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Week 1
What books did you like when you were growing up?
I loved all the series books -- Nancy Drew, for example -- and then I read more old-fashioned things, like The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, the Bobbsey Twins –even the Little Colonel Books, which were written, I think, in the very early 1900s. I liked books that had sequels so I wouldn’t ever run out if I wanted to read more. I think series books have come back, and partly for that reason. Whatever was around, I read….cereal boxes, what have you. I read Little Women, Louisa Mae Alcott’s most famous book, then read everything else she wrote. One of my children read that as her first “grownup” book, as well. Later, in high school, I got hooked on mysteries, and I still love them. I devour them between more serious reading.
What I think I did very early was develop a habit of reading an author over and over, in different books. I remember following that pattern after college as well (when I finally had my reading time back without textbooks). I do think it’s very instructive for a writer to read the same author in depth.
Did you always want to be a writer?
Yes. When my first book was published, my mother sent me a copy of a “grocery store” book from my childhood – I’d written my own story, in dialogue, on the blank pages of this throw-away paperback when I was five or six. I had no memory of it, but clearly, I was struck with the bug very early on.
How do you get ideas?
Any creative person – that is to say, most everybody, because I believe everybody is creative in some way – gets lots of ideas. The hardest part is sorting them out. But you do have to be open to ideas, and you do have to put yourself in the frame of mind to “receive” them…this means you need quiet time, you need daydreaming time, you need time without the constant noise of radio, TV, computer, or other people. That seems to be hard to find sometimes in our society in 2004!
When I’m ready to start a book, I will deliberately put myself in a position to get lots of ideas. If I want to write a book with a middle-school age character, for example, I might arrange to visit a school, or substitute teach, or in some way “get into” the culture I want to write about. If I wanted to write about medical school, for example, or if I had a character who was going to medical school, I’d make sure to visit. I’d interview young doctors who were recent graduates. I’d read any fiction or nonfiction I could find about the experience.
Often, you have a small bit of an idea and you need to develop that idea – if only to see if it’s an idea that will work for you for a long novel or a book. Research, as I describe it above, is a good way to do that. But the ideas come….that’s really the easiest part.
What do you do when you’re not writing?
Anything I want! Well, within reason. I like to garden, to travel, to go to art museums, to read….I love going out to eat and taking long walks as well. I guess you’d say I pursue all my hobbies.
Are you friends with other writers?
Oh, yes. I seek other writers out, and I belong to several groups of writers. One group started a writers’ workshop (almost 20 years ago now). That was wonderful fun. Other groups just talk about books, or about their own writing, or read their own stories to others.
Week 2
Are your stories ever based on real life?
Yes, except when they are better than real life.
Seriously, all stories have a deep reality if they are real. That is, the story starts with a real place, a real character, a real episode – any one of those will do. Then the story takes off to a new place and becomes an entirely different organism. The simplest example of this principle of storytelling is the TV series Law and Order, which the producer/director says starts with a headline, then proceeds forward to end in a completely different place with completely different people than the real story as reported in the news. All stories are somewhat like that. The fact starts it off, then the imagination takes over. I might add that until the imagination takes over and carries the story forward, it doesn’t really count as a story. A story is an imagined happening, not (as journalism should be) a real one drawn directly from life.
It is good to remember, though, that real life roots the story. Even with science fiction, where an entirely new universe might exist, characters have emotions and the plot might reveal more about ourselves (human beings who live on earth) than about extraterrestrial beings.
What did you like most about school?
Everything. There was the social life, the other people – classmates, teachers, assembly speakers, guests, parents – but also the subjects, which opened doors that otherwise could have stayed shut. Even chemistry, my worst subject, had much to offer me, if only a new language and a periodic chart. (My chemistry unknown tested positive for everything, which said much more about my ability as a chemist than about the mysteriously omnipotent substance.) But of course I loved recess the most in grade school, next to Water Fountain 101 and English – reading and writing – in middle and high school. Gossip 202 was also interesting, and taught much about life.
I’m also a good learner and school taught me how to be a quick study. That serves a writer well. There’s always more to learn about almost everything…and while you can’t do it all, it’s great to know there is more to know about what you like.
My sister is a great writer and wants to publish books. How can she be a great writer like you?
Tell your sister to get all the knowledge she can, whether that means traveling around the world or staying in school a long time…and read, read, read. Then she needs to get familiar with the publishing industry, either through writers’ conferences like the Iowa Writers Workshop or the Antioch Writers Workshop, or grad schools – or through working in the industry!
Get lots of experience writing, all kinds of writing – preferably for publication in something….the school paper, a weekly newspaper, a suburban newspaper, the Dayton City Paper – a magazine. Some newspapers carry a column by a teen, which is good experience if you have an interest in thinking through a certain position, either political or social or even personal, if it’s of interest to others. Choose subjects you like and learn all about them. Do this again and again (this is why journalism is a good background…however, it can also become your career if you aren’t careful! – though maybe that’s not a bad thing).
Obviously, at some point you need to start on books – fiction or nonfiction? There’s lots of material out there! It’s never too soon to start, though it may be too soon to start publishing until you have some life experience under your belt.
