West Coast Writers

29th Small Stone: Waltzing Magnolias

2012-01-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

The evenly spaced magnolia trees on Mountain Avenue slipped by my car in time with The Blue Danube waltz.

28th Small Stone: Slanting Sunrays

2012-01-28T13:42:00.001-08:00

Santa Ana Condition with sere wind and heat is here. The slanting sunrays pick out the delicate design of a cast iron decoration on a neighbor’s house and the tall, white branches of a birch, waiting patiently for its leaves to reappear.

Interview: Eleanor Stoneham, author of Healing This Wounded Earth

2012-01-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

Eleanor Stoneham, author of Healing this Wounded Earth, recently let me interview her for the West Coast Writers blog. Here is that interview for you to enjoy. Her web site and blog are at the end; if you're interested, buy the book and visit her web site and her blogs.

Laura: Eleanor, your book, Healing this Wounded Earth: with Compassion, Spirit, and the Power of Hope, seems to go against the prevailing pessimism of society today. How have you maintained your own hope in a life with many difficulties?

Eleanor: Sometimes it’s been really difficult! I’ve been to some dark places, to the brink of almost total despair, and fought hard to recover. But I think my faith has supported me, and my friends and church community, and a very understanding team of medical professionals over the years. And also a positive belief in human nature. Anne Frank, in spite of the terrible experiences she suffered at the hands of the Nazis in the Second World War observed that ‘Despite everything…people are really good at heart.’ Simone Weil once observed that ‘at the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done.’ We have to believe this! If we are to hold any hope at all for the future of our race we must believe that mankind is inherently good, not evil. And hope is more than simple optimism. Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said that he had never been an optimist. “I've always been a man of hope,” he said, because “hope holds on even when things are seemingly doomed and dark.” I like that – it’s very positive and has helped me get through some pretty dark times of my own. My first working title for this book was Ripples of Hope, from a speech that Robert Kennedy made in Cape Town in 1966:

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Mahatma Gandhi meant virtually the same thing when he said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

Laura: While many people see a dichotomy between science and medicine on one hand and spirituality on the other, you find their union generative to your hopes. Can you explain your ability to connect these two spheres of mental activity?

Eleanor: I don’t believe there is a dichotomy! When I talk with delegates at the conferences I attend, with scientists, doctors, philosophers and scholars from many disciplines, even enlightened ministers of religion, I realise I’m far from alone in believing that science and religion or spirituality are not mutually exclusive. I think the extremes of polarity between the scientific and the spiritual viewpoint, between the objective and the subjective, between thinking and feeling, the expressible and the ineffable, between our outer or exoteric selves and the inner or esoteric, are simply different ways of viewing the same reality. We have inherited the works of the great mystics, from all cultures and faiths. They have seen things, experienced things, which they’ve been able to articulate for the benefit of us all. And many of us are able to feel these qualities from both a heart and a head perspective, to have a sense of the spiritual, the intrinsic, the inner, as well as an ability to analyse rationally and objectively. And we sense that there is something there beyond the material. Some scientists, such as Rupert Sheldrake, think “outside the box” and are daring to challenge the restrictive materialistic dogma that has infiltrated science worldwide. Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance, for example, through morphogenetic fields, controlling the growth of plants and animals, is simply brilliant. In Rupert we have a highly intelligent scientist, also incidentally an Anglican Christian, who reminds us that we should have a more open mind in our approach to science. And when I was at such low ebb, I found healing in the spiritual, in meditation, yoga and prayer as much as in conventional medicine and pills!

Laura: As you point out, regulations and laws are not very effective in changing behavior, and you advocate education and understanding instead. But many people feel that atrocities perpetrated in World War II by highly educated people, claiming to be sensitive and cultured, undermined any faith in learning and understanding as a way to improve human behavior. What can you say to critics who make that claim?

Eleanor: But we’ve moved on since then and I’m advocating a different kind of education that hopefully recognises past mistakes and tries hard not to repeat them. I want to see an education that is more holistic, that equips people with the skills to be good citizens rather than simply able to find and hold a job. I want to see an education that nurtures spiritual literacy, teaches conflict resolution, the art of dialogue, tolerance and respect for all people. And this kind of education has to become available to all, including women-in fact especially women- across the globe, in the poorest as well as the most privileged countries.

Laura: As your book title implies, you emphasize healing from wounds as a road to insight. If someone has had a blessed life with no major problems, do you believe they cannot achieve real understanding?

Eleanor: No, I don’t think so. The emerging science of empathy is showing us that we seem to be actually wired for empathy and compassion, at a neuro-physiological level. Empathy and spirituality are natural in young children, but unfortunately this is too often beaten out of them rather than fostered by our education system. If children have a blessed life, as you say, then their natural empathic selves should reflect in their empathic behaviour. But very few people have such totally charmed lives. We also know that who we are and how we behave as adults is not only a combination of our inherited gene and possibly also our meme makeup. We are also affected by subsequent influences in our upbringing and our experiences as we develop through childhood and beyond. This is what is meant when we talk about ‘nature versus nurture’. And as well as our inherited physical characteristics, we pick up mental wounds from the collective experiences of our ancestors. The unhealed wounds of mankind inflicted through millennia of evolution by strife and violence and disaster mean that hundreds of millions of people are psychologically, emotionally and physically scarred and wounded and in need of healing. It has even been suggested by some psychologists that human culture as a whole has been saturated by unhealed wounding, which, if unchecked, will continue on a downward spiral toward inevitable disintegration. That’s a really gloomy prognosis I know, which is why I am calling for much more healing!

Laura: Your emphasis is on what one person can do, a powerful concept and one that can move people to individual actions that add up to big effects. But I've heard criticisms of this approach by people who say that only acting at the level of city government or above has any measurable effect on the huge problems we're facing today. How do you answer such people?

Eleanor: Of course we need both. Some things are just too big to tackle on our own as individuals. But without a change in the hearts and minds of the individuals laws can be and are in fact widely abused. Sadly today many people seem to live according to what they can get away with. The use of hand held cell phones in autos is a good example of this. And shoplifting. And this brings us back to education again.

Laura: When you were writing your book, did people tell you no one would pay attention unless your coauthor was Nick Kristoff or someone else with name recognition? How are you approaching getting your message out all over the world?

Eleanor: Yes, as any budding author knows, getting a first book published is not easy, and global recognition is a long slog but I’m getting there!! I continue to write, I do talks, I attend conferences to keep up with what is happening in my areas of interest, I have my own blogs and I actively comment on other blog sites if I think it will help to get the message out there. And it obviously helped to have people like Dr Larry Dossey, Dawson Church, William Bloom, Alastair McIntosh, Paul Ray of Cultural Creatives fame, and The Revd. Peter Owen Jones, for example, supporting my book and endorsing its message. Not to mention the renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist writing a very powerful Foreword for me. I really hope that many will read Healing This Wounded Earth, be challenged by it, inspired by it, tell me what they think about it, tell other people about it, use it for discussion in their book club, their faith group, or in any other discussion groups, and run with an idea or two from its pages. Because each such deed, however small, will start its own ‘ripple of hope’ towards a better future. Surely we all want that.

Laura: I notice that a large section of your book focuses on money (and its inedible quality) while your biography says that you've been a scientist and an accountant. Do you feel you understand the unreality of money because you've been an accountant? Do you approve of the Occupy movement, focusing on the concentration of money with the 1% instead of the 99%?

Eleanor: Yes after I’d completed my scientific PhD, I trained as an accountant with one of the largest accountancy firms, and further training as a tax consultant and financial adviser obviously gave me quite some grounding in all matters financial! But I spent the last decade of my business career as a sole practitioner looking after small self employed businesses and family companies, plus some wealthy individuals, and others who continually struggled to make ends meet. And I noticed very often that vast sums of money were not necessarily making people any happier. I also became disenchanted with the whole money-making machine, where for many clients the sole purpose in life seemed to be making more money, and more; and for what purpose? And I saw greed and injustice at first hand! And that sickened me. So yes, I do support the Occupy movement, at least in principle. I believe they have a very good point to make. In fact I went up to London twice to walk around the camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, to talk to some of the demonstrators; and I was impressed with the set-up, the serious discussions being held, the really strong feeling that something is terribly wrong when the gulf between the rich and the poor is so huge. How can we call ourselves civilised and human when the divide between the materially wealthy and the hungry poor is massive and the gap is apparently widening; when half the world live in hunger and poverty whilst there is a serious obesity epidemic amongst the rest of us?

Laura: Would you like to tell people about your blogs?

Eleanor: I started my Ripples of Hope blog as I was writing Healing This Wounded Earth, and I try to post items that I pick out of the news, that expand or illustrate those things I write about in the book. I also like to include plenty of photos of beautiful images – of gardens I have visited, places I have been, anything really that speaks to me in some way, which I hope others will also enjoy.I have now completed my second book, Why Religion? The Wisdom of Tolerance, which will be published hopefully later this year, by Circle Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing. This book is a rebuke to the militant or angry atheists, an apologetic for all religion, and this is the focus of my second blog, started in 2011. I push the boat out quite a bit in this book, because as I mentioned before, the trained scientist in me rejects the rigid materialistic dogma of conventional science. I believe that there are other realms of reality beyond this materialistic one; that the soul is immortal, that prayer can and does work, that we can connect with others through conscious intention. How can we explain phenomena such as psychometry, near death experiences, psychic imprints, intuitive medical diagnoses, and telesomatic experiences, for example, unless there are links between us all at some deep level in our consciousness? The late and great T. C. Lethbridge believed that the supernatural of one generation would eventually become the natural of the next and that all occult phenomena would in time be explained by science. But it will be that science I’ve already mentioned, a science that has thrown away the shackles of conventional dogma, a more open-minded science. And far from proving the myth or fairy tale of all matters religious, I think this new science will support and explain the religious phenomena of prayer, distance healing, and life after death, for instance. And this is something that I think could help to unite the religious in some way, not divide them. I’m really interested in this and am working on these ideas now. So to my third blog. I love my allotment. I was really keen on gardening even as a little girl and when we moved to a farm when I was eight years old I began fairly soon to supply much of the family’s vegetable needs. Any surplus vegetables were sold outside the farm gate to passing traffic. That helped to supplement my pocket money, which always went on gardening books, seeds, plants, cloches, netting, and anything else I could afford to buy for my garden. This all came to an end when I left home to go to University, and then my career and business took over. So now I am thoroughly enjoying being able to grow all our vegetables again. I set up the allotment blog to share some of my trials and successes, to show photos of the plot and the plants throughout the year, to help others who may not be so familiar with the whole gardening process, to perhaps inspire confidence in those who aren’t sure where to start!

Please visit Eleanor Stoneham's web page and blogs to learn more, and buy her book! Cheers, Laura

http://www.eleanorstoneham.com

and blogging at:

http://musings-ems.blogspot.com/

http://wisdomoftolerance.blogspot.com/

http://myvegetableplot.blogspot.com/

27th Small Stone Bluebells Ahead

2012-01-27T11:52:00.000-08:00

Dark soil with fifteen bright green points breaking through it, thrusting it aside, coming of the bluebells.

Lonely Hydrangea

2012-01-26T14:48:00.000-08:00

Blue hydrangea plant in a pot sits alongside the dormant flower bed like a guest at a party full of unknown people.

25th Small Stone: Generous Beams

2012-01-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

Because I slept late, the den was flooded with light when I came out, and I felt renewed by the generous beams.

24th Small Stone, Similar Branches

2012-01-24T13:12:00.001-08:00

Finger-thick grey branches of plum tree and wisteria vine, how similar they look now, but later, one will have pink blossoms and the other purple clusters of blooms.

23rd Small Stone: Dragon Puddles

2012-01-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

Welcoming dragon year to a world with darkened moon and dripping sky, circles widening and disappearing in shiny puddles.

Coming in February: Alphabetaphilia, 2012

2012-01-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

Do you feel like you need a shock of electricity to wake up your writing this winter? Yes, I was being mildly shocked many years ago by the van de Graff generator above, but it was stimulating!

I was fascinated recently with Captain GrammarPants’ Facebook lists of words originating from different countries/languages. I was reminded of some word games my family used to play on long car trips. Is winter like a long car trip? Don’t we keep asking if we’re done yet? So let’s play a word game. It’s open to everyone. This blog is moderated due to the bad behavior of some foreign posters, so your post will take around a day to appear each time. But be comfortable; it will not be lost. And if you'd rather post anonymously, you can (but read on, you may not want to). I will not post obscene or scary postings, and I have the final decision on any submission.

This year is a leap year so we have 29 days in February. To play the game, on Days 1-26 choose and give us a list of five favorite words beginning with the letter of the day, A for February 1, B for February 2, etc. Each day, you can challenge yourself to make a sentence (or in a pinch a couple of sentences) using all of your words. Days 27, 28, and 29 are free choice of repeats of letters, ones where you sensed one group of five favorite words didn’t even scratch the surface. Post each entry under the thread of the day, which I will post so you can “comment” to add your list and sentences. There will be author interviews and other longer posts, but just scroll around to find the “Febrary 1, A lists and sentences here” posting for February 1, etc. I will be out of town a couple of times, and will post the threads you need before I go each time so you won’t have to search fruitlessly for a place to post your alphabetaphilic entries.

Is this a contest? If so, does the winner get a prize? Yes, and yes. Everyone who writes at least ten lists and sentences during the first 26 days is automatically entered in the contest. I will recruit one more judge and we will judge the entries according to our aesthetic taste and announce the winner by March 15. The entire group of lists and sentences submitted by a contestant will be considered together, and we’ll look for sound, imagery, diversity of meanings, and success of the sentence(s). There will probably be intangibles involved in the selection of the winner too.

The winner will receive a new copy of either Gruen’s Water For Elephants or my memoir Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling, his or her choice.

All participants will be asked at the end of the month if they want to choose some of their lists and sentences and have them included in an Alphabetaphilia, 2012 pdf that will be made available free via WestCoastWriters blog, to anyone who wants to receive it. Your work, if you ask to have it included, will be acknowledged with a byline. It will NOT be used without your agreement. This pdf will not be sold, so there will be no financial profit to you for being included in the pdf, only free publicity.

Stay tuned!

Cheers, Laura

22nd Small Stone: Thinking Like Water

2012-01-22T12:43:00.000-08:00

As I back the car down the driveway, the sun shines on five big raindrops at the top of my windshield. The lower half of each one has blinding radiance. Should the water in the top half of each raindrop be jealous?

21st Small Stone: Puddle Reforms

2012-01-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

A smooth puddle reflecting the gray sky suddenly shatters from a big raindrop from above, bounces it back, then absorbs the water into itself, smooth again.

