A Reading at Laguna Beach Books

This coming Sunday, Jan 31, at 4 p.m., my long-time private workshop students and I will be giving a reading at Laguna Beach Books, 1200 South Pacific Coast Hwy., in Laguna Beach. There will be food, drink, and us, reading from current work. Admission is free. I hope you'll join us.

Orange County Noir is out in April!

I'm beginning to feel excited. Orange County Noir, published by Akashic Books, in which I have a story, is out in April. Click here for more about the anthology. And consider attending our party on May 15 at Scape Gallery in Corona del Mar to celebrate. More details to come.

Samantha Peale and Victoria Patterson

Marrie Stone interviews Samantha Peale, author of The American Painter Emma Dial and Victoria Patterson, author of Drift: Stories.

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(Broadcast date: September 2, 2009)

Mary Karr

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews Mary Karr, author of Lit: A Memoir.

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(Broadcast date: Jan 7, 2010)

Beverly Gologorsky and A. Manette Ansay

Marrie Stone interviews Beverly Gologorsky, author of The Things We Do To Make It Home, and A. Manette Ansay, author of Good Things I Wish You.

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(Broadcast date: Dec 23, 2009)

Steven Thomas and Stephen Elliott

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews Steven Thomas, author of Criminal Karma, and Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder.

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(Broadcast date: Dec 16, 2009)

Pen on Fire in Paraguay

Paulette is a Peace Corps volunteer who wrote to me a while ago about the podcast of my radio show. I love that she volunteers for the Peace Corps, so I sent her my book as a gift. She just received it. Here's what she says:

Hi Barbara,
The mail lady came to my house and I ran from washing clothes in the back yard to receive your book. Thank you so much! I'm in a rut with writing right now and I think this book is just what I need! I'm so excited to read it.

Here I am in my hammock, which is my favorite spot to pass a Sunday reading and writing and drinking terere, the traditional Paraguayan beverage. The girl in the photo is holding a guampa, the cup you use to drink it. These are cousins of my host family who follow me around like ducklings and only stop to pick up things and say, "Y eso, que es?" (And this, what is it?) Their names are Chiquetita and Chiquetona and I can't tell them apart for the life of me.

My Paraguayan friends think it's amazing that you sent me a book and I do too. Thank you so much!

I'm going to wash some more clothes and listen to your podcast as I always do. Savage Love is for dishwashing and This American Life is for bus trips.

Aguje (thanks in Guarani),

Paulette Perhach
Paraguay

Thank YOU, Paulette, for volunteering in the Peace Corps!

Save the date for T. Jefferson Parker

Pen on Fire Speaker Series presents T. Jefferson Parker and his new book, Iron River.

This monthly salon, hosted by moi, features authors, literary agents, and others involved in the field of writing. Set in the atmospheric Scape Gallery in Corona del Mar, the salon is a mecca for literary devotees who listen to readings, take part in discussions, and attend book signings.

The next one is Tuesday, January 26, 2010 ...... 7 pm

Join our salon on January 26 when we'll celebrate the launch of Jeff's new book.

T. Jefferson Parker is the bestselling, three-time Edgar Award-winning author of 17 novels. His first novel, Laguna Heat, was made into a movie for cable. His new book is Iron River, published by Dutton.

Our salon will take place at:
Scape Gallery
2859 East Coast Highway
Corona del Mar, CA, 92625


$20.00 includes nibbles, sips and cake. Advance tickets are required. Walk-ins are discouraged as seating is limited.

Paying using PayPal is easiest. Once you get there, send payment to penonfire@earthlink.net.

Please register soon as we expect this to be another sold out event (and we hate turning people away).

More details at www.penonfire.com; click on Speaker Series.

Upcoming is memoirist Dani Shapiro on Feb. 25. On May 15, plan to help us celebrate the publication of the new anthology, Orange County Noir (Akashic Books), in which Barbara, Mary Castillo, Marty Smith, Gary Phillips, and others have short stories.

Past guests include Lisa See, Carolyn See, Norman Ollestad, Susan Straight, Danzy Senna, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Merrill Markoe, Marty Smith, Sally van Haitsma, Elise Capron, Kelly Sonnack, Debra Ollivier, and Karen Karbo.

Another great letter

This one from a Philly fan, my old home town. Hope I'm not logrolling too terribly much by posting it, but it praises a guest whose work I love.

