First-time Author Gratitude that Lingers (plus book giveaways)

To say that the first six months after one's debut book is published are a whirlwind would be an understatement. For me, these months have been filled with so many wonderful experiences and events, new people and opportunities, a better understanding about the publishing world, chances to share insights, and much more.

The feeling which lingers most though when I look back -- as I did recently -- is one of gratitude. Hence, the heading for my recent newsletter:  Starting With...Gratitude.

Since some blog readers may not be on the newsletter mailing list (and you can fix that here), I wanted to let you know that you can read the newsletter at this link. 

Even better, if you haven't gotten a copy of my book yet, until the end of the day on Dec. 9, there's a giveaway going on (via the newsletter) for a signed copy (AND a separate giveaway for a bundle of writing craft books). Details are in the newsletter (and since you won't be able to reply there -- as the giveaway instructions state -- you can enter one or both by emailing me directly:  LisaRomeoWriter at gmail dot com ).

I also want to thank all my blog readers and other writing-world friends for putting up with my barrage of book promo, here and all over the place. Perhaps having gotten to this milestone at a somewhat later-than-usual age has made its significance loom larger. So my gratitude extends to everyone who has listened to me go on and on, who read and responded and supported and liked and shared and purchased and in any other way helped me on this journey, even a little bit. Thanksgiving may be over, but gratitude goes on...

Guest Blogger Liz Sheffield on Banishing the Inner Editor with NaNoWriMo

Liz Sheffield has been a writing student and editing client of mine over the last few years. She is a blogger and freelance writer focused on the topics of parenting, wellness and leadership.  Her essays, articles and short fiction have been published in national and regional publications, including Brain, Child and Family Fun. Until recently, Liz spent more than 11 years writing, editing and designing training materials for Starbucks. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two young sons.

Please welcome Liz Sheffield

This year, when I asked the young writers in the early weeks of my National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) workshop to tell me what their inner editors say, the kids (ages 8 to 11) didn’t hesitate to respond:

“You suck.”

“That’s no good.”

“You can’t spell.”

Ouch! Our inner editors develop at such a young age.

These fifteen students are part of the afterschool NaNoWriMo workshop I’m teaching at my son’s elementary school. A few years ago, the Office of Letters and Light (OLL) – the group that oversees NaNoWriMo for adults – created the Young Writers Program as well as a NaNoWriMo curriculum for kids and youth. It’s the same concept (write a novel in a month) but with a word count goal that is reasonable for each young writer.

September and October are all about training. In our weekly lessons, we discuss topics such as the inner editor, main characters, plot and setting . The goal is that by November 1, these students will be able to write their novels in 30 days. In order to succeed, I know from personal experience, the first step is to get their inner editors out of the way.

“Next, we’re going to draw these inner editors,” I continue after hearing the feedback from my students’ inner editors.

Villains wielding swords, with scowling faces, missing teeth and furrowed brows evolved on the blank pages of the kids’ workbooks.

“Now it’s time for these inner editors to take a hike,” I told my students.

I walked around the room with a shoe box covered in bronze-colored paper. After the last editor was in the box, I closed the lid and wrapped metallic string around and around the box to lock it.

“Is that barbed wire?” a sixth grader asked, incredulous.

“Yes. Star-studded barbed wire.”

The box rattled in my hands. I could hardly contain the energy inside the bronze-covered shoe box.

“These editors are desperate to get out,” I warned, “but if we want to write a novel in thirty days, we can’t let them out until December 1.”

Some of the younger students looked worried. (Okay, so maybe the shaking box was a little bit much.)

“Are we going to let these inner editors out of the box?” I asked.

“No way!” the kids hollered, a few boys adding an air-punch for emphasis.

If keeping their inner editors in the box is the one thing my students learn through this NaNoWriMo experience, I’ll be thrilled.  

And, they’ll be decades ahead of me.

I have a powerful, demanding and often hope-dashing inner editor who has played a leading role in my writing life: You’re going to use that word? Who will want to read this? You can’t write. You don’t have an MFA. You’re not old enough. Wait, you’re too old, it’s too late. You don’t have time.

I’ve heard this voice for years, but it wasn’t until I took the NaNoWriMo challenge myself in November 2010 that I understood the power my inner editor had over my creative process.