20th Small Stone: Tiny World

2012-01-20T08:56:00.000-08:00

We enter the car, close the doors, all windows misted over, in our own tiny world.

Swelling Camellia Buds, 19th Small Stone

2012-01-19T16:22:00.000-08:00

The tall camellia bush beside the door is covered with fat, green buds, and one showing red along the top side as a promise for the future.

18th Small Stone: Angry Real Birds

2012-01-18T12:39:00.000-08:00

So much noise from the sparrows and the hummingbirds, they drown out the car motor starting up. A Cooper’s hawk sits on the highest bough of the sycamore.

17th small stone, Captive Palms

2012-01-17T14:04:00.000-08:00

Captive palms stand in the street median, tall and skinny, dusting off the clouds.

16th Small Stone: Entwined Elms

2012-01-16T16:15:00.000-08:00

Tiny scrolling branches of two elms entwined and tangled over the street, reaching, touching, as close as they can ever get.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday

2012-01-15T12:34:00.000-08:00

Dear readers and writers,

When I was in graduate school, my office mate, a young man from Yemen, often played tapes of speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. I had heard of him, and vaguely approved of him, in college days of civil rights activism. But the power of the man's words surprised me. I could not do anything else when these speeches were rolling through the air.
Later, as a young professor at Occidental College, I taught in a class called "Collegium," the entire curriculum of these students for their first year of college. My colleague, Axel Steuer, had the students read Letter from the Birmingham Jail. If you haven't read it, you can find it here (click on link).
I'm going to quote a couple of passages from that letter here.

"In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." " ...

"I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"

Two or three years ago, I took a detour when driving between the Atlanta airport and my mother and sister's homes in Chattanooga, TN, and visited the Southern Poverty Law Center in Birmingham, AL. I stood a long time at the Maya Lin-designed fountain-table inscribed with the names of those who died in the Civil Rights struggle in the US. I read and reread the inscription from Amos, quoted above, which is inscribed on a black granite wall with water coursing over it. I was glad for the gains in Civil Rights, glad for this organization that says we must not forget who paid the price. Let us celebrate MLK's birthday by reconnecting with what he most cared about and stood for:

"Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty."

cheers, Laura

15th Small Stone: Scared Birds

2012-01-15T11:12:00.000-08:00

Coming outside on a damp, grey morning, I scare a robin into the darkness under the cedar. A fleeing mourning dove alights on the top branch of a leafless Liquidambar tree among the hanging balls of seeds. I won’t hurt you, birds.

Berries Going

2012-01-14T10:47:00.000-08:00

In the gray light, I see that the bright red berries of the Nandina bushes are almost all eaten up. A mourning dove coos.

New Classes, New Books, Need One Like Mine?

2012-01-13T19:16:00.000-08:00

Hi friends of reading and writing,

I just got a packet of books from the SDSU bookstore for the classes I'm about to take. And I've been re-reading the three for the two classes I'm teaching at Pomona this semester. New books smell so good, look so good, and feel so good. If anyone out there is teaching something where you could use an inexpensive book to show women can have both family and career in science, take a look at my memoir, Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling (Amazon.com). It's priced to be a feasible course supplement for people who want to discuss issues for women in science. I am willing to send you a text sample free if you email me about your course or library or whatever venue at lhoopes@pomona.edu. It was just reviewed in BioScience (BIOS) by Emily Schmitt. My main goal is to open doors and windows for young women who aren't sure they can balance both family and a science career. Keep reading, keep enjoying books, 2012 is off to a good start, book-wise!

cheers, Laura

Small Stone 13--Mint Awakening

2012-01-13T10:08:00.000-08:00

Beneath the network of bare branches on the plum tree, sprigs of mint leap into life with lime-green shoots. I crush one leaf and inhale its sharp sweetness.

This is my 13th small stone. Scroll down to find out more about the January River of Stones or Google "Writing Our Way Home."

PS Friday the 13th is lucky for me; hope it's lucky for you too.

12th Small Stone: Bare Trunks

2012-01-12T13:16:00.001-08:00

Bare trunks of three sycamores in the median echo V, V and more V as the branches rise and divide.

Moss-Grass Armistice Line, 11th small stone

2012-01-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

Chartreuse moss versus green grass, the armistice line runs from the Ceanothus to the fence. The swelling buds on the California lilac match the moss.

New Hampshire Election Realities

2012-01-10T21:19:00.000-08:00

I wanted to see the Vietnam War ended and the draft ended in the late 1960s. As a twenty-something student, I went to New Hampshire many weekends in late 1967, working for Eugene McCarthy in the Democratic primary to be held in January, 1968. I wore holes in my woolen gloves shuffling voter cards as I went door-to-door with informational brochures and follow-up answers to voters’ questions about McCarthy’s positions on local issues. I was colder than I’d ever been in my life, visiting one more house, and then just one more before returning to the storefront headquarters to warm up with strong coffee. I slept on the floors of churches, Dartmouth professors’ homes, storefront offices. I learned a lesson that appears to be as true today as it was then.

To me, the opposition to the Vietnam War was the big issue that separated my candidate from Lyndon Johnson. But the New Hampshire voters wanted to know details of each candidate’s thinking on many issues. It was the first time I encountered voters seeking so much information as the basis for voting. I’m sure my parents in North Carolina read the papers and made thoughtful decisions, but we never discussed it so I was unaware of their ways of getting ready to vote. Presenting a candidate in New Hampshire, to voter after voter who was well informed, interested, and actively seeking to make the best possible decision, I found something special: the basic wish of American voters to do the right thing.

In 2012, I was curious to see, in these digital days, whether this dynamic had changed. In my view, it has not. Candidates who spent a lot of time and used a lot of volunteers working door-to-door in New Hampshire, convinced voters. It was not so much the big PAC money for TV ads as it was caring enough to organize on the ground, to find the answers to the voters’ real questions, that counted. I am cheered that New Hampshire voters have continued this tradition. They are bedrock Americans. More power to them.

10th Small Stone: Sycamore and Sparrows

2012-01-10T13:15:00.001-08:00

The sycamore tree has a few leaves, brown star-shapes against the blue sky. Many sparrows perch on its branches, having a morning gossip.

Ninth Small Stone--Sycamore Leaves

2012-01-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

Six sycamore leaves, saucer to dinner plate sizes, fly by flipping madly in the wind, disappear into Aileen’s yard. A hummingbird pips and circles, then perches on a bare branch where the leaves used to live.

Bonus 8th #smallstone: Sunset Palms

2012-01-08T20:26:00.000-08:00

Hi river of stones readers/writers,
I could not resist capturing one more small stone as my husband and I drove through the sunset tonight.
cheers, Laura

Clear yellow sky with a band of mauve clouds, then a band of dark purple ones. Compact tops of three tall palms reach up to touch the mauve layer, black silhouettes of fans against the bright sky.

Interruption of the Rivulet of Small Stones for Long Sentences

2012-01-08T16:40:00.000-08:00

Hello friends of reading and writing,

I'll be back with more small stones tomorrow. Steve Silberman wrote on Twitter about an interview with author, Pico Iyer, in praise of long sentences.

Here is a bit of his thinking, "What we crave is something that will free us from the overcrowded moment and allow us to see it in a larger light. No writer can compete, for speed and urgency, with texts or CNN news flashes or RSS feeds, but any writer can try to give us the depth, the nuances — the "gaps," as Annie Dillard calls them — that don't show up on many screens. Not everyone wants to be reduced to a sound bite or a bumper sticker. "

I think he speaks for a lot of writers, who hope their words resonate in long term memory, instead of passing through on a one-second flight to nowhere. He goes on to quote some favorite long sentences, none from my own favorite exponent of the art, W.G. Sebald, but one from Annie Dillard that I plan to quote at the end of this posting.

Why not use long sentences? People do claim they are left breathless, but they should just breathe at the commas! I do. Or they say the sentence is unclear. As Iyer points out, Proust can take us through space and through character changes, all within the same sentence. There is no rule that a sentence must be self-consistent, thank goodness. I like to use a long sentence sometimes when my characters are going somewhere in a car, or walking down the hall. They aren't busy, so I can let the sentence pile up tiny insights they've accumulated and prepare for a change of heart or an outburst of feeling.

It's important to make the sentences clear, though. If you tend to lose the verb tense or mix up the modifiers, then use adjectival phrases to accumulate thoughts, or you'll make us think you believe that time travels both ways and that trees can think, or some such mishmash. But consider having fun with long sentences that take us deeper into meaning or confusion, wherever you need us to go.

Here is the promised quotation from Dillard, about a winged maple seed.

"I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown, pushed by the witless winds of convection currents hauling round the world's rondure where they must, but like a creature muscled and vigorous, or a creature spread thin to that other wind, the wind of the spirit which bloweth where it listeth, lighting, and raising up, and easing down."

Doesn't that sentence take you to a place vis-a-vis maple seeds that you've never been before? Try long sentences in your own writing!
cheers,
Laura

Eighth small stone: Pyrocantha Surprise

2012-01-08T11:53:00.000-08:00

The pyrocantha shines with color, gold and green leaves, red berries. I step up close and seven brown wrens explode from the bush, chittering. Surprise! More than meets the eye.

Seventh Small Stone: Rosemary Synchrony

2012-01-07T08:50:00.001-08:00

Only the top branches of the rosemary are sunlit. Three of them make the same down-up swoop with their reaching tips. A whiff of fresh rosemary rises in the still air.

Sixth Small Stone: River mist

2012-01-06T12:26:00.000-08:00

Triplets of golden globes glow on slender stalks along the walkway beside the quiet Columbia River, emerging from the fog and disappearing as we approach and pass by.

Fifth Small Stone, Framed Fir

2012-01-06T12:25:00.000-08:00

Hi friends of reading and writing,
I was away in Portland for a couple of days, just flew back this morning. Yesterday, I wrote my small stone but could not post it because the hotel's public computer was down. So here it is:

Next to my hotel room, the big two-story window frames a Douglas fir, richly green against the fog, condensing mist that it drips from the tips of its boughs.

Avian Return, small stone 4

2012-01-04T08:07:00.001-08:00

Outside my back door, I hear buzz-whistle, buzz-whistle, cheater-cheater-cheater, o-a-hu, cheer-cheer-cheer, chip-chip-chip. The mockingbird is back from his winter vacation south of here. Maybe his mate will come soon.

Constellation of limes, Laura's 3rd small stone

2012-01-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

A constellation of seven yellow limes rests on dark green grass while others barely hold onto the tree.

Consider joining me to write a small stone, an intense experience, each day in January. Go to Writing Our Way Home site FMI.

Stripes on the Grass, Laura's 2nd Small Stone

2012-01-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

The sun behind the fence stripes the grass with dark and light green. In the shadow by the fence, six light grey, round rocks wait for their turn in the sunlight. The rosemary reaches high and shines out with golden green, already spotlighted. I smell its aroma on the light breeze.

Enjoy your own moment of intense mindfulness each day in January; scroll down to find the January Small Stones information. Cheers, Laura

Small Stone #1 from Laura

2012-01-01T14:49:00.000-08:00

Warm air is rising outside my front door, with a grassy smell, and I see one red and one yellow rose blooming, raised high on the tops of spindly stalks like the statue of liberty's torch.

River of Stones Invitation

2011-12-29T22:50:00.000-08:00

Hello Writers and Readers,

One of my author friends invited me to join A River of Stones for January, 2012, and I've decided to write all of you who read my blog. The mother lode of information about it is here and if you want any more information, or to join the mailing list of the two leaders of AROS, please visit the site. Here are a few clues: a stone is a short, intense observation of the world around you. If you want to participate in the January, 2012 River of Stones, you commit to writing down one stone every day of January. The two leaders want to connect us to our world, to catalyze our careful observation and experiencing of the world around us. I suspect I'll have at least one day when I will not go happily to the stone manufactory, but I still find careful nature-watching so valuable for my writing that I have committed. I will post my stones on this blog and connect them to the AROS hashtag on twitter. If you would like to join in, I'd love you to comment about it on this blog as well as signing up to get inspiration on theirs. This resolution seems much more worthwhile than the usual ones for New Year's. Join in!

Best, Laura

Prose Poetry and Flash Fiction

2011-12-19T23:18:00.000-08:00

This past semester, I had a lovely class from poet/novelist Marilyn Chin. It's the first class in my MFA program from a woman, and she reveled in being a woman! I really enjoyed the massive reading list, which she told us was partly for our future reference. It's fine with me that we couldn't really define what's a prose poem, what's a flash fiction. We even found out that certain pieces are celebrated and have won awards in both categories.

I was more interested in the poetry half, since it was so different from the kind of writing we practice in the fiction workshops. Intense images, sensory to the max, steeped in layers of meaning, and highly condensed prose with every word carrying a double dip of meaning, those concepts go with prose poems to me. I think of one centering about an image of a small basket of dead bees, covered over with a thin layer of red rose petals. Or, a bag of dried human ears, dumped out on the dining room table. Or a full moon noosed on a black cord, hanging over a house. But not all prose poems have an indelible image, an appeal to senses, power-packed verbiage where every word must have resulted from intense debate in the author's mind. Some capture a scene with minimal poetic devices, with spare prose with simple beauty or starkness. I might call them flash fiction, but perhaps there is not enough story line to make them count as stories. The dividing line is assuredly murky and indistinct. Our collections of each genre only made it less obvious that the two are distinct, while enticing us to write our way into the mystery.

