How Donna Miscolta Became a Writer

Find a community. You’re in this together.
You’re in this alone.
Be patient.
It takes time to arrive at the right word, the story.
The moment of elation.

DONNA MISCOLTA is the author of the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced (Signal 8 Press, June 2011). Her story collection Natalie Wood’s Fake Puerto Rican Accent was a finalist for the 2010 Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in America’s Review, Calyx, Cha: An Asian Literary Review, Connecticut Review, Kartika Review, New Millennium Writings, Raven Chronicles, Conversations Across Borders, and others. She has been awarded residencies from Anderson Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has received numerous grants and awards, including the Bread Loaf/Rona Jaffe Scholarship for Fiction.

Web Page: http://donnamiscolta.com

Read more by and about Donna:

Novel: When the de la Cruz Family Danced

Excerpt of novel at Cha: “A Month in the Tropics”

Short Essay: “Home Is Where the Wart Is”

Story at Conversations Across Borders: “Fleeing Fat Allen” (proceeds go to VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts)

How Donna Miscolta Became a Writer

This is the next installment in the How to Become a Writer interview series, which will post here at Ph.D. in Creative Writing every other Sunday until I run out of writers to interview, or until they stop saying yes. Each writer answers the same 5 questions. Thanks to Donna for saying yes!

1.     Why did you want to become a writer?

The desire to be a writer went unacknowledged by me for much of my life. I had always been a reader and had a reverence for writers. Books were magical and writers were wizards. I thought that you didn’t become a writer. You simply were a writer. Anointed or ordained. Though all through school I did well when it came to writing, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never said writer. Writing was hard. Not hard in the way math was for me ─ the abstraction of it, the way numbers refused to form a language in my head. I felt comfortable with words, but choosing the right ones and arranging them in the best order – that was hard. I thought that to be a writer, writing had to come easy. So I never considered it an option to pursue.

In an almost willful defiance of logic I studied science, obtaining a degree in zoology. I followed up with a master’s degree in education and later one in public administration, trying to figure out what and who to be in life. At age 39, I was employed in the public sector, twelve years married, deeply entrenched in parenthood, and busy as hell, yet, looking for that thing to round out my life. Finally, I acknowledged it — my fascination with words and sentences and how they come together to make stories, my desire and need to play with words on my own, to knit them into narratives, to be a writer.

Trailer for When the de la Cruz Family Danced:

2.     How did you go about becoming a writer?

In July 1993, I attended a reading by Kathleen Alcalá, whom I knew from our membership in the local chapter of a national Latina organization. The reading was on the University of Washington campus, which I had recently learned offered extension classes in creative writing. Hearing Kathleen, someone I actually knew, read a story from a book she had written, inspired me to consider the possibility that I, too, might write a story.

As it turned out, I took one of the last open spots for the fall extension class. My teacher that quarter was Jack Remick. I knew nothing about how to write a story. Yet, I, along with many of my classmates, was resistant at first to the diagrams Jack would draw on the board and his requirement that our stories have an intruder. We thought he was trying to force a formula on us and we, by golly, weren’t going to be formulaic. We were going to be original! What we came to understand was that he was trying to teach us about tension and action and conflict ─ in other words, story.

The much loved and highly esteemed Rebecca Brown was my teacher for the next two quarters. I began to feel more confident about writing. From the time I started this series of classes, I developed the habit of writing every evening after my daughters were in bed. I wrote on the bus to work and during my lunch hour. I wrote while waiting for my kids to finish soccer practice or swim lessons.

As my daughters got older, it became more feasible for me to spend time away from home and I applied to writing conferences. My first was the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, which exposed me to a lot of established writers and people like me wanting to be writers. Over the years, I’ve been able to experience the Napa Valley, VONA, and Bread Loaf conferences. I took Tom Jenks’ four-day intensive workshop. And I’ve attended multiple times the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, a few hours away from me on the Olympic Peninsula. Program director and poet Jordan Hartt puts together a wonderful conference.

I’ve also set aside time for intensive periods of writing at residencies. Hedgebrook, Anderson Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts are among the places that have generously provided time and space, and in some cases, money for me to write.

I read books and articles on craft, but mostly I’ve just continued to be a reader of the things I want to write – novels and stories. Despite my science degree, I’m not a particularly analytical person. I suppose if I had done an MFA program I would’ve developed skills at analyzing fiction. Instead I just read and enjoy and hope that at some level I absorb something of craft from the writers I admire – Antonya Nelson, Francine Prose, Lorrie Moore, Jessica Hagedorn and Ana Castillo, to name a few.

The first book I read by Nelson was Nobody’s Girl. After that I was hooked on her writing. Prose’s Blue Angel and Guided Tours of Hell are among my favorite books, Moore’s stories seldom fail with me, and Dogeaters by Hagedorn and So Far From God by Castillo electrify with their language and humor. In fact, language and humor – sly, unforced, intelligent ─ are what draws me to all these writers.

Finally, getting feedback and really listening, letting go of any need for approval or praise, has been important in my growth as a writer. I’ve been in three writing groups. Each time one dissolved I was lucky enough to find another. I have a fantastic set of readers in the members of my current writing group: Alma Garcia, Allison Green, and Jennifer D. Munro.

3.  Who helped you along the way, and how?

Early on I received crucial support that allowed me to believe that I was a writer. I’d been writing for a couple of years daily, diligently, and more or less in isolation when I was invited to be part of Los Norteños, a group of Latino writers that was just beginning to form. We did writing exercises, critiqued each other’s work, and organized readings. It was my first writing community. Then, and I’m not sure how I happened upon them, I found resources for artists. I applied to and was accepted for a residency at Hedgebrook, a place that nurtures the soul and opens the mind and inspires you to write like mad.