My sons were age two and six, I was working full-time in a corporate cube and commuting an hour each way. Since college, I’d been too busy (drinking beer, teaching ESL in Japan, romancing with my future husband) to write. Skeptics, including my inner editor, told me I had no business taking on the challenge of writing a novel, much less attempting to write one in thirty days.

I signed up anyway. And I wrote 50,064 words in 30 days.

“How did you do it?” everyone asked after I came out of the NaNoWriMo fog.

The answer was simple: I told my inner editor to take a hike.

During NaNoWriMo, I gave myself permission to write a less-than-perfect novel. I ignored the thoughts that I had to come up with the “perfect” first sentence, find the “perfect” time to write, or labor late into the night, attempting to format a document so that it was “just right”.

With thirty days of practice, I gained confidence. My inner editor got quiet.

"Don’t look at this early stage for every sentence to be perfect—that will come. Don’t expect every description to be spot-on. That will come too. This is an opportunity to experiment. It’s your giant blotter. An empty slate, ready to be filled."

These encouraging words in Jasper Fforde’s pep talk to participants in the 2010 NaNoWriMo rang true. Having sent my inner editor on a hike, day by day, word by word, I was able to fill the empty slate.

My creative self took over. I added a hospital to the setting. My protagonist befriended a homeless teen. The plot twisted and turned in ways that my inner editor would have avoided (and admonished) but which I welcomed. I finished on November 30 with a novel that wasn’t perfect, but that had a beginning, a middle and an end. A year after I finished NaNoWriMo, I read what I’d written. While there are revisions to be made, I can say that I like what I wrote. (Take that, inner editor!)

As my students prepare for their NaNoWriMo adventures, I hope that locking their inner editors away in that shoe box will bring them the same sense of freedom; that they will embrace the time for creativity.

Most creative folks will agree that keeping the inner editor at bay is difficult. In fact, since I banished mine two years ago during NaNoWriMo, I’ve noticed my inner editor creeping back into my writing world.

But I’ve had enough. I make my way to the garage in search of the box covered in star-studded barbed wire. There’s got to be enough room for one more inner editor in the shoe box in the garage: mine.

Note from Lisa: NaNoWriMo begins on November 1. You needn't write a novel during the 30 days; it's also a great way to generate around 50,000 words towards any manuscript or writing project, keep track of your progress, and commit to a regular writing practice. For the math-challenged, 50K words in a month works out to about 1,670 words per day.

Guest Blogger Christina Katz: A Village to Raise a Book (and one comment to win one)

I'm a writer. And a mother. Sometimes I write about my kids and motherhood. Sometimes not. I don't really consider myself a mother-writer, mom writer, or writer mama, and in fact I have often discouraged others from using that label when describing me. This has a lot more to do with my own disinclination to limit myself than the nomenclature itself. I say limit because unfortunately these labels are often meant to describe a writer who writes almost exclusively about being a mother. Truth is, many – perhaps even most – writers who also happen to be mothers, actually write about much more than their children and their maternal roles. I'd even hazard a guess that most mothers who are writers usually DO NOT write only, or even mostly, about mothering.

That's where Christina Katz comes in, a.k.a. Writer Mama (also the name of her first book). It's her mission to help writers (who are mothers) fashion viable writing careers – writing for magazines, the web, newspapers, paying blogs; or novels, memoirs, prescriptive nonfiction; or copywriting or…any kind of writing. Through in-person and online classes, books, blogs, newsletters & ezines, Katz offers education, support and networking possibilities to help women, as her book's tagline notes, "raise a writing career alongside your kids." Not necessarily a career writing only about mothering. That's the category of writer mamas in which I wouldn't mind being included.

Please welcome Christina Katz…and leave a comment here by midnight tonight to win a copy of her book.

The Writer Mama Two-Year Anniversary Blog Tour Giveaway!

Post #12: It Takes A Village
Lest we forget, it takes a village to write a book. Writing a book is not an event; it’s a journey, similar to ascending a mountain. (A mountain that you create as you climb!) Don’t go it alone. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t create an antagonistic dynamic with the folks who can be your allies and help you champion your book into the world. I’ve already talked about collaborating with the folks over on the publishing end of your book. So let’s talk a bit about these mysterious folks:

The Acquisitions Editor
Jane Friedman was my acquisitions editor for Writer Mama. She was the editor who offered me the contract and who was my first ally inside the publishing company. The AE is the person who went to bat for your proposal and helped get your book concept through the approval process so you can receive an offer and sign a book contract. Keep in touch with your acquisitions editor, even after she’s handed you off to your book editor (if this happens).