Check Out Poet Ellen Bass

2011-12-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

Dear writers and readers,

This semester, I've been an intern at Poetry International literary journal from SDSU. One of my enjoyable tasks was to interview poet Ellen Bass for our blog. You can check out my blog post here: http://poetryintlreports.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/ellen-bass-interview/ and hear how Ellen Bass views the role of courage in a writer's life. For a long time, I found it puzzling that so many writers talked about courage. Then I found the vein of powerful writing rooted in personal experience, fiction or nonfiction, and I suddenly understood what they were talking about. Ellen Bass spoke at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference I attended a few years ago, and her words about courage and writing really resonated with me. Take a look at the PI blog to see more, some quotations from Ellen, a short video of her reading one of her poems.

best, Laura

Ruth Stone Is a Poet Worth Knowing

2011-11-27T22:12:00.000-08:00

Ruth Stone has passed away at age 96, an inspiration to writers like me, who took up the sport after their youth was spent doing other things altogether. Ruth, according to William Grimes, writing Nov 24, 2011, was relatively obscure until at 87, she won the National Book Award for her colletion, "In the Next Galaxy." She was living in Vermont, a feat that I admire in its own right. As I drifted into using a cane regularly and then into needing a disabled hang tag for my car, I gave thanks for good weather regularly. I know there is good weather in Vermont, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't last all winter. In my sixties, I might have simply fallen in love with my chair and sat there forever, should I live where the S word accumulates. Not that I don't agree with those of you who think it is beautiful. I recall a snowfall at Snow Mountain Ranch in Colorado, when I was pregnant with my son, when the crystals of snow floating down in the moonlight gave me that "I love you" catch in the back of my throat. But back to Ruth Stone. She lived in "rural solitude" near the end of her life; she had raised three daughters as a single parent after her poet husband committed suicide in 1959. Her poetry was, to quote Mr. Grimes, "fierce and funny, by turns elegaic, scathing, lyric and colloquial." He quoted a poem, as follows, "Things will be different/ No one will lose their sight,/their hearing, their gallbladder./ It will be all Catskills with brand/new wrap-around verandas." It was the title poem in her collection entitled "In the Next Galaxy." In an interview in 2001, she said, "I was hanging laundry out and I saw all these ants crawling along the clothes line. Well I just dropped whatever I was hanging and ran upstairs in the house to get a book and write it down. Never keep a poem waiting. It might be a really good one, and if you don't get it down it's lost." I love that, because I still dream about certain pieces I never captured on paper. They were really good, I'm sure of that! best, Laura

Behind the Scenes View of Rebecca Skloot's Process

2011-11-24T16:53:00.000-08:00

Hi readers and writers,

I really found Rebecca Skloot's book on the origin and fate of HeLa cells to be fascinating, and I loved seeing it rise in the best-sellers list. Now she has given a blog interview that opens up her writing process and her research process for us to see. In the part at the end, she actually posted copies of pages of her research notebook at the time she first interviewed Deborah Lacks by telephone about Henrietta and found she didn't know her favorite color and longed for more information about her, but then refused to talk more with Rebecca for a year and a half. She also included a page in which she got advice about how to dig for the information she knew Deborah wanted, using black churches and particularly their pastors, as helpers and sources of information. I can't think of anything I've read about writing that moved me more than seeing how she had to struggle to get this story. She wrote and rewrote it until it read seamlessly, weaving together the medical and the personal narratives, but here is the raw material. If you're interested in how great books are written, I really recommend this blog post:

http://www.theopennotebook.com/2011/11/22/rebecca-skloot-henrietta-lacks/#more-2211

Cheers, Laura

Conflict with Conflict

2011-11-23T19:58:00.000-08:00

I’ve been interested lately in “story,” the underpinning of a lot of creative writing. And there’s bad news about story for those of us who want to think good thoughts in the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas: story arises from conflict. The worst criticism my fellow MFA students give to each other’s writing is, “No conflict. Nothing happening, No tension.” A relaxed pair of old men, friends, fishing from a small boat, where’s the story in that? But let one of them challenge the other to a fishing contest? Let one be in love with the other’s wife? Let them be competing for the same high mileage vehicle at the car dealer’s? Conflict! Drama! Story!

I submitted a chapter about Holly, a young girl in North Carolina, getting to know her next door neighbor, an older woman of the Cherokee tribe, living alone in a house attached to an old pear orchard. I loved envisioning the natural environment and describing it, and having the two enjoy each other across the lines of age and ethnicity. But of course, I got, “Where’s the tension? Why should we want to read this, and find out more about these people?” And yes, conflict was coming, in that Galilani’s friend’s grandson, a Native American boy, was going to scandalize Galilani and his mother by going out with Holly. But I didn’t want to foreshadow that in the beginning. So my fellow writers suggested ways I could use language to clue the readers in that conflict was off stage but it was just around the corner. I’m still thinking it over. I suspect they are right But I am the same writer who is often accused of summarizing the conflict scene that should be developed fully, skipping over the problems. Hmm. I do that in movie DVDs sometimes too, although I’m pretty good about not looking ahead in murder mysteries. Well, there is no fast forward in life, and as I writer, I must face that and even revel in the details of the scenes of conflict.

I deplore this finding, but I can’t deny it. Without conflict there is really no reason to tell a story. With conflict, the reader wants to find out what happened to the characters, how the conflict plays out, is resolved, or is passed down to the next generation, or whatever. You don’t need resolution for the story, but you do need conflict.

Sports Comparison per Carlin

2011-11-22T19:30:00.000-08:00

Hi readers and writers,
One reason to have children is that they take you into areas of life you might never notice but for them. In my case, baseball. I was a Dodgers fan, but not a well-versed, ask-me-anything type. But my son is a walking sports almanac and now my daughter, the former opera diva, has decided she wants to manage a baseball team some day. Suddenly the names of those few women in baseball management have become quite familiar to me. My daughter's boyfriend recently told me about something so entertaining I need to share it with you here. George Carlin did a great comedy routine comparing baseball and football, largely in terms of their language (see, it IS related to writing after all!). If you tend to write fast without thinking through the implications of the words you've chosen, this routine will make you resolve to think more about the messages people receive subliminally from your words. Here is the link. You may need to copy and paste the URL into your browser. Enjoy! http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml
cheers,
Laura

Video of Talk on Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling

2011-11-22T00:59:00.000-08:00

Hi readers and writers,

Recently I gave a plenary lecture to 600 women from DWP at Women's Leadership Legacy Conference, drawing from my memoir, Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling, to talk about leadership in education. You can see and hear a half hour video of my talk, made by the fabulous Rob Daly, on YouTube by going to this URL: http://www.youtube.com/user/laurahoopes#p/a/u/0/F_soc1DxCdk

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, who has just released a new edition of her book on Frugal Book Marketing, recommends that you take off from the topic of your book and think what else you could talk about using it as a basis. Here, I talked about educational leadership easily, although it's not the main topic on which I wrote. I think this strategy is a real winner, and once I dig out of my MFA semester writing assignments, I am going to look for more opportunities like this.

cheers,
Laura

What's beauty got to do with it?

2011-11-09T14:56:00.000-08:00

Dear friends of reading and writing,

I just read an article on a man who studies birds in an interdisciplinary way, in the Yale Alumni Magazine (The bird-filled world of Richard Prum by Cathy Shufro). I'm sure I'll be thinking about this article for a long time. Near the end of the article, Shufro describes how Prum changed the way people think about bird coloration. Biologists have explained the bright colors we enjoy as evidence of fitness, so they are supposed to help a female choose a mate with good genes since he's so fit. Kind of like advertisers think about great arm muscles and abs for human males, it seems to me. But Prum could not really buy the theory, and harked back to the ideas of Ronald A. Fisher that females choose those bright males just because they are attractive. People resisted his ideas until he realized it's about beauty and moved into the philosophy of aesthetics. Feather art, like human art, he theorizes, is a form of communication via beauty and it co-evolves with its evaluation. As females enjoy red throats, they get brighter and bigger. As humans enjoy irony in art, it gets ever more ironical. He has no trouble connecting flowers, birds, and consciously made art in the category of Art, since he defines it as this communication with co-evolution by evaluators. Who evaluates flowers, you ask? Bees, birds, all the pollinators. But what they receive is the joy of beauty. So I think this is a message for writers too. Writers need to write for themselves, but in the end, their work will rise or fall based on how well it communicates and how the readers respond.
Photo credits (Wikipedia Commons): Cardinal by a Fish and Wildlife Service Employee, Peach-faced lovebird by Stephen W. Dengler, 2005, via Gnu.

The dark! The dark!

2011-11-08T14:45:00.000-08:00

I wonder what fall was like before daylight savings time. It would have arrived graduaally. Now, it's a think, black curtain across the night so that one night I come outside after work into the dark. I think about fires in fireplaces, buckets of coal, heavy cloaks, pea soup fog. My fingers and toes are cold all the time. But at the same time, as I said in my last post, I anticipate the long quiet season when I get to read many books. I'm enjoying the speed with which my Kindle lets some of those books appear in my life, although it's tempting me to read before my time really allows. Here's a blast from my past: I used to order seed catalogs about now every year. I spent my time in the dark days dreaming over possible summer flowers, ones with haunting names and strange colors and shapes, ones with evening scents to attract hawk moths, ones with secret flowers but large and flamboyant fruits. Gourds were always on my lists, but the one time I really grew them, they disappointed. Unlike their vigorous cousins the squashes, they damped off, died of mosaic, died of mold, just had no real urge to live. I always imagined that all the plants I planned to order from the seed catalogs would spring into life, pushing aside any other plants to overtake all and bloom extravagantly. But most of that explosion was in my mind on dark evenings of winter.

Inspiration from where?

2011-11-01T21:49:00.000-07:00

Dear friends of reading and writing,

It's often hard to start writing. Books have been written about writers' block. I sometimes have a hard time, especially if I am trying to write a new type of genre. This semester, it's poetry in Marilyn Chin's class at SDSU. But luckily, the day Word's blank page was looming over me, I had seen the search of Gadhafi's trailer in Libya on TV. They found this scrapbook of cutout pictures from magazines, all of Condoleezza Rice. I was off and running. How did he really feel about her? What else did he do? I looked on the internet, but mostly I imagined and wrote about this creepy and fascinating obsession with Rice. So, keep a mind open for strange bits from the news, strange smells or sounds, strange impressions of any kind. They could give you a blowtorch to melt away writers' block. And BTW, Rice's biography which has more information about the obsession, was released Nov 1, 2011. Check it out!

Cheers, Laura

Welcome to the Season of Reflection

2011-10-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

As the Northeast lies dormant under a Nor'easter storm bringing snow before Hallowe'en, I've started thinking about the quiet season that is beginning, more harshly for some than for others. It's about to be colder. The leaves are about to take the wind and pile up in drifts. The pumpkins are ripe and the butternut squash are full of flavor, but it's hard to find a tomato with that summery taste. I have started to accumulate books to read over the winter break, and I have some ideas that I want to write about as I extend the bits and pieces of my new novel. Now that I live in SoCal, it's hard to remember how fierce the wind was in fall in North Carolina, how bitter the cold felt on my neck and how icy the air that I breathed into my lungs on early fall mornings walking to school, how long it took to get ready to go out of the house, with boots, sweater and coat, mittens, scarf, and hat to find and assemble. I enjoy sipping camomile tea with vanilla and sending my mind back to reflect on those days, so I can use some of that sensory detail in my writing. And I love having long periods to read and write, instead of snatched, almost stolen bits of time. So welcome to the time of reflection, or to the anticipation of it. Fall is here.

My Message from Postdoc Kate Sleeth

2011-10-22T17:16:00.000-07:00

Hi friends of reading and writing,

My memoir was written to fill a vacuum of information about the lives of women who have successfully balanced family life and careers in science, and I've been gratified that quite a few schools and other organizations where young women congregate have invited me to speak about it, making that message more accessible. So I was very pleased when recently a young postdoctoral fellow, Kate Sleeth, blogged about a talk I had given and about my book on the Stanford Medical School blog site, here:

http://stanford.biocareers.com/bio-careers-blog/breaking-through-spiral-ceiling

When I wrote the memoir, I knew I couldn't keep harping on the same message or it would become boring immediately. I was very pleased that Kate saw in the book and my talk those things I hoped women would get, even though I had backed off from hammering people over the head with them. I feel that my life has been an interesting balancing act between being a serious scientist and professor on one hand and being a wife and mother on the other hand, so simply trying to recreate what it has been like for me is sure to bring the balance issue to the forefront.

I don't mean to address only young women in science; I hope that trying out the life of a female scientist is different enough from most people's experience that the memoir is worth reading for that alone, in the same way people read about a woman fishing boat captain or a woman secretary of state to find out how it is to live that life. But my special "now hear this" audience has always been young women who might reject a career in science because so many people now say it cannot be combined with family life. Yes, it can. I know quite a few women who have put that combination together, and my memoir is a kind of existence theorem (yes, it's possible, see, I exist!) for one's ability to do it and be glad of the effort it requires.
cheers,
Laura

Laura Hoopes on Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling with Libby Grandy

2011-09-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

Hi reader and writer friends,
My friend Libby Grandy interviewed me about my new book for this interview series on my blog. I hope you find it interesting!
cheers,
Laura

Interview with Laura Hoopes by Libby (Elizabeth) Grandy:

Your memoir, Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling has received excellent reviews. How did you become interested in writing after a successful career as a biology professor?

Myfirst year students in Biographies of Biologists seminar were frustratedbecause there were no biographies of women who had relationships, who marriedand had children. They asked me towrite it, half kidding, but I decided someone had to do it. I wanted to show that it is possible tohave a career in science and a family life, and that it can be worthwhile andenjoyable. I think my life has hadits share of setbacks and problems, but I also think the reader can see howmuch I’ve valued my family life and also my ability to make new discoverieswith my students. I had tostruggle to learn how to write something besides scientific papers so it tookme six years of writing courses and workshops.

Laura, I'm sure you are an avid reader. What kind of books do you like to read?

You're right, Libby! Ilike novels like White Tiger and the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and TheHistory of Love. I also likememoirs and biographies. I justread Harper Lee, a YA biography of the author of To Kill a Mockingbird by myfriend Kerry Madden. What a jobshe had getting material about this very private but interesting woman.

What is your writing process like?

IfI am working on something specific, I can’t work in tiny pieces of time. I need to sit down with a couple ofhours before me so I can reflect on what’s gone before and get into the writingstate that works best for me. I dolose touch with reality while I’m writing. I like quiet over music and bustle, so I write at homerather than in Starbucks as many of my friends do.

Do you write literature other than memoir?

Yes,I am in an MFA program in creative writing, fiction at San Diego StateUniversity and I write short stories and work on novels in that program. I’ve had a long short story publishedin The Chaffin Journal and acouple of short short stories online at Rose City Sisters.

Have you had any inspiring writing teachers?

Mostof my teachers have been inspiring in one way or another, including you when I was in your critique group. I had several encouraging classes withMike Foley of UCR Extension early on. Then I took Writing the World with Verlyn Klinkenborg at Pomona Collegewhere I am a professor. He reallyfocused us on sentences, and I’m grateful, but it was highly intimidating. Then, I had courses at UCLA Extensionleading to a Certificate. LindaRaymond was an inspiring novel teacher, and Barbara Abercrombie and GordonGrice inspired me to write nonfiction/memoir in more depth. Now I have three great writing teachersat SDSU, Stephen-Paul Martin, Hal Jaffe, and David Matlin. Although they have different styles,they have all had good effects on my writing.

Have you encountered any surprises in becoming a memoir author?

Onesurprise is that once I had published a book, I was suddenly an expertaccording to those who invite you to speak. I’ve had no trouble doing a book tour in 2011 talking withundergraduate researchers, youngundergraduates, postdocs, community members, and writers.
Anothersurprise is that Pomona College has been so encouraging to me even as I remakemyself as a creative writer and become less and less engaged in biologyresearch.

Do you have an agent? What are your thoughts on agents today?