That year I also received a generous grant, a powerful vote of faith, from the Seattle Arts Commission, and I was selected to participate in the first Jack Straw Writers Program, which exposes writers’ work through audio and live readings. Support such as this went a long way in counteracting the inevitable bouts of self-doubt.

Unable to pursue an MFA, I cobbled together my own writing education through conferences and workshops. Though I spent only a short time – a few days to a couple of weeks – with each of these teachers, I adored them: Lynn Freed, Bret Lott, Chris Abani, Antonya Nelson, Tom Jenks and, most recently, Paisley Rekdal. Each taught me something about writing and being a writer. A piece of advice I refer to over and over is this Cynthia Ozick quote passed on by Tom Jenks in his class: Play what feeble notes you can and keep practicing.

4. Can you tell me about a writer or artist whose biography inspires you?

When I think about the books I read when I was growing up, these are the authors that come to mind: Louisa May Alcott, Daphne Du Maurier, William Faulkner, Frank Norris, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and Jane Austen – authors worlds removed from a Filipina-Mexican-American growing up in National City, California. The only living (at the time) author that I can recall reading back then was Richard Brautigan, introduced by a student teacher in my high school English class.  Except for Fear of Flying in college, my reading repertoire would not encompass contemporary works for a few more years. It was as if I believed books existed only by long-dead writers.

So in the interim between Erica Jong and Carlos Fuentes (and the other Latin American as well as Latino and Asian and Asian-American authors whose works I would eventually seek out), I committed myself to Virginia Woolf. I was in my twenties, post-college, and missing the debate and discussion about feminism that took place in the classrooms and the commons. I wasn’t sure how one lived feminism in the world. The Voyage Out was the first of Woolf’s novel I read.

Here was a woman so removed from my life in time, place, and class, yet I connected to her words, the finely wrought sentences that paid attention to the small moments that were so ordinary and yet held such heft and meaning. I was drawn to her focus on the female consciousness, the journey from cloistered existence to intellectual freedom and independence from social strictures. I didn’t read all her works, but many of them: To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, The Years, A Room of One’s Own, Between the Acts.

I’ve only reread a few since then. But if the details of those works have not stayed with me the feeling of them has – the way she captured time, its fleetingness. Her life and character are so well-known – her fragility and her strength. The madness. But what matters most was the art, which has inspired other art – like movies. And I will always, always prefer Eileen Atkins’s portrayal of Virginia Woolf to Nicole Kidman’s.

5. What would you say in a short letter to an aspiring writer?

Be patient. Expect rejection.

Accept that you’ll feel envy, frustration, defeat.

Move on. Focus on your work.

Develop your characters.

Develop your character.

No one owes you publication.

When you can’t sell one story, write another.

There’s luck involved ─ good and bad.

Find a community. You’re in this together.

You’re in this alone.

Be patient.

It takes time to arrive at the right word, the story.

The moment of elation.

A review, a question, a bag of books

A review!

A gloriously long and detailed review of my book For Sale By Owner and Laynie Browne’s The Desires of Letters (Counterpath) was just posted at the awesome site/resource/lit journal, Literary Mama. Here’s an excerpt:

Thus, while the stories are in fact disturbing at times, these disturbances create layers of interest and intrigue. Parker causes the reader to reconsider the things she takes for granted (healthy children, mental well being, family connections) and asks that she appreciate these things a little more, hold them a little closer to her chest.

…Parker’s collection is at once practical and poetic, somber and funny, abstract and exact.

A question!

At the AWP Kore Press 20 Year Anniversary Poetry Reading, an audience member asked, “How can the average reader support independent publishing and women writers?”

The panelists and moderator addressed the importance of buying books, especially from the publisher, and making donations. I was just another audience member, but I chimed in with my own response: Talk about indie books, tell your friends about them, teach them in your classes, write about them on your blogs, interview the authors, link to them on Facebook. If you tweet, tweet about them.

So, in the spirit of buying and talking about books published by indie publishers…

a bag of books!

…here are the books and lit journals that I picked up at AWP:

Irlanda, Espido Freire, trans. by Toshiya Kamei (Fairy Tale Review Press)
– ooh la la, this is pretty, and the opening pages irresistible. Rilke epigraph: “How would I begin to recall you, dead as you are, you willingly, passionately dead? Was it as soothing as you imagined, or was not being alive still far from being dead?” First line: “Sagrario died in May, after much suffering.”

The Louisiana Purchase, Jim Goar (Rose Metal Press)
–stunning cover; tells how we got the moon: “President Jefferson walks off the mound. The Cardinals take the field. Ozzie Smith falls over dead. The crowd falls silent. Phil Niekro throws a ball at the sky. The ball does not return. We call it the moon. It becomes a crescent. When Jefferson holds up two fingers, the moon breaks into the dirt.”

It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature, Diane Williams (FC2)
–i bought this because of the novella-in-flash, and the flash stories with titles like, “Well, Well, Well, Well, Well,” and because it’s Diane Williams

Kino, Jurgen Fauth (Atticus Books, ARC)
– kinda got this as a sneak peek; it looks full of hip german madness

The Book of Portraiture, Steve Tomasula (FC2)
– steve runs the show at notre dame and lives in town; he’s not only brilliant, he’s super kind and welcoming to us iusb folks who always come to his amazing parties

Lizard Man, David James Poissant (Ropewalk Press)
– jamie is one of those people who i hope will remember me when he’s rich and famous

Three Ways of the Saw, Matt Mullins (Atticus Books)
– i interviewed matt here; his book has a beautiful design and i’m excited to read it

When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women, ed. by Andrea Hollander Budy (Autumn House)
–i wasn’t exactly planning to buy a poetry anthology, but this one looks great. i love that there are bios and photos of each poet followed by a cluster of poems (not just one), that the poets are all women, and awesome: Lia Purpura, Kim Addonizio, Sheryl St. Germain, Aimee Nezuhukuatathil, Julia Kasdorf, Juliana Baggott, Camille Dungy, Mary Ruefle…

The Desires of Letters, Laynie Browne (Counterpath)
– reviewed this week with my book at Literary Mama (link above)

Love and the Eye, Laura Newbern (Kore)
–i saw her read at the kore anniversary reading and really loved her poems; it was one of the few kore books i didn’t already have

Journals:

Absinthe: New European Writing
Booth
Midwestern Gothic
The Common
Exit 7 (first issue!)

