Barbara Abercrombie Interview on Year of Writing Dangerously

Dear readers and writers:

One of the most inspiring writers and writing teachers I know has recently released a new book called A Year of Writing Dangerously.  Barbara Abercrombie, author of many books and UCLA Extension professor, has been on a book tour recently: watch for her near you.  She's so enjoyable to hear in person!  Here is an interview on her most recent work.

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1.     LH Your new writing book has an unusual structure, combining memoir, interviews, quotations.  How did you come to this design for the book?

BA I think the design came from a number of sources –  first, I got the title in my head but for a long time I couldn’t figure out the voice, or whether the book’s structure should be monthly or weekly or daily. A writer friend cleared that up for me when he said he’d immediately buy a writing book of inspiration if it had daily entries to read.  I paid attention to that because I wanted the book to be for all writers – experienced/published as well as those just starting out.

I was also influenced by having written a blog for six years – it felt really comfortable to write in short pieces. As for the quotes – I use writer’s quotes all the time when I teach. I’m a real literary groupie, so the fun of the book was discovering and then connecting what favorite writers said to what I was writing about. 

2.     LH One of your blurb writers called this a daybook, a book with a writing inspiration for each day of the year.  It could be that, but is that how you thought of it? 

BA Yes, but I also thought of it having an arc – starting with getting down that first sentence, and then towards the end of the book, sending work out.  My editor wanted each piece to stand on it’s own, so a reader could dip into it anywhere – so I hope reading it that way works too.

3.    LH The word “dangerously” hangs in the air and rings like a bell.  What made you choose that word to characterize the writing year?

BA I love that – ‘rings like a bell’!  That word just came to me out of the blue – and I do think writing feels dangerous most of the time.  Dangerous 'cause we worry what other people, especially what our loved ones (our material!) will think, and to expose our thoughts and feelings, and our imagination just feels dangerous and risky to most people. 

4.     LH Early on, you quote Terry Tempest Williams to the effect that writing is “a bloody risk,” but I know in Writing Out the Storm you portray a different role for writing.  When is writing pushing out to the edge and when is it seeking for that healing level of understanding? 

BA What an interesting question.  I think writing does both – pushes to the edge – reveals and takes risks -  and also heals.  Because it takes courage to write toward understanding.  Writing Out the Storm is more geared for people who don’t want to become writers but use writing as therapy.  (And I’m going back to reread it to see where I contradicted myself!)  I know that when people came to the writing workshop the book was based on, they were really scared and it took weeks and sometimes months of writing in a safe group to get them to be more honest and open in their writing.

5.     LH On the first day (of creation?) you describe going up to Lake Arrowhead and say, “Whenever I arrive up there, I’m grateful that I made it,…”  The road up the mountain is, as you describe it, full of danger.  How important is making the metaphor real in your writing process?

BA (I’m not exactly sure what you mean with this question but I’ll  give it a go.)

Some writers think in metaphor and it helps them, others couldn’t come up with a metaphor if their life depended on it.  So some will not connect with this idea – And perhaps there’s no way to make this metaphor real in your writing practice. But metaphor can act as kind of a lift-off point.

(LH note: driving that highway makes me check for new white hairs and massage my white knuckles until they relax. Maybe she dreads it less.)

6.     LH On day 4, you remind us that “No one will read what you’re writing until you allow them to.”  That’s a very powerful idea, but then you write about rewriting.  Have you experienced long periods of with-holding things you’ve written yourself, or even of burning or tearing apart some dangerous writing?

BA I find that the process can feel dangerous – not usually the writing itself.  In the past I’ve experience dreadful bouts of writer’s block during which I was so judgmental of my own writing that I couldn’t get anything written. It all felt dangerous.  And every time I start a new project it still feels dangerous – the only difference is that now I know this is just how it is, so I start slamming stuff down on the page and with enough rewriting it’s usually okay. 

7.     LH I love the moment when you say, “…if you feel you need permission to write about yourself or whatever you need to write about, I give you permission.”  What has happened in your writing classes when you’ve granted this permission to your students?

BA Amazing things! Essays and memoirs get written!  They also realize in a class how interested other students are in their stories.  That we really want to know about each other’s lives.  That every single person has a story – or many stories to write.

8.     LH You talk about the role of poetry to direct our attention to “feelings, ideas, language.”  You often begin a writing class by reading a poem.  How would you say hearing a poem affects student writing?  Do the pieces resemble each other more?  Are they richer in imagery?

