Not Your Mother's Book Club and Spokane Bound . . .

I never got a chance to do a write up on my last trip, but the hostess with the mostest has done a better job here Literaticat on the Mandabach, Hopkins, Asher, & Lyga gig
with the San Francisco portion.

Here's silly me reading:

Tomorrow I'm off for the last stop on my fall 2007 micro-tour, Spokane, WA.

That where my best old friend Sam Ligon lives, and where I'll appear at Auntie's books on Friday night. I'll also be visiting two creative writing classes at two different schools, North Central and Barker Center. This is is my favorite part, I think, becuase it's so energizing to talk with the kids about writing. I'll miss my own students, of course, but the new groups are refreshing.

It's cold and snowy over in Spokane today, but looking at this pic from the area makes me wish I was going to be there in fishing weather. (Though I have fished in the snow!)



Peace, and wish me happy trails!

Q & A from Barrington High School Creative Writers, Part 3

It's been almost 2 months now since my visit to the old home town of Barrington and my beloved Barrington High School.

Or, disbeloved, unbeloved, nonbeloved . . . You get the picture.

I loved my English classes and my biology classes and my friends.

And I still love Baker's Lake, which used to have an island with couple of big trees on it, where herons nested. Both black crowned night herons:

And great blues:

But the herons loved it to death, and the conservationists love the herons, so they built these scaffolds for the rookery.


But let's get to some more questions from the BHS class of '08:

Have you distinguished yourself the way you wanted?

I joked about this question in class, mentioning my distinguished grey temples and beard, because I try not to think about winning renown. But the truth is, no—I haven't.

I would like to have written more and have garnered more recognition and money with my work than I have. (essentally none at this point.) I've written a novel that's as good as I could write it. It's been published, and I am grateful for that. But—I don't think I'm supposed to admit this—I'm jealous of writers who have bigger publishers and bigger budgets for promotion. But I'm also proud of my publisher's independence and that I have complete artistic autonomy. More than anything, I try my best to focus on the work for the work's own sake, and I believe that by loving the work, the process and the product, that I'll distinguish myself in my own esteem. If I retain any integrity at all, that's what matters most.

What do you think of the self-publishing option?

Sorry, but I don’t think much of it. I know somebody who self-published a good tween novel that my daughter loved, but I think she should have held out and pushed harder for a regular publisher. Unless you have something unconventional that you really believe in, and have the drive to do all the marketing work yourself, I think self publishing is best for those who have written something that they only want to share with family, friends, and close professional associates. But that's just me.

How do you find an agent in Chicago? What do you think of the Writer's Market books. How many query letters did you send out?

I think they are great, though I found my agent by using Jeff Herman's Guide to Agents, Editors, and Publishers.

But first, I tried to concentrate on the writing: on preparing to write a draft, and on getting the draft done. I want to clarify what I said before about giving myself permission to write a really crummy first draft: what I mean is that I try to avoid perfectionism and the paralysis of being self-critical. From the beginning, as I write about character and place, relationships and events, I strive for quality. I want real characters, characters that I love—I want a good story and good writing. But in that first draft, I don't try to get it perfect. I try to free myself to let the story come out, which means writing naturally and quickly. Then I'll go over it again and again and again, making my work as good as I can with my own skill and the help of people I trust to be honest and not destructive. These people also must also be readers (and writers) whose judgement I trust and who know how to talk about reading and writing.

Then, with OR NOT, I combed all the books trying to find agents who represented what I did, talked with everybody I knew who had published or knew people who had, googled the hell out of agents that I thought might be appropriate, and sent out 60-80 queries, in batches of 12-24. 6 wanted to see a chapter. 2 wanted the whold book. One became my agent and sold the book. Oh, and he's not in Chicago. He's in NYC.

How do you manage writing and other things such as jobs and school?

Luckily, I'm a teacher, so I had a summer to write my draft. And even then I had to sacrifice a lot of leisure time. During school, it's even worse. I have to give things up, some trivial, some that I miss. I don't watch TV. I watch fewer movies than I'd like to. I don't get out fishing, or skiiing, or hiking, or even walking very much. Sometimes I hardly have time to read, which is dangerous for a writer. My house is a wreck. My yard is an embarrasment. I don't get enough sleep.

Was it worth it?

Totally.

Do your parents approve?

My mom is sooooo proud. She is 85, raised six kids, and has always been a reader and a writer. She's kind of in awe because she feels that she never had the discipline to write a book, and we're a lot alike, so maybe she never thought I had it in me! My dad would approve, too, though he was on the conservative side, politically, and he wouldn't approve of Cassie and her parents' unabashedly progressive politics.

