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Questions
about Writing
How
long have you been writing?
I
started writing 4 years ago, intending to write nothing more
than a collection of birth stories. Adair
Lara, my first writing teacher, told me it needed to be
about ME. Turning the book from a series of vignettes into a
memoir was the most difficult part of the process.
What
has your experience been with the publishing industry?
I’m
embarrassed to say that, for me, everything fell into place
rather easily.
I wrote a first draft of the book. Then I paid Dorothy Wall,
a writing consultant in Berkeley (510-486-8008), to help me
with a query letter and a proposal. When we’d finished,
she referred me to five agents. Four responded favorably, and
a few weeks later I had a contract with Felicia
Eth. About four months later I had a six-figure sale to
Scribner, and the following year, Baby Catcher sold to the Goldman
Publishing Company in Germany.
What
advice do you have for aspiring writers?
It
feels presumptuous to be put in the position of answering this
question, since I still feel like an aspiring writer myself.
I just happened to be lucky. But I’ll tell you what I’ve
done and what I continue to do.
I take writing classes continuously, participate in writing
groups, and go to one writing conference a year.
I keep a journal, not a diary, just a collection of random stuff:
dreams, memories, things my kids or elderly parents say, bits
of conversation I hear during the day.
I read constantly and listen to books on tape in the car, and
I write every single day, even if it’s only a few sentences.
How
has writing this book changed your life?
For
about 20 years, friends and family members have nagged me to
write down the birth stories that they’ve been hearing
me tell—so it'll get them off my back.
Was
writing this book therapeutic for you?
Oh,
yes, very. There are some painful issues involved that I’d
never explored in as much depth before confronting the need
to write about them. It was a good feeling to put them behind
me.
What
authors influenced your writing?
I’d
have to say that James Herriot’s method of writing his
memoir with the thread of veterinary medicine holding everything
together was in my mind as I thought about how to organize BABY
CATCHER.
I admire
Anne Lamott’s style and E. B. White’s beautiful
essays. Barbara
Kingsolver, Kaye
Gibbons, Margaret
Atwood, Julia
Alvarez, Wallace
Stegner, Mary
Karr – oh, too many to remember.
What
books have you read most recently?
The
Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
All
Over But the Shoutin' (Rick Bragg)
Atonement
(Ian Frazier)
Don't
Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
Empire
Falls (Richard Russo)
Yo!
(Julia Alvarez)
The
Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien)
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