Frequently Asked Questions about the Writing Life
Q: Have you always been a storyteller?
A: I have always had something to say. Some might call me talkative. So yes, I have always been a storyteller.
Q: Where did you get your love for stories?
A: I have memories of my mother reading out loud. Sometimes she was reading directly to us – storybooks or fairy tales or cautionary tales – and sometimes I caught her reading articles out loud. For the sound of the words, I guess. And my dad – well if you’ve ever met my dad – you’d know – he IS a storyteller. I’ve grown up hearing him tell stories about his youth in the Philippines and WWII and if not that, the history of the Philippines.
Q: Do you remember the first story you ever wrote? When was it and what was it about?
A: The first story I remember writing is about Tommy the Teabag. I was in sixth grade – Ms. Paddock’s class. I wrote it on bright yellow loose-leaf paper with black lines – it was the seventies and everything was in bright colors. The story was about this Tommy Teabag who lived in the back of a Lipton Tea box and his conflict was waiting to get to the front of the box, and knowing he was supposed to be “destined” to make a good cup of tea. He didn’t like being told what to do or be, so he escaped from the box and set out to do other things. He tried being a tee shirt, a tee pee, a golf tee. He was miserable and not very good at any of it. In the end, he went back to his people. He brewed himself into a hot cup of tea.
Q: So even then, you were writing about identity.
A: I guess so.
Q: So did you major in Creative Writing?
A: No. I was discouraged by my high school counselor, Mr. Foote. I was told there would be no career there and that I should pursue something tangible like journalism. That way I could still write, but earn a living too. I remember being told that Connie Chung was someone successful in the field.
Q: You pursued journalism?
A: No. I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and apparently journalism was a very hot major and the classes filled like crazy. So I started taking courses in Radio-TV-Film as a back up and I ended up with a BA in Communications. Remember, Connie Chung?
Q: Were you still writing stories?
A: I was submitting work to the Creative Writing Workshop in the English Department in Madison. You had to submit work to get in. So I did it and I surprised myself because my teachers – Kelly Cherry, Lorrie Moore and Jay Clayton – all let me in. I was honored and scared.
Q: What did you write about?
A: I can’t remember. I’ve blocked those stories from myself. But to be honest, I think they were about unlikable boyfriends. I can still hear workshop peers asking, “What does she see in him anyway?” I’m not sure what my teachers saw in that work, but they must have seen potential there. I’m grateful for that.
Q: What was the most valuable writing lesson you learned from your teachers back then?
A: How to be patient with myself and my peers. How to give room for mistakes and to see potential. How to revise. In grad school, my mentor Steven Schwartz used to talk about the difference between illustration and illumination. When I look back at that time of my life, that’s what I remember – to have patience with myself and other writers, and to focus on illuminating some truth.
Q: So then did you go to grad school right away?
A: I took seven years away and I worked in the film business, making television commercials and little films.
Q: You wrote scripts?
A: No, I was a script and continuity supervisor. It was my job to watch all the action and make sure that the dialog and the action matched from one take to the next, from one angle to the next. It was my job to know what was going on at all times and to record it.
Q: Did that job help your writing?
A: Of course it did. It made me pay attention to details. It made me use all my senses to do that. I can hear twenty conversations at one time and tell you what’s going on. I can remember action and words verbatim. I can locate the action and even filter where the light was coming from. THAT freaks my students out.
Q: What made you decide to go to grad school?
A: I didn’t want to grow old and follow a path – say filmmaking – and then wonder about this desire I had to write books. Could I have done it? I wanted to spend some time writing them. Then I figured I could go on with my life.
Q: What happened?
A: I couldn’t stop writing. I loved it. For a while, after I graduated from Colorado State University, I went back to the film business. Even as I was teaching as a Visiting Fiction writer at Old Dominion University – I was still getting calls for film shoots. But in the end, my love was for writing stories and sharing/mentoring how to do that with young writers.
Q: Do you regret waiting seven years to go back to grad school?
A: I regret nothing. Everything that I’ve done, all the people I’ve met, all the places I’ve moved to and all my experiences, have lead me to this moment in my life and that is a great thing.
Q: You’ve been working with the Lolas – surviving Comfort Women of WWII -- for a long time now. When are you going to finish that book?
A: That’s the hardest and most heart-filled project I’ve taken on. I have over thirty hours of interviews and footage, millions of notes and journal pages and photographs. I’m responsible for the stories of fifteen amazing women and I don’t want to just spit those stories out – I need to consider them, process them, make sure I’ve got the facts down. It will be done when it gets done.
Q: But what about the Japanese government? Wasn’t your mission to help them document the stories in order to help with their claim?
A: Oh, you mean with the formal apology and the reparations? The Japanese government has been stubbornly and systematically refusing the victims of WWII their apologies. At first, I wanted to address this in the book. But I’ve come to realize that they may never do that and what is more important than their apology is knowing the truth and writing it down in a responsible and cohesive way. That what I am doing is contributing to the documentation of their truth – and that becomes more important than anything else. Leaving an accurate and responsible document.
Q: And you’ve also started writing a new book?
A: Angel de la Luna. I’m into it. I think its going to combine all these issues I’ve been researching and wondering about and it will put to practice all the craft I’ve been pushing in the classroom and in the revision of ONE TRIBE. And all of it is going to come through the stories of this young girl and her relationship with her mom.
Q: You sometimes talk about a writing habit. Have you established one and if so does it ever change?
A: I have a writing habit. But how I practice it, I’m finding changes with each project, with each book. I tell my students that my first book was written mostly on intuition and then I went back and revised the book using tools I had learned in MFA School. But the second one, this ONE TRIBE, was really a struggle between form and substance and I found my intuition working hand in hand with craft. They were partners. And with this third book, I feel like a dancer who has been practicing her plies and jumps and pirouettes before the dance, focusing on placement, and balance and form, and once she gets to the dance, forgets what she knows, stops thinking and dances. I have taken all that I’ve learned and thrown it away, and I’m dancing. So far, Angel de la Luna is coming from a place where the craft and the tools have become part of my intuition. I’m just writing and I’m enjoying this process. I’m liking the world that is surfacing and the characters. I’m loving them. And all of this is completely irrelevant when it comes to the LOLA essays – that body of work is about the mind, spirit and the body and I am very careful to take care of my own self as I delve into the tragic lives and experiences of women and war. I get tired sometimes, and I have to stop working. I nap or I pray or I meditate. I take breaks to replenish my mind, body, spirit and then I go back into it. Very different.
Q: So what is your advice to young writers?
A: I am always encouraging my students to take risks and to go to scary places in their writing – and scary places may take form in the material they write, or the history of their lives or their own internal issues or scary places might have to do with taking on new forms, techniques and abandoning safe habits – or scary places might deal with turning within and trusting yourself. But to grow and to make the writing matter you’ve got to take risks.
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