| 00:00:08 | From the Center for the Study and the Teaching of |
| 00:00:10 | Writing at The Ohio State University this is |
| 00:00:12 | Writers Talk. I'm Doug Dangler. Lee Martin is |
| 00:00:15 | the author of five novels including 2006's |
| 00:00:19 | The Bright Forever, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, |
| 00:00:22 | and River of Heaven, Quaker Town, and most recently |
| 00:00:25 | Break the Skin. He has written two memoirs and |
| 00:00:28 | a short story collection. He lives in Columbus, |
| 00:00:30 | Ohio, where he directs and teaches in the creative |
| 00:00:33 | writing MFA program at The Ohio State University. |
| 00:00:35 | Welcome, Lee Martin, to Writers Talk. |
| 00:00:39 | >>Thanks a lot, Doug. Good to be here. |
| 00:00:40 | >>Great. Well, I'm very happy you're here. |
| 00:00:42 | I read online that you really want to be introduced |
| 00:00:45 | with a line from a review of Break the Skin from |
| 00:00:48 | Publishers Weekly saying, "Here he is crackling |
| 00:00:50 | with dark deeds and bad intentions! Lee Martin." |
| 00:00:54 | So now you've been introduced that way. |
| 00:00:56 | >>Beautiful. Thank you so much. |
| 00:01:00 | >>And I tried to use the exclamation point that |
| 00:01:01 | was in it. So lets get to your dark deeds. Tell me |
| 00:01:03 | about Break the Skin. Tell me about the new book. |
| 00:01:05 | >>Well, in Break the Skin the premise is based |
| 00:01:09 | upon a revenge plot that goes wrong. Three women |
| 00:01:14 | are involved in a romantic triangle with another man. |
| 00:01:20 | |
| 00:01:21 | Well, two of the women are and the narrator, |
| 00:01:24 | Laney, is deeply devoted to one of those women, |
| 00:01:27 | Delila Daid. They become convinced the third woman, |
| 00:01:33 | |
| 00:01:33 | Rose, has placed a hex on them and the only way |
| 00:01:37 | to get rid of the hex is to kill Rose. Early in the book |
| 00:01:43 | |
| 00:01:44 | they decide that this is not a good idea so they |
| 00:01:46 | call that all off, but Laney finds out that it's harder |
| 00:01:50 | to get away from that plot than she thought it |
| 00:01:56 | would be and so the book does revolve around |
| 00:02:02 | this revenge plot of murder. Laney tried to |
| 00:02:04 | separate herself from that and finds out that |
| 00:02:07 | it's really hard to do that. |
| 00:02:09 | >>So this is based on what in your life? Love |
| 00:02:11 | triangles around you and being the subject of |
| 00:02:17 | this or this is just fiction? I'm not sure which. |
| 00:02:20 | >>Doug, this if what we call a novel and so this |
| 00:02:22 | is fiction, but it does have a basis in reality |
| 00:02:27 | in the respect that I was aware of a story of a |
| 00:02:29 | woman who had convinced these other people that a |
| 00:02:33 | young girl had placed a hex on all of them. |
| 00:02:36 | Really what brought me to the novel was trying to |
| 00:02:38 | figure out how in the world a woman could have |
| 00:02:42 | that much sway over other people to make them |
| 00:02:45 | believe that. It lead me to the story of the young |
| 00:02:48 | woman, a nineteen-year-old woman, upon whom |
| 00:02:51 | I base the character of Laney, who was a girl who |
| 00:02:56 | had never been in trouble, the sort of girl who was |
| 00:02:59 | fairly unremarkable and yet for some reason |
| 00:03:03 | found herself under the influence of this older |
| 00:03:05 | woman who convinced her that the hex was in place. |
| 00:03:09 | That's what really drew me to the subject matter |
| 00:03:12 | was I was really curious about how this could happen. |
| 00:03:16 | >>Ok. So you're writing to discover the answers |
| 00:03:20 | for yourself in a book like this? |
| 00:03:22 | >>Yeah. Usually I'm always writing out of some |
| 00:03:24 | curiosity that I have. I think that what keeps me |
| 00:03:27 | going is trying to figure things out so a lot of my |
| 00:03:34 | writing process involves just starting in the midst |
| 00:03:38 | of a story and seeing where I can take that each |
| 00:03:41 | day as I try to answer the questions that I have. |