Week 3
Was it hard to get your book published? How did you do that?
Yes, getting published is a whole effort in itself….after the writing, usually, at least at first. That’s why (see above) you need to learn about the publishing industry. You can read about it in many books published for this purpose and available at your local library: the Writers’ Digest yearly guides (divided into separate volumes for fiction, short story, novel, poetry, etc.), literary reference materials (for lists of editors, agents and publishers, for example). The former also contain essays that help with the ways you can present your material. Ask your librarian for help finding these books. There are many and new ones coming out all the time, and they’ll know which ones are right for your age and experience level.
How did you get the idea for your book Dive for the Sun?
That’s a good question….I love to travel and on a vacation with my husband in Key West, he took me (dragged me, truth to tell) into a “gold museum.” I fell in love with the artifacts shown there from the bottom of the sea – from Spanish galleons that sank hundreds of years ago – and presto – I’d found the subject of another book. Naturally, a novel needs more than just background material – that’s where the story of a famous father and a troubled son began.
What are you writing next?
I’m working on a play that has to do with a bike ride across the country, and I think it’s a lot of fun but I’m also having a lot of trouble getting it into shape. I didn’t go on a bike ride myself, but was a volunteer who helped on the “Big Ride,” a cross-country marathon for the benefit of the American Lung Association. It was a marvelous experience, and I’m trying to capture that in the play. Probably, since I haven’t written a play before, it’s harder than it needs to be!
Week 4
Do you ever write about what you did growing up when you write books?
Yes, of course! It’s important what happens to us as we grow…I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, which then was a city about the same size as Dayton, Ohio, is now – and with some of the same attributes and even some of the same demographics.
But of course while you are growing up, what is really important is your neighborhood and the people in your neighborhood. Two of my books have a strong relationship to my own childhood, In the first, BUT WHAT ABOUT ME?, the critical problem – Mom going back to work – is not from my childhood (moms didn’t work then, in our neighborhood), but the phone system used at the end is definitely straight from my childhood when my “best friend” who lived next door and I rigged up something similar when she had scarlet fever and I couldn’t visit her.
In MELISSA’S MEDLEY, the swimming team that Moe belongs to bears a striking resemblance to those that I recall from my own childhood, although we were NOT into yoga then. Still, the kind of closeness that athletes can build with each other in that situation is drawn from my own experience.
In writing, especially with fiction, the writer needs to draw on something – some aspect of situation or character – from his/her own background. You can’t research everything, and the emotion must be real to work. So it’s a good way to use both your good and bad experiences – write about both kinds!
Is there a secret for writing dialogue so it sounds like real people talking?
Well, yes, in a way there is. If you actually tape record folks talking, you’ll hear a lot of ahem and stuttering and slang words that in dialogue you don’t bother with, except maybe every now and then. This is done partially not to bore the reader. In fact, that’s one of the great things about writing fiction – you skip all the boring parts, like going to the bathroom and the details of answering the phone or trying to call the telephone company about the bill.
Dialogue is fun to try. Try taping a dialogue and then try writing it down, and do everything you can to shorten and improve it. In real life, a lot of time is taken up saying “Hello, how are you, how are the wife and kids?” and in a book, you don’t want to use up valuable space and time for either reader and writer, so you skip all that by saying, “After Susie ran into Mel in the grocery store, they started arguing about the play they had both seen, and continued talking about it over a cup of coffee across the street.” Then you quote the conversation – the interesting part, the part where something is happening – maybe Susie and Mel are discovering who the other is for the first time, or finding out they don’t agree on anything at all.
What is your favorite animal?
Cats, definitely. Writers and cats are like bread and butter together. They understand each other perfectly. You see, neither wants to be completely tame, but they’re both comfort animals and prefer the domestic scene where there is warmth and real food and good things to drink and you can sleep in a real bed at night. Most of them, anyway. The wilder writers like lions or tigers better, I suspect.
What’s it like to see your book in a bookstore?
Wonderful! It’s amazing, because you’ve created something that used to be just an idea in your head, and now artists have made it into a real thing that can be picked up and thumbed through.
It’s almost as good as seeing your child be honored by acting in a play or singing in a chorus or getting elected to the honor society in school…. or making a touchdown or winning a race.
It would be as if your parents won a great honor, and the president came and hung a medal on them. It isn’t YOU, exactly, but it’s something so close to you that you totally enjoy it as if it’s happening to you.
You feel very proud.
If I want to be a writer, do I need to take any special classes?
You should take great notice of everything….if you can draw, do that too, and be aware of what you see around you, and how people act and react to events and to other people.
You need to “educate” yourself somehow – that can be by getting the most education you can (at least through college – grad school is a mixed blessing) – or it can be by learning some other important skill. I know writers who educated themselves through travel (and reading), learning a difficult skill (and reading), going to medical school (and reading) – you get the idea.
Special classes would be defined by whatever is special to you and your interests. And wouldn’t be confined to classes in a school! The results – what you learn – are what’s important.
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