Interview with Deb Martinson

LH: Deb, how did you get interested in writing?
DM: Mrs. Garfield, my 9th grade teacher, wrote on my Eleanor Roosevelt term paper: “you already have style. You are a writer.” From birth I have been an avid avid reader. And from 9th grade till now, my writer self has evolved.

LH: What was your first success?
DM: Aside from Mrs. Garfield?
LH: LOL
DM: Well, I won an DAR essay writing award in 11th grade for an essay on the Cuban Missile Crises (first written for MR. Garfield’s history class—he gave me a B- on it.)
LH: Obviously lagging behind his wife in discerning talent!

LH: What kind of things do you most enjoy writing?
DM: Enjoy??? Well I love researching just about anything. And then, of course, I have to write about it. I’d sure like to try fiction and have 16 scenes written. But I don’t know about the rhythm and cadence of fiction—so I’ll have to learn.

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.
DM: Yes, I have an agent. Nat Sobel who is terrific and yet he’s made me cry (and I am not a weeper). I got Nat through connections and sheer luck. He is a first class editor and task master and a straight talker (hence the tears). I think some books require an agent to do anything with publishing. Academic presses don’t require an agent and are a whole different publishing experience. In University presses, editors don’t intrude much, nor do their marketers. But of course, writers can’t expect to make a dime in any event. And an agent expects to make lots of dimes. That’s the requirement. Nat likes me anyway, I think, though he sure hasn’t made much money off me!

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?
DM: No. I do have good advice. If you want your book marketed, hire someone on your own. Your presses’ marketers will do MINIMAL. I haven’t done this, and I regret it. Next time. . .

LH: 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.
DM: I’d start earlier (had a whole family and other career first). But I really don’t regret starting late . . .success? It is all a crapshoot. Keep writing, trying to do better, experimenting, having fun with it. Expect struggle. Learn to cuss.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?
DM: “Worth the effort. “ I named a whole introduction that on my Hellman book—my agent had turned down flat my first intro and I had to start from scratch. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted Nora Ephron or Joan Didion to write the intro. Ha! I had to do it myself—and it was worth the effort.

LH: Thanks, Deb, I’m sure my blog readers will enjoy this one!

Interview with Jia-Rui Chong Cook

LH: How did you get interested in writing?

J-R C: I’ve always loved to read, so I think it was only natural to want to try writing. I wouldn’t say I love the process of writing, though. It’s often difficult and always humbling. But I am always delighted to have created something in my own words. I think I got interested in newspaper writing because of the adventure. To write the best story, you have to get out to the scene, and you often get to see things most civilians never see. You get to be curious and ask a lot of questions that would normally be considered nosy. Then you get to try to make sense out of it and tell it to your audience in the pithiest, most evocative way. I think deep curiosity about character and the unfolding events makes for really great writing. I am always turned off by writing that lacks an intimate knowledge of a subject or lacks a thorough thinking-through of what things mean.

LH: What was your first success?

J-R C: If you define first success as first bylined article in a major publication, I guess I’d say that happened in the summer of 1999, when I got an article on good vs. bad low-fat foods in U.S. News and World Report magazine. I just started as an intern at the magazine and an editor assigned me to work with another reporter on low-fat foods. That reporter was nonplussed, but said I could start making some calls. When I came back to her saying that some nutritionists I talked to said there were actually bad low-fat foods, she was impressed. She suggested I do my own article.

If we’re defining success as my first award, that would be the 2006 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award from the National Association of Science Writers and National Press Foundation. (Link to announcement: http://www.nasw.org/mt-archives/2007/08/jiarui-chong-wins-evert-clarks.htm) It’s given once a year to science writers under 30. I won for four pieces – a story about Alaskan villagers on the lookout for bird flu (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-kipnuk22oct22,0,4438376.story), a story about the impact of bird flu on badminton, a story about recovering a lost text of Archimedes (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/dec/26/science/sci-archimedes26), and a story about the emerging human health risks from climate change (http://articles.latimes.com/2007/feb/25/science/sci-disease25). I was really excited about winning this award. I had only really started writing stories for the LA Times’s science editor in 2005.

