Fresh Voice: Rachel Colina!

"we do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit." - E.E. Cummings

Welcome to the latest edition of Fresh Voices. We are delighted to share with you the voice of Rachel Colina!

What is your ultimate writing goal?
This question is at once easy and scary. I think about writing. I talk about writing. And I certainly write about writing. A lot. But what is my ultimate writing goal?

“Only connect,” E.M. Forster said, and that’s it. That is all. Connect people, connect ideas, connect seemingly disparate times and places. Connect myself.

(Of course I hope that ultimately this results in publication and readers and long-term happiness…)


Why do you write?
I write in order to make sense of the world. If I’m confused about something or someone, I write about it. I try to understand and explore different points of view. But more than that, I love stories; it doesn’t matter if the story is about my family, myself, or someone I have made up. Flannery O’Connor wrote that “a story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in that story to say what the meaning is.” I relish telling that story, revealing that meaning.


Your writing is both sweet and smart. Have you worked to achieve that voice or is it just a natural style for you?
When I was a child—timid, shy, but oh-so interested in the world around me—I would replay in my head conversations I had listened to throughout the day. I couldn’t wait until I was alone so I could “hear” them again! I would add my own narration and think about what I would have said if I were a little braver.

My writing voice is the one I hear in my head; it’s optimistic and nudges me to be more compassionate and understanding. When I write fiction, I draw from those conversations I’ve been cataloging throughout my life. My writing and language are grounded in my experiences and observations.


Who are your favorite authors and why do you  like them?
I’ve read everything by Flannery O’Connor and love the ugly and flawed characters that populate her stories, from Hulga (born “Joy”), the one-legged woman who believes in “nothing” and who attempts to seduce a traveling bible salesman, to Mrs. Turpin, who gets a book thrown at her and is called an old warthog inside a doctor’s office. I enjoy the short stories of Amy Bloom, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Lee Smith, and too many others to count!

I also love Barbara Kingsolver and Jhumpa Lahiri, and I’m getting impatient for another book by Jeffery Eugenides. My favorite authors are ones who let their characters drive the action and not the other way around.


What most attracts you to the life of a writer?
I used to joke that I’d love to be a perpetual student; take classes, write papers, and learn tons and tons of stuff!  “If only I could get paid to be a student,” I’d say. But being a writer is even better. I direct my own learning, steer my own education.

Until last month, I taught Composition and Introduction to Literature to nursing students. There was so much I loved about being a teacher. I helped them find their voice and shape their own writing. But while I played an important role, their successes and failures were their own. I think today’s writers are more connected than ever; writing is a less solitary endeavor than twenty or even ten years ago. Still, our successes and failures are our own. My own.


If you couldn't be a writer but knew you were guaranteed success at a different career, what would you choose?
I’m sure I would be an educator of some sort, whether leading a creative writing workshop for older adults or teaching children how to make homemade paper in an afterschool program. My mom teaches third grade and my dad, formerly a principal, is building schools and resource centers in Kenya; education is in my blood.


If you had to describe your writing in one word, what would that word be?
Wistful.



What's the best writing advice you've ever gotten?
In the first writing class I took as a freshman, our assigned text was William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well.” Zinsser stresses the importance of clarity in writing; eliminate clutter, redundant words, the “thousand and one adulterants” that weaken our sentences. I carry that advice with me in all my writing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, formal or informal, and I’ve passed it on to my own students.


Rachel currently resides in Cincinnati, OH, where she cheers on the Reds and cannot wait to see what happens when Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco line up together for the Bengals. She doesn’t have any pets, but she does have a giant stuffed penguin named Wally given to her during a stay in the hospital as a teenager. Rachel’s blog, Perfect Sand, is named after a holiday she and her best friend made up in 1989, wherein they meticulously filtered a neighbor’s sandbox (“Perfect Sand Day” remains November 3rd). She started the blog two years ago to post pictures from her trip to London and has since been using it to chronicle her journey as a daughter, teacher, and aspiring writer. For a sample of her personal, nonfiction writing, check out this post from January, Communities. (She’s currently building a wordpress site to house her fiction). Follow Rachel on twitter (perfectsand), but beware of tweets about the Reds, politics, and libraries in addition to ones about writing!

Check out: http://perfectsand.blogspot.com/2010/01/communities.html

Blooming Author: Adi Alsaid!