Ido not have an agent, and I would like to have one someday. It’s my understanding that agents arevery helpful in writing ideas in the way editors used to be. Without one, it’s not possible tomarket books to the big companies like Random House and Basic Books.

How did you publish your book?

Ifirst submitted it to university presses, and Yale University Press was quite encouraging. They sent it out for review and gotback suggestions for me, which I used for revisions. The reviewers all thought it should be published. Yale didn’t give me a contract, butthey told me, for three years, that I was “in the queue.” During that time, I submitted to a newseries of publishers and SUNY wanted to see it on an exclusive basis, but whenI called Yale they wanted me to stick with them. I did, and a year later they emailed to say they were nolonger interested in publishing my book. That was that. So Iconsidered options and decided to use a print on demand site, Lulu. The Female Science Professor who writesa blog I enjoy had used that for her book, Academeology, and one of my friendsfrom SDSU had published a novel there and liked it.

Do you have any other thoughts you would like to share?

Goinginto writing has been a pleasurable journey for me. I’ve met many interesting people, and I feel glad to give amessage to young women considering science careers that family is possible forthem. You can see more about my women-in-science concerns by going to my website, http://www.lauralmayshoopes.com.

Thank you, Laura, and good luck on your new career as a writer. We look forward to reading more of your work.

Interview with Barbara Abercrombie on Cherished

2011-09-14T20:10:00.000-07:00

Dear writers and readers,

Here is a fascinating interview with Barbara Abercrombie. If you ever have a chance to take a writing class with Barbara through UCLA or elsewhere, jump on it! She has a new anthology of stories about adored animals called Cherished...hope you enjoy her interview! Cheers, Laura

Hi Barbara! How would you describe your relationship with writing? Do you enjoy it, struggle through it, or some of each?

– It’s like a verylong marriage: passionate periods,tough times, and right now kind of mellow. Writing fiction and pictures books for kids has always beena struggle for me, but now I’m more into essays and non-fiction books and forthe first time writing is actually fun.

Your current book, Cherished: 21 Writers on Animals They Have Loved and Lost is an anthology. How did you get thie idea for this book?

– I had blogged about losing my horse, how much I had loved him and howhard I was grieving for him, and one of my readers (a vet) said there ought tobe a book, a collection of pieces like I wrote/blogged. And it was like Bingo!for me. That was the kind of bookI wanted/needed to read. And of course you always write the book you need toread.

Can you tell us a bit about how an anthology is born?

– First of all Ichecked out Amazon and there was no book like the one I had in mind. So then Iemailed some of my writer friends who love animals and explained my idea forthe book, and asked if they wanted to write an essay for it - and if so to sendme a few paragraphs about what their essay would be about. Then I found somepublished essays about loving and losing an animal by Anne Lamott, Tom McGuane,Jane Smiley, Mark Doty etc. and I wrote to them about reprint rights. Finally Ihad a proposal put together and sent it to my agent.

What did you like best about putting together this anthology? What was hardest?

– I loved practically everything about putting together an anthology.I’m a literary groupie so it was like getting to hang out with the band. Even marketing – something I usuallyloathe – was fun cause there was always a group of us when we did readings atbookstores.

Do you work with an agent? How do you view the role of agents today?

– Agents are importantunless you’re self-publishing – They deal with contracts that most writersdon’t want to even read. I soldsome of my children’s picture books to publishers and then had my agent handlethe contract. I also did that with Courage & Craft – my agent sent it out to everybody in New York and they replied withwonderful rejection letters but basically said, Who needs another writing book?So I did some research on my own and sent it to New World Library in Californiaand they bought it – then my agent handled the contracts and money. NWL hasturned out to be the publisher of my dreams – small and very hands on. And theylove their writers. The bottom line is that you can sell a book to smallpublishers on your own (be sure to research what they publish) and then find anagent to handle the deal. The agent’s 15 percent is a bargain.

What kind of publicity help did you get from your publisher? What are your thoughts about how authors should approach publicity these days?

– I love New WorldLibrary’s publicists – they’re very available and have booked me on radio andpod casts, and do a lot withmagazines – and if I want to do bookstore appearances they set it up forme. They also expect me to come upwith ideas and contacts of my own – as all publishers do now unless you’re onthe best seller list. The Internet is hugely important for publicity. You need Facebook, your own website forthe book, and also a blog. I callmyself the Marketing Whore when it comes to publicity because that’s what itfeels like.

What kind of books do you most enjoy reading? Any current favorites to recommend?

– I finally read TheHelp and loved it. Also I just read TheJournal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux on atrip to Russia. I loved it so much I got in touch with her via Facebook fromMoscow – and was thrilled when she replied. I’m now reading Lacuna by Barbara Kinsolver and a biography ofFrida Kahlo. And Thirst – MaryOliver’s poems. I love reading all kinds of books. You can’t be a writerwithout reading.

You have facilitated writing groups for women facing cancer. How did you keep that activity from becoming depressing?

– There was a momentearly on in the workshop when I thought I just can’t do this – a dear woman Iloved had died – but then Irealized most people didn’t die. The workshop was filled with people who wenton from having cancer to thrive. And I went on to conduct it for another twelveyears. It turned out to be much more inspiring than depressing.

You have taught a lot of wonderful classes at UCLA Extension. What is it like working with such a variety of people, who have self-selected as members of your class?

– Joy, pure and simple. I love teaching atUCLA Extension. I love my students and I love the other instructors. I finallyfound my own community.

You travel a lot; does this feed into your writing or interrupt it?

– It used interrupt mywriting and it would take days, weeks, to get back into it. But there’s nothinglike a book deadline to focus you, so for the past year I’ve written every daywhile traveling. I love to writein hotel rooms or on boat cruises (as on our last trip to Russia.) or up inMontana where we have a place. My husband and our rather large family are usedto me disappearing to write on vacations.

Can you give us some ideas for creating a wonderful writing life for ourselves?

– This is the subjectof my next book! (A Year of Writing Dangerously.) It’s 356 days of anecdotes and encouragement and writer’s quotes. Kindof like a party – you get to hear how all these other writers struggle and havefits over their work. It’s also about thinking like a writer, writing everyday, grinding through the tough times, etc. I just sent in the final manuscriptto my editor at NWL. (Message fromthe Marketing Whore: it’ll be published May 2012 and author is available tocome to any and all groups to talk about the book!)

Any other thoughts to share with writers?

– Just this: when youwrite you’re part of a community of writers. You’re in the Writers Club – theonly condition is that you write every day. Even if it’s just for ten minutes.Even if you think what you’re writing is all crap (all writers feel this way atone time or another) and you keep going because only you can write your story –and somebody out there needs to read it. ( One of the perks: You get to read asmuch as you want – because that’s the best way to learn to write. )

Laura's note: If you enjoy Barbara's thoughts, you may want to follow her blog at http://writingtime.typepad.com/ It is often full of inspiration, not to mention many great book recommendations! Also check out her website at http://www.barbaraabercrombie. com. Cherished is available now on Amazon.com and you should keep an eye open for author events featuring her at your local bookstores.

Madeline Sharples Interview on Leaving the Hall Light On

2011-09-09T17:34:00.000-07:00

Dear writers and readers,
Madeline Sharples and I crossed paths in a writing course at UCLA a couple of years ago and have stayed in touch. Her book is a moving account, full of poetry as well as prose, of her son's life and his death of suicide, called Leaving the Hall Light On. I'm very interested in how people create beauty from painful experiences, and I hope you'll find Madeline's thoughts on this subject as interesting as I do.
cheers,
Laura

Hi Madeline, what got you interested in writing?

It seems thatI always wanted to be a writer. Writing came so easy for me – even in gradeschool. I studied journalism in high school and wrote feature articles for thehigh school newspaper. Then I took all the course work toward a degree injournalism in college though I ended up with a degree in English because Itransferred schools just before my senior year (that’s a story all its own).So, when I got out of college I wanted in the worst way to write for a magazineor newspaper. After a fewattempts I turned to the aerospace industry. I got a positive response afterone call asking, “Do you ever hire people with a degree in English?” Easy,right? But hard on my dream to become a “real” writer.
Andthough I never gave up on that dream, for the next several decades I tookcreative detours and continued with my day job working as a writer/editor and proposal manager in the aerospace business. I learned to draw and paint, I learnedto sew, I made needlepoint pillows, I quilted and gardened. And, I co-authoreda non-fiction book, Blue Collar Women:– a little less technical than my work in aerospace. Anything to keep my handin creativity, until finally I could stand it no longer.
Itook a workshop called, “Writing about Our Lives” at Esalen in Big Sur,California in the late 1990s. It was there that I wrote about my misgivingsabout ever being able to make the transition. Here’s what I wrote: “My writingis so factual, so plain, so devoid of descriptors, feelings, and imagination.” LaterI learned that was okay. Once I discovered a private instructor in Los Angeleswho taught me to “write like you talk,” I knew I was on my way.

What kinds of books do you enjoy reading?

I’mvery eclectic about the books I enjoy. I read mostly fiction, non-fiction,memoir, history, and poetry. Right now I’m reading The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon and recently finishedand thoroughly enjoyed a noir detective story Swann’s Last Song by Charles Salzman, someone I met on Facebook. Ihave a huge stack of books to be read, including those my book clubchooses.

You write both poetry and nonfiction. Is it a challenge to combine the two into one book?

I never even considered leaving mypoetry out of my book. They were instrumental in my book’s organization. I hadjournal entries and other writings to draw from and a poetry manuscript, and Iarranged my book’s chapters according the order of the poems in my poetrymanuscript. However, I still worried about what others would think. So manyagents state that they don’t look at poetry. A memoir workshop instructorwasn’t keen on the idea either. However, one of the people who had read mypoems several years ago says he can relate to them better now because of theircontext in the story. The bottom line is: I was fortunate to find a publisherwho not only liked the poems I initially had in the book, but asked for more.

Oneof the first reviewers of my memoir, Leavingthe Hall Light On, said, “….The poetry and photographs add an extradimension that is missing from most memoirs like this since as a reader you getmuch closer to the reality of what is being described on the page….” (MarkShelmerdine, CEO, Jeffers Press). Another reviewer said my book is“poetically visceral.” Those statements helped validate any misgivings I had inadding other creative works into my manuscript.

Bythe way, I have gravitated over to the world of fiction as well. I started anovel last year and though it’s on hold because of all my book marketing work,I’m about half way through and hope to get back to it soon.

Your book is about a very painful subject, the suicide of your son. Do you have any advice for writers who are dealing with such sensitive personal topics themselves? Are there ways the writing process helps with the grieving?

I think my first piece of advicewould be to take your time. Think about caring for yourself first and foremost,and if that means getting words onto the page, that’s good. Otherwise, don’tpressure yourself.
Writing became my therapy. I justhad to write or I’d feel itchy. Even the very act of pounding the keys on thekeyboard helped. The page was always ready for my tears, my rants, my sorrow,my complaints, and my thoughts and ideas. The page never told me what to do orhow to handle my grief. The page never told me it was time to stop grievingalready. The page became my everyday friend – a special place I could go toempty my full heart. And, as a result, writing through my grief totally turnedmy life around. I made a “real” writer out of me.

How long did it take you to write this book?

Mybook took years to write and organize. I never intended my journal entrieswould turn into a book. I just wrote for myself at first. Only when my writinginstructor told me I should get my story out to the public did I begin to thinkabout writing a book – that was about the year 2001. However, it took a lotmore years of writing and classes, working with editors and readers, andrevising until my book was finally finished and ready.

What is your writing process like? Do you write in a special place or at a particular time?

Itreat my writing as if it is work – even though it is work I love to do. I getup early everyday, go to the gym, have breakfast, and shower and get dressed.Then I go to my writing room and get down to business. And some days I’m inthere for hours.

I createdmy writing room and office from the room in our house where Paul lived his lasttwo and a half years. Paul had been my muse for so many years; so I decided hecould continue to be my muse in my new room.

I write inthere alone. I sit at my large black draftsman table opposite a bay picturewindow. I look out to the garden, at the three palm trees, the small cementpond, and the ginger plants behind it, all designed to create a calminginfluence on my writing work. I can hear the gurgle of the fountain when thewindows are open. Once in a while a bird comes to take a seed from thebirdfeeder or a dip in the pond. If I’m not sitting at my table, I sit on thewindow seat or on the orange futon-like sofa.

At first Iworried about how it would feel taking over his space, how it would feel tomake it mine. And now I know. It’s a feeling of cleansing, healing, and ofbeing in a safe and comforting space. I feel calm in there, and that calm helpsmy writing. Maybe the little reminders of Paul in there help too. Hiscandlesticks are on the top shelf of the bookcase, his photo is on the nextshelf and a portrait of me when I was pregnant with him hangs on the wall. Ialso have a photo of a sunset taken on September 22, 1999 – his last nightalive – a beautiful reflection of an orange sun in a deep blue ocean – and sopeaceful. I also have many of my Buddha statues in my office (Paul was aBuddha-like character) – besides the ones in other parts of the house andgarden. They are on my desk and on the end table next to the sofa.

Do you use music in your writing process?

I listen to music while I writevery occasionally. I always have my ear buds in when I work out at the gym.

Tell us how you approached point of view in your book. Did you consider first versus third person, straight memoir as opposed to a fictional approach, or was it always clearly as it turned out?

Once I got down to thebusiness of creating a book from my journal entries and poems I never thoughtit would be anything other than a memoir in first person. Early on in acreative writing class I wrote a story or two – still in first person – basedon some of the facts in the book, but they didn’t work for me as fiction, so Idiscarded them.

Do you have an agent? What are your feelings about working with an agent?

I am agent-less. I queried about sixtyof them in my quest to get my book published and though a few asked to see mymanuscript, none of them even took me as far as negotiations. And most of myqueries went unanswered. So rightnow, I’m happy I found my traditional small press publisher on my own and don’thave to share any royalties I earn from book sales with an agent. Of courseI’ll revisit this when it comes time to shop my next book.

Has your publisher helped with publicity for your new books? What thoughts do you have about publicity today?

Yes, my publisher has been verygenerous. She has paid for a publicist and she very frequently posts about mybook and her other books in the social media. She works very hard at keepingmentions of our books out there.

I find getting publicity unless Ido it myself very difficult. My publisher sent out review copies to newspapersbut my book got very few notices. However, I scheduled and arranged my booklaunch and signing at our local independent book store, and I arranged a blogtour on Women on Writing (WOW). This allowed my book exposure and many reviewson other related blogs. However, being on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn hasbeen most helpful. I also have a part-time publicist who got a book reviewposted on Shirley Showalter’s wonderful site, 100 Memoirs, and also got me aonce-a-month writing gig on a great website, Naturally Savvy, as its over sixtyexpert. Even though I don’t write about my book’s subject matter there, we feelany way I can get my name out there helps.

