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Ron McLarty discusses what it feels like to have become an 'overnight success'
How much did your own life experience influence the creation of your
characters and drive the plot of The Memory of Running?
My parents had a car accident while visiting me at a vacation spot in
Maine. I stayed at a motel between my mother's trauma center and my father's
neurological hospital. Between visits, I wrote The Memory of Running as a
play. After their deaths, I expanded it into novel form. Like in all of my
work, I try to explain the world and its affect on me. I have always felt that
writing is a deeply personal thing and not a road to wealth and happiness. In
terms of my characters, although I start from my own experience, I seem to let
my characters go from my control. They wrote their own stories from their own
points of view.
Although Stephen King calls Smithy Ide, "a smokes-too-much,
drinks-too-much, eats-too-much heart attack waiting to happen," he also
posits that your protagonist Smithson Ide, "is an American original, worthy
of a place on the shelf just below your Hucks, your Holdens, and your
Yossarians." What do you think of his impressions?
I appreciate his impressions although I must say that I don't think
Smithy Ide is a shelf lower than Yossarian or Caulfield. And who could be on
par with Huck Finn anyway?
How has your acting career shaped your life as a writer? Do you think
acting has made writing easier because you have a better understanding of real
characters? Now that your writing career has taken off with flying colors,
will you continue to act?
Acting has been my entrée into the world. Not just creating roles but the
energy that swirls around each varying project, starts me up. But it's also
a calling that requires permission to do it. If your career is a hill then the
mountain next to it is the rejections accrued. Writing was something that I
didn't need permission to do. It's why, I think all my work, is different.
No rules. Nothing but myself and my imagination and memories…But writing has
never been easy for me. If I work for, say, five or six hours in the morning,
I might go through twenty five pages, but almost inevitably, I end a session
with 5 or 6 I can use. I would prefer to only write I suppose, but I think it's
too late to change at my age. I need even the small order an acting career
offers so that I don't flab away the days.
Do you have a specific routine that helps you write? How has having
insomnia shaped your writing process?
I write in the early morning, four or five hours. Later, if there's time
between auditions, I love the energy of the main reading room at the NY Public
Library .To be able to get even a paragraph or a phrase, that feels right,
down on paper in stolen time is a joy. I've always had what my mother called
‘short sleep,' so over the years I've learned quasi meditations to give
myself additional rest. I always have a pad and pencil next to me for when I
‘meditate' upon a character or idea that's been consuming me.
Stephen King acted as a catalyst in getting The Memory of Running
published, will you talk a little bit about this experience. How did it feel
to finally get that call saying that it would be published?
I certainly am in Stephen King's debt. How does one say thank you? We've
talked and I'm determined to put my own good will out into the world as
selflessly as he did for me. I will never forget being thunderstruck by the
realization that I will finally have a chance in the writing arena. Yet
everything comes with a price tag. I'm not the only writer to put everything
he is onto paper and been told there's no room at the inn. After I while, I
gave up on sending work out—too difficult…Although I do believe it took
kismet for my work to get any credibility, it's important that I express how
hard I labored over this novel. I learned from a myriad of failures. I found
my voice, lost it and found it again. Sometimes, frankly, it's discouraging
to think that this and subsequent work will be viewed by many as luck, as if I
sat down one day, popped a beer and scribbled it down…I still have 37 years
of the whipped dog in me.
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
Fran Dorf was born in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1953. As a teenager, she read voraciously, wrote poetry and stories, and began working on a novel at the age of sixteen. She graduated from high school in 1971... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Memory of Running
Try:
Saving Elijah
by Fran Dorf
Yoko Ogawa has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, and Zoetrope: All-Story. Her works include The Memory Police, The Diving Pool, a collection of ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Memory of Running
Try:
The Housekeeper and the Professor
by Yoko Ogawa
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