| 00:03:44 | I have a feeling that if I make myself curious |
| 00:03:48 | I'll make the readers curious too. |
| 00:03:49 | >>What kinds of answers did you come to? |
| 00:03:51 | What did you write yourself into the answers? |
| 00:03:52 | Not to give away the plot, but what is it for you |
| 00:03:57 | now that you have written the book around the |
| 00:04:00 | idea of how can someone have this kind of |
| 00:04:01 | influence over other people? |
| 00:04:03 | >>Well one of my characters, the other narrator |
| 00:04:05 | of the book, is a woman in Texas named Betty |
| 00:04:08 | Ruiz or she goes by the name of Miss Baby |
| 00:04:10 | because she owns Miss Baby's Tats, a tattoo parlor. |
| 00:04:15 | Toward the end of the book she simply says that |
| 00:04:19 | it was all about wanting to matter to someone. |
| 00:04:23 | Wanting so badly to matter to someone that you |
| 00:04:26 | found yourself doing things that you never |
| 00:04:29 | thought you would do all for the sake of love. |
| 00:04:31 | What I found on the underside of these dark deeds |
| 00:04:35 | and evil intentions was the fact that it happens |
| 00:04:41 | |
| 00:04:42 | because people want to matter to other people and |
| 00:04:45 | so they go to extremes that they never thought |
| 00:04:47 | they would go to. So really it's a story of love |
| 00:04:51 | underneath all of that. |
| 00:04:54 | >>It's a love story. |
| 00:04:55 | >>It is. |
| 00:04:57 | >>A comforting love story. That's really interesting |
| 00:04:59 | that you say that its all about mattering, wanting |
| 00:05:01 | to matter to somebody else because I come from |
| 00:05:04 | a background of rhetoric persuasion, things like |
| 00:05:06 | this, and we're always thinking that it's the person |
| 00:05:09 | who has the ability to persuade others that is really |
| 00:05:13 | what the plot turns around, but this is the other way. |
| 00:05:16 | It's saying wanting to believe is that person wanting to |
| 00:05:21 | matter to that person is really what the world turns around. |
| 00:05:23 | >>Well, particularly in the case of Laney. She wants |
| 00:05:25 | to matter so much to Delilah Daid that she finds herself |
| 00:05:31 | |
| 00:05:32 | allowing this belief and the hex to exist. Once she |
| 00:05:36 | allows the space for that, then she's on a road that |
| 00:05:42 | |
| 00:05:42 | is going to be hard for her to get off of and she tries |
| 00:05:47 | her best, but events have been set in motion at that |
| 00:05:53 | |
| 00:05:54 | point and they have to come to their end. |
| 00:05:56 | >>Right. And from the position she's narrating from, |
| 00:05:58 | she actually remarks on that once or twice in the |
| 00:06:01 | novel. "Had I known then.." and she's doing that sort of |
| 00:06:04 | foreshadowing which I found interesting. |
| 00:06:06 | Now you were born and raised in a small Illinois |
| 00:06:08 | town, probably similar to a lot of Ohio towns and |
| 00:06:10 | you describe it as, "I'm connected to the rhythm |
| 00:06:13 | of the seasons. The stark beauty of its landscape, |
| 00:06:16 | the come and go of its people." The connection is |
| 00:06:20 | evident in Break the Skin. There's a lot of- |
| 00:06:21 | Landscape plays a roll in a lot of the book. |
| 00:06:26 | I'd like to hear more about how you see your |
| 00:06:29 | background as appearing in your writing. |
| 00:06:31 | For example, I'm an Ohio native and I have to say |
| 00:06:33 | that I'm not always aware of the stark beauty of |
| 00:06:35 | the landscape of the Midwest. What is it that you're |
| 00:06:38 | referring to there? What in the stark beauty, the |
| 00:06:42 | come and go of the people, the rhythm of the |
| 00:06:44 | seasons? How are you connected to that and |
| 00:06:46 | how does it show up in the writing? |
| 00:06:48 | >>Well, my father was a farmer in southeastern |
| 00:06:50 | Illinois and my mother was a grade school teacher |
| 00:06:55 | and because my father was a farmer, I was, from a |
| 00:06:58 | very early age, attuned to the changing of the |
| 00:07:02 | seasons, the way weather affects the crops, the |
| 00:07:06 | way the landscape changes throughout the seasons, |