Any other thoughts you'd like to share?

If you are in the Los Angeles area, I’ll be signing copiesof my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On,at the West Hollywood Book Fair on October 2 from 10 am to 2:30 pm. Thissigning was arranged through the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society.

Do you have web sites the readers can visit?

See my book trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TMOVHAmSlc

Become a fan of Madeline Sharples (for book newsand writing tidbits) at

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Madeline-Sharples/145268628820134?ref=mf

Visit myblogs at:
http://madeline40.blogspot.com/
and
http://www.redroom.com/member/madeline40

And website:

http://w ww.MadelineSharples.com

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Madeline!

Interview with Dorothy McMillan, Author of Many Mysteries

2011-09-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

Hi readers and writers,
I'm pleased to bring you an interview with someone who has published several books, and whose inventive mind enables her to create puzzling mysteries. Enjoy! Cheers Laura

Dottie, how did you get interested in writing?

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love to write. When I was in the fourth grade, I wrote dozens of ghastly horror stories and sold them to the kids at school for a dime each. That was a lot of money way back then. Finally, irate parents told the principal, and I had to stop writing the stories, and give back all the money. My first rejection. But hardly my last. At least with my professional writing no one has asked me to give back the money.

What kind of books do you most enjoy reading?

Just about every kind. However, my favorite authors are Bradbury, Steven King, Ann Tyler, Mary Stewart, Mary Robert’s Reinhart, and Clive Cussler (who was in the same writing class as I was in college). An odd mixed bunch, aren’t they?

How many books have you published to date?

To date, I’ve had seven books published. Two non-fiction: “Creative ways with Polymer clay” and “Artful ways with Polymer clay” under the name Dotty McMillan. And five novels under Dorothy McMillan. “Blackbird” “Soul Crossed” “Vile Acts” “Deadly Urges” and “The Devil’s Bell.” Two of these books were optioned for film, but, as usual in Hollywood, they never were filmed. But I got to keep the option money! Deadly Urges is now on the Kindle for a pittance. Fortunately, it’s getting some great reviews. I just wish I had more time to do some PR for it. Besides books, I’ve written five screenplays. Early on, I sold two of them. Again, they never got made. This is the toughest field of writing to try. I only do it because I enjoy the process and at times need a break from the novel writing.

Are the books all similar or are there different series of them?

All of the fiction books are in the same genre, that of Suspense Thrillers. I would love to venture out into other areas such as fantasy and sci-fi, but my agent doesn’t handle these. In the past he sold “Logan’s Run” but hasn’t handled that type since. Even so, I’m still working on a fantasy book during those days when I need to let the suspense thriller rest for a day or too.

Do you enjoy writing conferences? Any advice for newbies about going to writing conferences?

I love going to writing conferences, and I used to attend all kinds of them. I also taught at some of them. However, due to a variety of life things, I haven’t been able to do that much during the past few years. Nevertheless, they were extremely valuable in many ways. One of the best things about them is that they help to stimulate your creative nature, and can give you that push we all need, to make time to write, and keep at it. It’s also good to be with people who love the same thing that you do. Writers work alone so much, that getting out of the house and in contact with other writers is a healthy way to spend some time.
For years, I went to every conference where Ray Bradbury was speaking as he had such a powerful message for writers. On one occasion, after a conference was over, he was walking in the same direction I was, and he noticed I had some papers in my hand. He asked if they were something I had written. I said yes. He asked if he could read some of it. In a state of total panic, I handed him the pages. He read all of them. Then he looked up at me and said, “Don’t you ever quit. You are going to make it!” At that time, I was actually ready to take up basket weaving instead of writing! We walked together to the corner of the street where Ray was to wait for his ride home. He has never learned to drive! I thanked him, hugged him, and as soon as his ride arrived, I made my way home in a daze. Those words of his stuck to me, as if crazy-glued, for the rest of my life. When my first book was published, I sent him a copy to say thank you for his encouragement. He wrote back and said he read it, his wife read it, and so did his daughters. He said it was fantastic! From that day on, we exchanged Christmas cards, our successes, and our failures. I’m not sure what I would be doing today, without his kindness and encouragement. Probably basket weaving.

How do you get the ideas for your books? Based on real experiences or your own great imagination or both?

I wish I didn’t have so dang many ideas for my novels. I have dozens of summaries, starts, and idea pages for future novels. They just pop into my head and won’t go away until I record the idea. It would take two lifetimes to write them all. They are always based on some facts. Then I go nuts from there and add all kinds of wild and dark things. In one book, a character in the book is actually a written description of my mother. Not what she looked like, but what she was like. A little skewed, a lot off kilter.

My non-fiction writing is always about the art of working with Polymer Clay, something I’ve done, and taught for about twenty years. Each of these books took a full year to write and photograph. Not as much fun as writing fiction and a lot more work. However, selling non-fiction is usually easier than selling novels. My agent handles more of that now, than fiction. It’s especially good if you are able to write about something, in which a lot of people are interested.

Tell us about your latest book.

The novel I’m working on now is “The Gray-Green Underground.” Did you know that underneath Tokyo there is a large farm that grows all kinds of food crops? Did you know that in the U.S. there are old mines where all kinds of things are being grown underground? Did you know that many of these growing things have been bio-engineered and could be deadly to mankind. Surely there has to be a book I could write about all this, one filled with murder, mayhem, and madness.

A strange little hunchbacked man named Hagan Poole built a strange stone castle as his home over a hundred years ago. Today it still sits like a stone fortress in a wild little canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California. Shadowed by dark stands of pines, it gives one a creepy skin prickling sensation on first sight. This is the setting for the book. A place like this actually did exist.

Through lonely years after Poole’s death, the hallways of his stone castle collected giant tangles of hoary spider webs. Slime-green fungus and powdery white mold oozed from the blushing Tutor brick that lined the enormous kitchen. The entire place reeked of a syrupy dampness and a putrefying mushroom smell. Abandoned and forlorn, the place languished silently. Forgotten.

Forgotten, that is, until twenty-eight year old Isabel Warren received the unexpected phone call from her dead husband.

There the story begins. There the terror and fear attack.

Do you have an agent? How do you feel about agents? Are they necessary today?

A short time after Ray Bradbury encouraged me, my writing instructor at Orange Coast College gave a hard copy of my novel to Mike Hamilburg, an author’s agent who resides in Beverly Hills. Mike called me a few days later from the airport and said “I have your novel with me and I’m on the way to New York. I would like to represent you and try to shop it. Would that be okay?”
When I was finally able to talk I said, “You bet!” So, off he went, and about four months later, he had it sold. That began a long and wonderful relationship, with one of the nicest, most honest, and helpful agents anyone could have. It was just one of those fantastic lucky things.
Today, it is possible to sell a novel without an agent. But it is a lot better and easier if you can find one who will represent you, that is if you want to get a traditional paper book publisher. They will not represent a self-published writer unless it looks as if their book might take off and make a lot of money. Some of these do. Most do not.
There is a huge list of authors agents online. They usually say what type of writing they represent. You can send a good query letter to all of them to see if they are interested in working with you.
Publishing is in such a wild state today. No one knows how it will all turn out. Before now, I have always been against “self-publishing” because I’ve seen so many problems with doing it. So many friends ended up by paying for hundreds of their books which ended up in their garage, and no way to distribute or advertise them. However, this is changing. You don’t have to pay huge amounts to self-publish now, and can buy one or two of your books at a time. The major problem however, is getting out there and doing all sorts of things to publicize your book. All the things that a paper publisher does for its writers. It takes a great deal of time and effort.

Do you usually publish through the same publisher? Does that make an agent less necessary?

No, unfortunately, I’ve had different publishers. You wouldn’t believe the things that have happened with my work through the years. Way too many things to mention. But I would just say that if you are lucky you will sell to a publisher who won’t merge with another publisher, won’t go out of business, and who won’t give you an editor who says he doesn’t believe that a woman can write a successful suspense thriller, and the worst, a publisher who decides that Robin Cook’s new book should be the lead novel instead of your novel which was slated for that honor. All because Cook didn’t meet his deadline for the month before. Despite all this, however, my books have always sold extremely well, no matter what house published them. If you are lucky, as some of my writer friends have been, and have the same publisher for all your books, an agent is still very important. Mine not only works to get a book published, but also takes care of the contract to make sure you are not getting stiffed some way. One publisher demanded the movie rights in my contract. My agent made sure that didn’t happen. There are dozens of things that need careful perusing. An agent takes care of all that, and is well worth his percentage.

What else would you like to share with the blog readers?

First, I would like to remind them that you will never have time to write, you have to make time. It means giving up a lot of things you might rather do. If that makes you unhappy, then stop writing and do the things you’d rather do. If writing is your life, then realize that you will have to spend a lot of that life putting words together to create stories, articles, whatever it is you like to write.

Second, don’t spend hours and hours on the first few chapters of your book, trying to make them perfect before you move on. Just jump in and write the whole darn book. My routine is to write like crazy in afternoons and late nights. Then I clean that writing up some in the morning, and then write new chapters all afternoon and night again. One you hit that last page of your book, put it away for a week or so. Then, take it out and read, polish it, and make it the best you can. Then get it out there and sell it. Get an agent if possible. Or start out by putting it on the Kindle, IPod, etc. Who knows, it might just take off and make you a zillion dollars. I sure hope so!

Interview with Charles Strozier about Until the Fires Stopped Burning

2011-08-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

Dear writers and readers,

I had the pleasure this past summer of taking Historical Narrative workshop at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony at Provincetown, MA with Chuck Strozier. His comments about his work-in-progress, based on psychological interviews of New Yorkers concerning their 9/11 experiences, really aroused my enthusiasm for this book. So, here, for your enjoyment, is an interview with him about writing and about his new book! Cheers, Laura

How did you get interested in writing, Chuck?
Almost as soon as I could read I began to write. In fact, writing has always intrigued me more than reading. In 4^th grade I was absorbed with Jack London novels and fell in love with wolves, dogs, and all kinds of canines. I wrote a 40 page story about “King, The Story of a Dog” that my father typed up for me as I dictated from my scribbled pages. A novelist friend of my father (Billy Hagood) said when he read it that I would be a writer. It was a kind of blessing. More than once in school I had the curious experience of a teacher not liking an essay but giving me what the English call a left-handed compliment that it was well written.

What was your first success?
I think my story of “King.” My first adult success in writing came with the reception to my first book, a psychoanalytic study of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln’s Quest for Union). It was 1982 and I was 38. The book was reviewed on the front page of the Times and called “surpassingly eloquent.” It was startling for me, and it changed my life.

How hard was it to persist writing the biography of Kohut in spite of family opposition? Did you put it aside and then go back later, or keep working sub rosa?
That book took me 19 years to research and write (1982 to 2001), though, because of all the opposition I encountered from the family and many of his protective colleagues, I did do other projects along the way. There was, for example, a delay in the early 1990s in my gaining access to some crucial archival material. But there was nothing sub rosa about my work. I just pushed on, kept interviewing, talking about my work, learning more and thinking more deeply about what I knew. And, frankly, I found the gossip and mean-spiritedness steeled my resolve. I am stubborn in that way. It was a welcome vindication to have the book so well received.

Do you enjoy writing or is it hard for you? Describe what your writing process is like.

I love writing. I do it every day. I warm up with emails and then get down to it. My only frustration is that I have to do all these others things—teach, run a research center, raise money, see patients, and generally earn a living—that crowd in on writing. But the trick is not ever to let being busy prevent you from writing.

What kind of books do you most enjoy reading?
I read mostly nonfiction works of history but I also usually keep a novel going (my favorites are Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner and, among more recent writers, David Grossman, Don DeLillo, and of course Norman Mailer). My hobby is photography, and I have a rather elaborate project right now to photograph in medium format, black and white negatives the bridges of New York that I then enlarge in high contrast. I am about 2/3 of the way around Manhattan and hope in some future year to mount an exhibition. My visual sense carries over to my writing. I am less interested in the sentence than the paragraph. I can see the paragraph when I enter into it with a lead sentence. I imagine it before I write it. I love the shape of a good paragraph and its transitions from what comes before and what follows. A good transition thrills me.

What kinds of things do you write? Just books, or do you also write articles, stories, poems?

I write mainly my nonfiction books but also lots of articles, which I actually don’t like very much and have cut back on in recent years. I wrote two volumes of poems to the love of my life 30 years ago when I was courting her. It was a good move, as we are still happily married.

How did you get the idea for your current book on 9/11?

I was standing in Greenwich Village watching the disaster happen. It was shocking but I also felt I had some understanding of what was behind it in light of my scholarly involvement in the 1990s with what I then called the “new terrorism.” I felt a certain mission to study the disaster I watched unfold in front of my eyes and began my interviewing at the start of the second week.

Will people turn to your book to get help with their remaining 9/11 fears and other reactions? If they do, will it help your book or hurt it?

I suspect those with lingering fears of attacks or with residual traumatic reactions to 9/11 will have contradictory reactions to my book. On the one hand, the details of the stories—and for better or worse I am a story teller—may evoke memories and feelings that can be disturbing. On the other hand, my book provides context for such feelings and I hope puts the disaster into perspective and explains it in meaningful ways. It is the only overall interpretation of 9/11, and I think we do better psychologically with things we understand than living with the dread.

Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.
I have had two agents in my life. I stumbled into publishing with my first book, which thankfully Basic Books was willing to take on cold. The book then led to a top agent (Charlotte Sheedy) approaching me. She helped me then secure a wonderful publisher (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) for my Kohut book and various other projects. We then didn’t see eye to eye about my 9/11 book and parted ways. Some two years an agent, Richard Morris, from Yanklow and Nesbit Literary Agency, picked me up for the 9/11 book. Both agents were crucial for me and helped me enormously. It is awful in publishing these days. Without an agent, trade presses won’t even answer your inquiries. The good news is that university presses still can be approached without an agent. There are also many other outlets for one’s writing, including blogs, a format I am coming to enjoy a great deal (note “911aftertenyears.com”).

What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?

I have a blog for my book (just mentioned) and a Facebook Author Page. Each links to the other. They have proven very useful for promotion. Any number of journalists who have read my blog have been calling for interviews.

If you could achieve one marketing coup for your current book, what would you like it to be? Interview with someone? Special review location?

I would love a good Times review. I may still have an NPR interview with Scott Simon and something is cooking with ABC. We will see. The trick, I think, in marketing is to throw a lot of balls in the air and see what comes down.

If you could go back in time and start over, tell us one thing you have learned that would help you to succeed better/faster/with less struggle.