The Book Editor
Chances are good that your acquisitions editor will hand you off to another editor, your book editor. A book editor may or may not be the project manager of your book as well. But don’t be surprised if your Acquisitions Editor is still involved in major decisions like cover art, formatting, and how to structure the book (at least this was my experience).

The Cover Designer
Cover designers may work in-house for publishers or as freelancers. The cover designer for Writer Mama was a member of the in-house team for F+W. I was fortunate that my agent negotiated to include me in the cover review process. Working closely with your acquisitions editor and book editor can only help when it comes time for cover art reviews. And of course, it goes without saying that you won’t always love your cover design. Always get your agent involved when offering input on cover design. That’s one of their helpful roles.

The Copy Editor
You will interact with your copy editor after you have completed your final manuscript. The copy editor assigned to you will likely be a freelancer. You will receive a series of suggestions from your copy editor that further refine your manuscript and help prepare it for publication. However, it’s good to prepare yourself for the inevitable typos that your entire editorial team will likely miss. Typos happen. That’s just life. And don’t worry, your writer friends will likely let you know all about the typos that they find when they get their copies. (Or you can ask them to so you can alert your publisher for the next printing.)

The Publicity Director
Whoever manages book promotion and book events for your publisher is definitely a person you want to get to know. That is, if you want to be invited to literary conferences and get support publicizing your book. I am fortunate that the publicity and events manager at Writer’s Digest Book was such a charming and organized guy. If you make an effort to get to know your publicity director, everything promotion-related with your book is bound to go better.

The Sales Team
I dropped the ball on this one. It never occurred to me that the sales team would care to meet me, so I didn’t initiate anything. When I finally met the two sales team leaders at a conference, I kicked myself for not getting to know them sooner. My bad. Go ahead and ask one of your editors, if and when it would make sense to introduce yourself to the sales folks.

We’ll talk more about the other important “village people” at the next stop on the blog tour.

Today's Book Drawing: To enter to win a signed, numbered copy of Writer Mama, answer the following question in this blog's comments:

How shy are you about contacting people you don't already know? One thing I discovered when I became an author is that I am pretty comfortable chatting with folks I already know, but I hesitate when I haven't met the person before. Will you be willing to stick out your hand to all of the folks you'll need to meet at your future publishing house?

Thanks for participating! Only US residents, or folks with a US mailing address can participate in the drawing. Please only enter once per day. Where will the drawing be tomorrow? Visit the Writer Mama blog to continue reading the rest of the Writer Mama story throughout March 2009!

Guest Blogger Vicki Forman on the Copy Editing process for her first book

While I am at the Vermont Studio Center for a couple of weeks, my intention is not to blog too much. Then again, it may turn out I will welcome the chance to get away from the manuscript and connect. Since I’m not sure which way it will go, I've asked a few writer friends to help fill this space.

Vicki Forman first caught my attention with her special needs parenting column at Literary Mama. (Her last column there must be read sitting down, and with a prepared heart.) Her work has also appeared in the Seneca Review, Santa Monica Review, and the anthologies, Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child With Special Needs, and This Day: Dairies From American Women. She lives outside Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
I asked Vicki for a glimpse into the wonderful, nerve-wracking and occasionally tedious pre-publication process she's currently involved in for her first book, a memoir, This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), due out in July. Her manuscript earned the 2008 Bakeless Literary Prize for creative nonfiction.

Please welcome Vicki Forman.

Great news: you’ve finished a book and even landed a contract. You’re in love with your agent, and even more in love with your editor. From here on out, it’s all fun and games, right?

Sort of. Writing a book is absolutely hard. But getting a book through production—from the friendly Word document you have come to know and love into a thing in print, between covers—is a different sort of hard. There are tricky steps to learn, and all the nomenclature that comes with them (blurbing, bound galleys, ARCs,) and then there is the simple psychological aspect of seeing your own words become more and more engraved in stone as the publishing wheels turn.