“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” ~ George Sheehan
 
Adi Alsaid is a literary fiction writer with a commercial slant whose book Somewhere Over the Sun will be available from Dog Ear Press in November 2010.


Tell us about Somewhere Over the Sun. What is it about and where will it be available?

The story follows Alan, a spirited young writer with a wandering imagination who has discovered that the stories he writes are suddenly coming to life. At the suggestion of his loving father, Alan embarks on a quixotic journey to visit friends and use his new-found gift to write them all happier lives.

There are a few limitations to his power; he can’t cure diseases, he can’t summon pots of gold, and each story leaves behind some physical discomfort. However, the appreciative and optimistic Alan is not deterred from creating fantastical characters and storylines to give his friends more literary lives.

Interlaced by the lovely and true to life vignettes he writes for his friends, the narrative takes us inside the imaginative Alan’s thoughts and those of his hosts; college friends, a childhood chum, his editor and a former love.

It will be available on Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, borders.com and all other major online retailers. It will be distributed by Ingram, so it’ll be available internationally at brick-and-mortar stores.


What were your inspirations for Somewhere Over the Sun? What sorts of thing inspire you as a writer in general?

Like pretty much everything else I’ve ever written, it started as just a thought while lying in bed one night. I maneuvered through my dark room to turn the computer back on and write down the thought, then left it alone for months. By the time I was ready to write the novel, the idea had changed into what is now the basic synopsis.

I like to think that I can be inspired by anything. At some point in Somewhere Over the Sun, Alan, who as I mentioned is also a writer, talks about how writing is by and large waiting for inspiration to come, much like a surfer waits for a wave to form. I don’t think writers ever have a choice when it comes to inspiration. It’s just about being out in the ocean for long enough, waiting for the wave, and hoping to ride it as best as you possibly can while it’s there.

Unlike surfing, though, a writer can always be attacked by a silently approaching wave, even when you’re not aware that you’re in the ocean, so it’s crucial to always have a surfboard with you (in a writer’s case, pen, paper, a note-taking application on a cell phone).


Let's talk about your process. How do you approach a story, do you start with outlines or something else? Where did you work when writing Somewhere Over the Sun? Do you think it was the optimal writing environment for you?

I wrote the outline for Somewhere Over the Sun while I was living in Las Vegas. That was a pretty big deal for me, because I usually just get a sentence in my head and try to form a story from that, which results in me never finishing anything I start writing.

But I knew I wanted to take a more organized approach to the book, so I got an outline together, threw a going-away party, and left everyone I know to go live on the coast of California. I’m a social guy, and having friends around would be too much of a distraction. So I moved to Monterey, CA, armed with an outline, free time, and an array of coffee shops to write at.

It turned out to be a good decision. I was writing 1,100 words a day for the first month, mostly in coffee shops during the day or on my inflatable mattress in the middle of the night. It gave me the opportunity, for the first time in my life, to fully submerge myself in my writing. I made it my full-time job, and in 3 months the book was done. I spent another month doing rewrites before I began sending out queries to agents.


Tell us about your "story of getting published." How long did you submit before you were accepted? How did it feel to get accepted?

I queried dozens of agents for a couple of months. Two of them requested my manuscript, and both of them passed because they felt it was not the right project for them, although they did have good things to say and assured me that the project would be right for someone else.

Unfortunately, time wasn’t on my side, and I could no longer sit around and wait for agents to respond. I am not a citizen of the U.S, and currently on what’s called an OPT visa which expires at the end of 2010. To ensure that my book would be published in time for me to get a new visa, I chose to go the self-publishing route. I’m thankful that the option exists. This way I can make some agents regret their decision to pass me up, and hopefully stay in the country to be able to promote my book.


What are the publicity plans you have coming up?

I’ve got my blog running at www.somewhereoverthesun.com and have been steadily increasing my audience by promoting on my Facebook page and on my Twitter account @adialsaid. I recently held a writing contest in which I had readers submit a story that they would like to see come to life. The winner got to read my manuscript prior to publication.

The book will be announced by a press release to 1,000 targeted media outlets. I’m also putting together a virtual book tour which will hopefully lead to a non-virtual book tour. My plan is to mix guerilla marketing efforts with my ability to take rejection lightly. Even if the chances are slight, I’ll be sending emails or placing phone calls to everyone from local newspapers and book stores to Oprah and Jon Stewart.

