This is the first in a series of author interviews in which I will try to get an author to tell me all their secrets in the spirit of Literary Exhibitionism. The spotlight is on, the writer is ready, the interview is about to commence. First up, ROB DINSMOOR! A little about Rob...
Robert Dinsmoor is a freelance writer and yoga teacher. He
has published hundreds of articles on health and medicine as well as pieces for
Games, Paper, National Lampoon,
and Nickelodeon Magazine and scripts
for Nickelodeon and MTV. He has written fictive
memoirs titled Tales of the Troupe, The Yoga Divas and Other Stories, and You Can Leave Anytime and co-authored a
children’s picture book called Does Dixie Like Me?
So, Rob, thanks for stopping by my virtual home. I'm about to ask you the tough questions, the literary questions, the complex questions. The kind of questions you sit with, much like a Zen kōan, for hours or days or years. Here we go...
J: Writing is hard. Why do you do it?
R: It’s a compulsion. I
can’t not write. It’s an opportunity to
have complete control over one small area of my life.
J: Do you write full
time or part time? And what is your
writing process/routine?
I’m semi-retired but spend about 20-30 hours a week writing
both nonfiction health-medical articles and my fictive memoirs. My writing process for nonfiction is very
different from my fiction work. For
nonfiction, I begin by doing a lot of research on-line, downloading relevant
articles and scientific papers. Then I
carefully underline relevant parts of the documents, spread the documents out
in front of me, and painstakingly hand-write a very rough draft. This is a tedious task, requiring a lot of
focus, and I take frequent breaks. (Most of my housework gets done while I’m
writing these drafts.) If I need to
interview experts on the subject, I like to have good mastery of the material
before I talk with them. I tape and
transcribe the interviews, print them out, and underline the information and
quotes I might want to use. Then I
rewrite my article according to the new information and carefully insert quotes
where they seem to fit. The final stage is editing and making the words flow,
so that the reader never has to slow down to figure something out.
For
creative work, I write at the keyboard, as I’m a fast typist and want the
thoughts to flow quickly. I start with
individual stories or scenes and then patch them together and edit them. If I get stuck, I jump to the next
scene.
J: When did you know you
wanted to be a writer, and who/what were your early influences/inspirations?
R: I wanted to be a writer starting around age 11. I was a big fan of horror movies, especially
Vincent Price movies. I soon learned
that they were based on stories written by someone named Edgar Allan Poe, and
that other writers made them into scripts.
It was a mind-blowing revelation that writing stories could actually be
a person’s career! The first stories I
wrote were about werewolves. Then my
parents, oddly and wisely, bought me Playboy
anthologies of horror and science fiction, and while I didn’t understand all
their nuances, they introduced me to more sophisticated writing. Those writers, including Ray Bradbury, Richard
Matheson, and Jerome Bixby, were remarkably smart and creative, and I started
seeing their names in the credits for movies, Twilight Zone, and Star Trek.
Gradually, my interests widened to intelligent science fiction, satire, and the
world of books as a whole.
J: What was the last
book you read?
R: I just finished Dreamland:
The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones. The author is a crime reporter who traced the
current epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse to a number of factors. One was a paradigm shift in the treatment of
chronic pain, when pain specialists decided that opiates were very safe based
on a widely cited “landmark study” from 1980.
It turns out that it was actually a Letter to the Editor making
observations about opiate use in a small number of hospitalized patients. Using this “landmark study,” pharmaceutical
reps began to aggressively market highly addictive opiates for all kinds of
pain. The book also describes the
ingenious way black tar heroin was sold all over the U.S. in ways that largely
escaped detection by law enforcement.
The book is so fascinating and crisply written, I couldn’t wait get back
to it.
J: What do you want
readers to take away from reading You Can
Leave Anytime?
R: Going through drug/alcohol rehab was such a bizarre
experience it took me a few years to get my head around it. The book is a gentle reminder to other
high-functioning alcoholics that things can go downhill very fast. Second, it’s about trying to make the best of
life when you have very little control. And,
as bizarre as my experiences at the “Wetlands” were, I got sober there and
stayed sober-- probably as a result of three months of abstinence as well as
better understanding of addiction and tools to cope with it. The book is also about recovery, taking all
the dogma with a grain of salt and choosing the methods that work best for you.
J: Do you ever find
yourself creatively blocked and, if so, how do you find your way through?
R: Sure. I usually have
a few long-term writing projects going on and, if I hit a snag, I re-read what
I’ve written, start to fix and embellish, and pretty soon I’m writing fresh
material. When I really haven’t any idea
what to write, I sometimes read some of my best writing, which gives me
confidence, and read my favorite authors for inspiration.
J: What’s the most
important part of a story (beginning, end, setting, dialogue)?
R: They’re all important!
I tend to start with a setting, geographical or emotional or both, and
invite the reader into that world. I create
that world through the judicious use of sensory details and character. And dialogue is very important because
nothing brings characters to life like what comes out of their mouths. Beginnings are also important because you
have to hook readers or they won’t keep reading.
J: I rather love prompts and post them weekly here. Do you ever use
prompts?*
R: Not really.
J: What advice do you
have for other writers?
R: Write about you know, even if it’s all made up (like H.P.
Lovecraft did). In terms of character, I
always recommend finding the central paradox that defines each character. Make your violent thug something of a white
knight when it comes to women. Maybe
your geek writes bullying letters to the editor. Make your heroes a little irritating and make
us care what happens to your villains.
J: What advice do you
have for humor writers?
R: Brevity is the soul of wit.
When it’s time for the punch
line, cut to the chase and don’t put in a lot of extraneous material to
distract the reader. And while it’s
important to let your reader in on the joke, don’t explain the joke for them
and ruin the pleasure of figuring it out.
The reader must be an accomplice.
If you tell a really good raunchy joke and people laugh, they are just
as guilty as you are because they had to make the connection.
J: What’s the best
advice you ever received (on writing or anything else)?
R: Don’t sweat the small stuff.
Life is too full of real tragedies to get caught up in minor slights,
insults, and disappointments. I don’t
like to live melodramas—I only like to write about them.
J: What are you working
on now?
R: One is a short story collection, 32 Dogs, the title of which comes from a poem I wrote about an
African American friend in Southern Indiana (where I grew up) whose dogs chased
off visiting Klan members. The collection is about the intersection between
love and ferocity. The other is a
science fiction novel called Ageless
Dilettantes, about a bratty antihero who is somehow invincible to the
ravages of age and disease—and is guided by morbid fascination. Over the course of many decades, he lives
through wars, plagues, cults, opium dens, tuberculosis sanatoriums, a
half-baked attempt to mimic Houdini’s death-defying escapes, atom bomb tests,
and LSD mind control experiments. In a
strange way, it’s autobiographical.
I look forward to reading the new work, Rob! Thanks for stopping by.
*This week's prompt: Try your hand at comedy writing. Under a thousand words, no more than two characters, and take Rob's advice. I paraphrase: Don't over-explain, just tell the damn joke. Readers are smart, they'll fill in the blanks.
If you get stuck, read one of Rob's fantastic books to see how it's done.
