PLACE AND DATE OF BIRTH:
Los Angeles, California, 1947
FAVOURITE BOOK:
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
MOST TREASURED POSSESSION
An old neon clock that used to hang in the lobby of my godparents’ motel on the outskirts of Sonora, a small town in Texas.
FAVOURITE SONG:
Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp, Laura Nyro
FAVOURITE FILM:
8 ½, Federico Fellini
When did you start writing?
I started writing when I was fourteen years old. It was not a good beginning. I announced to my English teacher that I wanted to write an adventure novel. Happy to hear that, she excused me from class and sent me to work in a book storage closet at the end of the hall. It had a small table, a straight-backed chair, and a typewriter. She gave me a stack of blank paper and wished me luck.
It was a very exciting beginning. I departed from class with great fanfare. I was off to become a novelist. However, before long, I ran into trouble. I discovered that did not know how to write a novel. I did not know how to generate new ideas. I did not know how to shape ideas into a story. I did not know how to create characters or dialogue or plot. Most of all I did not know how to pay attention to the world around me, so I really didn’t have much to say -- at least, not much that was very interesting.
Although my teacher meant well by offering me the chance to write a novel, she couldn’t really offer me any ideas about how to go about it. So after a few chapters my enthusiasm for writing began to flag. It was lonely sitting by myself. I was very disappointed in my progress. Apparently I was not a novelist after all.
After two weeks I asked to be allowed to rejoin my English class. It was humiliating to have failed so publicly. Although I’m sure I deserved it for being such a little snot about being excused from class. But despite the humiliation it was a relief to escape from the little book storage closet that had come to feel like a prison cell.
How things change over time! Now the image of an empty room, a desk, a typewriter, and a stack of blank paper spells FREEDOM in capital letters. The difference? After many years of trying I think I finally gave up on the idea of BEING a writer and settled for just learning how to write. It’s a much easier proposition. There is always something to be done. There is always a problem to solve, a sentence to write, a paragraph to fix, a chapter to shape. It’s never easy. Consequently, it’s never boring. And since hard work makes good company, it’s no longer a lonely experience.
Where do you get your ideas?
For ideas I try to pay attention to the world around me. I try to take notes when something amazes me or amuses me. I am particularly alert for people, things and events that irritate me deeply. As well as things that please me. I love contrast. Cities and gardens for example. A certain amount of bustle and noise. A certain amount of silence. I like rhythm. I love artist’s studios, newspapers, department stores, coffee shops, courthouses, small towns, big crowds, and deserted streets. I like rocks and plants. Books, movies, music and art.
For inspiration, my source is simple. Love. My wife, my family, and my friends. There is nothing else like it. Love provides organization and direction for my ideas. And it gives me the motivation to do the hard work needed to bring them into being.
Can you give your top three tips to becoming a successful author?
1. Learn to write a good love letter. You have all sorts of opportunities to write them. You can write them to your boyfriend or girlfriend, your mother or father, your teachers, all sorts of people that inspire you. It is harder to write a good love letter than to write a hate letter. For one thing people don’t usually keep hate letters; they burn them. So you don’t have to worry about their holding up to repeated readings. But a good love letter demands re-reading. So the most basic challenge to any writer of love letters is to make his/her language compelling enough to stand up to use. Writing love letters brings up all sorts of psychological and technical issues. The fear of revealing yourself. The fear of clichés. The fear of failure. But those are the basic fears involved with any kind of writing. So you may as well get used to them. On the brighter side most readers respond positively to receiving a love letter. So you stand a good chance of getting a fair reading. And possibly some sort of response. This is good. For it is the possibility of a response that focuses your attention on the essential craft of your literary endeavor.
2. Spend a few months or years writing down your dreams. Write them very carefully, trying to capture both their style and substance. Because the content of dreams is fractured and non-linear, it presents some very real problems to the narrative writer. Essentially, how do you make sense out of nonsense? How do you express the seemingly exhaustive quantity of peculiar details without derailing the compelling quality of the plot? How do you determine the point of view when it keeps shifting? How do you keep from getting lost in a personal hall of mirrors? This is a pretty good introduction to the process of writing stories. And it comes with an exceptional bonus: You don’t have to struggle to invent characters, settings, or plots. They are supplied to you on a regular basis. Daily sometimes. Free of charge. And they are entirely, uniquely yours. So while you are learning something about the craft of writing, you are also learning something about the grammar and syntax of your own imagination.
3. Read what you write to someone else. Not everything of course. But selections that you’re ready to share. Read them aloud and pay careful attention to your audience while you do so. Vary your audiences. Read to people you know and who like you. It’s nice to have an attentive audience. But also read to people who don’t know you. It’s good to find out what your words are capable of on their own. To go forward with writing it’s necessary to get used to people’s reactions to your work. Some of those reactions are constructive and useful. Some of them are a pointless waste of time and emotional energy. It takes a long time to learn to tell the difference and learn to respond appropriately. The sooner you start the better.
Favourite memory?
My favorite memory is a game of “kick the can” that I remember playing on a beautiful spring evening when I was in the third grade. The year was 1956. My family lived in a tiny mining town on the Mojave Desert in California. I went to a two-room schoolhouse and knew all of the children in the town. After school we often played together as a group. On this particular evening the weather was unexpectedly mild. It was pleasantly warm. There was no wind. The twilight lingered on lazily seemingly unwilling to finally let go of the wild and desolate landscape that surrounded us. We had settled on a game of “kick the can.” Very similar to hide-and-seek.
We took turns hiding from each other all over town--behind piles of lumber, inside deserted buildings, under cars, and beneath porches. We laughed. We screamed. We ran until we were exhausted. Finally it was too dark to see. We had to stop playing.
But still we did not want to go home. Even though we knew that dinner was waiting and that soon we would be in trouble for being late.
We didn’t talk much. We just there stood there in an empty lot and stared up at the impossibly huge sky. We watched the stars come out -- one by one at first, then by dozens, then by hundreds. We shivered in the chill that crept in from the desert. To the east a shooting star exploded and faded over Red Mountain. Then one of us thought he spotted a flying saucer. He pointed it out triumphantly. We watched in horrified fascination as it moved in from the southwest, hovered over the town and then, lights blinking ominously, slowly started to descend toward us. We let out a single, ear-shattering shriek, shouted hurried good-byes, and ran wildly for the safety of home. It was the perfect end of a perfect day.
Favourite place in the world and why?
My home. No doubt about it. It has everything I want. Squirrels, birds, cats, and trees. My books. My garden. My writing studio. My wife. It’s a wonderful place to go out from to see the world. And a wonderful place to come back to—to think, reflect, and write.
What are your hobbies?
My first hobby is gardening. Not the delicate kind. I like moving dirt and rocks about and I have plenty of rocks to work with. My second is making odd little books and cards. I’m pretty good with a straight edge, a razor blade, and a piece of paper.
If you hadn't been a writer, what do you think you would have been?
I tried quite a few things before I settled down to write. Some of them happily, some of them not. I think I pretty thoroughly covered the arts scenes. Everything from choreography to painting, textiles to photography. Ultimately I think I would have made a very good engineer. I like to figure out how things work.