| 00:07:10 | that sort of thing. Once I lived away from the |
| 00:07:16 | Midwest, as I have for a while, I've been back here |
| 00:07:19 | for ten years here in Columbus, but once I lived away |
| 00:07:23 | from the Midwest I started to miss it. I started |
| 00:07:27 | to miss the changing seasons. I was living in |
| 00:07:29 | Texas for quite awhile and I missed the changing |
| 00:07:32 | of the seasons. So now that I'm back, it's all very |
| 00:07:37 | poignant to me and so if I take drive across I-70 for |
| 00:07:41 | example, through Indiana and into my native Illinois, |
| 00:07:45 | even if it's the dead of winter, I'm just charmed by |
| 00:07:50 | the landscape. I love the brown fields, I love the |
| 00:07:55 | snow falling in the dead furrows of the fields and |
| 00:08:00 | that changes as the seasons change and I do find |
| 00:08:02 | a stark beauty in the Midwestern landscape and I |
| 00:08:07 | find that also in the people of the Midwest. |
| 00:08:10 | I've been on a campaign here lately for |
| 00:08:13 | literature from the Midwest, which I think has |
| 00:08:16 | its own place in our canon these days. |
| 00:08:19 | >>It's interesting in this book because you've |
| 00:08:21 | got somebody from the Midwest, Laney. |
| 00:08:24 | All of these characters seem to be, Laney and the |
| 00:08:26 | group in Illinois seem to be natives and then |
| 00:08:29 | Miss Baby is in Texas but the description of |
| 00:08:32 | Texas is very different within that. It's othered |
| 00:08:36 | for a couple of reasons. One is that she's a |
| 00:08:39 | different ethnicity than the rest. I was curious |
| 00:08:41 | about when you started writing this book, what |
| 00:08:44 | was the research into that? Did you speak Spanish? |
| 00:08:47 | Is that something you picked up? Is it just something |
| 00:08:49 | you researched enough for the book? What's the |
| 00:08:51 | necessary alteration for you as a writer to do that? |
| 00:08:57 | |
| 00:08:57 | >>I have studied Spanish, but I wouldn't say that |
| 00:09:01 | I speak it. As I say in the acknowledgements page, |
| 00:09:04 | I know just enough of it to make me dangerous and |
| 00:09:06 | so I relied upon one of my colleagues at OSU to help |
| 00:09:11 | me with some of the Spanish. I lived in Texas for |
| 00:09:13 | five years and this book actually began with Miss |
| 00:09:16 | Baby's section even though in the finished book it |
| 00:09:19 | appears about a third of the way in. The first scene |
| 00:09:22 | I wrote was Miss Baby coming out of her tattoo parlor |
| 00:09:26 | one evening and finding a man on the street corner |
| 00:09:30 | who eventually tells her that he doesn't know who |
| 00:09:34 | he is or how he got to Denton, Texas. Miss Baby, |
| 00:09:40 | seizing an opportunity that stuns her once it happens, |
| 00:09:44 | tells him that he's her husband and now lets go home |
| 00:09:48 | and they do go home and over the period of weeks |
| 00:09:53 | and months that they're together they start to fall in |
| 00:09:57 | love. To answer your question, it's simply a matter of |
| 00:10:01 | immersing myself in the culture of the place. I carried |
| 00:10:05 | with me everything I knew from that part of Texas and |
| 00:10:09 | that particular town in Texas, in that particular corner |
| 00:10:13 | where Miss Baby discovered Lester Stipp. |
| 00:10:17 | >>But there isn't a Miss Baby's Tattoo Parlor? |
| 00:10:20 | >>No, there is not a Miss Baby's Tattoo Parlor. |
| 00:10:21 | >>I was just curious how closely you adhered to |
| 00:10:24 | that because there's the old adage, you can tell |
| 00:10:26 | me your opinion on this, write what you know. |
| 00:10:30 | Is that something that you make a lot of use of? |
| 00:10:35 | Is that something you repeat to students because |
| 00:10:37 | you're writing about something which you know? |
| 00:10:40 | There always seems to be a double side to that. |
| 00:10:43 | It could be good, it could be bad. |
| 00:10:45 | >>Yeah, I agree with that. I do tell students to |
| 00:10:48 | write about what's genuine to them, what's authentic |