My own book is currently making its way through production and I recently had the first encounter with the fact of my words becoming real when I was asked to review copyedits. Most writers will confess to a love-hate relationship with copyeditors. We need them to point out errors in continuity; they remind us of the rules of grammar and punctuation (rules we may adhere to only in the most perfunctory way as we create). In other words, I fully expected the task of reviewing copyedits to be strenuous at best, tiresome at worst.

I didn’t expect to find myself faced with words, now reviewed and altered by someone else—and a stranger to me at that. I am thoroughly familiar, to the point of intimacy, with this book that landed on my desk. I’ve been writing it for four years. But to see words changed, suggestions made, grammar or style questioned? These marks on the page had the effect of severing me, in some elemental way, from those same words. They were not only mine now, they belonged to a reader. And a reader with a point of view.

Which is exactly the point. The difference between that same friendly Word document you’ve come to know and love as a writer, and a published book, is that it will have readers. As my favorite songwriter, Jeff Tweedy says in “What Light”:

"And if the whole world's singing your songs
And all your paintings have been hung
Just remember what was yours is everyone's from now on"

My first reaction in seeing the make up of my sentences questioned was to become defensive. But then I remembered Tweedy’s words and realized that I had a new job: not simply to protect those words, but to see how they were now being experienced by someone else. My job as a writer had evolved into that of shepherd.

And so shepherd I did. I looked at every suggested change and asked myself if it made the sentence better. I reread aloud each new sentence to evaluate rhythm and clarity. I made at least two passes through the book before sending it back to my publisher, and wrote a careful cover letter explaining (in general terms) the changes I chose to accept—and reject.

A good friend explained that while I was the performer, the publisher was in charge of the auditorium. If they moved the metaphorical lights or microphones of my words, I could certainly move them back if I chose. But I should also know that they knew what they were doing when they moved them. And that our goal, in the end, was the same: a solid piece of writing we could all stand behind.

What follows is an insider’s guide to surviving the copyediting process:

- Ask your editor or production manager about house style. The publisher may even have a writer’s guide to which you can refer. Make sure you know which style guides the copyeditor has used (e.g., Chicago Manual of Style) as well as which dictionaries.

- Clearly understand directions for accepting or rejecting changes. These instructions should come in a cover letter from the production manager.

- Respect the copyeditor for being better at his or her job than you. This person has been hired for a reason, and it’s not simply to make your life complicated.

- Enlist the help of a friend. In some cases, I was so close to certain sentences, I honestly couldn’t tell if a suggested change was better or not. I ran at least four or five such examples past another good friend who has also read my manuscript.

- Allow yourself enough time. You do not want to rush this process. It will take far longer than you expect, and you will have a hard time reading more than 40-50 pages at a time without losing perspective.

- Meet your deadline. I know many authors feel they can squeeze an extra day or two at each production deadline, but your book is just one of many in the pipeline. I have worked with production managers before and they value above all writers who help them stay on schedule.

- Find out about next steps, and prepare yourself for them. If you know you’re going to get bound galleys at a time when you have other deadlines, for example, try to clear some room in your schedule. Each part of the process takes longer than you think, and brings up unexpected psychological aspects in your personality. I had completely forgotten about my emotional “finishing” problem, for example, until I took so long reviewing the manuscript I was forced to send it back via Express Mail. An expensive quirk.

A few last words: as with any step in the writing process, it’s important to enjoy yourself along the way. I felt a great sense of relief and accomplishment when I put the manuscript into the envelope and sent it on its way. Always honor each moment—you never know when you’ll get to do this again.

Guest Blogger: Matthew Quick, on First Novels, Readings, and Those Questions Readers Ask

As is so often the case, I first "met" today's guest blogger Matthew Quick on the page, through an essay of his in The Sun, nearly two years ago. Then we both wound up with nonfiction work in the same issue of the literary journal Quay and discovered we were both writing and living in New Jersey – he closer to Philadelphia, me nearer to Manhattan. Later, I interviewed Matthew, who has an MFA from Goddard, for an article on Mediabistro. Then one morning at breakfast not long ago, I found him – or rather his terrific first novel, The Silver Linings Playbook (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) -- in the coveted Newly Released column in the weekday arts section of the New York Times, and heard it touted on NPR. I had to find out on my own, since Matthew doesn't mention it, that the film rights to his book have been optioned by The Weinstein Company. While I understand his pragmatic "anything can happen" reason for not shouting this last news from the rafters, I, on the other hand can whoop all I want for him.

