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Laura Pedersen |
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Laura’s 18Q |
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The Eighteen Questions |
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18Q |
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1. Did you choose the writing profession or did it choose you? Both. I’ve always loved to read and when I ran out of stories that I liked, I started writing them.
2. What is your background? (education, work, etc.) I went to Wall Street when I was 18 and became a trader. I knew that I’d end up in the arts, but after growing up in Buffalo, NY , during the energy crisis, I also knew that not being able to afford heat is more of a distraction than an inspiration.
3. When did you ‘know’ you were a writer? That’s the good thing about contests. I didn’t enter a lot of them but when I did I often won and that was encouraging, especially prior to being published. The first was in 7th grade for an essay on why Teddy Roosevelt was a great American.
4. How would you describe your style of writing? Modern, simple, humorous, won’t give you a migraine or the jimjams with explosions, Flashbacks, fireballs, and space aliens.
5. What is your writing process? Organic. I write down the beginning and the end. Between the two I build characters, events, and what will eventually become the muddle, or middle. I’ve often heard bestselling authors say they can write toward an unknown star and trust that the end of the story will mysteriously appear, but I’m not that confident. After a reasonable amount of storyboarding I need to know for what port the ship is heading.
6. What was your path to publication? My first book was nonfiction, about my experiences as a trader on the floor of the stock exchange. I sent it to the agent who had just sold Michael Lewis’ LIAR’S POKER. Publishers, like moviemakers, seem to want projects similar to other bestsellers, at least until that segment of the market becomes saturated and they’re on to the next thing.
7. What is your favorite self-marketing idea? The naked cowboy in Times Square gets first prize. After that I guess you want your books banned by the Religious Right.
8. What are the biggest surprises you’ve encountered as a writer? Unfortunately, success is not always about good writing or a good story. It can be just as much about buzz, the vagaries of the marketplace, and what the editors have decided is going on in said marketplace. For instance, I was once told to cut 20,000 words from a novel because a publisher decided that the reading public preferred shorter books that season. Now, if I’d been told my story dragged in parts that would have been one thing -- but shorter books? “Sorry Mr. Tolstoy, people have shorter attention spans nowadays so you can keep The War or The Peace, but not both.”
9. How do you inspire yourself? What are your sources of creativity? Talking to interesting and funny friends always provides me with a lot of material. And anyone can get at least one novel out of a service at the Unitarian Church - you couldn’t dream up the announcements, and the “joys and concerns” is Henrik Ibsen meets P.G. Wodehouse. Just this past Sunday a couple had their child christened in a pumpkin outfit.
10. What is your proudest writer moment? My novel BEGINNER’S LUCK was chosen by Barnes & Noble for their Discover Great New Writers program, by Border’s for their Original Voices series, and as an alternate selection for the Literary Guild. Being that it was a trade paperback from a mostly unknown writer, I think my editor was very surprised.
11. What’s the best advice you were given about writing? If you write one page a day, by the end of the year you’ll have a book.
12. What is your most embarrassing writer moment? As a columnist for “The New York Times” I spelled the local basketball team as Nicks instead of Knicks (after Knickerbockers). An editor caught the error but never let me forget it.
13. What business challenges have you faced as a writer? Where foreign rights are concerned, publishers basically wait for people to come to them. In wanting my books translated into Japanese I had to do my own research and make the appropriate contacts.
14. What is your writer life philosophy? No matter how bad the problem, insult, or crisis, it will all make good material down the track.
15. When you’re not writing what do you do for fun? I rollerblade in Central Park and tutor at a school in East Harlem. I tutor because I believe in education, but in retrospect I admit that I’ve picked up some great lines from the kids. And they help me keep up with what characters, candy and hobbies are cool these days. Without this compass, you say “pop culture” and I say “Partridge Family.”
16. Who do you like to read? My reading interests are constantly changing. Stuck on the proverbial island, I suppose I’d take the complete works of Paul Johnson (MODERN TIMES, HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, ART, et al.).
17. What’s your advice for new writers? If a full length book seems daunting then try your material as an essay or a short story. If the work still isn’t coming together easily then perhaps you need to go out and have some experiences. If the book is finished and it’s publication you’re seeking, agents like to see that you’re marketable and that you already have an audience, even if it’s small, so try to get something published in a literary magazine, journal, or local newspaper. (More advice for writers can be found at my website in an interview called “On Writing.”)
18. What are you currently working on? I’m writing a humorous memoir called BUFFALO GAL about growing up as one of God’s Frozen People in upstate New York during The Great Folk Music Scare of the 1960s and 70s. |