Posts from the “On Writing” Category

Ten Lessons of Fictional Writers in Film

Posted on January 6, 2012

New Years Resolution: update blog in a timely manner … starting right after I post this news of a piece that ran almost a month ago. But if you love film and you love to write and you love writers in film, this one may have been worth the wait. Thanks to Ryan Rivas for including my Ten Lessons of Fictional Writers in Film on the Burrow Press Blog in December. The following is only the first lesson. Check out the rest here and have a look around Burrow Press while you’re at it.

Funny Farm

In Funny Farm, Chevy Chase plays a writer who moves to the middle of nowhere in order to jumpstart work on his manuscript in solitude. When he’s finally done, he rents a hotel room, chills champagne, hands his wife his manuscript, and sits with his hands folded together in anticipation—watching intently, reading her facial expressions as the pages turn, leaning to check whether or not her laughter erupts in just the right places. Lesson? Don’t do that.

Categories: On Movies, On Writing

Tagged: burrow press, chevy chase, film, funny farm, writers in film, writers in movies, writing

Today’s the day!

Posted on December 1, 2011

You can now get your ebook copy of Writing Off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema right here. A very special thanks to Simon Smithson at Calavera Books, each of the phenomenal contributors and interviewees, book cover designer Steven Seighman, and book trailer producer Vernon Lott for all of their hard work and support. I’m thrilled to share the result of their efforts with you and to see just how much we can raise to help replace the Joplin High School JET-14 students’ studio equipment, field cameras, and supplies that had been destroyed in the May 22 tornado. So go buy it! I promise it’ll be $4.99 well spent.

Categories: On Movies, On Writing

Tagged: creative writing, film, writing

Something to be said for a happy mom: an interview with author Amy Wilson

Posted on April 19, 2011

In honor of today’s paperback release of Amy Wilson’s When did I get like this?: The Screamer, the Worrier, the Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget-Buyer, & Other Mothers I Swore I’d Never Be, I’m reposting the interview I did with Wilson last year and giving away copies of the book. So raise your hand if you want one. Or, better yet, drop me a note at cynthia@cynthiahawkins.net. I only have a few, so … one, two, three, go! *UPDATE: I’m all out of free books. Thanks to all who requested one.

“Sorry, I’ll have to call you right back as soon as I put my two-year-old down for a nap,” I say, phone against my shrugged-up shoulder as I work my daughter’s highchair straps. I don’t normally begin an interview this way, but I have subconsciously rendered When Did I Get Like This? author Amy Wilson into best-friend-hood, someone for whom I don’t mind conjuring the rather unprofessional image of me in a mess of a kitchen wiping yogurt splats off my sleeve. That’s fine, she assures me, because her two-year-old is just going down for a nap as well. Which doesn’t help. In no less than five minutes of our resumed conversation, I’m slouching at the kitchen table with chin to fist lamenting that I don’t wear earrings anymore either and that The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy had once crushed me by asserting that pregnant women should never, ever have short-hair lest they look even “fatter.”

“I mean, I obsessively check Consumer Reports before I buy anything for the kids,” I found myself admitting while running a fingernail between the seams of the table leaves. “Why doesn’t he worry about these things?”

“Because your husband knows you’re going to do it,” Wilson tells me with the closed-eyed kindness of a school counselor on the other end of the line.

Such is the spell of When Did I Get Like This?, a trick of heart-warming, belly-laughing, gut-wrenching familiarity. “Love this woman! Wait, we ARE this woman!” a real-life best friend tapped out in an email after I’d told her the full title of the book. Which is, by the way: The Worrier, The Screamer, The Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget Buyer, and Other Mothers I Swore I’d Never Be.

“What I’d thought was so specific to my experience – well, I’m the kind of person who worries about all this stuff, I’m the one who thinks every little detail should be perfect – was a much more universal experience than I had realized,” Wilson says, because this is, after all, an interview. With Wilson. “And it was that universality that people wanted to laugh at, if that makes sense.”

More to her credit, what they’re really laughing at is the way Wilson in particular mines humor with unflinching candor from the everyday experiences of motherhood they readily recognize. Most of the milestones Wilson covers in When Did I Get Like This? – from pregnancy to applying for preschools – were first honed in her one-woman, off-Broadway performance in Mother Load. The book, she says, allows for a more “fully realized” account of life with three young children.

CH: You provide a much more grounded, realistic view of motherhood here. What would you think if your book became the new must-read model for new moms?