Please welcome Matthew Quick.

Last month, I embarked on what I will loosely refer to as my debut ‘book tour’—a few readings, signings, and interviews in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York.

I was excited, hopeful, thrilled.

Four years before, I had left a tenured teaching position and sold my house to pursue fiction writing seriously. In that period I wrote three unpublished novels. My fourth, The Silver Linings Playbook, weathered more than 70 rejections from literary agents, and, once Doug Stewart began to represent me, the book endured many courtships with US publishing houses that were initially interested but ultimately passed. We actually sold rights in Europe before the US.

And then, suddenly, somehow, I was finally a published novelist with positive reviews, ready to greet my fans. One of my first appearances was during the opening of an architecture museum of sorts that has a bookstore attached. Feeling proud, sitting behind a big desk, pen in hand, with stacks of my novel prominently displayed throughout this hip new venue, I was approached by a man in a suit.

“Is this book about architecture?” he asked me.

“No, sir.”

“What’s it about?”

I gave him my one-minute pitch

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m signing books.”

“Were you asked to come?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Your book has nothing to do with architecture.”

“But it’s set locally. And it did get nice write ups in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Wall Street Journal, and in People too.”

He examined the cover of my book more closely. “May I read the first chapter?”

“Sure, please do,” I said, and then for the next five minutes I anxiously watched this potential reader sample my words.

When he finished, he snapped my book shut, placed it back on the table, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Nope,” popping the ‘p’ triumphantly. Then he walked away.

There was no one behind him, and so for a few moments, I just sat there, sort of stunned.

Now, I fully realized that not everyone would like my book, that some people would fall outside of my target audience, but I don’t think I was quite prepared for a face-to-face p-popping ‘Nope.’

Shortly afterward, a woman in a cocktail dress walked up to me and said, “There’s a football helmet on your cover. I’m a woman. I don’t like football. Why should I read your book?”

There was no smile on her face. She was demanding to know why I expected her to crack open my book—which, if you really think about it, is a perfectly legitimate question.

For a good five minutes I smiled at this potential reader, told her that my editor is a woman who does not particularly like football, nor does my agent, Doug Stewart, and they both love the book. Plus, we were getting a really good response from women readers so far. I talked about how my novel really isn’t a football book at all, but a quirky love story, a book about family, hope, new beginnings, and finding promise in unlikely situations. By the end of my pitch, I had her smiling, but she moved on without buying my book, and I began to feel slightly exhausted, crestfallen, even though I would go on to sell a few copies that night.

Recently, I did a corporately sponsored event. It was the grand opening of a bank branch. There was a string quartet, free food and booze, and the sponsor had purchased 100 copies of my novel. Anyone who attended could have a signed copy—for FREE.

The sponsor had made beautiful posters of my novel’s jacket, and I had all of my positive reviews framed on the signing table. I thought surely I’d have all the free copies signed and moved in under an hour.

But early in the evening a man walked up to me and asked, “So why should I read your book?” Again, this was posed as a challenge—there was a confrontational edge to his question, as if he were insulted by the bank’s offering of a free novel.

In my mind I was thinking, These are FREE tonight. All you have to do is say your name and I sign your book and then you take it home. But it quickly dawned on me that this man wanted to know why he should carry my book around for the rest of the night, why he should even bother to lift it off the table. And so I gave him my pitch, smiling unceasingly, and he ended up shaking my hand and taking a signed copy home.

I would go on to sign many books and have dozens of genuinely pleasant conversations that night, but a long line never formed and, at times, I had to lure people away from the free drinks and food long enough to convince them to take a free copy of my novel.

Why should anyone read my book?

When I was writing The Silver Linings Playbook, like most writers, I was trying to craft a good story that would move people, something I thought readers would generally like, but I never really thought objectively—from a purely market-driven point of view—about why many people should bother to reach specifically for my book, especially considering that there are so many other equally entertaining, well-written books they could read. When you publish, you are absolutely asking people to choose your book—to pluck it off the shelf, pay money for it, and then devote hours to reading your words. It’s an incredible request. Going through the publishing process has really changed the way I now think about this reality.