AWP Chicago, Rose Metal Press, Frank Lloyd Wright

At AWP I got to meet with Kathleen and Abby of Rose Metal Press, who publish amazing, beautiful, and unique hybrid-genre books like these:

They also say super-smart things about the importance of indie-publishing, like this short essay, “On Being Indie,” at The Next Best Book Blog:

Compared to trade publishers, we have more creative freedom because we are independent and a nonprofit and can publish and encourage the kind of writing that we see as ground-breaking and innovative rather than focusing heavily on the marketability and projected sales numbers of any given project. We obviously want our books to sell, but the quality of the work takes precedence in our process of choosing what we’ll publish.

So you can imagine how thrilled I am that they are publishing my book, Liliane’s Balcony, in fall 2013. They wrote up a juicy description of the book to preview their upcoming publications:

Liliane’s Balcony is a novella-in-flash that takes place at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Built for Pittsburgh merchants E.J. and Liliane Kaufmann in 1935, the house is as much a character as it is a setting. One September night in 1952, Liliane Kaufmann—tired of her husband’s infidelities with a woman named Stoops—overdoses on pain pills in her bedroom. From there, Liliane’s Balcony alternates Mrs. Kaufmann’s mostly true story with the fictional narratives of four modern-day tourists who arrive at the historic home in the midst of their own personal crises, all of which culminate on Mrs. Kaufmann’s over-sized, cantilevered balcony. With its ghosts, motorcycles, portraits, Vikings, and failed relationships, Liliane’s Balcony is as dizzying and intricately beautiful as the structure in which it is set.

Here’s a link to the opening chapter published at Talking Writing:http://talkingwriting.com/?p=640

Frank Lloyd Wright was on my mind because of the book and because I was in Chicago, where he’s kind of hard to avoid. On Sunday, after I had my final coffee-with-a-friend and before I drove back to South Bend, I visited FLW’s home and studio in Oak Park. Here are a few of the like 50 pictures I took. They’re kind of crappy because I used my iPhone and was often rushing to take pics before other tourists got in my frame, and they’re in reverse order so just pretend you’re walking backward through the tour.

Wright's Oak Park house and studio, 1889-1909.

_

Love the ceiling lights throughout the house.

_

Secretary's desk in the studio office.

_

Waiting room to the studio. And also a talking room where they could lay out plans on the table and shut the studio door and discuss the PLANS.

_

Side of studio.

_

Model of the Robie House.

_

Center of studio with hint of the vaulted ceiling. Amazing.

_

Yep. Apparently the second floor was originally supported by the chains, but current building codes won't allow it.

_

First view of studio. Robie model on left. The desks straight ahead are the ones in earlier photo. Light shining down from upper level windows.

_

The children's play room! (There were 6 kids.) Windows on both sides. Grand piano wedged into the wall on the left side of image.

_

More awesome ceiling lights. These are in the dining room, which was pretty small and typical of the time.

Living room. Bay window seating.

For Wright, the hearth is always the center of the house and family.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Maybe you’ve noticed: I’ve been posting interviews, but I haven’t been blogging so much. Where am I going? AWP in Chicago! Where have I been? Busy. In a good way: Taking an online mixed media art class. Teaching my classes. Applying for grants. Writing new stories.

I’ve been here at New Purlieu Review, where my flash piece “Three Women” was published in January. There’s a Professor Plum and a Lady Bret. Here’s a snippet:

In Plum’s office Lady Bret wanted to slide across the floor to the shelves of books and inch her way into their pages, like an actual bookworm, eating away the words and pages until she created a space she could fit her whole body in. Plum said you need to develop this section and read so-and-so’s article on that section if you want to—. But Lady Bret didn’t want to. She wanted and wanted.

The art class was part of my 2012 New Year’s LIVE LOVELY campaign. Here’s a portrait I made (inspired by Alfred Henry Maurer):

I also made air-dry pottery, drawings of moths, a rhinoceros, a peacock, lots of portraits, collages, etc.

Now it’s time to head to AWP – the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs – in Chicago.

My book For Sale By Owner will be at the Kore Press/Arcadia booth 822.

And Rose Metal Press (Table N4) will have a bit (a very little bit) of promotional material about my forthcoming book, Liliane’s Balcony, set at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house.

I’ll be on this panel on Saturday:

Home Sweet Home: Short Story Collections and Small Presses
Caitlin Horrocks, Amina Gautier, Shannon Cain, Adam Schuitema, Kelcey Parker

(4:30-5:45 Sat. 3/3 Lake Erie, Hilton Chicago, 8th Floor)

With trade publishers less willing to take a risk on story collections and agents and editors advising writers to just finish a novel, where can the story writer turn? Five debut authors discuss their experiences with the small, independent, and university presses that are increasingly the most welcoming homes for story collections. They’ll discuss how they found their publishers, what small publishers can (and can’t) offer story authors, and how these presses are helping collections thrive.

And I’ll be spending quite a bit of time at the 42 Miles Press table – M 12.