BA  Their writing becomes more free.  Poems can lift us out of a linear rut. (and then this happened and then this…..) Poems make leaps and prose can do the same.  Also a good poem makes you realize the weight of one word – or just a few words.  So it helps them to be more economical with language. 

9.     LH I like the quote from Gordon Lish, “Get into trouble. Go to where the jeopardy is.”  In a sense, he believed in paring down prose to the absolute minimum.  I’ve seen notes on his editing that show him removing over half of a short story.  Do you agree with him that less is more when it comes to showing trouble?

BA I think less is always more when writing.   It’s one of the hardest things to learn as a writer!

10.   LH Having been twice to writing classes at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Norman’s old, lovely home in Provincetown, MA, right on the water, and going out to eat in some of his favorite restaurants and to his favorite theatres, I had to laugh at your quote from Norman, “Writers don’t have lifestyles.  They just sit in little rooms and write.”  And you yourself have lovely homes to serve as your home bases when you write.  Is there a point where you shut out the world?

BA  Oh, such a good question. And it makes me feel guilty cause that’s what I should be doing, shutting out the world and writing.  But here I am having this wonderful back and forth with you, which is so much more fun.  And I wrote a blog post today and posted on Facebook and have finally been convinced I need to get on Twitter.   Since I have a new book out  (and another coming out next spring) I tell myself I have to do online connecting – but I, and all the writers I know who are publishing, struggle with this and I write about it in AYOWD.  But to answer your question – yes, and often I have to go up to my cabin in Lake Arrowhead where there’s just silence and no internet to reconnect with my writing.

11.   LH You quote Abigail Thomas, “It was a long time before I realized that you don’t have to start right, you just have to start.”  This quote is related to the permission.  What’s the barrier?

BA So many people – at least this is true of my new students - think there’s a right way to write.  That you have to know a lot, or at least know where your story is going, and that you need to be inspired etc.  When in fact to be a writer you just need a notebook, a journal, and you start writing. 

What a fun interview this was. I love tough questions! And thanks for reading the book so thoroughly.  
 Thanks, Barbara!

LH note:  be sure to watch Barbara's book trailer on her web site here: http://www.barbaraabercrombie.com/

 

Dangerous Voices of the Fiction Writer

One of my MFA classes has provided a lot of food for thought this semester on the subject of voice.  I've thought of voice as your unique sweet spot, the writing position that you and only you can take and from which your best work will come.  But in this class, we've discussed fiction writers who position their narrator in a different, non-self place with every book, and think of themselves as writing from a new position with each novel.  I've worked so hard on finding MY place this idea is almost shocking to me.

 The up-side of the shock is liberation.  I hate the idea, espoused by some, including the "teacher" I once had at the Mendocino Writer's Conference, that you have to avoid writing in the voice of an oppressed minority person.  The implication that as a writer, you only can feel and imagine what YOU would feel and experience based on your own life, is a straight-jacket to creativity. Write what you know, stick to that: no, I don't want to be that writer.  I love reading Susan Straight, Gayle Brandeis, Madison Smartt Bell, and others who have respectfully imagined their way into someone else's life.  I love the risk, the danger, but the reward in understanding from imagining that different life.

Still, the idea of putting on a new viewpoint with every new work is challenging.  I hope to rise to the occasion, though, since I would like to create work out of ultimate empathy: writing as if I'm another person, out of different experiences of humanity that I can imagine.

cheers,
Laura

Talking About My Life

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.

American and Chinese Risk Tolerance; Writers' Risk

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.

Live dangerously: Write

One of my inspiring teachers is writing a book linking danger and writing. My imagination has been at play with that connection for a while now. You need courage to write, not just because your cousin Joanne won't like how you portrayed her as a bitch (or she thought you did) in your novel or memoir. The deeper risk is that it shakes up your own soul. All of those things you could list that you DON'T want to write about are the things you need to confront, but each one takes an act of courage on your part. Even if you are not going to write any memoir, you need to mine these past events because their emotional freight is what makes your writing come alive. Digging into buried pain bombs is not easy. And it can be rewarding but there are no guarantees: you can't say to yourself, okay, if I think this through finally, my relationship with my dad will be fixed forever. It may not be. You may need to keep revisiting that healing sore on and on into the future because there is still shrapnel there. But some of the hurt area will recover the healthy pinkness of flesh and definitely, the emotions you uncover will spark up your writing. Go there, take the risk.