Creative Writing Addict: Diane Lefer: Nobody Wakes Up Pretty

Interview: Diane Lefer and her novel, Nobody Wakes Up Pretty

How long have you been writing?

I was one of those kids who started making up stories before I could write. As soon as I was literate, I was writing those stories down and putting them between paper covers. Part of this was simply loving language. I actually got in trouble in first grade. We had a class exercise where we had to answer Yes or No to a series of questions. I thought that was boring, so I answered with words like Certainly! Absolutely Not!, even Indubitably! I still don't understand why this made the teacher angry.

Where do you get your story ideas?

Sometimes just from an image or a phrase, but for me to write, I have to be moved by either horror or love. Both of those emotions, I guess, are fueled by curiosity, by a need to understand. So I find myself writing about what disturbs me: violence and indifference and hatred. Or writing to understand someone I love, or to recreate a world that's gone to me: the life I lived years ago in Mexico; my old neighborhood in New York City that has been utterly transformed--and not for the best!--by gentrification. Here I am, living in Los Angeles, but my old NYC neighborhood became the setting for Nobody Wakes Up Pretty--a crime novel fueled by both of the emotions I just named: my nostalgia along with the anger at racism and violence and exploitation.

Who is your favorite writer? Why?

*Hey, an anthropologist once told me about a group of Aymara-speaking people in the Andes whose dialect lacks any comparatives or superlatives. You can't even say someone is taller than someone else. You can report the height of each and let people draw their own conclusions. Describe attributes, but don't judge. Our culture, on the other hand, loves to create competition and hierarchy. Who is better? Who is best? So I'm gonna dodge your question and instead name some writers--not just one--who were very influential at different times in my life.

In second grade I began memorizing speeches from Shakespeare. I didn't know this was a sophisticated thing to do. To me, he was a fabulous adult who, unlike most grownups I knew, believed in witches and fairies and ghost. As I grew, most of what I read and loved came from England. I read and reread many times Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and Wuthering Heights. In high school, I became obsessed for the first time with an American author: James Baldwin. When I read Another Country, I felt I could envision for the first time the sort of community I'd end up a part of.

Not that I gave up on England. As we went to war in Vietnam, Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American shook me up. I kept thinking things would be different if President Kennedy read that instead of Ian Fleming. (Of course, I read James Bond, too, but I saw 007 as fantasy, the characters in The Quiet American as very real.)

In college, I started to read Latin American fiction. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Miguel Angel Asturias. I fell in love with their work and the Spanish language that's part of why I dropped out of college and ran away to live in Mexico.

When I started writing seriously and submitting my work for publication, all I really thought about was the story. Getting it down on the page. I didn't really pay attention to the words I used. As long as the reader could understand what I was getting at, why bother with style? Then I met and read Oscar Hijuelos and Sharon Sheehe Stark and from knowing them and reading their work I became sensitized to the use of language.

In recent years, I've also been busy as an activist. I write advocacy journalism for some progressive websites but I still feel that art reaches people in a way that journalism can't. So here's two novels that deal with subjects close to my activist heart and that blew my mind: A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava. He's a public defender in Manhattan and this sprawling experimental novel is also an incredible indictment of our criminal justice system. Karen Connelly's novel, The Lizard Cage, about a political prisoner in Burma, shows a man in solitary confinement surviving not just physically, but psychologically and spiritually. I immediately bought a copy for my friend Duc Ta who is serving a life sentence right here in California for a teenaged incident in which no human being or any other living creature was injured in any way. Duc?the essence of him?survives as Connelly?s protagonist Teza does: through meditation and Buddhist practice, his commitment to feeling compassion and forgiveness for those who put him where he is and who commit brutality around him, his attempts to find meaning in his life by bringing whatever help he can to others. I was so moved to find Karen Connelly's novel, dealing with these matters with so much art.

Does writing intrude on other aspects of your life?

Let's get our priorities straight! My life, I'm glad to say, intrudes on my writing.

How do you find the time to write?

Honestly, by not worrying too much about it. If I have an assignment with a deadline, sure I have to ignore the phone and get up early or stay up late. But with my creative work? No one's waiting for it. If it takes longer than I'd like, so what? I don't believe in that old advice--If you're a writer, you put your ass in the chair every day and you write. I think that's a very macho way of looking at it. That doesn't mean I wait for inspiration to strike, but I don't think you get good writing by forcing it. If you're procrastinating, maybe there's a knot that needs to be untangled.

Sometimes, I find that if there's an issue in my life I'm not facing, I can't write because my mind doesn't want the freedom of imagination. It's like I'm afraid if I go into that creative state, I'll be confronted with what I want to avoid. So that sort of writer's block is a warning to me that I'd better take stock of where I'm at. Resolve my own issue.

I'm glad I took time off and didn't think about writing for a minute when I was in the hospital every day for months to be with my mother before she died. For a while I wasn't writing because I was volunteering as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking immigrants held in detention. (All of the detention centers are horrible. This one was so bad, the feds had to close it.)

Though I don't write every day, over the years I've written so many thousands of pages, and seen so much of it in print, that I know the writing will get done. If I don't write a single word today, or tomorrow, I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

Is publishing a necessary outlet for the writer?s craft? Why or why not?

Of course we want to share our work. There are other ways to share it, though. Readings, performances, podcasts, blogs. Having a book in your hand--well, it's great. I agree with that (to use a word I was chastised for) ABSOLUTELY. I hope everyone who reads this is getting published or will be soon. But if you look to publication to validate your identity as a writer, it may not work. I remember being with my friend Ted at a reading. He actually made a good living as a writer and at the time had at least 50 books in print. So after the reading, this guy in the audience raises his hand and asks, "Was your last book reviewed in the New York Times?" Ted says no, and the guy says, "Then you're not a real writer." Can you imagine?! Then I love it when people ask what I do and I say I'm a writer and they ask, in such a snotty tone of voice, "Oh, really? Have I ever heard of you?" I'm very proud of myself whenever I have the nerve to answer, "Depends how well read you are."

How do you prefer to write? By hand? On computer? How do you prefer to edit?

I love the computer. However, several years ago, I stared at the screen for so many hours, the focusing muscles in my eyes went slack. Warning to all you writers: Take breaks! Look away from the screen! For the eight months it took for my eyes to heal, I couldn't read, write, or drive. So I've started doing some writing by hand, the way I did so many years ago. That still means having to transfer what I've written to the computer, but at least I can write some drafts and make changes on my yellow legal pads and only go to the screen when I feel ready. I have to limit my hours at the computer and I have to take a lot of breaks. For editing, I print out a hard copy and edit by hand.

Tell us about your newest project?

Trying to weave together dozens of plot lines and characters and cities around the world: scientists, terrorists, FBI agents.

Where can we buy your book?

Support independent publishing by buying direct from Rainstorm Press: http://www.rainstormpress.com/nobody-wakes-up-pretty.html

or here at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=Diane+Lefer

Source: http://publottery.blogspot.com/2012/08/diane-lefer-nobody-wakes-up-pretty.html

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