© Misty Richmond
Michelle, talk us through your daily writing routine.
I usually write for a few hours in the morning after dropping my son off at school. Because my work generally requires a good deal of research, my writing time frequently gets hijacked mid-process because I need to stop to look something up, or email someone a question, or call to find out if I can visit a certain location (shadow a doctor at the VA, tour a coffee roasting company, etc.). The answers often lead me down a long and winding path. While the unexpected paths I find myself following almost always make the writing of a book take longer than I’d planned, they also make the books a great deal more fun to write. Theoretically, I think it would be far more efficient to unplug the modem and write for 5 hours straight with no breaks, but, alas, the older I get, the more easily I get distracted.
Do you write with a particular demographic in mind?
I don’t generally think of a particular demographic. I leave that to my publisher–who makes all of the decisions about how to market a book and whom to target with the jacket art, cover copy, and advertising. But if I had to identify my “ideal reader,” the person I hope my books reach, it would be someone who wants to be entertained, but who is just as interested in characterization and the mood of a book as he or she is in plot. I guess I write for the “patient reader,” someone who’s okay with learning a little bit about memory (The Year of Fog), or math (No One You Know), or the Three Gorges Dam (Dream of the Blue Room), while following the main character on her journey.
Having a New York Times Bestselling book sounds impressive but what does it mean to you as an author?
I remember when my editor called to tell me that The Year of Fog had hit the New York Times bestseller list. I just thought, “Wait, did you dial the wrong number?” Prior to that, I’d written two books that were published by small presses and were very obscure. The Year of Fog honestly did change my life. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would be able to make a living as a writer.
Then The Year of Fog “happened.” And I say “happened” because I did no more to promote The Year of Fog than I had done to promote Dream of the Blue Room–probably less, in fact. One sold about 5,000 copies, and the other sold about one hundred times that. Both novels took about four years to write. I look at both of those novels and can think of a dozen things I would have done differently, in terms of the actual writing of the book, if I had it to do over again–which is to say that both are flawed books. But one of them took on this sort of magical, unexpected life out in the world, and the other didn’t. Which is to say that a book’s commercial success is almost entirely out of the hands of the author, so commercial viability can never be something you’re thinking about as you’re writing the book. You have to think only about that particular story, and do your best to tell it, and hope that someone will read it.
But to get back to your question, what the NYT designation did was to enable my agent to negotiate a better contract for my next two books, thus allowing me to stop teaching at the MFA program in San Francisco where I’d been teaching for years. The newfound freedom gave me ample time to write, which I’d never had before. I found that when I have a contract, an advance, and a deadline, I’m able to think, “Okay, this is what I do for a living,” and that simple statement has freed me of all the writer’s guilt I’d felt for so many years–guilt that I couldn’t waste time on a hobby that wasn’t helping to pay the mortgage. That guilt may have been misplaced, but I think it’s a very common feeling among writers, musicians, and artists, because we live in a culture in which the “important” work is the work for which we are paid.
Honestly, though, I have to say that having The Year of Fog selected as a Target Bookmarked pick did more to change my life as a writer than the book’s brief run on the New York Times bestseller list. I owe a great deal to the independent booksellers, and I also owe a great deal to the buyer for Target, who decided to take a big gamble on a completely unknown writer.
With four successful books under your belt, do you feel the pressure to meet your fans’ expectations?
Yes, I suppose I do in a way. There’s always the pressure to make the new book better than the last, and to avoid whatever pitfalls one might have stumbled into during the writing of the previous book. Before The Year of Fog, there was no one to disappoint, except perhaps my mother, who is impossible to disappoint. I could write, “See Spot run,” and she’d say, “Oh, isn’t my daughter terrific?” When No One You Know came out, I was concerned that readers of The Year of Fog might be disappointed. What I’ve found, however, is that while No One You Know has reached fewer readers than The Year of Fog, those who have read both have tended to like No One You Know better. Oddly enough, my first novel, Dream of the Blue Room, which came out in 2003, is being re-released in a new edition in February, and because of the publisher’s plans for distribution, it’s likely to reach a much bigger audience than it did the first time around. In this case, I do wonder how readers of my most recent two novels will react to Dream of the Blue Room. It’s much racier than the other two, and I think readers who expect a certain kind of book from me might read this one and say, “Huh?” It’s the sort of book one might easily find banned in high school libraries. That would be a good thing. Nothing sells a novel like the “banned book” label!
Tell us about your Fundamentals of Fiction Workshop, Michelle.
Having taken three years off from teaching, I’ve found that I miss the camaraderie and the creative energy of being in a room with a group of aspiring writers, but I don’t miss the day-to-day routine of working for a university. So I’m offering a one-day crash course in fiction writing in April (2010). We’ll be covering the essential building blocks that are applicable to all forms of fiction, from the short-short story to the novel: characterization, plot, structure, setting, and dialogue. I’ll offer mini-lectures on each topic, we’ll examine samples from published works, and we’ll do some writing exercises so students will get plenty of practice. I love one-day workshops because they provide a lot of inspiration in a very short period of time, and the small class size means they’re intimate and a lot of fun. And there are no English departments or grades or administrators to deal with–just a peaceful home and comfortable sofas, and plenty of coffee! The class is in the San Francisco Bay Area, and so far, I’ve had students enroll from as far away as Orlando, which is pretty exciting. Details are here: http://michellerichmond.com/fundamentals-of-fiction-writing-a-one-day-crash-course/ I’m also considering offering another one-day class this summer.
What advice would you give someone struggling to write stories of a publishable quality?
My first advice would be to read widely and thoughtfully and voraciously. Read literary magazines–Glimmer Train, Gulf Coast, The Missouri Review–whatever literary magazines you can get your hands on. Go to newpages.com, and visit a number of magazines, and read their online offerings. Also keep an eye on new collections of short fiction, and read them with a writer’s eye, paying attention to how the stories are set up and what makes them tick. Read Grace Paley. Read Lars Gustafsson. Read Flannery O’Connor. Read, read, read. If you’re not in an MFA program (and I certainly don’t think one needs an MFA to be a writer!), take a community-based workshop. All major cities have plenty of writing workshops to offer, and any town with a college usually has some sort of creative writing class. While too many hands in the pie can be disastrous for a short story, the deadlines imposed by a class, not to mention the collective creative energy, can be very inspiring. I’d also recommend finding one good reader who will read your work with a kind but critical eye, a reader who can be both encouraging and demanding, in equal measure. The other advice I’d give to anyone struggling to write stories of a publishable quality is to write the ending, and then write it again. And again. Keep layering the ending until it takes the reader someplace entirely new and unexpected. Your ending should never be something that the reader could have predicted on page three. It should be logical, but it should offer some element of surprise.
To learn more about Michelle Richmond, visit: http://michellerichmond.com/
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