Carrie Oeding – who was featured in my How to Become a Writer Interview series – will be there signing her book Our List of Solutions on Friday, 3/2 from 1-3 p.m.

If you’ll be at the conference, stop by one of these tables, say hello!

How Matt Mullins Became a Writer

I took an intro to philosophy class and learned Plato’s theory of the forms,
which blew my mind with its assertions about the nature of language
and the spaces between us, the idea, the image, and reality.
After that I took an intro to creative writing class.
Those two classes, combined with some other experiences I had
outside the classroom, changed how I saw the world.

MATT MULLINS is a writer, musician, experimental filmmaker and multimedia artist. His first book, Three Ways of the Saw, debuts this week from Atticus Books, and his fiction and poetry have appeared in Mid-American Review, Pleiades, Hunger Mountain, Harpur Palate, Descant, Hobart, and a number of other print and online literary journals. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Ball State University where he is a faculty fellow with the Emerging Media Initiative. His recent works of interactive/digital literature can be found at lit-digital.com. Read excerpts, find info about readings, and more at his blog.

Read more by and about Matt:

Book: Three Ways of the Saw

Title story: “Three Ways of the Saw”

Story at Bull: “The Bachelor’s Last”

Story: “I Am and Always Will Be”

How Matt Mullins Became a Writer

This is the next installment in the How to Become a Writer interview series, which will post here at Ph.D. in Creative Writing every other Sunday until I run out of writers to interview, or until they stop saying yes. Each writer answers the same 5 questions. Thanks to Matt for saying yes!

1. Why did you want to become a writer?

As soon as I understood enough about fiction and poetry to be fully impacted by the things going on inside what I was reading, I felt an immediate urge to try and join the conversation.

2. How did you go about becoming a writer?

I was a solitary kid who read a lot.  Sci-fi, fantasy, history, non-fiction, all kinds of things, though nothing you’d call literary.  I loved being transported by books, and wished I could do it for myself, but I never ventured to try beyond the first paragraph of a Star Wars knock off with a protagonist named Reb Starbayer.

Around age twelve I got distracted by music.  I spent many hours wearing headphones and setting the needle back over the same section of an album while teaching myself how to play the guitar.  I started a rock band my freshman year in high school.  By my senior year we were playing high school dances.  I’d go on to play in working bands for many more years.

But when a record label didn’t materialize out of nowhere to limo me off to LA the instant I graduated high school, I came back to reality and did what my parents expected me to do and went to college.  I had no idea what I wanted to be.  I was considering journalism. Then I took an intro to philosophy class and learned Plato’s theory of the forms, which blew my mind with its assertions about the nature of language and the spaces between us, the idea, the image, and reality. After that I took an intro to creative writing class.  Those two classes, combined with some other experiences I had outside the classroom, changed how I saw the world.  I became a creative writing major and started focusing on learning how to write fiction and poetry.  Next thing I knew I had an MFA, a Ph.D. and manuscripts in hand.

The following is a video poem by Matt Mullins and Michael Pounds:

3. Who helped you along the way, and how?

From the standpoint of how others have helped me evolve as a writer along the way, I can say that the teachers I had in graduate school were instrumental.  They exposed me to a wide spectrum of writers, taught me the language of critical examination, and showed me how fiction works.  Likewise, the many excellent writers I’ve known as peers have been helpful in both practical and aesthetic ways.  Every editor who’s ever encouraged me by publishing my work has also helped.  But I think I’ve found the most help in the writers I’ve read.  Nothing is of greater help to someone who wants to write than a great book.

4. Can you tell me about a writer or artist whose biography inspires you?

Hubert Selby Jr.  Diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis as a teenager while serving in the merchant marine, he was given a year to live.  He underwent an experimental treatment that saved his life but essentially left him unable to work.  Having no money or education or support, he supposedly said, “I know the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.”  Then by sheer force of will and hard work he became a writer of outsider fiction who ran parallel to and beyond the Beats.

“I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn’t be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again.” - Hubert Selby, Jr.

Two of his novels, Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream were made into films.  Along the way, his chronic pain caused him to fall into heroin addiction for a few years, but then he kicked it and remained clean for the rest of his life.  He lived to be a grandfather in his seventies.

Last Exit to Brooklyn is an important book for me.  It’s lyrical.  It’s dark.  It’s profound.  It’s technically and structurally unique, and it completely humanizes people who the self-righteously judgmental in our society would consider to be moral outcasts.

5. What would you say in a short letter to an aspiring writer?

Hail, Writer!

Consistency is the hobgoblin of the little mind, but that hobgoblin knows a lot of really, really good stories.

Your friend in deed,

Matt

How Daniel Bowman Jr. Became a Writer

Here was some sense and some beauty in the midst of a life where everyone argued about money because no one had any, where the house and the car were always falling apart, where I was dropped off to chain-smoking babysitters who seemed to fulfill their obligations solely by ensuring that I did not die on their watches.

Daniel Bowman Jr.’s first book is A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country (VAC Press, 2012). His work has appeared in journals such as The Adirondack Review, American Poetry Journal, Art House America, Books and Culture, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Midwest Quarterly, The Other Journal, Pyrta (India), Rio Grande Review, and Seneca Review. He lives in central Indiana where he teaches at Taylor University.

He can be found on the web at http://danielbowmanjr.com.

Read more by and about Dan:

Book: A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country
5 Poems: Art House America
More Poems: Pyrta

How Daniel Bowman Jr. Became a Writer

This is the next installment in the How to Become a Writer interview series, which will post here at Ph.D. in Creative Writing every other Sunday (er, or so) until I run out of writers to interview, or until they stop saying yes. Each writer answers the same 5 questions. Thanks to Dan for saying yes!