Personally, I wish I had married my current wife at 22 and not gone through the agonies of my first marriage, the divorce, and the years of single parenting. I lost time and suffered much heartache. In terms of my writing, I have had lots of ideas about 9/11 in recent months that I wish I had put in the book. Why couldn’t the tenth anniversary be in 2012?

Any other thoughts to share?

Thank you for this opportunity to enter into your world in this way. These were good questions.

Visit Chuck's blog about issues raised in his new book here: 911aftertenyears.com

Dick Cheney Saves Paris...Interview with Ryan Forsythe

2011-08-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

Hi writers,

This interview kicks off a new series of author/writer interviews on the blog. If you are interested in being interviewed, please email me asap at lhoopes@pomona.edu. Ryan Forsythe's book is a novel about Dick Cheney and time travel, being released the same week as Cheney's own memoir. Read below to learn more about Ryan and his book.

Cheers,
Laura

Ryan, how did you become interested in writing?

In college I was disappointed with the majority of my classes. I asked all my friends to recommend one decent professor, and I almost signed up for an engineering class (I was a psych. major at the time). At the last minute, a friend recommended Michelle Herman's fiction workshop. I signed up, and on the first day of class—just my luck—learned she was having a baby and would be out all semester. The replacement teacher wasn't very good, but I enjoyed writing the short stories so much that I kept adding writing classes (including Michelle Herman's the following year). Soon I added a creative writing major. Been writing ever since.

What was your first success?

My first writing success was having a travel story selected for an anthology published by Lonely Planet. It paid $100! But it was also an odd start to my writing career, as they made me sign a contract giving them all rights. When it was published, major parts of my story had been changed—including actual quotes. This was nonfiction, mind you, so it was odd that my name was still attached to it, yet I don't believe that the events happened as noted in the final draft. But they bought it—it's their story, and so can apparently change it as they see fit. I will say that since then I've certainly paid much more attention to contracts. Also, I now rarely submit stories to publications seeking all rights.

Do you enjoy writing or is it hard for you? Describe what your writing process is like.

The hardest part is finding time. When I have the time and space to write and revise, I find it fairly easy and enjoyable. My process is usually to try to get as much down as possible—typing as fast as I can, with almost no editing at first. Sometimes this includes just describing what I want to write, like "insert here a part about how they drive across the state" and then I'm on to writing the next scene. Once I have something to work with, I find I constantly move around from part to part. I might spend an hour working on the first page, then jump to the end for ten minutes, then jump to the middle for five minutes or thirty. In that way, I'm kind-of revising the entire thing at the same time. Eventually, each part feels "finished" and I know the whole thing is ready to share with others for more feedback.

What kind of books do you most enjoy reading, Ryan?

I get bored easily and so I like authors who take changes and try new things. I particularly enjoy novels that play with the idea of genre. Three of my favorites are Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, and Mark Leyner's Tetherballs of Bougainville, though my favorite author is probably Percival Everett. I appreciate that he seems to cover new and different ground in every book—whether western, sci-fi, political satire, epistolary, children's book—you name it, it's always something different. By the way, you didn't ask, but my least favorite books are self-help books.

I may still have one of Everett's novel's I borrowed from you, have to check around and see. Do you just write books, or do you also write other kinds of things?

I used to write mainly travel stories—even had a newspaper travel column for a bit in Oberlin, Ohio. But I don't travel as much anymore, so my focus has shifted to fiction—both short stories and novels. I've also written a few "children's books for adults"--books that look and sound like children's books, but which cover adult themes. I published one a few years ago, titled The Little Veal Cutlet That Couldn't. It's about the happy cow that goes to the slaughterhouse—told in rhyme with full color illustrations. I have a few more I'd like to get out there, but lately I've been putting all my attention on the novel. I don't do poems.

How did you get the idea for your current book?

I wrote the first draft in 2006, when Cheney was V.P. One day I was thinking of all the things he'd done in his life, wondering what would make a person, for example, vote against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela. For some reason I pictured Cheney as a time traveler, stuck in our time and doing what he had to in order to get back home. Soon I had a rough draft, which sat in my computer for years. When I found out Cheney's memoir would be coming out this year, I decided to revisit the book. Since his has the subtitle "A Personal and Political Memoir," I decided to add a similar subtitle to mine. In order to make mine more "personal and political," I added the parts to my book about my own history with politics, as well as my thoughts on politicians and their memoirs.

Will people confuse your book with the book by your subject, Dick Cheney? If they do, will it help or hurt your book?

I don't think anyone will confuse Cheney's memoir with my novel. If they do, I think it would just draw attention to the book, which certainly won't hurt.

Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without an agent.

No agent. For people really trying to sell the next bestseller, agents are probably necessary, but given the tiny market for the type of things I write, I don't see the value. Or rather, I don't think they'd see the value in having me as a client. Really it's not something I spend any time thinking about.

What are your thoughts about marketing? Any tips about how to do it well?

A lot of authors seem to hate that part of the process (or say they do), but I enjoy having different things to work on—website or ad design, writing press releases, contacting newspapers, and so forth. It's not my favorite part of writing, but more and more often, independent writers have to manage all aspects themselves, and I'm comfortable with that. As for tips on marketing, I would probably suggest authors try to have more than just the book to discuss. It could be an event or a giveaway, but I think having something extra can help draw attention. For example, With Dick Cheney Saves Paris, we have a soundtrack due out the same day as the novel. It's been fun putting together, and I think the songs fit well with the book. But it's also one more avenue for getting the word out on the book.

If you could achieve one marketing coup for your book, what would it be?

I would love to see a book review somewhere that examines both books side by side, but I'm not convinced a review in the New York Times or someplace similar would help the book reach its true audience. For me, the ideal mention of the book would probably be by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! or by Rachel Maddow on her show, or perhaps a review in Mother Jones. Anywhere that will help the book find an appreciative audience would be great.

If you could go back in time and start over, tell us one thing you have learned that would help you succeed better/faster/with less struggle.

One thing I've learned is the necessity of the struggle itself—in order to grow as a writer, one needs the many moments of doubt and pain, as well as the small successes along the way—all are part of the process.

Any other thoughts to share, Ryan?

As I note in the book itself (it is a meta- novel, after all), I hope the book will not be taken as simply a joke. Yes, it is an absurdist time travel tale about Dick Cheney. But part of my point is that we need to more deeply examine memoirs written by those in power, and not blindly accept their versions of events as the true story. At the end of the day, it's possible that an absurdist sci-fi novel is just as true as a memoir.

To preview an excerpt of the novel, visit http://www.freado.com/book/10562/dick-cheney-saves-paris

Misplaced Earthquake and Typical Hurricane

2011-08-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

The East Coast friends and relatives have our sympathy as nature turns vicious there, first delivering an earthquake in Virginia, which propagated in the harder rock so that it was felt much farther away than it would have been out here. Then we have Irene, the hurricane that has New York planning to shut down the subways on Saturday perhaps. And Amtrack and the airlines are canceling travel right and left. So it's a good time to settle down with a good book and a hurricane lamp to enjoy a nature-induced break from modern life. That's what these natural disasters impose on us. The outdoors we ignore most of the time suddenly appears, renders us house-bound or nearly so, but wakes us up to the power and majesty of nature.
Quite a few of my friends attribute all this to global warming but I recall hurricane Hazel's destruction when I was in junior high school, walking home as limbs crashed all around me, half pushed and half pulled by wind gusts that could not keep a constant direction. I arrived home wet through but exhilarated. My mom, though, was appalled and thought the school should have kept us there until the winds died down. No doubt I could have been killed by a falling limb; some of the ones I saw fall were over a foot thick. But I am glad I didn't miss the immersion in nature's reality. I hope that wherever you are, you can manage to contact nature regularly and don't have to wait for disasters to make it happen.

Joys of Historical Research: The Battle of Hayes Pond

2011-08-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

Hi writer friends,

I am beginning to write a novel about North Carolina. Incidents that I half remember from when I lived there keep coming up in the back of my mind. Then I have to see what the public record shows about these half-memories. This week, I recalled that while I was in high school, the Indians of the coastal region of NC surrounded a Ku Klux Klan rally and won the fight with them hands down.

I remember that the Klan was unpopular, even though there was a lot of racism in my whites-only high school, and that people passed around gossip about the Klan's defeat with great glee, even people I knew had racist attitudes towards black people. The fact that the Klan behaved like terrorists, hitting at night, keeping their identities secret, and trying to win by intimidation, probably accounts for why my fellow students rejoiced in their loss of the battle. I hoped to find out more about this event, and turned to the internet to find some sources I could order. Most sources seemed to be newspaper and magazine articles, at least as cited in the Wikipedia article. Now I'm really tempted to use this incident in my novel!

Have you ever included real historical incidents in your fiction? How do people react to that?

Six Twitter Surprises

2011-06-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

What's Twitter, I asked? A Social Media site. You must be active on Twitter to sell your book, I heard in reply. I posted here a while back about finding out how to forget trying to read the whole stream of Twitter and get in. Go ahead and follow me/follow you in excess. The stream of Twitter is a lot like a real water stream. It is constant, it has molecules of every dead king and live star, it is always moving and never the same, and there is no way you can experience it all. That was my first surprise. The second one was hearing things before they officially happened. In the Arab spring we all know this now. Tweet before news even after repression. But that's a surprise we all got at about the same time. Here's something else I, who thought of Twitter as an outgoing publicity machine, never expected: moments of transcendent beauty. Instant poems that transfix me as the stream rushes by. Referrals to lightning storms set to gorgeous music. Images of volcanos erupting. Moons covered with frost flowers from a winter window. And moments of connection with people I really don't know were another surprise. A young woman whose cat died. A man whose father never hugged him even once. Simple, direct appeals to the open universe for support by these tweets. And fifth is the #ww and #ff system. These symbols are for lists of people (tweeps) you recommend for others to follow. If they like you, they might like them too. And it's a good way to reward people who follow you and put you on their #ww and #ff lists. Last, but by no means least, there are hashtags. Want to find authors? Go to #writers or #authors. Want to work with working writers? Go to #amwriting. There you can even go to the associated web site and post a bio. Want to read writing tips? Go to #writingtips. Writing memoir? Go to #memoir. You can even make up your own hashtag and start including that in your tweets. If you're irresistible, others will follow and you can manage the hashtag list. There is a heck of a lot more to Twitter than I thought! Enjoy.

The mystery of voice

2011-06-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

For one of my classes last semester, a class in British Literature (modernism), the professor let me do a creative writing paper rather than a research paper. After he read my draft, he said, "Wow. The first three pages are very poetic. You really got into the landscape of the area where you grew up. But then, it's like you feel off a cliff. It's not in the same voice at all." I knew exactly what he meant. I almost never have "flow" when I'm writing, but those three pages jumped from my brain to the page almost effortlessly, with joy and purpose, with writerly thoughts, with a sense I knew what I was doing. But then, I didn't know how to go on. I had a setting and a main character, but although I wrote about 27 more pages around the setting and character to turn in for my professor, working on and off for a period of weeks, I never found that voice again. I hope very much that I can, in some quiet moments in natural settings this summer, reread the three pages, meditate, and reconnect that cord to the source of the voice. I don't know if it will be possible, but with every fiber of my being, I want to make it work. I only hope wanting it that much won't get it the way.

Braiding Storylines

2011-06-07T21:28:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you can discover braiding storylines without writing something long, like a novel or a novella, and then rewriting. I had no idea about how exciting this method could be until I began to rewrite my novel, The Bad Project. I had a straight-through story, involving what happened to two women during their first semester in college, more or less chronologically. The strands I braided into it came from the question, "What else did they do? Just go to class?" Of course not. The roommates began to meet with a writing outreach group for high school girls, and that helped Marianne call her resistance to Chinese culture into question. Marianne took on a co-editorship for the college literary magazine with a gay black man, helping her to mine the prejudices of Mandy, the student representative on the panel judging Crystal's application for the Forscher premed scholarship for "students of good character." Also, Marianne had to put her writing out there to be judged by older students, some of whom were none too gentle with her. These strands of extra-curricular activities seemed to be side issues, but when I began adding them, they made strong connections and big contributions to the main themes of the book. Crystal sang in the Gospel Choir, and her concert broke open some of her inhibitions about relationships with men and also allowed Marianne to relax from excessive studying. So, the fact of writing a longer story gave me the room and the freedom to develop some related activities for the two women, thinking they might prove to be distractions, only to find that they often led me right to the heart of the story. That is why I thought of it as braiding; in braiding you take an outward path, but then it curves back to the center and connects. I found this process highly enjoyable and surprising, and when I reread the novel now, I cannot imagine the story without these braided elements.

7 Important Reasons to Write a Memoir

2011-05-20T23:03:00.000-07:00

Why write a memoir? 1. You can't help it. You feel a strong compulsion to do it. 2. You have learned something from your life that you want to share with others either so they can avoid repeating your mistakes or because you've proved something works. 3. The rhythms and flavors of your life are unique experiences that you'd like to explain to others. 4. You want to move from writing into speaking about parts of your life that were important to you. 5. You want to get out and compete with others to sell a lot of books. 6. You want to become a celebrity and make a name for yourself. 7. You are a celebrity and know that others want to read about your life and how you succeeded.

I wrote my memoir for reasons 1-3. I am not a celebrity so reason 7 is for the Oprah Winfreys, Ellen DeGenereses and Maria Shrivers of the world, not for me. What about reasons 4, 5, 6? Those are the things that reclusive, shy writers don't consider, don't want, but may have to accept. Being a professor, I'm more comfortable with speaking than some writers I know. I don't much like 5, the competition. And I have a love/hate relationship with 6. I think I might like being a household word, but I might hate the loss of privacy. Once you've written and published a memoir, at least part of your privacy curtain is gone anyway, so perhaps it's just as well to imagine it all gone. But I'd like to have my cake and eat it too: I'd love to sell a lot of books but not be recognized by the woman in the street. Probably, I'll get at least half my wish!

On Writing What You Know, or Not

2011-05-07T22:01:00.000-07:00

One of those powerful dicta that newbie writers receive many times is, "Write what you know." It certainly worked for Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Hardy to sink body and soul into the places that ran in their bone marrow, to use the accents and verbiage of their homebodies, to ignore the rest of the universe. Each of them sought the commonality of humanity in the specifics of their own villages and towns, farms and roads, libraries, ramshackle cars or carriages, and tired feet. But is that the only way you can write anything worthwhile? What about Blind? Who has experienced what it would be like for everyone to become blind at a stroke? Yet it's a profound novel, well worth reading, with great insights into human behavior and emotions. I've thought a lot about this advice, and I think it can inhibit creativity. Its virtue is that you are likely to know the important details of places you've lived and loved. But it can prevent you from applying those details to new places and ideas. And here's the real rub. You can tell yourself you know a place and its people, but the insides of their heads could be much different than you imagine. So unless you talk about the world according to your own thoughts, there is no real way to write only what you know. And if you talk with any philosophers, even your own thoughts will have fading reality. So, I'd say this. Keep in mind rooting what you write in the physicality of the universe you're describing. But let your imagination go free in placing your writing in Stonehenge, on Mars, or in a time and place of your richest desires. And enjoy yourself in that world.