| 00:10:50 | to them as I try to do in my own work. That doesn't |
| 00:10:54 | necessarily mean the experiences that you've lived |
| 00:10:56 | through. Often when those are put on the page by |
| 00:10:59 | young writers they don't leave enough room for |
| 00:11:02 | invention and the imagination, they just try to duplicate |
| 00:11:06 | the facts of their lives. It often means writing from the |
| 00:11:11 | conflicted feelings that we all experience as we grow up. |
| 00:11:17 | |
| 00:11:19 | The combination of sadness and anger, the combination |
| 00:11:25 | |
| 00:11:27 | of humiliation and pride, whatever those might be and |
| 00:11:30 | so sometimes it's a good idea to find a way to look |
| 00:11:35 | away from the self, but to always stay in touch with |
| 00:11:39 | those moments from your past that brought out very |
| 00:11:43 | conflicted emotional feelings in you. That's what I try |
| 00:11:47 | to impress upon my students. |
| 00:11:51 | >>So, reach for the painful, conflicted moments. |
| 00:11:53 | >>Yeah, well you can describe it as painful if |
| 00:11:56 | you'd like, but conflicted in whatever way. |
| 00:11:59 | >>How do students generally respond to that? |
| 00:12:01 | Is that something I'm guessing MFA students |
| 00:12:03 | really take in and sort or cherish because that's |
| 00:12:06 | something as a writer you have this romantic |
| 00:12:09 | notion of chasing the conflict within your own |
| 00:12:12 | life and using it for art. |
| 00:12:14 | >>Well, I think by the time the students get to |
| 00:12:17 | our MFA program they've pretty much embraced |
| 00:12:18 | what Faulkner called the human heart in conflict. |
| 00:12:22 | Really the kind of thing that I'm talking about |
| 00:12:27 | happens most often in my undergraduate classes. |
| 00:12:31 | >>When did you start writing? Where did you get your start? |
| 00:12:34 | >>I always wrote, not well, but I wrote. I started |
| 00:12:40 | writing when I was a kid, spent an afternoon deciding |
| 00:12:44 | I was going to write the next great Bobbsey Twins |
| 00:12:48 | novel. That took about an hour, knocked that one |
| 00:12:50 | off. I started seriously writing when I was in college |
| 00:12:55 | and I started writing poems, which I think a lot of people |
| 00:13:01 | do. Those angst-driven teenage poems. |
| 00:13:03 | >>Again, reaching into the conflict. |
| 00:13:04 | >>Exactly. The angst of lost love and aimless |
| 00:13:09 | youth, etcetera etcetera, but eventually I turned |
| 00:13:12 | my attention to short fiction. I did a Bachelors |
| 00:13:18 | |
| 00:13:18 | degree and a Masters degree at Eastern Illinois |
| 00:13:21 | University and then worked for three years and |
| 00:13:23 | decided that it was time to get serious about |
| 00:13:26 | studying writing and that's when I went to the |
| 00:13:28 | University of Arkansas for their MFA program. |
| 00:13:29 | >>What made that turn for you? What was the |
| 00:13:31 | idea that it's time to get serious about writing? |
| 00:13:33 | You weren't happy with the day job? You list a |
| 00:13:35 | number of day jobs: flipping burgers at Burger |
| 00:13:37 | King or restaurants and things like that. |
| 00:13:41 | >>Yeah, and at the time I was working a full time |
| 00:13:43 | job as a coordinator for a federal program that |
| 00:13:46 | helped students get into college, but I was |
| 00:13:51 | always writing. I was writing in the evenings |
| 00:13:53 | and I decided that this MFA program might |
| 00:13:59 | be a good thing. It would deepen my study of |
| 00:14:02 | craft and it would also start me on a path of |
| 00:14:06 | what I would always wanted to do, which was teach. |
| 00:14:09 | >>When did you start calling yourself a writer |
| 00:14:13 | then? Was it right around this time? Was it before |
| 00:14:14 | or after the Bachelors you called yourself a writer. |
| 00:14:17 | I'm curious because you had a full time job doing |
| 00:14:20 | something else and most people say oh, I'm my |
| 00:14:21 | full time job when you ask them their self-identity. |
| 00:14:25 | When did that switch for you to talk place for |