1. Why did you want to become a writer?

I’m one of those people who feels like I didn’t so much choose to be a writer as writing—as literature and the arts—chose me. I read a lot as a kid. Something about the worlds inside books seemed more real, more true to me than anything else. Here was some sense and some beauty in the midst of a life where everyone argued about money because no one had any, where the house and the car were always falling apart, where I was dropped off to chain-smoking babysitters who seemed to fulfill their obligations solely by ensuring that I did not die on their watches. I was a sensitive kid, and it was to me a hardscrabble childhood much of the time, and the best consolation came in the form of nature and books—being outside in every season, and reading. Years later, my impulse would be not just to read, but to write. At college, I took the Intro to Literature course and it seemed perfectly inevitable to me that I would live with books for the rest of my days.

I remember seeing an interview with Barbra Streisand once where she was asked if she had doubts that she would “make it” when she was young and trying to get her first break. And she said, essentially, “No, never. I knew I was born to do it, and that it would only be a matter of time. There was nothing else for me.” And I understood that there was not a bit of arrogance in her answer, only that sense of inevitability. I feel like that about writing. It’s nearly absurd for anyone to think that he or she will “make it” as a writer, however you define that, or if you bother with such notions at all (many of us do, I suspect, but pretend we don’t). I always just knew I had to do it or die trying. If I couldn’t write books, I couldn’t do anything.

2. How did you go about becoming a writer?

I read and read and read. When I got to college, with the upbringing I’d had and the choices I’d made, I saw that I was far behind. I wasn’t even the best poet on my own campus, a tiny liberal arts school. So I overcompensated, became obsessed. I read everything I could get my hands on. At Roberts Wesleyan, it was a very traditional program, so I studied Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, the Romantic poets and the Victorian novelists, and then one single course offered to seniors called “Contemporary Literature,” a thing you, for the most part, had to discover on your own if you were going to discover it at all.

The courses drawing on the canon were what I needed, but I also knew that I could not write like that, that people didn’t say things like, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.” I needed to find poems that I could emulate. I spent my time in the library and in the dusty little used books stores of Rochester, NY: Rick’s Recycled Books, Brownbag Bookshop, Greenwood Books…. I read and bought books more or less indiscriminately.

Rick's Recycled Books / Photo by Doug Manchee

Mary Oliver, when talking about learning to write, privileges reading above all. She says something like (in A Poetry Handbook, which I don’t have here in front of me), “If given the choice between reading and taking a poetry writing workshop, the young poet should almost always choose to read.” That was the path I took. Of course, I surrounded myself with people who were like-minded and could help.

3. Who helped you along the way, and how?

I remain close to several of my undergraduate professors. William Judson Decker taught literature and had an expertise in the Romantic poets. He also loved Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher and Anne Tyler and Frederick Buechner…he was a great reader and one of the most thoughtful teachers, and men, I’ve ever met. Though he was not a writer himself, his influence on me has been profound.

After an MA program, I was employed in the business world for five years, during which time I was publishing a lot of poetry and had become friends with Jack Leax, who was teaching at nearby Houghton College. Jack’s friendship and mentoring helped me to persist even when it seemed I wasn’t making any progress toward my goals.

I did the low-residency MFA program at Seattle Pacific University. Gregory Wolfe, our program director, is the editor of Image, a journal of “art, faith, and mystery.” The faculty included poets Jeanine Hathaway and Jeanne Murray Walker, and like every low-res program, they brought in many terrific guests. It was just the perfect place for me, the perfect opportunity to improve my craft and finally piece together the manuscript that would become my first book. Greg and the faculty of the SPU MFA gave me a place where, for the first time in my writing life, I felt at home. The friends I made in the program help me every day of my life; even just seeing a quick line from them lets me know I’m not alone.

4. Can you tell me about a writer or artist whose biography inspires you?

As a poet, I’ve always been inspired by García Lorca—both his life and his work. He endured suffering in many forms, and also was very playful and wildly creative. Coming from an “old world” culture, Lorca valued what he ultimately would call “duende,” a kind of dark and powerful force he saw at work in authentic art. As he refined his thinking about duende, Lorca concluded that great art depends on a “vivid awareness of death,” a “connection with a nation’s soil,” and “an acknowledgment of the limitations of reason.” This paradigm has been extremely helpful to me. Lorca first saw the power in the place he came from, the people and traditions and art. I think I do the same thing.

Simone Weil urged us to “love the country of here below,” as “God saw fit that it should be difficult yet possible to love.” I am crazy about that idea, and I gravitate toward writers who have chosen to love places, writers who maintain a “connection with…soil,” with places that are difficult yet possible to love. To me, Lorca epitomizes that tradition; to grossly oversimplify, it became the lens through which he saw the world. His place informs his poetics. Wendell Berry is another example, though he is a writer who has stayed in his native place.

I come from a little Mohawk River town at the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, a beat up and forgotten piece of ground that is easy to dismiss. No one has written more eloquently about the Mohawk Valley than Richard Russo. The people in his upstate New York novels, those are my people, that’s my place, those are our stories. My family came to New York from the Palatinate region of Germany in the spring of 1710. That is three hundred years! So of course, like Lorca, like Russo, I’m haunted by that soil and those people, and I often write from and about that place, though I do not live there anymore.

5.     What would you say in a short letter to an aspiring writer?

Ora et labora.

How Cila Warncke Became a Writer

It never occurred to me that I could be a writer.
Books were magic, after all.