I have always loved to read fiction. I taught my students that reading fiction makes you a more humane person. I respect anyone who takes the time to arrange words carefully and is brave enough to share stories with the rest of the world. And so the ‘sell-it-to-me’ attitude of many potential readers I met on ‘book tour’ was slightly disheartening, but extremely illuminating. And because I want people to read my books, because I love writing fiction and want to keep doing what I am doing full-time, I am adapting my pitch, becoming a better salesman, learning every day.

Note from Lisa: Read an excerpt of the novel here. Though he's officially "on hiatus," Matthew will still answer occasional writing and publishing questions on his blog.

Author Q/A: Penelope Schwartz Robinson on Publishing an Essay Collection and Slippery Men

Penelope Schwartz Robinson's first book (already favorably reviewed), is the essay collection Slippery Men, winner of the Stonecoast Book Prize, and published this month by New Rivers Press. Penelope teaches creative writing at University of Maine Farmington, and is a 2004 graduate of USM's Stonecoast MFA program. Our time at Stonecoast did not overlap, but we have a number of writer friends in common, and I got to know Penelope when she visited Stonecoast during residencies and by sharing meals, ideas and walks together at writers conferences from Iowa to New York over the last year. I was thrilled to hear that she recently was awarded a $13,000 Maine Individual Artist Fellowship, and I can't wait for her book to launch this month. She took some time out this past weekend to answer my questions.

LR: Penelope, you've done something thought virtually impossible for literary nonfiction writers -- getting an essay collection published without being an already established author. You must be feeling pretty great about that.

Penelope Schwartz Robinson: It’s amazing! An essay collection is very hard to place. Usually a writer publishes something else—a memoir for instance—and then is asked “do you have anything else?” And that’s when it’s possible to put up a collection. I am enormously grateful this has worked the other way around for me because I think the collection showcases different strengths of mine that might not have been so apparent in a more “cohesive” piece of work.

LR: Can you talk a bit about how the book came together? Did some of the essays come out of your work in the MFA program?

PSR: Five of the seven essays in the book originated in Stonecoast workshops; however, each has been significantly revised post-Stonecoast. The other two are excerpted from two book-length projects I worked on after Stonecoast. The overall vision was cast with the MFA thesis because it also was titled Slippery Men and my selective process of the many pieces of work I had to choose from was shaped by the title.

LR: Can you describe what life has been like in the months, weeks and days leading up to the publication date? Enjoyable, frantic or both?

PSR: I wasn’t sure what to expect. In the beginning, it was very quiet. New Rivers Press is a teaching press which means I worked with a team of college students from Minnesota State University at Moorhead in the initial phases. This is a situation which requires a good deal of author patience. The team was very enthusiastic. In the end, everything came together. NRP is fortunate to have Donna Carlson as its Managing Editor. She had the enormous responsibility of wrangling the student team and working with the author— both of which she handled beautifully. She was thorough and flexible and I credit her with everything good about the finished product. As for the timetable, things heated up a little as we approached the publication date, but not too appreciably.

LR: You have a reading coming up in Boston (Oct. 14) as well as in New York City (Oct. 29). In what ways, if any, do you prepare differently for a Manhattan audience?

PSR: I have read previously a couple of times in New York City. I don’t prepare terribly differently, but since I am something of a “nature” writer, I do tend to tone that down for a city audience and go with material which is a little less “outdoorsy.”

LR: Many essayists (me included) and memoirists struggle with putting their relatives and friends on the page. How did you deal with that? Talk to them about it? Get an OK? Change names and details? Let them read it first in draft form? Just plunge ahead hope for the best?

PSR: Writing about friends and relatives (and people who just happen to cross one’s path) is definitely a challenge. In a general response to your question: none of the above. I don’t ask anyone’s permission and I don’t let anyone read drafts. (So far.) I have a couple of ground rules: when I’m writing about people who didn’t ask to be included in my (writing) life—as for instance “Elliot” in “Mucking About”— I change their names. The same is true for friends. I do not write about my daughters—unless the work is undisputedly positive. I don’t write about my husband. Parents, because they are so formative, I believe have to be placed carefully on the page. My father, as an example, has recently died and so did not see the piece I wrote about him. My stepmother, however, is another matter and I am concerned that she will be offended by this work. I have tried to prepare her and, as you say, shall hope for the best. My mother is still living and I have written a great deal about her which I will not publish during her lifetime.