| 00:14:27 | you to say, "I'm a writer now?" |
| 00:14:29 | >>Well, I think at that time I probably wouldn't |
| 00:14:30 | have answered the question what do you do by |
| 00:14:33 | saying I'm a writer. I imagine I didn't start doing |
| 00:14:38 | that until I actually started publishing. |
| 00:14:39 | >>The advice that people often get and the advice |
| 00:14:45 | that you had talked about writing what you know, |
| 00:14:48 | I'm curious about how you turn that into the |
| 00:14:51 | process on yourself and whether... You've only written |
| 00:14:56 | a couple things. You've written memoir, short stories, |
| 00:14:58 | longer novels. What you tend to gravitate toward is |
| 00:15:04 | novels, which takes away from memoir. What is the |
| 00:15:09 | turn there for you? Why the turn towards memoir if |
| 00:15:11 | you're more in a fictive mode? |
| 00:15:14 | >>Well, I really love working in both forms. |
| 00:15:16 | I started as a fiction writer and then when I |
| 00:15:20 | went to the University of North Texas to teach, |
| 00:15:23 | they assigned me a workshop in creative |
| 00:15:26 | non-fiction. I thought well, I should try to |
| 00:15:29 | write some of this if I'm going to teach other |
| 00:15:31 | people how to write this. I wrote an essay called |
| 00:15:33 | "From Our House," which was the first time I had |
| 00:15:36 | written directly about my father and the farming |
| 00:15:42 | accident that cost him both of his hands when I |
| 00:15:43 | was about a year old. That essay opened up |
| 00:15:47 | material that I had approached indirectly in all |
| 00:15:53 | of my short stories, but for the first time I was |
| 00:15:55 | writing about it and claiming it as my experience. |
| 00:15:57 | I wrote about four essays and before I realized I |
| 00:16:00 | had a narrative arc and I had a book and that |
| 00:16:02 | became my first memoir, From Our House. |
| 00:16:05 | Now I find myself going back and forth between |
| 00:16:09 | the two genres because there's just certain |
| 00:16:12 | material that I want to own and I want to |
| 00:16:16 | announce that is it my experiences that I'm |
| 00:16:19 | putting on the page because that's what I really |
| 00:16:22 | got out of writing From Our House. The first time |
| 00:16:25 | of actually stepping forward and saying this is |
| 00:16:28 | who I was when I was a young man. I was in this |
| 00:16:32 | very difficult relationship with my father, who |
| 00:16:35 | turned violent after his accident, but he and I |
| 00:16:39 | eventually came to reconciliation and redemption. |
| 00:16:43 | There was something empowering, just claiming |
| 00:16:47 | that as mine. That's what got me into non-fiction, |
| 00:16:52 | it's what's kept me there and it's what I enjoy |
| 00:16:55 | about going back and forth between the two forms. |
| 00:16:58 | >>What was that like writing that first thing you |
| 00:17:02 | said? Is that part of what led you to the redemption |
| 00:17:06 | part? Was writing something that helped you through |
| 00:17:08 | that or was that something that was separate from and |
| 00:17:10 | you were able to use writing to describe the experience? |
| 00:17:13 | >>Well, I always tell people that once somebody |
| 00:17:15 | decides they are going to write a memoir, that |
| 00:17:18 | person has pretty much accepted the fact that the |
| 00:17:24 | writing will give them a way of thinking about |
| 00:17:27 | the experience and a way of sorting through it |
| 00:17:31 | and making some kind of sense out of it. |
| 00:17:34 | By the time I wrote From Our House I was ready |
| 00:17:37 | to face the material so it wasn't a hard thing to |
| 00:17:40 | start writing. I don't like to think of writing as |
| 00:17:43 | a therapeutic process although I think I can be. |
| 00:17:47 | I just know that by the end of my writing of From |
| 00:17:51 | Our House I was a slightly different person than |
| 00:17:53 | I was when I began the book. |
| 00:17:55 | >>Now we mentioned The Bright Forever from |
| 00:17:58 | 2006 for which you were a Pulitzer Prize finalist. |