AW: I would love that. My fondest wish is that somebody might read this book while she was still pregnant and that she might as a result not waste the time that so many of us waste, you know, thinking, “oh my god I’m getting so fat,” or, “I had a c-section, I’m such a failure as a mother and I’ve just begun.” And all those things we spend time worrying about …. If somebody pregnant could read this book and avoid even some of those pitfalls I would be so gratified that I’d saved somebody the trouble. I do wish I knew then that all this stuff I was worrying about, that much of it was just nonsense.

CH: Of all the parenting books you’ve read, what’s the one piece of advice that has seemed to ring true for you?

AW: I heard this somewhere from a mother: “You know what you realize? You realize with the later kids that this isn’t forever. This is just for right now.” And I thought, oh my god, number one I wish I’d put that in my book, but number two I wish that someone had told me that when I was going through all these things for the first time. When my first child had reflux and I was up all night with him, I would think, this is my new reality. My baby cries all the time, and it will always be this way. I will never be able to leave the house again. Or I’ve gained forty pounds and now the baby’s born, and I still have thirty-eight pounds to lose – I’m not sure how that happened. And you live through all that stuff, and you’re so stressed, like it’s your new reality. When you’re a more experienced mother you realize, “Oh, this is the terrible twos. I know this, and it lasts six months. It won’t last forever.” And I think that’s advice I would give to a friend who was pregnant right now, that all these things you’re going through that seem so overwhelming in reality, it’s over in the blink of an eye. Then you’re onto the next stage.

CH: What’s the worst?

AW: The worst piece of advice, I’d have to think about that cause there are so many. I think the one that jumps out at me is the nipple confusion. I do talk about this in the book too, but the thing called nipple confusion, that if you’re going to breastfeed your baby they can’t ever have a pacifier, they cannot ever have a bottle, because you will put your entire way you feed your child in jeopardy if you for one minute let them do this …. Having gone through with that, having nursed three kids, I think it’s crazy, and I never met anybody whose baby had nipple confusion. Many women I know who breastfed successfully for a long time like me — I breastfed up to a year — were the ones who realized it’s okay for my mother-in-law to give him a bottle once in awhile. It’s okay for me to let the baby have a pacifier so I can leave the house for twenty minutes …. It just means you can get a haircut or go lie down and not be a bad person.

CH: Does anything you’d learned as an actor ever come in handy as a parent?

AW: It does, yeah. There’s this Shakespearian voice teacher that I study with whenever I can. She comes into NY a couple of times a year, and what she teaches is that there are sort of different circles you could be in when you’re communicating with somebody. There are three different circles. The first circle is that you’re very shy and withdrawn, and the third circle is that maybe you’re like your uncle who’s had too much to drink or a bad actor on stage, emoting. But if you’re in the second circle, you’re really connecting, really listening to the other person, really in sync with them. And that’s the key to good acting on stage. Don’t be worrying about what you should be doing with your hands or what you look like. You just really listen to the other person, and you’ll be acting well. And the example that she uses as the most incredible second-circle communication is a baby who is nursing, looking up at its mother and the mother looking down at the baby. That they’re just in such sync with each other. I’ve thought about that a lot. And I try very hard with my kids to be in second circle with them. When they come up to me with a drawing or a Lego creation, to not say, “yeah, uh-huh, that’s nice honey, I’m on the phone, whatever,” but to give them ten seconds, thirty seconds, whatever it is, of my full, undivided attention. It’s so important to them, but frankly in the long run it’s important to you as a mom. If you can focus on your kids for five or ten minutes, then they’ll play nicely for half-an hour. They might! If you don’t give that to them, I find, if you give them your distracted self, that’s when they get whiney and start fighting with their brother and give you a hard time.

CH: And this is even harder to do now that we have such easy access to things like email and texting on our phones.

AW: That’s the latest thing I’m really discovering about myself. I’m really trying to sort of take a hard look at myself, my addiction to my iPhone. It’s so nice to be at the playground and be able to check my email or see what’s happening on Twitter. But I don’t necessarily want my kids to think that that’s how adults should behave or that that’s all they deserve from me — a little attention while the rest is focused on this little screen. Something to think about. Definitely.

CH: Just wait until they’re teenagers, and they’ll be doing it to us.

AW: Exactly! I’ll be feeling the burn when my son won’t look up at me because he’s texting.

CH: How has motherhood evolved for you since you’ve taken Mother Load on the road and are preparing to promote this new book?

AW: That’s an interesting question because of course it takes me away from the kids to do it. There is another actress who sometimes does Mother Load when I can’t. But sometimes I do go do it, and then of course writing this book took me away from my kids to an extent. I mean, I had a really concentrated amount of time in the day when I’d go hide or go to the library or get away so I could do this work. I think when you’re a mom you learn very quickly to compartmentalize. You don’t have all day to do something …. So I’ve been away from them more as the demands of the work have gone up, but I think that when I’m with them I’m much more content, much more fulfilled and just very happy in my creative life. I think that’s made me a more fun mom to be around. I think there’s something to be said for a happy mom. Whatever you need to do to have your act together. Whether it’s going for a run or writing every day. I think for me, when I can do it, I’m much more the mom I want to be.