Cila Warncke is an award-winning essayist and is currently writing her first non-fiction book. She worked as a journalist in London and Spain for 10 years, covering music, politics, travel, media, and culture. Her essays, criticism and reviews have been published in journals including Beatdom, Word Play, The Kelvingrove Review, Denali, and The Nervous Breakdown. A graduate of the University of Glasgow creative writing programme, she was shortlisted for the Harper-Wood Studentship and was published in the literary magazine From Glasgow To Saturn.

Visit her website: http://cilawarncke.com

Read more by and about Cila:

Essay: Word Play
Essays “Soul Work” and “Fighting Fear”: The Nervous Breakdown
Blog – Irresponsibility: http://irresponsibility.wordpress.com

How Cila Warncke Became a Writer

This is the next installment in the How to Become a Writer interview series, which will post here at Ph.D. in Creative Writing every other Sunday (or so) until I run out of writers to interview, or until they stop saying yes. Each writer answers the same 5 questions. Thanks to Cila for saying yes!

1.     Why did you want to become a writer?

I grew up in a former holiday cottage on the Oregon coast, with no TV, a handful of septuagenarian neighbours, and my kid brother for company. Home-schooled until age 12, books were my main source of information about the world. I don’t remember wanting to write stories, so much as wanting to live them. I wanted to be a cowboy (Wyatt Earp: U.S. Marshall), be a detective (Nancy Drew), or a veterinarian (All Creatures Great and Small), but the one character that bled into real life was a nosy little girl with a notebook – Harriet. I read Harriet the Spy when I was nine and promptly bought myself a notebook, its cover embossed with a western saddle. It was the first of dozens of spiral notebooks, cloth-bound journals and legal pads I filled over the next few years.

Shy to the point of paralysis, I substituted scribbling for social interaction and was secretly thrilled at writing’s power to discomfit. I fell afoul of teachers for writing during class, irritated my basketball coach for writing on the bench, angered my parents for writing instead of doing chores, and generally unnerved my classmates. Years later, I recognised myself in George Orwell’s self-portrait in Why I Write: “I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays…. I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued.”

There was a positive element to my impulse as well. Being immersed in words made me happy. Books were magical, and what kid doesn’t want to touch magic?

2.     How did you go about becoming a writer?

It never occurred to me that I could be a writer. Books were magic, after all. Most of my friends’ parents were doctors and being a doctor meant money, respect, and a nice house, so that was what I wanted to do. I started college as a chemistry major but drifted into English basically out of laziness. If I had more self-discipline I would probably be an unhappy MD. I started by writing columns and music reviews for the student paper, which alerted me to the possibility that writing could get me close to things that fascinated me. After graduating I moved to London to work for Q magazine. I did every kind of writing – editorial, features, news, blogs, essays, publicity, criticism, analysis, copywriting, reviews, travel guides, FAQs, but in my mind only books and poetry were “real” writing. I went freelance and moved from London to Ibiza. By some trick of the mind I convinced myself that even though I was making a living exclusively from writing I still wasn’t a writer. Intellectual dissatisfaction and a desire for validation finally drove me to a Master’s programme in creative writing at the University of Glasgow.

It was a catastrophic decision. I realise now the problem wasn’t lack of credentials but lack of confidence. The literature elements of the course were brilliant but I dreaded and hated workshops. I left vowing to never betray myself like that again. As soon as I got Glasgow out of my lungs several loose threads of ideas came together and I started my current book, working titled Satisfaction – How to Get What you Really, Really Want. It is the true stories of ten ordinary people who, without fanfare, have created extraordinary lives. After muddling around with fiction this is different, urgent; I’m writing because it’s something that needs to be said. Before, I was just pushing words around on paper.

3.  Who helped you along the way, and how?

My first influence was my sister, who read to me constantly when I was very young and planted in my head the idea that books are delightful treasures. At university a number of professors whose names I’ve forgotten urged me to quit chemistry and study English, for which I am grateful. It was Paul Hendrickson, though, who put my feet firmly on the path towards becoming a writer. Generous, humane, kind, and curious, he taught non-fiction writing with an abundance of love and enthusiasm. Our class met on the top floor of the Kelly Writer’s House at Penn, an adorable little Anne of Green Gables-esque cottage in the midst of the high-rise, super-functional campus, and we could bring music – that was the first place I heard Kind of Blue. Professor Hendrickson taught us that essays and long-form journalism are important, meaningful and showed us how to make them beautiful. The other professor who I greatly admire is Michael Schmidt, head of Glasgow’s creative writing department. He’s the perfect mentor: ferociously erudite, urbane, acid-tongued, and an unapologetic defender writing standards.

I am also indebted to my writer-publisher friend Helen Donlon, for being the first person to suggest I can, and should, write books. And to all the friends who have fed, sheltered, and encouraged me during my years of itinerant freelancing.

4.  Can you tell me about a writer or artist whose biography inspires you?

George Orwell. He endured a brutal education, vile jobs, un-picturesque poverty, war, illness and more poverty and never lost his nerve. I love his essays: they gleam with honesty and moral courage. Shooting an Elephant, Why I Write, Bookshop Memories, and Politics and the English Language are particularly fine examples. Orwell fought for what he believed in and held himself to the highest standards of thought and clarity – both as a writer and as a human being. For me, he exemplifies a writer to whom the craft is precious, but who is never precious about his craft. I am also profoundly influenced by Henry David Thoreau. Like Orwell, his writing is driven by ideas, not aesthetics, and it is all the more beautiful for not being decorative.

George Orwell

5.  What would you say in a short letter to an aspiring writer?

Try a few things: study, travel, get a job or a few. If any of it satisfies you be grateful. Write professionally only if you must. Throw away your preconceptions about writing and the ‘writer’s life’. There are as many writers’ lives as there are writers, and there is no point in wearing someone else’s shoes. Be gently skeptical of criticism, but never defensive. As F Scott Fitzgerald said, in the end you have to rely on your own judgement, so trust yourself and do what you love.