Hey,

I just want to tell you that I just discovered your podcast this week, and after several work commutes with it, I'm convinced it's the best thing I can find in iTunes on writing.

I'm a dedicated, aspiring fiction writer (experienced, mid-career professional business writer, but an amateur when it comes to fiction) and the discussion with Bret Anthony Johnston really held some great insights...I've been discovering my own personal revision process through trial and error, and Bret's comments about the pyramid (I believe he credited Frank Conroy) really crystallized something that I had been sensing about rewriting as I've moved down that path of discovery. Pen on Fire is a great mix of writer's talking about writing craft, but through their writing. So many of the other now-proliferating podcasts about fiction are either 1) raw instruction that's not always so insightful, or 2) wandering interviews with celebrities, ostensibly about their writing, but really just selling books or people. I'm finding with your blog that there's just the right mix for writers who love to both write and read - I'm listening to authors talk about books I'm not yet familiar with...and it's holding my interest because of the way the detailed craft discussion is woven in. Really nice. Hope you keep landing such good guests!

Best,

Barry Slawter
Philadelphia, PA

Robert Olen Butler

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews Robert Olen Butler, author of Hell.

Download audio.


(Broadcast date: Dec 9, 2009)

Memoirists Michelle Maisto and Abigail Thomas

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews Michelle Maisto, author of The Gastronomy of Marriage: A Memoir of Food and Love and Abigail Thomas, author of Thinking About Memoir.

Download audio.

(Broadcast Date: November 11, 2009)

Writers as Plunderers

Over the years I cut out articles and essays from various magazines and newspapers and, along the way, throw some out while others are keepers. Those I keep I sometimes later find in the most unlikely places.

I found this one, "Writers as Plunderers," which ran in the New York Times in 1998, on my dryer in the garage. It's yellowed and brittle, but still timely. I found what the writer said about why we're so fascinated with true stories especially interesting. See what you think.

Jonathan Lethem and Elizabeth Benedict

Marrie Stone interviews Jonathan Lethem, author of Chronic City, and Elizabeth Benedict, author of Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives.

Download audio.

(Broadcast date: Nov 18, 2009)

How to write a great novel

Fascinating article in the WSJ.

Pen on Fire Speakers Series with Danzy Senna and Norman Ollestad

Our Evening with Memoirists rocked. Another glorious sold-out event with a ton of writers and many readers present. We stuffed Scape Gallery until there wasn't one chair left to occupy. Danzy and Norman have both been on the show, at different times. On this page you can search their names for the podcast of those radio shows. In the meantime, we'll podcast the recording of this event in then next couple of months, so keep checking back.

The next event with T. Jefferson Parker is scheduled for Jan. 26. We'll celebrate the publication of his new book, Iron River. Hope to see you there!

(Top photo, Norman Ollestad; credit: Marrie Stone. Middle photo, Danzy Senna and Norman Ollestad; credit: Adele Peters. Bottom photo, Danzy Senna, Norman Ollestad, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett; photo credit: Marrie Stone.)

A letter from a podcast listener

I love that Paulette listens from Paraguay.

Hi Barbara,
I just wanted to thank you for your show. I love it! I´m a Peace Corps Volunteer and writer, and I love listening to your podcast while I´m washing clothes in the back yard or taking the four-hour bus trip into the capital. It´s really inspiring. I´m beginning to trick myself into thinking that everyone´s a successful writer and there´s nothing to fear. Ha ha, right? Keep up the good work and know that you´re inspiring writers world wide.

Jajotopata (that´s Guarani for see ya soon!)

-Paulette

Here's her blog.

So many notes from so many people around the world. In case I don't say it enough, thank you!

Michael Blake and Dylan Landis

Marrie Stone interviews Michael Blake, author of Twelve, the King, and Dylan Landis, author of Normal People Don't Live Like This.

Download audio.

(Broadcast date: Nov 4, 2009)

More with Bret Anthony Johnston and Jincy Willett

There just wasn't enough time with these two on the radio. So I sent them each questions and they each generously responded.

Jincy Willett....

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett: On the show, you'd mentioned an author you just read and loved. Farrell? Book was...?

Jincy Willett: The title is The Siege of Krishnapur, by J.G. Farrell. It won the Booker Prize in 1973. It's about the Sepoy Rebellion, p.o.v. clueless Brits under siege and facing wholesale massacre. It's got everything: wicked satire, adventure, horror, humor, tragedy, great suspense, you name it. And terrific character work. It's fabulous.