Find more information on Amy Wilson here.

Categories: On Literature

Tagged: Amy WIlson, humor, motherhood

Interview with Wench author Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Posted on February 5, 2010

Though she’d told me she’d had several “apprentice novels” prior to writing Wench, this is Perkins-Valdez’s first published novel — and as I received the galley to review and prepared for our discussion, I couldn’t help but be really, really excited for her. It had taken her twelve years of “chopping away,” as she’d explained to me, since earning her MFA in CW to reach this point. She said she’s grateful it’s this novel that gets to be her “first novel,” and I can see why. It’s a stellar achievement. Finely crafted. Compelling from page one. Gut-wrenching all the way through. Here’s the rest of our discussion about Wench as it appeared in the San Antonio Current: Love in the time of chains

Categories: On Literature

More Spore

Posted on January 6, 2010

There was so much great commentary by Jeff VanderMeer in my interview with him for the Current that didn’t actually make the Current article due to space — insights on genre and craft, everything that probably interests me most whenever I talk to an author. So, I’m happy to report that the remainder of this interview is now seeing the light of day over at Strange Horizons: Everyone’s A Rebel

Categories: On Literature

interview with David Small, author/illustrator of Stitches

Posted on November 24, 2009

Pictured, a panel from David Small’s Stitches, accompanying the article below.

Putting the pieces back together

Categories: On Literature, Uncategorized

My interview with Finch novelist Jeff VanderMeer

Posted on November 4, 2009

In the San Antonio Current: Waiting to Inhale

I ran out of room in the article to mention VanderMeer’s online “Finch Insurgency Campaign” which, aside from having some very cool interactive stuff, has information on the Murder by Death soundtrack composed for Finch. Worth the visit:Finch Insugency Campaign

Categories: On Literature

Everything is Writing

Posted on July 1, 2009

Men’s ties lined up, plain, striped, paisley, sewn into the frenetic mosaic of a crazy quilt and knotted through with yarn – I could pretend that it was pretty or even artfully wrought because it was made and handed down by my great-grandmother. That was my first understanding of a quilt, anyway, and I’d studied it, the varying qualities of silk and polyester against my fingertips, the batting puckered, the backing slouched. I’d imagine the collecting of ties in some random corner of the house the way great-grandmother collected anything else (empty syrup bottles, shaped candles, magazines, shorn-off braids, hat boxes). I’d imagine the woman she must have been back then with her needle and thread and the haphazard progression of sewn-together ties draped across her lap. I always wanted to make a quilt.

When I found myself with a handled shopping bag full of baby clothes I couldn’t seem to give away, it occurred to me I could make a quilt out of them. I spent an afternoon ripping seams in onsies and gowns and pajamas and cutting out small squares. I spent another afternoon poring over Youtube videos to get some idea of what I was doing. On little two-minute clips the hands of various middle-aged women managed neatly cut scraps and pins as their seemingly disembodied, vaguely distant voices, ranging from whisper-thin to raspy, directed me to keep a pill bottle for worn needles or wear a thimble all day long so it becomes a part of me. In the pauses, someone admonished a dog, a child’s toy erupted in bright melodies, a dryer buzzed. Labored breathing, the plucking of a needle at cloth, the snapping of a thread broken against teeth – I watched over and over and learned more about character than quilting.

As I proceeded on my own, sewing squares together, making mistakes, ripping them out, starting over, finding a pattern in the arrangement of outgrown clothes, I had a simple revelation. This was a familiar craft. At the same time I was also at a loss to revise a novel, and as I took pictures of different configurations of quilt squares I remembered something I’d written about the main character early on, that he sees a pattern to everything. The novel is all about patterns, in fact – generations repeating lives, repeating mistakes, characters rethinking and reliving the past. The novel structure, I decided, had to enhance this as well as the eventual change in the patterns that begin to take place. Like scrap cloth, I took the novel apart, evaluated, rearranged, rewrote, added on. So Milan Kundera once decided his novel should have the structure of a symphony, and I decide my novel should have the structure of … a baby quilt.

Maybe the lesson is that inspiration can be found in the strangest places if you’re paying attention … or that when you’re having trouble with one craft you should try another to find the solution … or even that Marguerite Duras was right to suggest that “everything is writing.”

* pictured above, my daughter displays the finished quilt

Categories: On Writing