I studied Marketing in college, and I am in talks with one of my former professors to present my case to his class in order to get some more input on promotional efforts. Because I went with the self-publishing route, there is even more pressure for me to conduct my own publicity. I’m up for the challenge, and confident I can succeed. This interview is one of the first steps, and I’d like to thank you and your readers for the opportunity. I try to be prompt with email responses, and welcome all questions or comments to adi.alsaid@gmail.com.

Fresh Voice: Anne McCarron!

"we do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit." - E.E. Cummings

Welcome to the latest edition of Fresh Voices. We are delighted to share with you the voice of Anne McCarron!

What is your ultimate writing goal?
Ultimately, I'd like to be read after I'm dead. Well, not exclusively after I'm dead, of course. I think it would be great fun to be read while I'm still alive. In fact, I'm busy trying to make that happen. But I love reading a book or exploring a painting or listening to music and getting the feeling of connection to a person who lived in another time, a different world. I'm sharing the mind of someone I'll never know, yet in some deeper sense, know better than most people I see every day. I believe that's what Art can do. It makes the world a bigger place.

Why do you write?
It's cheaper than paint and canvas. No, that's not the only reason. That wouldn't explain why I write every day, why I care so much about the people who inhabit the stories, why I want to share the experience of the story with everyone. When I was younger, writing was work, and I abandoned it. Since I started writing again three years ago, I've discovered that writing is play, and now it's all I want to do.

Your writing is lyrical and rich. Have you worked to achieve that voice or is it just a natural style for you?
My high school writing teacher used to complain that my writing style was archaic. Well, I couldn't help it, I was reading Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle and Tolkien, among others, and I was a devout Anglophile. I think I must have been writing with a British accent. Now, I have a better sense of who I am, and I think the voice that's emerging in my writing is the product of my own experience, although I use the term loosely since I've lived my whole life in Wisconsin.

Who are your favorite authors and why do you like them?
I've fallen in love with many writers, but the first was Ray Bradbury. His stories are poetry to me. I would get swept away to exotic places like Mars or Venus or Waukegan, Illinois on a river of words, perfectly buoyant and maybe a little soggy at the end, but exhilarated and thankful for the ride, and wanting to run around to the back of the line and do it all over again.

And then there was Daphne DuMaurier. A friend and I took a road trip through Devon and Cornwall, looking for Dame Daphne. We ended up in the middle of Dartmoor at the Jamaica Inn on a day when the wind was howling and the rain was blowing sideways over the tops of the hedgerows. I think we found her there.

I bumped into Mark Twain while I was in college. That man could make a sentence sit up and bark. He was such a powerful writer. He could drive a needle-sharp point home with a delicate tap from the sledgehammer of his talent, and you'd only feel it when it got to your heart.

And for the past twenty years or so, I've enjoyed the teeth-to-the-wind stories that Stephen King rides into the world. Everything he writes is so true and seems so real (glad it's not). What terrible fun his stories are, especially at their darkest, and what a joy when the clouds part and the sun shines out again. And he shows up in his own stories, too -- how cool is that!

What most attracts you to the life of a writer?
Freedom.

Oh, I know that being a professional anything requires commitment and obligation and deadlines and tax forms, but that's the business of writing. As a total amateur, I can get away with ignoring that part to focus on the good stuff.

Writing is something I can do wherever I am, whenever I want to, I don't even have to write it down as I'm doing it, although if I want to share it with anyone, that would be best. It's in me and of me and purely me, and as long as I'm speaking a language that others understand, I only need my experience and my imagination to call the stories out into the world. No one can take that from me and no one can stop me. That's freedom.

If you couldn't be a writer but knew you were guaranteed success at a different career, what would you choose?
Oh! Definitely! Japanese ink and wash painter, sumi-e. It's all very Zen and indescribably beautiful! When can I start?

If you had to describe your writing in one word, what would that word be?
Metamorphic (and I mean that in the geologic sense. Lots of heat and pressure and bending and folding going on).

What's the best writing advice you've ever gotten?
The old standby, "Write what you know", is still good, but I would up it one. Write what you love. Love is the thing that lasts.


Anne McCarron is a middle-aged (well, she doesn't know any hundred-year-olds, so guesses she's past it, in many ways, alas) woman who has been a good little worker bee for long enough. Time to soar with the eagles! To do that, she's gonna really have to muscle-up on her flying skills, but if you'd like to read any of the stories she's finished so far, they're at The Shining Line. She'll be adding new ones as they get rejected by the literary magazines she sends them to.