LH: What kind of things do you most enjoy writing?

J-R C: My favorite kind of writing is narrative non-fiction. I love watching things unfold in front of me. I love having enough time with a subject that I can put the things I see in context and highlight the most meaningful bits. I love being able to write authoritatively in my own words, find my own analogies to describe something. This kind of writing is most similar to documentary filmmaking. Here is an example of one of my recent favorites of this kind: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/25/local/me-marines25

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

J-R C: No, I don’t have an agent.

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

J-R C: When I am doing “marketing,” I feel as if I’m doing it on behalf of the LA Times. I want people to read my stories, but also to browse the Times and hopefully stumble on another story that interests them. I’m excited that the internet has made connecting to a potential audience that much easier. I have a Facebook page, where I often post my stories and stories by my colleagues that I like. I also have a Twitter feed (@jahree) that I update at least daily. I try not to insert too much of my opinion in these places, but I do give people reading my Twitter/Facebook posts something a little extra. It might be a funny comment a researcher made to me that didn’t make it into the story.

I also try to accept speaking invitations, even if they require a significant amount of work outside of my regular job. For instance, Zocalo, a group that organizes public lectures around Los Angeles, asked me to curate and moderate a panel discussion on veterans’ health issues at the UCLA Hammer Museum. (Link: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/archives_2009.php?event_id=243). While the story that this panel was based on has not yet come out in the LA Times, I did have many people come up to me afterwards saying that they’re looking forward to the story.

LH: 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.

J-R C: I love the clarifying power of writing. When I first started working at the LA Times in 2002, one of the best writers at the paper said that clear writing requires clear thinking. I’ve really come to believe that when troubled, confused thinking results in bad, confusing writing. It’s worth taking the time to step back and ask, “What’s really important here? How do these things fit together?” Of course, sometimes you don’t know that you have a gap in your thinking until you try to put words on paper and you get stuck. That’s good, though. Then you know what you’re missing.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?

J-R C: I think I’ve said enough!

Interview with Mike Foley

LH: Mike, how did you get interested in writing?
MF: At age 19, I read Kerouac’s On the Road and I was hooked. I’ve been writing ever since.

LH: What was your first success?
MF: My early success came while I was still in the creative writing program at Cal State Long Beach. I had several poems and short stories published in literary journals. My first short story was published at the University of Wisconsin, in their journal “Cream City Review.”

LH: What kind of things do you most enjoy writing?
MF: Short fiction or nonfiction profiles of individuals. I also like travel writing, although I don’t do much of it anymore. Film scripts can be fun too, but I prefer doing those in collaboration with other writers.

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.
MF: Yes, it seems as if I’ve always had an agent. My experiences have ranged from terrible to wonderful. Agents tend to be busy and some of them handle it better than others. My current agent falls into the “wonderful” category. He has been handling some screenplays for me, and he’s great.
LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?
MF: Writers are expected to do much more of this now. Good networking with other writers or editors is essential. So I can recommend attending writer’s conferences, where you can meet many people in the industry face-to-face. There doesn’t seem to be any substitute for this. Meet people, talk about your work, and when you attend a conference, be sure to carry a few asmples with you.

LH: 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.
MF: In the early days, I hated rejection so much that I would pore over a rejected manuscript and try to make changes so the next publisher would take it. Now I understand that work gets rejected for a variety of reasons and many, many times it has nothing to do with a work itself. If I were starting over, I would just give a rejected manuscript a quick read and then send it out again. I wouldn’t waste a lot of time worrying about it. That would free up time for writing other things.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?
MF: When it comes to writing, I still haven’t seen anything more valuable than persistence. Be persistent in writing and submitting. You have to write well, of course, but the more persistent you are, the better your writing becomes. Keep doing it!

LH: Can you tell us where to find some of your articles and your website? I know you work with other writers to help them improve/edit their work, and I have found your online courses, workshops, and input on my own manuscripts very valuable.
MF: You can find some of my articles at the Dream Merchant web site, although they aren’t designed to help writers. http://www.dreammerchant.net/
My web site is at: http://www.writers-review.com/
LH: Thanks for the insights into your life as a writer, Mike.