| 00:18:00 | What was the experience like, the process like, |
| 00:18:03 | of learning about that? Was it a phone call, e-mail, |
| 00:18:05 | sky writing over your house? How do they tell you |
| 00:18:08 | and how did you respond to it? |
| 00:18:12 | >>Well, it's really funny because you have no |
| 00:18:15 | idea this news is coming. I was observing a |
| 00:18:19 | graduate students class at Ohio State that |
| 00:18:24 | afternoon and when I got back to my office my |
| 00:18:26 | inbox was full of congratulatory e-mails and |
| 00:18:30 | the first one was from a former student who |
| 00:18:33 | said did you know that The Bright Forever is |
| 00:18:37 | a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize? Well no, I didn't |
| 00:18:41 | know and I thought it was like the National Book |
| 00:18:44 | Awards where there would be five finalists and |
| 00:18:46 | then in a months time there'd be a ceremony |
| 00:18:49 | where the winner would be announced, but |
| 00:18:52 | that's not the way it works with the Pulitzer Prize. |
| 00:18:55 | The winner is notified. The two finalists are not |
| 00:18:59 | called. They find out through their friends who |
| 00:19:05 | read it online and then within a few weeks I got |
| 00:19:10 | a letter from the President of Columbia University |
| 00:19:13 | where the awards are done and a congratulatory |
| 00:19:17 | letter, but that was the extent of it. |
| 00:19:20 | >>Sounds a little anticlimactic. |
| 00:19:23 | >>There's nothing anticlimactic about it, Doug. |
| 00:19:29 | It was a fantastic moment. |
| 00:19:32 | >>Good. Well I'll remember it when I get mine. |
| 00:19:34 | >>You do that. |
| 00:19:36 | >>Since I've never published anything, I figure |
| 00:19:39 | I'm sure it's on its way. What's your best advice |
| 00:19:42 | for a writer? What's the advice you seem to come |
| 00:19:47 | back to and I guess in a general sense? I know |
| 00:19:48 | much good advice comes, well probably, most |
| 00:19:50 | comes to specifics when you respond to a piece, |
| 00:19:52 | but what do you think is the most useful advice |
| 00:19:53 | you've gotten or given? |
| 00:19:55 | >>The best advice I ever read about writing, and |
| 00:19:59 | this is what I pass on to everybody, comes from |
| 00:20:02 | Isak Dinesen who said, "I write a little each day |
| 00:20:05 | without hope, without despair." I think that that |
| 00:20:09 | is a very, very wise thing. What we need to do is |
| 00:20:11 | forget about the result. In other words, forget |
| 00:20:17 | |
| 00:20:19 | about publication and all the things that come |
| 00:20:23 | with that and become more interested in the |
| 00:20:26 | process, the day-to-day process of exploring |
| 00:20:29 | material no matter the form that you're working |
| 00:20:31 | in. If you can do that, then I think the result will |
| 00:20:36 | come. I'm a firm believer that if what brought |
| 00:20:39 | us to that writing in the first place was not |
| 00:20:42 | because we wanted to publish, it was because |
| 00:20:47 | we have a love of language and we understood |
| 00:20:50 | in someway that language could help us better |
| 00:20:53 | understand the world around us. That labor of |
| 00:20:56 | love of just following the words on the page |
| 00:21:01 | is what continues to satisfy me in all the years |
| 00:21:04 | I've done this and I hope it's what satisfies my |
| 00:21:07 | students when they do it as well. |
| 00:21:11 | >>Let's get into the specifics about that. |
| 00:21:14 | You said that you get into the process. You love |
| 00:21:17 | the process. What's a good day for you in writing? |
| 00:21:22 | How do you judge? I know you say no hope, |
| 00:21:23 | no despair, which is a pretty blanket statement |
| 00:21:26 | in some ways. What is that specifically? Do you say |
| 00:21:28 | I'm not going to have hope or despair, |
| 00:21:31 | but I'm going to have four pages? |
| 00:21:33 | >>No. I don't set any goals for myself as far as |
| 00:21:36 | page, word count, anything like that. A good day |
| 00:21:38 | for me, which will come soon this summer, I'm sure, |
| 00:21:44 | now that I'm almost done with teaching, a good |