How Andrew Porter Became a Writer

It seemed like this type of storytelling was within my reach; it seemed like something I might be able to do myself—with a lot of hard work, of course, but it seemed possible in a way that, say, writing the type of literature I had read in other classes, big Victorian novels and Russian epics, had never seemed possible.

Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and a novel forthcoming from Knopf in Fall 2012. His short fiction has appeared in One Story, The Threepenny Review, Epoch, and The Pushcart Prize anthology and on NPR’s Selected Shorts.  A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received a James Michener/ Copernicus Fellowship, the W.K. Rose Fellowship, and the Drake Emerging Writer Award. Currently, he’s an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Trinity University in San Antonio.

Web site: http://andrewporter.com

Read more by and about Andrew:

Book: The Theory of Light and Matter
Short Story excerpt: “Hole”
Interview at Fiction Writers Review

How Andrew Porter Became a Writer

This is the next installment in the How to Become a Writer interview series, which will post here at Ph.D. in Creative Writing every other Sunday (or so) until I run out of writers to interview, or until they stop saying yes. Each writer answers the same 5 questions. Thanks to Andrew for saying yes! (And thanks to new blog subscriber Denise Richter for recommending him!)

1.  Why did you want to become a writer?

Well, from an early age, I think I’d always known that I wanted to do something creative with my life. As a young child, I was drawn to visual art; and later, in high school, it was music, writing songs and so forth, and then, in college, I was pretty consumed with the idea of becoming a filmmaker, at least at first. I’d even begun to take some courses toward a film major at that point. Then, at the end of my sophomore year, I took an introductory fiction writing workshop, and everything changed. I remember sitting in that class and feeling very intimidated by the other students in the group, but also very inspired by the stories we were reading, contemporary short stories by writers I had never heard of before, people like Lorrie Moore, and Richard Ford and Raymond Carver. These writers seemed to be speaking to my own experiences in a very direct way, and I remember thinking how amazing that was, that you could write about such seemingly small conflicts and such ordinary people and yet make these character’s lives and experiences so compelling.

Raymond Carver

To put it another way, it seemed like this type of storytelling was within my reach; it seemed like something I might be able to do myself—with a lot of hard work, of course, but it seemed possible in a way that, say, writing the type of literature I had read in other classes, big Victorian novels and Russian epics, had never seemed possible. On top of that, for the first time in my life, I was actually getting some positive feedback on the work I was doing. My professor in that class was a very kind and generous man, and though I’m sure that the work I was producing wasn’t very good, it meant a lot to me at the time to know that it wasn’t horrible, that there might actually be something there.

Shortly after that, I think I simply caught the writing bug. It became hard to imagine a life in which I wasn’t writing or in which writing wasn’t at the center of my world. I didn’t really know why I was doing it, and perhaps I still don’t. I just  knew that it was more fun than almost anything else I’d ever done.

2.  How did you go about becoming a writer?

I think I began to seriously entertain the idea of becoming a writer around my senior year in college. That’s when I started talking to some of my professors about it and also when I began to do a little research on what other writers I admired had done. Not people like Philip Roth, but young, emerging writers, people who were maybe eight or nine years older than me. I think, in retrospect, what I had hoped to find was some sort of logical path, a series of simple and easy steps that would lead me to where I wanted to go. What I found instead, of course, was that the writers I admired had all taken vastly different routes and most had come to the profession somewhat indirectly. Still, I did notice that a good number of them had eventually gone on to get MFA degrees, something I had heard some of my professors talk about in class. I didn’t really understand what an MFA was at the time, but it seemed that there was some sort of correlation between getting an MFA and becoming a writer, or at least that’s what I thought at the time.

So I ended up applying to programs, and three years later, after earning a degree from the University of Iowa, I discovered that I was in exactly the same place I was before.  I had a few more stories under my belt, a little more experience and knowledge, and of course some wonderful new friends, but I didn’t feel any closer to actually publishing a book.

What followed after that was basically a decade or so of struggling along, trying to keep my head above water financially, trying to find a free moment here or there to work on my stories, enduring a lot of rejections, jumping between agents, being told again and again that nobody wanted to publish short story collections anymore, and so on. I came very close to throwing in the towel on several occasions, but I think what helped me out, what kept me going, was the fact that I’d always found a way to surround myself with other writers, people who were struggling along just like me, fellow adjuncts at the colleges where I taught or people in the community who had found a way to support their writing habit without going into too much debt.

3.  Who helped you along the way, and how?

Early on, it was the professors I had as an undergraduate and grad student—writers like David Wong Louie, Frank Bergon, Marilynne Robinson, and Barry Hannah—but later, it was really the friends I’d made in grad school who helped me the most.  These were the people who I could call at any time of the day or night to talk about writing, the people who  I shared my early drafts with, the people who kept me going during  those frequent moments of self-doubt. To be honest, if I hadn’t had those friends,  it’s hard to imagine where I’d be now.

Charles Baxter

4.  Can you tell me about a writer or artist whose biography inspires you?

Charles Baxter has a great epistolary essay called “Full of it” (excerpt here), which appears in Frederick Busch’s anthology Letters to a Fiction Writer. It’s a wonderful essay—very funny and smart, like all of Baxter’s writing—and for a long time it served as a source of inspiration for me. Not because it painted a romanticized picture of the writing life, but because it painted just the opposite: a realistic one. Basically, Baxter catalogues all of the many setbacks and early discouragements he faced—all of the novels he wrote that didn’t get published, all of the stories we wrote that got rejected, all of the agents who abused him, his descent into despondency and hopelessness, the many years that he spent knocking on a door that simply wouldn’t open.

