Welcome
to the first in a series of discussions and interviews with writers on living
the writing life.
The
following is a chat with Portland, Oregon writer Ariel Gore. She’s the creator of the award-winning
alternative parenting zine, Hip Mama,
an enormously popular publication that’s been around since 1993 and that has
given a voice to moms in alternative lifestyles – welfare moms, moms in school,
single moms, gay moms. In its current
incarnation, the full-sized magazine enjoys a healthy and faithful
circulation.
Ariel is the author of Atlas of the Human Heart, a memoir of her vagabond
years as a mid-teen who left home and whose global adventures eventually led
her back to the United States, young single motherhood and a writing
career. She is now thirty-three and
teaches several packed sections of The Memoir Workshop at The Attic in
Portland. She enjoys teaching and
reports that it doesn’t interfere with her own work; it also gets her out of
the house – an important thing for a writer.
Her first novel, The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show was
published last spring. Her new book, How
to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead – Your Words in Print and Your
Name in Lights, is due out in March 2007 from Three Rivers Press. And if this isn’t enough, the iconoclastic,
political, prolific Ariel Gore also maintains a blog. Visit her at
www.arielgore.com.
This interview offers Ariel Gore’s take on the
writing life and demystifies some stereotypes.
ES: Let’s start in the
future and work our way back. You have
a book coming out in March 2007. How
to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name
in Lights sounds like fantasy but it’s nonfiction. Tell us about this project.
AG: I’ve wanted to do a book on writing for a
while. I’ve been teaching at The Attic
and with Writers in the Schools for years.
There’s already plenty of good stuff out there on craft. I wanted to take a more D.I.Y. approach to
the writing life, and to publishing. I
got to interview a bunch of my favorite writers: Michelle Tea, Julia Alvarez,
Dave Barry, Ursula Le Guin, to name-drop a few. I think one thing that’s special about this book is what’s true
about me as a writer: I’m not the very best writer in the world, but I show up,
and I don’t mind making a fool of myself, and I try not to be selfish, and I
honestly believe that’s the ticket.
ES: This has best-seller written all over it. Can you share some advice and wisdom before
publication?
AG: The thing is, you can’t wait around for a book
deal to hit you on the head. You’re
going to have to make yourself famous – at least in some small way – before
you’re going to be able to start selling stories and books. Look at the way visual artists do it, the
way emerging musicians do it – there’s this respected tradition of
self-promotion in those fields.
Writers, for some reason, tend to wait around for publishers. Self-publishing zines and limited edition
books has gained some widespread acceptance, but there’s still a lot of
resistance among writers to do their own dirty work. And, you know, lighten up.
ES:
Can you share some fantasies of how your life would change if you became rich
and even more famous from your writing?
AG:
I’m not looking for rich, really. But I wouldn’t mind having my house paid off
and maybe my kid’s college paid for. I
don’t like stressing and struggling for the things I really have to pay for – I really have to
struggle against the urge to write for the marketplace. I could make more money off my writing if I
did that, but that would defeat the purpose of not having a drudge day job –
writing would just become the drudge day job.
ES:
What is your writing process? If you
hit a snag, how do you resolve it? Is
your writing process for memoir, novel and nonfiction different? Has your writing process changed over the
years since Hip Mama and Atlas of the Human Heart? Is there another memoir in your future? Of your books, which was the most difficult
to write and why?
AG:
It’s so different for different projects and different books. With nonfiction, deadlines help a lot. I’m very stop-and-go with a lot of my
writing. I’ll write twenty pages today
and nothing for a week. I wrote Atlas of
the Human Heart in these 50-page chunks, working really insanely for a week
or two and then doing other – moneymaking – things. It was my first book that I didn’t have a deal going in – I
didn’t want to have to worry about pleasing an editor and I didn’t really know
where I was going with it – so there was a lot of stealing time for myself to
work on it. For The Traveling Death and Resurrection
Show – I drafted
that book by hand in a couple of weeks in a cave-like hide-away. If I hit a snag with something I usually go
out for a drink and try not to worry about it.
I try to loaf for a day or two.
Sometimes ideas need time to ferment.
I used to have more vices, so things were easier, but that’s what
maturity is about, isn’t it? I mean, in
our crafts? Over time we develop egos
that can handle creativity. Atlas of the Human Heart was the most
difficult to write, and the most fun, and is my best book (although I wouldn’t
mind giving it a good line-edit), and I think the only one anyone wants me dead
over. It also sold the fewest copies.
ES:
Are there autobiographical elements in The Traveling Death and Resurrection
Show?
AG: Not so many. I’ve traveled that west-coast
tour-route many times with literary road shows, so the context and the
landscape were familiar to me. I can
identify with the main character Frankka – I liked in particular that she was a
shy performer – but I’m not Frankka.
I’ve never experienced the Stigmata, for one thing.