| 00:21:48 | day would be three to four hours of work where |
| 00:21:50 | I find myself completely immersed in the |
| 00:21:53 | characters and their situations that I'm following |
| 00:21:56 | on the page. If I get to the end of that time and |
| 00:22:00 | I feel that I've gone more deeply into the characters |
| 00:22:05 | and their situations, then I'm very, very satisfied. |
| 00:22:09 | >>You're sitting at your desk? You're typing or are |
| 00:22:15 | |
| 00:22:15 | you using a computer or long hand? |
| 00:22:17 | >>Well sometimes I'll start long hand because I |
| 00:22:20 | really feel that there is something about the |
| 00:22:22 | movement of the hand across the page that helps |
| 00:22:24 | me capture the rhythm of the prose that I'm going |
| 00:22:27 | to use in whatever I'm working on, but eventually |
| 00:22:30 | I'll switch to the computer. |
| 00:22:33 | >>What do you like? I've always got this image |
| 00:22:35 | of authors sitting at the desk and they're typing |
| 00:22:38 | away. I remember it used to be Steven J. Cannell |
| 00:22:40 | would have that at the end of each of his six million |
| 00:22:43 | scripts that he cast out of a typewriter. I've also had |
| 00:22:46 | this idea that you're sitting there and sort of talking |
| 00:22:48 | back to your characters and inhabiting. Is that |
| 00:22:51 | something that happens for you or is that just all |
| 00:22:57 | upstairs, it never gets verbalized, you're very quiet |
| 00:23:01 | sitting there not arguing? There seems to be a divide |
| 00:23:03 | among authors on how they do that. |
| 00:23:05 | >>I'm very quiet. I'm just trying to listen to my |
| 00:23:07 | characters. I do a lot of staring out the window until |
| 00:23:10 | I hear the line I need or I figure out a little problem |
| 00:23:16 | |
| 00:23:18 | in the narrative that I've been struggling with, but |
| 00:23:21 | I don't say much to my characters. |
| 00:23:25 | >>You're an active blogger at LeeMartinAuthor.com, |
| 00:23:29 | which I found really interesting because your books |
| 00:23:33 | are categorized as serious fiction and there are a lot |
| 00:23:36 | of views I think by people doing serious fiction about |
| 00:23:41 | the Internet. It's Satan; it's bad for authors. Do you |
| 00:23:42 | see that as a distinctly separate genre? Is it a variant |
| 00:23:45 | of memoir for you when you're blogging about things |
| 00:23:47 | in your life? How do you feel about that? |
| 00:23:50 | >>First of all I would say that I was very resistant to |
| 00:23:56 | the idea of a blog, but the advice was if you're going |
| 00:24:01 | to have website, a blog is a necessary |
| 00:24:04 | component of the website. |
| 00:24:07 | >>You almost said evil, you said component. |
| 00:24:09 | >>But once I started doing the blog, I found that |
| 00:24:12 | I really enjoyed it. I look at it sometimes, as you |
| 00:24:14 | say, a variant of memoir. When I'm writing about, |
| 00:24:18 | for example, a recent post I did about the pronunciation |
| 00:24:24 | |
| 00:24:25 | of the word peony, the flower, which we always said |
| 00:24:31 | piney in southeastern Illinois. That lead me to a |
| 00:24:36 | piece that would be very close to something I would |
| 00:24:39 | do in memoir, but other times I'm writing about the |
| 00:24:43 | craft of writing or writing about the teaching of |
| 00:24:46 | writing. I find that the blog becomes an extension |
| 00:24:48 | of the conversations that are going on in my |
| 00:24:51 | workshops and among my students. Sometimes |
| 00:24:54 | something's said in a class that I feel we didn't |
| 00:24:57 | get at as well as we could have and so I'll write |
| 00:25:00 | about that. I'm really enjoying this way of engaging |
| 00:25:03 | with readers either about personal stories or about |
| 00:25:09 | pedagogical concerns or just the craft itself. |
| 00:25:13 | >>I was surprised by how long some of the entries |
| 00:25:16 | were because I thought this is a significant |
| 00:25:18 | investment because you're also on Twitter, for |
| 00:25:21 | example. The Tweets are by necessity 140 characters, |