If anything, one might interpret this essay as a kind of cautionary tale, an argument for why one shouldn’t pursue this particular path. But for me, it never read that way. For me, as a longtime admirer of Baxter’s work, it always read like a testament to hard work and perseverance. I remember thinking, if someone as talented as Charles Baxter had to endure these types of setbacks, then why should I expect anything less? So, for a long time after that, as the rejection slips were piling up in my drawer, it was this essay, and Baxter’s story, that saw me through.

5.  What would you say in a short letter to an aspiring writer?

I would say what Baxter says indirectly in the letter I referenced above: it’s not going to be easy, by any means—it might even take you to some very low moments in your life—but in the end, it’s the writers who persevere and push through these periods that ultimately succeed. I honestly believe that. Talent is obviously important, but it’s only a very small part of the equation. The rest has to do with whether or not you can endure the sacrifices you’ll have to make, the discouraging comments, the setbacks, the self-doubt. If you have the fortitude to keep writing in the face of all of these things, then I’d say your chances of publishing a book are pretty good.

Beyond that, I’d say it’s important to surround yourself with other writers, as I mentioned above. No one can write in a vaccuum, and it’s important to have a support system of some sort, a group of people who you can trust and who you can rely on for encouragement. In a world where most people aren’t going to really understand what you’re doing or why you’re doing it, it’s really important, I think, to have at least a few people who do.

My job is the “best”!

It’s syllabus time. School starts Monday, so I’m working on crafting the perfect balance of readings and assignments, with time for grading in between.

Of course I’m lamenting that break is almost over while assuring myself that Break. Is. Not. Over.

But I’m also experiencing the little inner delight I get over designing a new syllabus and anticipating the cool things I’ll get to read and talk about with students this semester. I’m enjoying the industrious feeling of sending and receiving emails, writing and crossing off items on the to-do list, working on a couple of new manuscripts, and cleaning up the holiday mess.

In other words, I’m looking forward to the new semester. Perhaps this is because my job is THE BEST!

In a recent Forbes Magazine study of BEST JOBS FOR WOMEN IN 2012, my job was rated #1. Here’s what it says:

At No. 1, post-secondary teachers top the list. Not only do women report very high satisfaction rates in the job, median annual earnings range from $59,000 (for foreign language and literature teachers) to $94,000 (for law teachers), well above the average household income in the U.S. Furthermore, the field is expected to grow by 15% and features an average of 55,000 openings each year.

Shatkin believes women likely value post-secondary teaching for its high earnings, prestige and stimulating environments. The National Survey of College Graduates found that women appreciate a job’s location and environment more than men, and Shatkin points out that college students are generally excited to learn, colleagues are of high caliber and college campuses provide comfortable amenities. At the same time, post-secondary teachers have a high degree of independence and autonomy, which Shatkin says almost all workers prize.

[The bold is my doing. Source link to Yahoo overview. Source link to Forbes Magazine article.]

I have to agree. My students ARE generally excited to learn. My colleagues ARE of high caliber (not just in academics, but in food, fashion, music, and fun). And the amenities are comfortable indeed. I like my office with its window view of rooftops and treetops. I love working at a place with a library overlooking the campus on one side and a river on the other – and with more books I can order from other campuses. And did I mention: I got to take students to Prague and Berlin this summer!

Sometimes, when I’m drowning in the middle of a semester, I think that I would quit teaching if I could, and just write. But I’d drown in different ways without the semester’s structure or the students’ energy.

Yes, I get annoyed when our budget well runs dry or when the bureaucracy runs thick, but, in the spirit of living lovely, I thought I should take a moment to appreciate where I am and what I’ve got. Here’s to a new semester.

My Non-New-Year’s-Resolution for 2012: Live Lovely

Happy New Year! I just returned today from an awesome family holiday in Colorado, filled with skating, hiking, skiing, hugging, crying, laughing, eating, and drinking. Here’s a view from the gondola up the mountain at Keystone (which was way out of my league skiing-wise):

It’s resolution time, but I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s what I said about them in a post a year ago:

A resolution is something we should do, don’t do, resolve to do in the future, do a few times, and then fail to continue doing. Which makes us feel bad.

I respond much better to commands. So I’ve started choosing one meaningful command that repeats in my mind as if yelled by a drill sergeant at top volume, or, better, as if sung by an awesome singer who repeats it as a refrain I can’t escape.

Last year – 2011 – my command was: Put Yourself Out There  (See full post here.)

And I did! Against my own shy nature, I gave lots of readings for my book, developed my blog, made a new web site, won awards, applied for a competitive Fulbright post in Belfast (survived preliminary round!), submitted a tenure dossier, gave more readings, and just generally Put Myself Out There.

Before that, in summer 2010, my first blogging summer, my command was: Finish What You Started

I’d started all these manuscripts that I hadn’t finished, and this command, repeated over and over, helped me get focused and finish lots of projects.

Which brings us to 2012. My theme for this year is: Live Lovely

This basically means I’m tired of putting myself out there and I want to turn my focus toward living well, slowing down, making art – literary, visual, decorative, culinary – and toward my loved ones.

It’s a weird phrase – Live Lovely – so I’ve been trying it out for a few weeks in my head. And it’s already working! For Christmas I made a few gifts, which combined art-making with loved ones. Here are some vellum votive candles I sent to my mother and grandparents, and I made some for dad and sister too:

[Update: I got the idea from this cool book: PHOTOCRAFT Cool Things to Do with the Pictures You Love]

A friend and fellow writer keeps a terrific blog – I Will Not Diet – where she posted lots of Non-Resolutions by contributors (like me!) HERE.

What did YOU accomplish this year? What’s your command/theme/non-resolution for 2012?