Interview with Martha Ronk

LH: How did you get interested in writing?
MR: I read a great deal as a child, taking books from the public library to read in stacks through the hot Ohio summers. I liked creating sentences and diagramming sentences and rearranging sentences and analyzing literature and studying Latin. I wrote a dissertation on Milton for my PhD and have taught Shakespeare at Occidental College for many years; teaching literature has made me awed by writing.

LH: What was your first success?
MR: My first book, “Desire in LA,” was selected at random for a contest sponsored by the University of Georgia, published 1991. A recent success: I had work chosen for a Norton Anthology, “American Hybrid.”

LH: What kind of books or articles do you most enjoy writing?
MR: I like conceiving of an entire project in which the poems are all related to one another by theme, approach, style, or form. At the moment I am working on “Transfer of Qualities” (quotation from Henry James) in which people and objects transfer qualities with one another—the manuscript is made up of prose poems, short essays, and short “fiction” pieces. In an earlier book, “Why/Why Not” (Univ. of CA Press), I had Hamlet and the phrase “to be or not to be” in mind for each of the sections. In fiction, I like obsessive narrators.

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.
MR: Poets mostly don’t have agents. My work has been published by means of literary contests offered by University Presses or by request from a publisher. If I try for another work of fiction, I would ask all the fiction writers I know for advice; my own fiction, “Glass Grapes and other stories” was published by a small press, BOA Editions, because one of the editors had published one of the stories in his anthology.

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?
MR: For publishing poems in literary journals, it is most important to know the journal and the editorial approach so that the work you send is fitting and appropriate. Most journals have instructions on how many poems to submit and when. I also think that it is important for all authors to attend conferences, to read at bookstores (and other venues), to attend readings. For poets, the major meeting is the Associated Writing Programs meeting in spring every year. I have had the opportunity to be an editor for Littoral Books, a small press here in LA, but we published 10 books of poems, and for several literary magazines; I learned a great deal working with other writers.


LH: 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.
MR: I would start earlier. It also helps to begin with a community formed in graduate school, in one’s city, in publishing ventures with others, in other projects. Writers help support one another and since there is little financial support, this aesthetic support is crucial. I also wish I had tried fiction earlier; it was writing my fictional memoir, “Displeasures of the Table,” that got me to thinking that I might try fiction. For me fiction offers more opportunities for the comic.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?
MR: Writing is the most interesting and exhausting thing I do. And every time I read a great piece, a poem (C.D. Wright, for example) or a novel (I just finished “The Book Shop” by Penelope Fitzgerald with ironic, wry sentences) I am eager to write more, to find yet another juxtaposition of words. Each one offers something of a solution to the mystery of how it is done.

I have chosen photographs for the covers of my books; I have written a number of poems about photographs and I love black and white photographs and decided early to use photographs on the covers (although I didn’t have a choice for my last, “Vertigo” from Coffee House Press). My website is through Occidental College, English and Literary Studies Department at

http://departments.oxy.edu/ecls/07%20webpage/ronk/. LH note: Martha Ronk's most recent poetry book, Vertigo, is a National Poetry Series winner, selected by CD Wright.

Interview with Kathryn Wilkens

LH: Kathryn, how did you get interested in writing?

KW: I didn’t get interested in writing until my late 20s when I felt the urge to start a personal journal. I didn’t want to write for anyone else, only for my future self. A few times when I came to the end of a book I would consider abandoning the enterprise, but I always wound up buying a new book and filling it up. No one had ever encouraged me to write, so I had to encourage myself. My writing was a form of rebellion against my traditional, Midwestern, male-dominated upbringing. My journals taught me how to write and helped me become the kind of adult I wanted to be.

LH: What was your first success?

KW: My first paid acceptance was an essay in Walking magazine, followed closely by a personal essay in the Los Angeles Times and a travel article, also in the Times. For me the stumbling block was in mustering the audacity to send out queries and manuscripts. Once I got over that, publication came easily (not that I didn’t have rejections and rewrites). Of course, by this time I was in my 50s!