LR: As you know, I finished an MFA a few months ago and I'm in my late 40s; so it's wonderful and hopeful for me to see a graduate of the same program who is older than me, getting her first book published a few years post-MFA. What advice, if any, do you have for fellow writers getting started at a certain age?

PSR: The line I begin almost every interview with is, “I’m a late bloomer.” It has been enormously gratifying to me to achieve recognition during my mid-to-late sixties. I spent a good deal of my life putting off my own creativity in the service of others. Now, I don’t regret that because I learned so much that allowed me to move ahead with a voice of my own. A voice, I believe, that would not have found utterance even ten years ago.

My involvement with the Saturday Morning Club is an important part of not only my development, but also my ability to believe in it happening later in life. I’ve been a member of this extraordinary group of women since 1988. Founded by Julia Ward Howe in 1871, the Saturday Morning Club provides a forum for women to present personal philosophical and literary expression. We meet every Saturday at the Harvard Club in Boston from October to April; each member reads aloud a 25-30 page “paper” annually. When I was invited to join, I was forty-eight years old and the baby of the group. It was enormously important for me to see women in their sixties, seventies, eighties, even nineties, who were alive and vibrant. I credit the Saturday Morning Club with giving me a vision of what was still possible for me.

LR: Your essay about your father's aging especially speaks to me, as this is a theme I've been exploring as well. It really all starts with our Dads, doesn't it – our relationship with all the men in our lives, slippery or not?

PSR: In my case, although I have written about my father, that’s easier for me to do than to write about my mother, where the real conflict lies. But men. Yes. At least for me, most of the major decisions, choices, postures in my adult life were made in response to men.

LR: Since you teach at the college level, I imagine you need some pretty definite structure to your own writing time. Can you dish on where, when, how often, etc.?

PSR: This semester I’m not teaching so I have a really wonderful schedule, structured exactly as I like it: up at 4:30-5, write, meditate, move around words until 6. Breakfast, walk the dog, read the paper. Back at the desk from 9-12. Sometimes I’ll do a little more work in the afternoon, but essentially, I’m a morning person. Cooking is a vital part of my life and so every afternoon I go to the market and from 4 on, am involved in making dinner. I don’t strive for a particular number of pages, but I do need to run a few words through my fingers and my head every day. I thrive on structure and this semester I have it. There is no question but that teaching, especially college teaching, disrupts the creative cycle. I, at least, find it hard to switch gears. Also, since I teach creative writing, I have to shake my students’ words out of my head before approaching my own. And there’s no real boundary for the contemporary teacher: on any given day, I’ll get twenty to fifty e-mails from students, some in the middle of the night, and all requiring considerable response.

LR: What's on your reading table right now, and on the to-be-read list? And is it as frustrating to you as it is to me, that one never gets enough time to read everything one wants?

PSR: I consider my reading just as important as my writing— perhaps more so. I find I read entirely differently now from the way I used to: I really read like a writer, which means my reading is much more concentrated and if more intense infinitely more rewarding. I’ve been on a Richard Preston kick. He wrote The Wild Trees, about climbing the redwoods, an absolutely fantastic book. I read that a couple of years ago and this summer I caught up with his The Hot Zone and The Demon in the Freezer, books he calls part of his “black biology” series. I also love Simon Winchester and I’m just about to finish his latest, The Man Who Loved China. Those are all literary nonfiction. I have also been reading, from time to time, various “illness” memoirs as research for a project I’m working on.

In fiction, I’ve been indulging myself with Wallace Stegner (about whom I’m writing my Saturday Morning Club paper for December), one of my literary heartthrobs. I re-read Angle of Repose, a novel I greatly admire. Read Redemption, The Big Rock Candy Mountain and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, which is a collection of essays about the West. This is what I’ve been reading since July. I don’t exactly have a to-read list. I tend to pick things up as I go along. But I certainly agree, there is never enough time to read all the books one wants to. Recently I decided I need to re-read Norman Mailer, but I haven’t taken that on yet.

LR: What's next writing-wise?

PSR: I am working on a book-length project about assisting a friend through the initial terminal diagnosis to her death from uterine cancer. I have just received funding for this project from the Maine Arts Commission (a “Good Idea Grant”). It’s a little hard going because it’s intense, but I am moving on it. I have also been given her diaries by the family and I am going through this material to incorporate it into my text.