ES:
Who are your favorite authors, which authors have provided the greatest
inspiration and what are you reading right now? Do you have a favorite book?
AG:
I’m a Haruki Murakami geek. And Tash Aw
is my favorite new writer. bell hooks
for nonfiction. I’ve had different
favorite books at different times in my life.
Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo
by Ntosake Shange, Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto,
Valencia by Michelle Tea, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami, The Book of Dead Birds by Gayle
Brandeis. Those come to mind.
ES:
Let’s talk a little about Hip Mama – its continued popularity for one
thing, and spin-offs
like the online Literary Mama and the newly launched Babble. Debates on mothering are heated and
unavoidable – they take up pages of The New Yorker and salon.com.
and have become part of our culture wars.
Things seem fairly intolerant on both sides of the aisle. As in the rest of our political scene, we’re
a polarized nation. Where do you want
to see Hip Mama in all this?
AG:
When I started Hip Mama in 1993,
telling the truth about mothering and including urban and younger and queer
moms was totally radical. The dialogue
about childrearing had become insanely pastel and middle-class. Hip Mama wasn’t the first to be real
about motherhood – frankly it wouldn’t have been nearly as radical in the ‘70s
– but it emerged at a time when the culture had become especially Puritanical
around sex, back-lashing against feminism, and totally
Mommy-track-meets-Harriet-Homemaker about childrearing. You had erstwhile liberal columnists writing
about how every threat to the fabric of this country could be traced to teenage
sexuality in general and teen motherhood in particular. Black women were seen as procreating at
dangerous rates while black men were called “an endangered species.” In that cultural context, Hip Mama made a huge splash – certainly
bigger than I ever imagined, because I grew up in the ‘70s and by then I was
living in a punky-feminist ghetto. I
saw the right-wingers on TV, but I had no clue how radical it was going to be
to come out as a welfare mom and a single mom and an artist mom and an
underachieving mom all in one go. I
didn’t expect the violent offended reaction and I didn’t expect the
popularity. Since the early ‘90s,
things have really opened up – ‘mama media’ is everywhere. Online, especially. I still think Hip Mama is important, but no one would die now if it ceased to
be. Other things could and would take
its place. The only thing I would
really encourage all the new ‘mama media’ folks not to shy away from is
including low-income moms and single moms and teen moms. Stop acting so shocked in your daily lives
and start being more inclusive in the media you produce. And don’t forget the
parental is political. It’s always
political.
ES:
How does your daughter feel about things?
Has she read Atlas of the Human Heart?
AG: She read Atlas of the Human Heart and
appreciated it, I think. I was worried
about the way I portrayed her dad, but she seemed to understand that he could
be a jerk to me and that didn’t have to alter her memories and experience of
him. By the time that book came out,
she was pretty accustomed to me writing about my life and our lives. She’s always been a good sport about that.
ES:
Our parents give us gifts and tasks, baggage, if you will, that we must unpack,
examine, sort through, decide what to keep and what to toss and what to save
for later. This is the work of our
lives. What did your parents give you
that led to your writing career?
AG:
That’s kind of a loaded question, yo.
My bio-dad is the kind of guy who wouldn’t admit that it was certain
that there wasn’t a rhinoceros in the room.
Paranoid schizophrenic to use the language of the psychology. My mom and my step-dad tried to be very open
about that reality, but as a kid you learn very quickly to keep certain things
quiet. I spent a lot of time with my
dad’s parents – they supervised visits – and of course I spent a lot of time
with kids at school and in my neighborhood, and from them – from my
grandparents and my kid-peers – I learned that mental illness was to be kept
secret.
My step-dad, before he was my step-dad, was a Roman
Catholic priest. My mom was just the
divorced mother of two who kept showing up at Mass. So in that context, my mom and my sister and I were secrets. I was a secret. – I was already a very quiet
kid – they called me “The Owl Child” on the commune – so my understanding of
these secrets made me even more reticent.
But I also came from a family of artists. My mom is a painter and my
bio-dad did experimental animation, so the family culture was very much about
finding outlets for expression and confession.
My step-dad, for his part, remained a practicing (although
excommunicated) priest after he married my mom. So he was always writing a sermon. I needed an outlet, too.
I learned to write because I couldn’t talk. As an adult, I had to learn how to talk a little bit because this
culture won’t let writers keep to themselves, but that came later.
How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead is
part survival guide for the writing life, part no-nonsense curriculum on the
art and craft of writing – including assignments taken from Ariel Gore’s own
workshops – and part instruction manual in query letters, agents, publishers,
and the art of shameless self-promotion.
Plus advice from authors you admire.
It’s witty, informative and down-to-earth and should be required reading
for anyone considering the writing life or already living it.
Next up in The Writing Life: writing and mood
disorders. Have an excellent new year,
keep writing and reading.
Evelyn Sharenov
December 2006