Will you tell us about your upcoming book?
In 2013, I started writing Really Truly because I was interested in “story”: What is story? For me, I found that it isn’t anything like plot but, instead, develops from a significant incident or problem that insists on its own importance — and on the meaning I can discover in writing about it. The first piece I wrote was “Trail,” about two men whose lives affected mine one morning in Griffith Park as I was hiking there. I wanted that incident to be the story; I wanted the resonance of the moment to matter. I didn’t intend to write autobiographies. What do we have, though, but our own lives as material? So, as I moved on with the work, it became about my life. But I hope the experiences will echo the reader’s life, too.
I’m delighted that Green Tara Press is publishing Really Truly, this book of unusual autobiographies, short prose pieces (one to three pages long) that center on memories, experiences, responses to what life has tossed at me — the stuff that demands we face ourselves and become human beings. The pieces are only vaguely chronological; each piece is its own thing. The connecting tissue is in the title: These are really truly mine.
Is there anything you’d like to say to your readers and fans?
My great wish for any reader of my work is that the reader be inspired to write her/his life with as much verve, intensity and authenticity as possible. We need, desperately, one another’s stories, however you choose to define “story.” We’re bombarded by media’s version of human experience, but that doesn’t include your specific, precious, one and only self and your experience, does it?
If money were not an object, what would you be doing right now?
There will never be a time when money is “no object.” Money is inextricably involved in my writing life. I have to earn enough to pay rent, buy groceries, pay the gas and electric bills, have auto insurance — everybody knows about those responsibilities. I’ve never yearned for a lot of money, but I do need to cover expenses and have a bit, too, for a meal in a nice restaurant, a new dress, a great birthday present for a friend.
Over the years, I’ve become grateful that I have to earn my own way. As a devout introvert, teaching has pulled me into a world of creative people whose work and lives I value. They pay me for my writing workshops; for editing poetry and novels and non-fiction — whatever they care enough about to show me; sometimes for readings — how can I ever thank them, honor them, for trusting me with their creative work? By keeping a balance between my psyche and my outer work; by continuing to believe in the force of writing, whatever form that takes. The Word has always had great power. It still does.
Money is an issue only if it’s in conflict with one’s fate.