LH: What kind of books or articles do you most enjoy writing?

KW: I write short nonfiction—700 to 900-word personal essays or 1,000 to 1,200-word articles. I write about anything that interests me at the moment. In addition to travel articles, I’ve written about the English language, writing techniques and photography. I wrote several articles for the now-defunct Personal Journaling on topics such as nature writing and how to title your journals. I’ve had three essays published in anthologies, with another one coming out in 2010.

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

KW: Only what everyone has heard a million times: Never give up. A story or article is only a failure if you quit sending it out. Of course, you may have to update, revise or re-purpose a piece of writing (by changing the angle or writing it for a different audience than you first envisioned). Also, I like to use the word “decline” rather than “reject” because it’s less emotionally loaded, as in “The editor declined my article, but I’m sending it out again.”

LH: 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.

KW: I took an article-writing class at UC Riverside Extension with Mike Foley and he explained the marketing process (queries, cover letters, submission formats). I wish I had taken his class (or a similar one) at a younger age. I struggled with my own attitude for years and couldn’t accept that I was a real writer. Then I looked at all my journals and realized of course I’m a writer! Who but a writer would maintain a journal for so many years without a reason other than the desire to do it? Anyway, I think a certain amount of self-doubt is good if it motivates you to take writing classes, read writing magazines, learn how to research, revise and market.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?

KW: Join or start a critique group. Set up ground rules that everyone agrees to. Read your story aloud, then be still and listen to what others say, without jumping in to justify what you wrote. Accept both praise and criticism with equanimity. You don’t have to take everyone’s suggestions, but you should pay attention to what is working and what isn’t. And right before you send a manuscript, it’s a good idea to have someone proofread it. They will find little mistakes that you may have read right over several times!

Here is the link to my travel article about Egypt:

http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-egypt7-2009jun07

Interview with Linley Erin Hall

LH: Can you tell us how you got interested in writing? I know you were into science back at Harvey Mudd College.

LEH: I started writing stories in the fourth grade, and although I wrote for the school newspapers in junior high and high school, I mostly wrote fiction. When I went to HMC, I thought I’d become a chemistry professor. I found biochemistry fascinating. But I didn’t enjoy lab work. Putting my science interest together with my writing skills was a great combination for me.

LH: What was your first success with writing?

LEH: I was a graduate student in the science writing program at UC Santa Cruz, and one of my internships was at The Californian, a small newspaper in Salinas. I was assigned to cover the visit of the Olympic Torch to the area, and my article ended up on the front page! That my article was important enough and good enough for the front page gave me a lot of confidence.

LH: What kind of things do you most enjoy writing?

LEH: The in-depth ones. I’ve written a lot of different kinds of nonfiction, but it’s more fun to dig deep into a subject, to tell a real story, than to write a 300-500 word article skimming the surface, although those are important too. I also still enjoy writing fiction, although I haven't had any published yet.

LH: Any experience with agents?

LEH: Not yet. I sold Who’s Afraid of Marie Curie without one. I wrote an essay about the hairs we leave behind, not science at all, for the magazine section of the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle. In the blurb about me at the bottom, I said I write about science and engineering. About two and a half months later, an editor at Seal Books emailed me, said she liked my writing style, and asked if I’d like to write a book for Seal about women in science. That contact grew into Who’s Afraid of Marie Curie. So I basically skipped one of the hardest parts of getting a book published. It’s almost like I cheated.

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing?

LEH: It’s the part of freelancing that I enjoy least. It’s hard to put yourself out there. There are so many people trying to reach your audience, you need to stand out from that background. Target your audience and be creative.

LH: If you could go back in time to when you started writing and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

LEH: If you want to be a freelance writer, make a specific, detailed business plan. I sort of made one when I first made the leap into freelancing, but I could have avoided rough places if I’d done more research and planned more carefully up front. As for the writing itself, outline, outline, outline. Having a plan, even if it changes, makes writing both fiction and nonfiction easier.

LH: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on writing with us, Linley.