the way you looked at writing, or the field
itself? Do you find that part of the process enjoyable
or just a necessary evil? Once all is said and done, do
you pay a lot of mind to your book reviews, and if so,
how do you push through the negative ones?
I think my first publication was in a homemade kind
of booklet in junior high. And then in high school, I won
2nd place in fiction in a contest at a local community
college. I enjoy being published, but I don’t like writing
query letters at all. It makes me look for stereotypes and
tropes to identify the work. Faugh! About reviews? I
wish I had a lot more reviews! The most supportive thing
a reader can do for an author is post a review on Amazon
or Goodreads or both. I tend to enjoy my own writing, so
it’s not crushing if someone doesn’t like my work. I just
love to be read and understood. I focus on that bond.
7. Do you find that writing is an escape or can it be
as demanding as running a marathon? If there are
times of it being a chore, does it have to do with the
ability to set aside a time to write or is it more about
the scene you’re working on? If it is the scenes, which
ones do you find are the hardest scenes for you to
write?
If writing felt like a chore to me, I wouldn’t do it. I try
to handle the time-crunch by thinking about the story, the
scene, and the character in spare moments. I do very little
pre-writing; I just dream it up. Then it’s easier to write
it down, a process that presents its own revelations and
discoveries. Some things are hard to face writing about
-- sex, childbirth, grief -- mostly because of the physicality and interiority of those experiences. But I just grit my
teeth and dive in, and go deeper instead of backing away.
I call this “holding my feet to the fire.” But it’s not pain-
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