BDB: I wanted to ask you more about why you think writers shouldn't spend time on memoir.

JW: Well, first of all, the facts of most people's lives just aren't that interesting. This is not to say that we don't all have great stories to tell. We do, absolutely. But the stories aren't strings of facts. Facts are just raw material. What distinguishes successful writers is the ability to discern what the real stories are, the underlying truths, and that has to do with how we connect certain facts in our minds, how we invest certain sequences with significance.

Second is the moral issue. How does one publicize one's own life without betraying family, lovers, friends, all those with whom one has had and intimate connection? I know that some great writers have had no scruples about this, but I'm with Elizabeth Bishop: "[A]rt just isn't worth that much." And anyway, why do this when you can use your family, lovers, friends, and everybody else as inspiration for your fictional characters? As long as you're not a total slob about it, they may suspect, but they'll
never know, and in any event they won't be publicly embarrassed.

I don't know why the recent public appetite for memoir, or why fiction is the red-headed stepchild these days. A really wonderful memoir--the two by Gore Vidal, Mary McCarthy's, M.J. Andersen's, Robert Graves's--is a work of art and would be severely disimproved if rendered fictional. But great memoirists have great raw material, for Pete's sake, and sharp eyes, and an ability to look at their lives and themselves without pity.

If you want to write, and you don't have all those gifts in abundance, then do the right thing. Make stuff up.

BDB: That Eleanor Roosevelt quote I butchered in paraphrasing was: "The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature,to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself." What do you think?

JW: That's so interesting! I'm not sure I agree completely. I mean, in fiction the author can tell the truth (see above) without humiliating everybody else. I guess it follows that the author risks less self-humiliation through fiction than through memoir, but only to the extent that icky factoids aren't being broadcast all over the place. But there's plenty of humiliation available to all writers, including and especially poets and the writers of fiction. After all, if you're doing your job,
you're putting yourself out there--everything you value, everything you know, or think you know. There's always risk.

BDB: Those discussion questions at the ends of books interest me. Did you come up wih the questions, or did the publisher, and what do you think of them?

JW: The publisher does these. I could never do it, because I wouldn't be able to resist horsing around. My Inner Benchley would come out, as in:

In the passage on page 421 about the simultaneous gas leaks, do you the writer intended the asphyxiation of Maud Knuckles to be humorous? Why? What's wrong with you?

Seriously, I'm grateful to publishers for doing these, because I think they serve a function with book clubs and therefore sell more books. As a reader, I don't care for them, but that's just me. If I want to talk about a book I've just read--and what's more fun than that?--I want to ask my own questions, follow my own train of thought.

BDB: Authors never talk about writing novels, and money. Should a writer expect to make a living writing novels?

JW: No. Keep your day job. If you're really lucky and middling successful, like me, every now and then you'll get a nice chunk of money, but if you calculate that money spread out over the timespan of your writing life, you'll realize... Well, you'll wish you hadn't. And anyway, I do believe that if you're lucky enough to be a writer--to produce books that strangers pick up and read and keep reading, not because they know you or owe you but because you've interested them--you've got more luck than most. Day jobs aren't all that bad.
......

And now, Bret Anthony Johnston:

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett: In Corpus Christi, in the end-of-the-book interview, you said that each
of your stories was revised 15-20 times. How long, on average, did it take to write each story?

Bret Anthony Johnston: Some took months, and some took much longer, but I tend not to think of stories in those terms. I would find it, I fear, too discouraging. Some stories come more easily, more quickly, than others, but my only concern is rendering the characters as they need to be rendered. I’ll work on stories as long as it takes to do the characters and their experiences justice. I feel beholden to the story not the clock or calendar. Editors, as you can imagine, hate me.

BDB: How much editing did you go through with your editor at Random House,or were your stories pretty much there by the time you'd revised them?

BAJ: My editor for Corpus Christi: Stories was the imminent Dan Menaker, who’s also a wonderful writer. He made very few suggestions for the stories, but the edits he suggested were incisive and invaluable. Most of the stories had already been published in magazines, so they were pretty tight, but he found small and brilliant ways to open them up, to fill their cells with oxygen. I’ll always, always be in his debt.

BDB: Do you have readers, and at what point do you allow a reader to read your drafts?