Have you ever been to a book signing?

Yes, but my first book signing is October 11. (I was in Barrington on Oct. 4. Now, as I revise this a get ready to post it, its Nov. 24th and I've had 7 book signings! They are so much fun.)

Be Thankful; Buy Nothing!

Do you love to shop? Hate to shop? Indifferent?
..


(this is an old video, btw, this year it is the 23rd)
Wouldn't it be nice to give it a rest? A one day shopping fast?Should there be exceptions? Buy only one special book and only from an independent bookstore? Buy only beer, locally brewed, from the tap? When I think of Katie, the proprietor of Village Books, or Frazer Dobson of Park Road Books, I think I would exempt them. But they're not in my neighborhood, so I ain't buyin' nothin' tomorrow.

ELLEN HOPKINS, BARRY LYGA, JAY ASHER, and . . .MANDABACH?

WOW. How did I manage to get myself on a bill with these talented and successful authors! Very exciting :D




And Frisco rocks, despite the Oracle convention. Not that I have anything against being surrounded by tech geeks who never take off their id badges per se, but remember when Oracle was somebody at Delphi? A seer, a priestess? No? Well, I don't technically remember either, but it's not exactly GREEK to me either.

And the oil spill! I feel so sorry for the poor birds :(

next question . . . from Barrington High School

THIS IS ENTRY TWO in my series of questions and answers from senior creative writing students of my alma mater, Barrington High School.


I DON'T KNOW ANYBODY in Barrington anymore except for my high school girlfriend, Claire, and my favorite English teacher, Dale Griffith. So I spent the night in the Barrington Motel, and took a cab over to the high school. My cabbie dropped me off at the wrong entrance, by the gym and the senior lockers, but the garrulous security guard had the authority—after checking his computer—and the technology to scan my Colorado driver's license and print me a visitor's ID sticker. Then another security staffer escorted me to the main entrance, and a third called Dept. Chair Jack Bowyer, who collected me and led me up the stairs that hadn't existed in my day.

Here's the second question that teacher Maggie Olberg gave me from the class:
What influences you? (Style & content)
Everything I read influences me a lot—or everything I read that's good and substantial, because the stuff that isn't just passes through me without leaving an impression. When I read, the language echoes in my mind. So I have to be careful what I'm reading when I'm writing.

Right now I'm reading I Sailed with Magellan by Stuart Dybek, and I can hear his voice, very lyrical. The good stuff becomes part of me, the characters are real people inside me, the worlds that are created become real places within me. I like writing that has a deep sense of place, urban or natural or both, and I like characters with a lot of love in them, or perhaps sympathy—with other people, with nature, with music and stories and all the arts. There will be alienation, disconnection, despair—but without what I'm calling love or sympathy, the alienation has no consequence.

Sometimes the language itself expresses love. I think Hemingway did that. One of my favorite stories, which is in a book that I borrowed from the BHS English resource center and never returned, is "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." It amazes me that I was so attracted to that story at so young an age, and I believe that even very young people often sympathize with the loss and disappointment of the age. The sympathy of the waiter in that story, the old waiter, carries the story—and the reader despises the young, self-involved waiter because he has none. Though the old waiter is preoccupied with nothingness, with emptiness, his emptiness is not nihilistic because he still feels the emptiness and sympathizes with those who also feel it.

Was this supposed to be style OR content? I think they are of equal importance. There is no style without content, and since the content is expressed via language, it can't be communicated without good writing (which is one way to define style) or without a voice that arises naturally from the subject and expresses the content.

And everything influences me. My best friend Sam, whom I met at BHS when I was a junior and he was a soph, influenced and continues to influence me. He's now the editor of Willow Springs and the author of an excellent novel called Safe in Heaven Dead.
But "everything under the sun", as it says in the finale of Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon, influences me. Growing up in Barrington, coming back, meeting new students . . . I could go on and on. (And usually do ☺)

Another Sell-out!

It's been tough keeping up on postings--just too busy.

I haven't even told about my book launch party at Hillside Gardens, where we ran out of books.



Then I went to Charlotte, NC for visit to Myers Park HS--amazing students--and a fab party at the Trennings with Park Road Bookstore.



And today, when I did my thing at Borders at the the Chapel Hills Mall in Colorado Springs, they ran plumb out of Or Not!

I guess without the amazing Frazer Dobson of Park Road Books around, I'm a sell-out!

Details later--my friend and I have some papers to grade!