One special detail is all you need

2011-05-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

Something I have become more and more aware of is the way authors I enjoy use the special detail that conveys the whole picture. Someone from my MFA program, for example, described an old Irishman as having eyebrows like hamsters. Picture that! You don't need any more details, do you? I certainly didn't. And this master detail that conveys it all shows in full bloom in stories by Chekhov.

Francine Prose, in Reading Like a Writer, decribed how Chekhov broke all the rules for short story writing but said she can't put his short stories down. I started reading these stories, and I completely agree. And I think that his use of the one detail is part of the reason the stories work so well. Of course, Chekhov had other methods as well, including providing a slice of life instead of a nice neat ending. But the telling detail is so well chosen in Chekhov stories that I often just stop and marvel about how much you can read out of a single detail. If you haven't tried to describe things with ultimate economy like this, it takes a lot of thought. You can't just remove all the details but one and have it convey it all. That special detail has to bring the whole scene into focus, has to be the detail that implies the rest. You may have to think about what it could be for a few days before you find it. But it is very worthwhile. People may read your story and say things like " Such economy of description!" The underlying secret is not just economy, but worth per word!

Book Release Feels Like Graduation, Wedding, BIG DAY

2011-04-30T19:14:00.000-07:00

Hi friends,
I am surprised at how excited I feel about Monday, May 2, release day for Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling. Since graduation at my college is right around the corner, and we just saw the royal wedding on TV, I feel it compares to those occasions for me, way back when. It's funny how little I recall of my graduation day. I cannot recall the speaker. I know we wore black gowns and it was very hot. I recall sitting down with my family and my senior thesis mentor, Ann Lacy, to chat after it was over. Did I shake hands with President Otto Kraushaar? Probably. But I have no memory of that. For my first wedding, I recall having cold feet right before the ceremony and having my dad calm me down. I recall that the priest brought Marge Champion, a movie star, as his guest to the wedding. I remember after the classical music on the tape, it switched to rock n roll via Roll Over Beethoven. But that's all I remember. What we said, what the priest said, that is all gone. For my second wedding, I remember being worried that my nose would still need a cast, but it didn't. I remember more about the ceremony because Mike and I wrote a lot of it. I remember singing the Wedding Song and Morning Has Broken with Mike. I remember a taped talk by Sister Julian Betts, Mike's education teacher from Bowie State. I remember Katie hitting everyone in the nose with a very long-stemmed rose. I remember Erin sleeping along the wall, and Jean pregnant with Susan. I remember Lyle, spiffy in a suit. And at the reception, I remember people watching the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament while we opened presents, and that Lyle got more presents than we did! More for that one. Maybe because it was more recent, although still many years ago. But the Book Release has in common with all these the feeling of anticipation, the feeling of being on the edge of something that will change my life. Here's hoping it changes for the better, for the better for women considering a career in science but unsure if it's compatible with a family. Yes it is!

Birds on the Move

2011-04-24T22:35:00.000-07:00

It seems like every day now, I hear different birds calls from the fruit trees and berry bushes in the yard before I get up. I can often spot a new bird or two as I leave for work. The draft of northward migration is moving and the birds migrate through Southern California, stopping to snatch a few good mouthfuls as they pass through the neighborhood. My sister Jean gave me a bird book with bird calls embedded in it, so if I have time, I can page through and try to figure out who I listened to at early morning call. The calls are often particularly from males and stimulated by a spring burst of testosterone, but that general picture gets a lot more complicated when biologists study individual types of birds. My old friend Luis Baptista, sadly now deceased, used to say birds sing such beautiful songs because their balls hurt them due to excessive testosterone in spring. I can't really believe the songs are produced out of pain, though. They seem to be joie de vivre in some cases, look-at-me calls in others. The idea of King Solomon's Ring, which was supposed to make the birds and animals' vocalizations meaningful to the ring's wearer, has always attracted me. I would love to be "in" on the meanings of these sounds. But for today, just seeing a poised indigo bunting in the yard, sporting feathers of intense turquoise blue, was enough.

Thrills of Being an Author

2011-04-22T00:23:00.000-07:00

I've been proud to say, under the guidance of Libby Grandy the magnificent, that I AM A WRITER, for about four years now. But having a book published moves me a yard farther down the field to being an AUTHOR, which is a whole different dimension. I don't count writing a text book, although that too was a thrill at the time. But now, this isn't my take on science I put out there for anyone with $14 to read, it's MY LIFE in science, and my attempts to keep my family life and my life of science discoveries in a rewarding, balanced state. And, I tried to write it using the methods of fiction. Not making up facts, but using colorful language, dialog, writing in scenes as much as possible, keeping an eye on suspense and conflict, the techniques of a novelist. So, when someone who is not in science reads the book and writes a review showing that she really gets it, it feels like a real pat on the back. I felt that way with every good review on Amazon, and now with Susannah Burke's review on her book review blog, Sooze Says Stuff too. If you'd like to read it, it's here: http://sooozsaysstuff.blogspot.com/2011/04/book-review-breaking-through-spiral.html or if you prefer a tiny URL, here:http://tinyurl.com/44hs54c I'm so thrilled that she hung in there in spite of the science bursts and saw that it was more about how women can overcome societal obstacles. Kudos to Suzannah!

My Book? It's About People Who...

2011-04-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

Why is it so hard to tell people what your book is about fast? They ask, "What's it about?" My memoir is about, it's about my, well, going into science. Lame and lamer. It's about having it all, but wait, some of it is about having doors slammed in your face and.. Lame too. It's about trying to go into science before men wanted women to join them in the field. Sounds formal, cold, doesn't imply beheading frozen flies to make a buck. I don't think one sentence can do the job. My novel, The Bad Project, is the same. It's a coming of age story. But wait, it's about college women. No, it's about ethnicity. Not just ethnicity, about how friendship can reach across those barriers. But is that the bottom layer of meaning? Isn't it really about how, no matter what your motive is, looking for trouble is very successful? Or is it about love and support between friends, how friendship is the most important take home message? Here's the problem: if you only had one sentence to say, why would you write a book? Isn't it because you had more, deeper, more complicated, more interconneted, less obvious, more fun, funnier, sadder, than one sentence to say? How can you strain out all the good parts you were trying to include and summarize the book in one sentence? Something is bound to be lost. Any ideas out there about how to do it successfully??

The Embarassment and Glory of Self-Publishing

2011-04-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

I am self-publishing my memoir. I hate to tell people that. It reminds me of the stigma of vanity presses, the idea that you alone, in your delusion, think your book is worthwhile and so you pay someone to publish it. In fact, the reality today is a little different. I had submitted my book widely and received some interest. It was "in the queue" at a university press for over two years. Then they pulled the plug. But why not keep submitting it? I responded to my desire to let women know right away that they can "have it all," balancing family and a career in science. I responded to being invited to give talks on my life in science, the reality that people were interested right now to hear more about it.

And I found a great variety of choices. PublishAmerica, where I would pay nothing, would format, create the cover, and publish it, but they would decide the cover style and price. The price, considering its length, was probably going to be $26. That was one end of the spectrum for me. The other end was Lulu.com, also willing to charge me nothing, but asking me to do all the design work in formatting the text, designing the cover, etc, albeit with their wizards to help. Lulu's advantage was that they let me set the paperback binding and the cost, $14, to make it affordable as a supplementary text for a course in women in science, one use I'd always envisioned for the memoir, because it's an existence theorem that you can have it all as a woman in science. These companies are very matter of fact and deal with authors with fast responses. I found them quite businesslike and didn't feel like a creep with shiny teeth turning to them to publish my book. But every now and then, when someone asks if I self-published, I fall through the floor into that abyss of self-loathing and mumble, "yes." I should steel myself to say "yes, but today self-publishing is not so bad. Authors cross the line between publishing and self-publishing in both directions these days." That's the way it will be more and more, it seems to me.

Helping Hand for Indie and POD Writers You Know

2011-04-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

People have asked me quite a bit during the few weeks I'm gearing up for the May 2 release of Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling what they can do to help. The good news, for me and all of your friends with books out, is there are several ways you can help them that are both free and not terribly time consuming.
1. Like their book on FB, Amazon, wherever else it appears. Very fast support!
2. Go to an event for them. Seeing a friend's face in the audience or at the signing table is very welcome.
3. OK, this takes longer. Read the book and write a review. Doesn't have to be literary or long. Post it on Amazon.com or another site where the book is posted.
4. Ask the writer if she/he would love to have the book reviewed in some specific magazine or journal, then email to ask if they would accept a review from you. If no, maybe suggest alternatives, especially if you have contacts there.
5. Make positive comments on FB encouraging others to read the book too.
6. If the author has a launch date, try to buy the book on Amazon on that day (if you can wait!) That way, she/he has a chance to possibly say it's a best seller in its category, if lots of people buy it that day.
7. Tell you friends to read the book.
8. Recommend it to your community or high school library if appropriate.
When you see the author, a brief comment about the book is always appreciated!
cheers,
Laura

California Lilacs

2011-03-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

We've had Ceanothus, California's lilacs, in both front and back yard for some time. This year, with all the water, they've outdone themselves. And this year, I discovered that they have a lilac scent. I always loved the way lilacs smell, and I used to go to the international day at Claremont McKenna and buy a big armful of the back-East type lilacs. But today, I was out in the front yard, standing next to the big Ceanothus, and I smelled that distinctive lilac smell. I thought my nose was making it up at first, but when I walked right up to a bunch of blooms and sniffed it, there it was. Clean, light, subtle, but unmistakeably lilac. It's a pleasure to discover a new way to enjoy these blue flowers, which cheer me up as the camelias are almost finished blooming. The smaller bushes grow wild all along the 15 coming up from San Diego to LA. At first, I thought the gray-blue patches were shrubs that had not leafed out yet, but I looked more carefully when I got stuck in a traffic jam, and sure enough, blue of lilacs, not gray of bare woody stems. These lilacs seem to sneak up on me in various ways, but the surprise is always a good one. I hope you have some lilacs to breathe in or look at near you.

Book Review for Spiral Ceiling

2011-03-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

Libby Grandy's very insightful and gracious review for Spiral Ceiling has just been posted on The New Book Review (http://www.thenewbookreview.blogspot.com) and I'm excited. Getting closer to the May 2 release date, and a lot of the pieces are falling into place. I have uploaded the contents of the book on Amazon so they will be able to let people look inside the book if they want a preview, but it's not visible yet. And I need to figure out how to get Amazon to list it in a more detailed category than biographies and memoirs (of which there are about 200,000 currently available to compete with) if I can. I think bios of scientists or of educators would be a lot more likely to be searched for anyway. No one can read a list of 200 thousand entries looking for something. They're bound to narrow it down, and then my entry will be lost.
If any of you are gearing up for a book release, I highly recommend that you check into the ideas of Carolyn Howard-Johnson (I've added her site to my favorite sites along the left side). She has a free newsletter that's great. However her Frugal Book Promotion book on Kindle is not very expensive, and it's a mother-lode of good ideas for someone who wants to make a book more visible. And they are free or at least frugal! That's the best part for me, as I near retirement.

Fun with Twitter

2011-03-18T18:47:00.000-07:00

Two or three weeks ago, a writer friends and I both had Twitter accounts with perhaps 20-30 people following us, maybe following about the same number of people. The other day, I clicked on her name and she was being followed by about 300 people. I was amazed. I don't know if that's good, but probably it is, especially when both of us have new books out we hope people will read. So, I asked her how she did it. She told me she picked two categories she wanted to emphasize and followed lots of people in those categories. Then, she used hashtags to recommend these people to each other for following purposes. I had no idea about hashtags, but I've spent about a week playing with them on Twitter, and found out some interesting things. If you see a tweet with #something in it, you can click on that (it's a hashtag) and get a list of messages about that. So since I wanted to find memoir writers, I clicked on #memoir and read the tweets looking for ones not YA, not over the top, not boring.

I followed a lot of those people. I also tried other categories, and some of the people Twitter recommended on the special tab at the top of my home page. I soon was following 100 people, with 30 following me. Then, I picked out a few really good ones and listed them after this hashtag, #WW or #FF. They thanked me for recommending them, and some followed me back. I retweeted some of their special comments. More followed me. I'm creeping up, now at sixty, which is twice where I started. It's a bit addictive, though, you can lose an hour if you're not careful. But I suspect just a few tweets a day will keep things going once I've ratchetted up a few rounds. It's very interesting to read the tweets about writing and see all the energy that goes into writing and reading in these days when we keep hearing that books are dying. I think they won't, but ebooks are growing more and more important. Anyway, in case you need to have a Twitter presence, I thought I'd pass on the glory of hashtags. Have fun!

Tia Obreht's Novel, The Tiger's Wife, Breaks Out

2011-03-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

The New York Times on Tuesday, March 15 ran an article on a new, beautifully writen novel that is creating a big stir. In The Tiger's Wife, young Tia Obreht, originally from Bulgaria, wrote about war in an un-specified Balkan country, interweaving it with folk tales about a tiger and a mysterious character called the Deathless Man. I was very taken by this quote from her, "The other evening I gave a reading, and someone came up to me afterwards and said, ' The Deathless Man is my favorite character!' My immediate reaction was, how do you know about the Deathless Man? When you're writing, you're working on this private world that becomes more and more real to you, but it's still your own. And then to discover that other people can access it--in a way that really shocks me."

What resonates with me is how this relates to writing memoir. In Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling, I've told the events of my entering the world of science, come what may, and making a life for myself balancing family and career, still allowing me to uncover the secrets of aging. But those intimate events and details are shocking to me on the lips of those who read my book and want to ask, "Did Lyle ever write again after that awful challenge of his essay in fifth grade?" or "Do you often think about your student Jo who committed suicide?" I feel like my own mind has just been x-rayed. But of course, I said to myself that I was ready for this when I decided to write the memoir. When the questions come, I still feel shocked, just like Tia Obreht.

Talking About My Life

2011-03-05T13:42:00.000-08:00

When you write a memoir, you're deciding privacy is not so important to you. Instead, you have a message you want to share with others, and you're willing to take the risk of revealing your secret life to achieve that goal. Open secrets, things you never really wanted to tell anyone. Suddenly, you find that people you don't know ask you why you did things you're ashamed of. You have no answers, really, but you try to talk about what you think might have changed in you, so that now you would never do such things. You can't be sure that's true.