BAJ: I’m lucky enough to have a few deeply gifted readers, and I’m committed to not wasting their time, so I tend to take my pages through countless drafts before I ask for their help. I want to take a story or chapter through so many drafts that when my readers locate something that needs to be addressed—cut, augmented, clarified, expanded, or whatever—I know I couldn’t have found it on my own. They help me identify and isolate my blindspots as a writer. I hope I repay that generosity when I read their work. It’s also how I approach teaching, and how I encourage my students to use our workshops. If a writer shows a piece of work too early in the process, the reader or workshop’s time and energy may be lost on it. The goal is to use those resources once your tools as a writer—your experience and craft, your imagination and vision and voice—are fully exhausted. The readers and workshop provide the fuel to keep working.

BDB: When you visited with my class last month, you said that the job of
the first draft is to deliver us to the second draft. Elaborate?

BAJ: For me, the first draft is almost all lateral movement through a narrative. I want to get from the beginning of a story to the end, and I’ll use anything and everything at my disposal to achieve that goal. I’m pretty Machiavellian in this regard, and I ask my students to view the challenge of the first draft similarly. Once you have a beginning, middle, and end on the page, then you can return to the draft and make informed and sophisticated decisions about how the story and characters—and the reader—will be best served. I don’t worry about narrative structure or metaphor or symbol or theme or anything on that higher plain of imaginative writing until I have a solid foundation on which to build. I worry about clarity—of prose and emotion, of action and detail—and I refuse to fall into the trap of procrastination (editing sentences, doing research, fiddling with character or place names) that so often accompanies the excavation of an initial draft. My only goal is to get to the second, third, fourth, forty-second draft. I trust the work will pay off.

BDB: You also said the way to generate a plot is by giving your character a
tangible desire. Which of your stories do you feel best encapsulates this
tip.

BAJ: From Corpus Christi: Stories, I’d say “The Widow.” Minnie, a woman who’s dying of cancer, wants her son to take her to a park with a pond. She wants to feed the ducks. There’s a story on my website (www.bretanthonyjohnston.com ) called “Republican” that also, I hope, employs that mechanism in a way that satisfies the reader. Once you have a character with a tangible desire, then you only need put obstacles in their way and the story will almost write itself.

BDB: In Naming the World, you have a section on Hiding the "I." Will you
elaborate?

BAJ: That’s a wonderful exercise by Marlin Barton, a wonderful writer from Alabama. I think the exercise is working on at least two different levels. On a surface level, Barton is offering writers very specific techniques to vary their sentences, to sidestep the pitfalls of starting too many sentences with “I” in a first-person piece. On a different level, he’s encouraging writers to test how deeply they can inhabit a character’s senses and skin, how vividly and persuasively can you imagine someone else’s life. It’s an exercise in empathy, a tool by which you can engage the reader through sensate language and original, precise detail. Many, many people love that exercise. I’m proud it’s in the book.

BDB: One last thing we didn't get to in my show. You've been a
skateboarder for years, and at one time you competed. How is skateboarding
like writing?

BAJ: I think it comes down to grit, to discipline, to a stubborn refusal to quit. One thing I see in some aspiring writers is a lack of commitment, and for me writing, like skateboarding, depends on commitment. How much punishment are you willing to take? What are you willing to sacrifice? How long are you willing to stay alone in a room with twenty-six letters and their infinite combinations, trying to make order from chaos? As a skateboarder, I’ve been hurt so many times and I’ve worked for years and years—in one case, a decade—on tricks, so while the demands of being a writer are different, I understand and value what it means to log hours, to use pain and discouragement as opportunities. To succeed in these worlds, you need to be an optimist and a masochist. It’s not about talent or inspiration. It’s about showing up for work, clocking in early and staying late. It’s about getting back on the board after you’ve fallen, about revising your every sentence a few more times than everyone else will.

Bret Anthony Johnston and Jincy Willett

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett interviews Bret Anthony Johnston, author of the short story collection Corpus Christi and the writing book, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer and Jincy Willett, author of The Writing Class.

Download audio.

(Broadcast Date: October 28, 2009)

And do check back in a few days for a written Q&A with Jincy and Bret, as a follow-up to the radio interview.

Day of the Dead

My altar, today. Photos of dead relatives, and pets. Water for quenching thirst and purity. Flowers. Incense. Candles. Fruit. A freshly baked divine date bar since my mother loved dates. Should I put a bottle of Seagram's up there, too, since my father loved it? Nah.....