| 00:25:26 | but you're directing them back to the blog, which are |
| 00:25:28 | really long. To me that's a really interesting split |
| 00:25:33 | because those audiences are so different, you know. |
| 00:25:35 | If you're reading Tweets like check, check, check, |
| 00:25:38 | check, check and if you're reading something that |
| 00:25:42 | long you're really into the craft or so I assume. The |
| 00:25:45 | last question I have now is your blog and your book |
| 00:25:49 | of short stories are both titled The Least You Need |
| 00:25:54 | to Know. What attracts you to that phase? |
| 00:25:55 | What is the least you need to know? |
| 00:25:57 | >>Well, the phrase comes from the title story of |
| 00:26:01 | my first story collection, a story in which a son |
| 00:26:04 | writes about a father whose job is to clean up |
| 00:26:07 | crime scenes after the police have released them. |
| 00:26:12 | In the midst of the story we run up against the |
| 00:26:15 | idea of how much we can stand to know about the |
| 00:26:20 | people that we love. The assumption is that there |
| 00:26:23 | are always things beneath the surface. The cover |
| 00:26:27 | of that book is a painting of a closed door, which |
| 00:26:33 | |
| 00:26:33 | I hope invites the reader to think about what's on |
| 00:26:38 | the other side of that door and how much courage |
| 00:26:41 | does it take to walk through and see what's on the |
| 00:26:44 | other side of that door. I like it as the title of the |
| 00:26:47 | blog because I think anybody engaged in the craft |
| 00:26:50 | of writing or the profession of teaching is always |
| 00:26:55 | coming up against those same questions of how |
| 00:26:58 | can we open the doorways to the things that we |
| 00:27:01 | might not want to talk about but need to talk about. |
| 00:27:04 | >>Is there a danger for you as an author in |
| 00:27:06 | knowing too much about a character on the other |
| 00:27:08 | side? You said, ok I can't write about this person |
| 00:27:11 | because I'm no longer interested. |
| 00:27:13 | >>Yeah, absolutely. I think that if you know too |
| 00:27:16 | much about the character too early, that character |
| 00:27:18 | can only be that person that you've decided he or |
| 00:27:20 | she is and what I'd rather see in a piece of fiction |
| 00:27:23 | is a character who's capable of surprise as they |
| 00:27:26 | evolve through the circumstances of the narrative. |
| 00:27:32 | |
| 00:27:32 | >>That leads you to the idea of you don't work your |
| 00:27:36 | arcs out in advance. You're surprised by the endings. |
| 00:27:39 | >>The first novel I wrote I gave it a classic |
| 00:27:44 | three-act structure and I knew what I was heading |
| 00:27:48 | toward at the end of each of the three acts. Since |
| 00:27:51 | then I've really operated on this principle of curiosity. |
| 00:27:54 | Even though, say in The Bright Forever when I |
| 00:27:58 | knew that the book would have a certain arc to |
| 00:28:01 | it, I didn't have any idea how I was going to get |
| 00:28:04 | from one point to another. I'm really just trying |
| 00:28:07 | to make myself curious and satisfy my curiosity. |
| 00:28:11 | >>Ok. So Break the Skin is satisfying curiosity for |
| 00:28:13 | you. From now on all these books are going to be |
| 00:28:16 | satisfying your curiosity so we just have to find out |
| 00:28:19 | what you're curious about and that's how we get a book. |
| 00:28:21 | >>There you go. Ask me and I'll tell you. |
| 00:28:24 | >>Alright, well thank-you very much for being |
| 00:28:27 | here on Writers Talk, Lee Martin. Appreciate it. |
| 00:28:30 | >>Thank you, Doug. I appreciate it too. |
| 00:28:32 | >>And Lee Martin's books are widely available, |
| 00:28:34 | including the Writers Talk section of The Ohio |
| 00:28:37 | State University bookstore. That's a good place |
| 00:28:40 | to get it. And from The Center for the Study and |
| 00:28:41 | the Teaching of Writing at The Ohio State University, |
| 00:28:43 | this is Doug Dangler saying, "Keep writing." |
Note : Transcripts are compiled from uncorrected captions
