knew without really understanding it that I needed to be there and that I would have been out of my element in a Southern California high school. So at age ten I began lobbying my parents to let me go to school overseas. Two years later, they finally agreed. Best move I ever made, because the Irish culture is one that values writing as a craft and I was mentored by wise teachers. I ultimately graduated from the National University of Ireland in Galway and embarked on a journalism career.
Q. What kind of journalism?
A. I would have been useless as an objective news reporter, because everything reminds me of a story. I loved anything that allowed for narrative and digression--interviewing people, especially about the work they did, being a columnist, writing feature articles. Over the years, I also began writing for magazines, worked as a script reviewer, and took up editing. By the time I moved back to California, I’d discovered that I loved writing about pretty much every topic but sports. So as I wrote for other publications, I was branching out into such subjects as food, economics, political satire, education, nature writing, and humor. I even loved writing about automotive, despite the fact that I don’t drive.
Q. Do you struggle with writer’s block? If so, how do you get through it?
A. I did in my early twenties. I used to obsess over creating the perfect conditions in order to write. Then a wonderful, awful thing happened—I got my first writing job and with that came deadlines. I remember being paralyzed for most of the first day, just staring in bafflement at a blank page, looking up at the clock in my house, and realizing that in two hours I had to turn in my copy.
And here’s the thing: I was still wearing my nightgown, sitting amid dirty breakfast dishes, holding my infant son, and it was three o’clock. Something clicked and I started typing. This was all pre-computer and no one of my age then could afford the luxury of a phone in the house, let alone a car. So with just minutes to spare, I took off running down Shop Street in Galway, my nightgown tucked into jeans, the baby strapped to my chest, my unbrushable hair flying out in all directions and the article clutched in one hand. But I’ll tell you, after that, I was able to write anywhere, anytime, no matter what my mood or condition.
Q. You’ve had a varied writing career, from children’s book author, essayist, columnist for Salon, poet, journalist, playwright, educational writer. Is there a particular genre that is your favorite, one you would like to do more of or one you haven’t done yet but would like to?
A. I absolutely live for story—from avidly reading masters of the craft to enjoying people’s anecdotes and remembrances. I also can’t fall asleep unless I’m listening to some sort of narrative on Stitcher. Yet I’m much more drawn to dialogue and vignette than to plot and the resolution of conflict. And most of my writing has been nonfiction that somehow veered into narrative, like a distracted cyclist going into a fishpond. So I’d like to keep experimenting with the story form and trust it to land me in the middle of somewhere interesting.
Q. What has surprised you most about being a writer? About getting freelance work?
A. It surprises and saddens me that so many people quickly give up a dream of writing, or acting, or otherwise working in the arts, because they believe that they couldn’t possibly make a living at it. Sure, it isn’t easy to make a living at writing –is it easy to make a living at anything?--but it’s entirely possible. Thousands of people do it every day.
Reverie Fair / Oct. 2015 18