Writing is a dangerous craft, and there is no way to do it without letting cats out of bags, taking the cover off the bed, letting the hidden be revealed. Well, there is another way. It's called boring. If you want to compel your readers to live it with you, so they'll arrive in the place you are and understand your message, you must let go of your desire to remain safe.

So, when I went recently to Emory University's Oxford College to talk about my memoir, Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling, I hoped it would be easy and safe. Of course, it was not, at least not altogether. But I liked the way the students, especially women and students of color, felt it showed them a path worth considering. I became a woman in science with a family, married and with kids, but still finding out the hidden ways the molecules of the universe work, why aging happens at the scale of molecules. I talked with them about my student who committed suicide, my daughter who once asked, "Are you going to step on me, Mommy?" And my son, whose seventh grade teacher completely gave up on him, although his English aptitude scores were above 90%, because, as she said, "I know these black kids struggle with English."
They kept asking, "Didn't your family get in the way of your career?" Of course it did. But I kept both going because both were supremely important to me. It was a struggle, no denying that. And there were days when I had no idea if it would all fall apart. But it didn't and I have the nerve to hope it would not for them either, if they decide they would love to be biologists with families.

Memoir Breaking through the Spiral Ceiling is posted by Nature!

2011-02-07T12:07:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and readers,

My Nature editor, Ilona Miko, has just posted an announcement about my forthcoming memoir and a lecture I'm giving on it at Emory University on the women in science forum. You can check it out here:
http://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/women-in-science/laura-hoopes-upcoming-memoir-17804575
Having a book nearing release is very stimulating and I'm really looking forward to May 2, when Amazon and the other outlets will have the book available for ordering. I love the cover, which my daughter Heather helped me with. At Emory, I'm giving a big public lecture as well as meeting with students, and I hope we'll discuss career/family balance, one of my major themes. Now that I'm evolving into a writer, I have a lot of nostalgia for biology too, so I'd love to talk about that with the students.

Stopping by Woods in August

2011-02-02T15:08:00.000-08:00

An online publication to which I subscribe recently had an excerpt from a book (Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth) by Andrew Wyeth in which he discussed the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. Wyeth asked Frost if he went through a lot of revisions of this poem, and if it had been written in winter. Frost answered, "I'd been writing a very complicated, long-drawn-out poem, almost a story type of poem, entitled 'Death of a Hired Man.' I had finished at two o'clock in the morning. It was a hot August night, and I was exhausted. I walked out on the porch of my house and looked at the mountain range. It came to me in flash! I wrote it on an envelope I had in my pocket, and I only changed one word. It came out just like that."

I love to think about that sort of flash of clarity, where a great poem leaps from the universe into the mind of a poet, even without the stimulus of the same sort of scene to prompt it. But it may be that the intense work Frost put in on his long narrative poem was a required part of the birth of the Stopping by Woods poem. All that intensive effort may have primed the pump.

Readers, writers, what has been your own experience with writing that appears in your mind more or less fully accomplished? Is there any pattern to it that you can discern?

New Tools, Old Mind

2011-01-29T00:13:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed the article in the LA Times on Sunday, Jan 28 on David Hockney and how he uses iPAD to help him paint some of his works. As noted on the comments, he has always been open to new methods, being a pioneer of the kinds of collage paintings where every unit of the painting is a photograph, but its predominant color contributes to a larger picture. Here is one of his iPAD productions to give you an idea of how miraculous this process can be. It's scary to use new tools, and it's important to accept the risk. I am pursuing an MFA in creative writing largely to introduce myself to the greatest variety of tools I can. I am reading constantly, and when I write, I try to put into practice ways of writing I've run into in my assigned reading. But I also feel I need to use the electronic tools more creatively, following in Hockney's footsteps figuratively. I find it inspiring to view a painting like this and realize it started as pixels. I hope some of my explorations may approach this level of successful practice in a new form.

For the love of sentences

2011-01-25T17:48:00.000-08:00

When I had barely begun as a creative writer, I was lucky enough to take a class with Verlyn Klinkenborg. He focused our attention on sentences. Every week he harvested sentences from all of our submitted papers and handed out a sheet entitled "some sentences." It would more appropriately have been entitled, "some sentence disasters." Each class period, we revised these mistakes into clear, useful sentences and discussed why the earlier versions were confusing, unclear, and grammatically incorrect. It was eye-opening to me. I had taught first year writing seminars at my college holistically, as I was taught, emphasizing essay structure and ignoring sentences. Now I was caught by sentences, their simplicity and complexity, by how some people could write a whole page sentence that I could understand easily, by the way that others stuck to the simplest forms of sentence.

A new book by Stanley Fish explores sentences and argues convincingly for writers to pay attention to them. Here is one of Fish's favorite sentences: "And the words slide into the slots ordained by syntax and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities that we call meaning." He cites Anthony Burgess's novel Enderby Outside. I like the way this sentence portrays words, sentences, and meanings.

David Hockney Views a Lane

2011-01-23T15:31:00.000-08:00

As I've started observing, collecting, and savoring details from my daily life to use in my writing, I have become more and more interested to read what others say about how they relate to their environments. David Hockney, the British artist, lived in Hollywood from 1978-2005 and I've enjoyed much of his art reacting to that experience. But then he returned to Yorkshire. In an article in the New York Times, Carol Kino records how he described the scene to her as they approached a group of trees along a narrow country lane. "As we drew close to the trees, he fretted over the sun’s position. “The lighting is made for going the other way,” he complained. Then he slowed down so we had time to appreciate each tree individually, and began issuing orders about how to look.

“Watch!” he called out. “The ash tree now comes in — look at the shape of it! And now then on the right, another tree. There’s a point where each one stands on its own. There. Now. It’s surrounded by sky. Now the next one, and it stands on its own. You see?” It was as though he were giving director’s notes. " He told Kino he had seen this area many times and wanted to make a painting of it, but could not yet get it to work since he had to synthesize many perspectives into one. He said he hadn't yet figured out how to do it, but he would.

It's a new idea to me to take in an experience repeatedly and consider how to synthesize it. I like this concept a lot, and I'm thinking over how I'll use it in my writing. I haven't yet figured out how to do it, but I will.

Spiral Ceiling on its Way

2011-01-18T19:47:00.000-08:00

Hi friends,
This is the cover of my almost-ready book, a memoir about how I overcame bias and barriers to become an American DNA Scientist studying aging, all the while being married with children to love and care for. The book will be released this spring, and I'll announce it and tell you how you can find out more and order a copy if you wish. I've published a text book on genetics before, in fact I describe in Spiral Ceiling how I filled the time after my first husband died suddenly of a heart attack with writing the text book in the evenings after my son was in bed. But the release of this memoir is much more exciting to me, and I hope a lot of you will want to take a look at it and ask me questions about what happened in my life. Stay tuned for more details as they become available.
cheers,
Laura

American and Chinese Risk Tolerance; Writers' Risk

2011-01-16T18:56:00.001-08:00

Two things this week resonated with my understanding about risk taking in the US and in China or among Chinese Americans today. First, I read an article in The New York Times for Sunday, January 16 about Architects Finding Dream Jobs in China. In part, it read, "The American mentality is, 'if it's never been done before, then you shouldn't do it. It's all about risk, risk, risk. The Chinese have a kind of fearlessess about building.' " The article described buildings in China with holes through them, with a five story park underneath the building, etc. When my husband and I were in Shanghai in 2005, we were astonished at the remarkable large buildings everywhere, with architecture that was far beyond anything we had seen in the US, so this attitude rang true to me.
Then there is a new book by Amy Chua about Chinese American parenting. She claims Americans are unwilling to expect very high achievement from their children, don't want to risk losing their affection, and thus don't insist that their children work at their activities enough to allow real achievement. Again the theme of risk, now in a very different context, but still saying Americans are adverse to risk.
Writers cannot really abjure risk. Writing is inherently risky and the scarier the places in a writer's soul that she explores in writing, usually the stronger the writing that results. So we need to buck this trend, or pretend to be Chinese American and learn to take these risks. Revel in the danger and enjoy the good writing that results.

Being a Writer

2011-01-09T16:54:00.000-08:00

In the Feb, 2011 issue of The Writer, Charles Baxter discussed some of his insights into literary writing. Asked "How do you think new writers are best developed?" he answered, "I really don't know. They're good observers; they read; they don't mind solitude; they remember what people said and did; they're interested in ideas; they try to notice everything; they always feel slightly outside, looking in."

I identify with this list of qualities and attributes, but I see that most of these items are not things you can easily develop or train. Perhaps memory can be trained; some of my writing classes have increased my enjoyment of certain kinds of memories that I had previously repressed. Maybe good observation can be stimulated. Natalie Goldberg's walking meditation seemed extraneous at first, but I can easily recall the smell of the desert earth in Sedona where I had her class, the soft lavender color of the sage flowers, the industry of the many ants, the cracked, tired looking feet of the young woman walking in front of me. Slowing down to look can be taught, it seems.

But reading for enjoyment doesn't seem all that malleable. Neither does comfort with solitude or an outsider view. I wonder, then, if teaching writing is more of an opportunity or a release of a desire than an actual discipline. What do writing teachers teach? Is it just permission to be yourself?

The Season of Deep Thought

2010-11-26T20:31:00.000-08:00

Fall begins the quiet season of the year, the time when, in cold climates, the trees all lose their leaves, the ground freezes, fireplaces glow, and cider is mulled. But here I am on the West Coast, and not up Northwest with the sleepless rains, but down in SoCal where the midnight neon burns through the quiet and makes the stars invisible from inside city limits. So what I do is, go outside the city limits for walks, enjoy the liquid ambers and other trees that do change colors and drop their leaves, giggle at the dawn redwood that loses its needles in late fall, pretending to be dead, and get ready to be quiet in harmony with people elsewhere. It's a good time to read, and I tend to collect books in preparation for this cozy reading period. I like to read some of the book award winners (isn't it nice that they are chosen right in time for this season?) And not just reading but also, WRITING. Quiet and reflection feed writing, bring out those sore points you've been trying to ignore so you can mull over why you react the way you do, so you can write for relief or revenge, so you can rant and you can play. Time to spill over with ideas, brewed like tea in the quiet warmth of indoors in fall and winter. Happy writing.

Novels vs Romances

2010-08-31T23:05:00.000-07:00

One of my SDSU professors just told us tonight that novels will break your heart with the bitterness of the real, but might make you rich. He portrayed novels as embracing realism to unmask the ploys of the rich to keep the poor praying in the kitchen. We're reading DeFoe, Richardson, Austen, the Brontes, Virginia Woolf, and others. Nothing current, but he rasied the question, why is realism waning today, way beyond the slight shrinkage of a gibbous moon to a mere sliver of its former popularity? We've even started calling the precursor of the novel, the romance, by the same name: novel.

He talked passionately about the vampire novels/romances, wondering why readers have stopped wanting the secrets of how to escape the ploys of society and seek your own happiness. Instead they want to pursue dreams, and not their own dreams, the dreams that others foist onto them. It's as bad as craving a frog prince. No vampires out there, sorry. One student (male) suggested these novels are making young girls think stalking is romantic. Argh!

While I am not convinced that embracing rampant materialism would make people happy, or that realism is far more useful and powerful than romance, I do think this man cares deeply about his subject. I'm glad to be able to hear his thoughts for a semester.

The detail versus the details

2010-07-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

My friend Jeanne used to say she skipped over the description in novels because it was so boring. I skimmed it, being sure it contained some clues about the characters. As I write more and take writing classes, I've found a great focus on getting the details. Show, don't tell is a strategy everyone recommends today, and that leads to details, to descriptions of how John looked after Ellen told him she was pregnant, not "he was upset."

On the other hand, have you seen places where authors give you too many details? Color, shape, size, clothing, hair, shoes, nailpolish, makeup, etc etc. No one can really take in that many details at once when they look at a person casually. When you meet someone, you don't take inventory the way a policeman writing up a description might. You catch a few details. Which ones? Some people say you should include "significant details" in writing descriptions. To me, that means I should include what makes this person unique or memorable. If you see them crossing the street and the next day you try to name one thing you think you know for sure about how they looked, will it be the oversized cowlick in the back of the head or the izod sweater with a big black stain on one elbow or will it be blond and blue eyed, loafers, blue slacks, white teeth? I would guess you'd recall the first two items, things you don't see every day. That's a good way to pick out significant versus excess details.

I like Chekhov stories for many reasons, but one reason is that uncanny ability to choose the significant detail about a place, a table, a person. Once you know it's okay not to keep every possible detail, it's fun to choose the one or two that give the reader the best sense of that scene.

Body and Pen

2010-07-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

One of my students, many years ago, told me he thought we should all decant our brains into servo machines and forget all this physical activity. At the time, I thought he was a bit cold and techno, but I didn’t think his idea was totally out of the range of possibilities. I didn’t much like sweaty exercise myself and thought doing without all that might really save a lot of trouble. Not long ago, I ran into his essay again right after I had reread Thoreau’s essay on Walking, where he said, “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from all worldly engagements.” What is it that Thoreau was collecting or soaking in during these long walks that my student felt was expendable? I’d guess, connection to nature, a sense that I am part of something larger than myself. It would be hard to get to that feeling if I were a brain in a servo mechanism as Chris had envisioned.
One thing I’ve noticed in my reading is that I appreciate breaks that show me what a character is doing and feeling in the world. A glimpse out the window, a flash of yellow leaves blowing in the wind, the warm vapor of a cup of tea, swirling around the character’s face, the taste of a wild blueberry just picked on top of the mountain, the wind gusts that push hard against the body and then let go with no warning. These mini-descriptions that authors place in long sections of dialog or of interior monolog make me feel embedded in the character. Why? Because that’s how I experience the world. Read, read, read, then look up for a sensual input. The rhythm is familiar and takes me right into the story, has me looking out through the eyes of the character.
I’ve been trying to teach myself to be aware of my bodily sensations and use those in my writing. Gayle Brandeis’ Fruitflesh book, her earliest one, is great at increasing sensory awareness. I’ve heard that when she talked with California Writers Club, Inland Empire, about that book, she handed each person a strawberry to experience. Many people in the group had never encountered a strawberry with such intensity in their lives. Smelling, close examination by eye, feeling, tasting. I’m not sure about hearing. If you heard the berry, let me know.
Gayle, a dancer as well as an author, and many writers I’ve heard talking about their processes, say that a walk is one of the best ways to stoke up the brain. Walking with the sense on high amplification is a great experience, very relaxing and also, paradoxically, invigorating. So, nowadays I wish I could talk with my former student again and say, “No, don’t decant your brain. You would lose way too much.”