TC Boyle in the Sacramento Bee talking about literature…that it’s mostly entertaining.
Click here

You may have to register to see it (I did, but it only took a moment). Here’s an excerpt:

“People are put off by me because I’m so productive and such a good performer,” says Boyle, 53, who will appear Wednesday evening at the Crest Theatre in a talk sponsored by California Lectures. “They think it’s not proper for a writer. But I don’t agree. Anybody can do whatever he wants, as long as the work backs him up.”

And this…

“That said, it takes work. If you have the ability and devote your entire life to it and you’re very lucky, you may get an audience and be a productive artist. It’s really difficult in our society to be an artist. There’s a lot of competition and nobody really cares. So, why not enjoy it and have fun?”

A former student and current friend asked me to blog on something controversial, so he could comment. So I sat for a minute, took a bite of fettucine with chopped basil and tomatoes, and thought. This was a hard one. I’ve been so controversial at times that I’ve lost friends over that quality I have that allows me to say more than I intended (or maybe I did intend and just wanted to push and see what would happen? I do like to shake things up, it seems).

So, controversial means (to me) something that might lose a few friends for ya. I really don’t want to lose more friends than I already have, but then it came to me. I had just the thing that would be controversial, at least in regards to this friend ( and former student) who wrote asking for controversy.

This is it. It has to do with writing workshops and having a thin skin and encountering a few workshop participants who either don’t get your work or get it and are giving you a hard time about it. So you leave. You decide that you’ve gotten all you need from said workshop and it’s time to strike out on your own. At least that’s the excuse you give.

When in fact what has happened (most of the time) is that your ego has grown ungainly and is misleading you, as egos tend to do.

So many writers are too thin-skinned for their own good. And it’s too bad because I’ve seen some talented writers decide what they really need is to go it alone, and then falter. They start doing crazy things–or continue to do crazy things that I (or another teacher) told them not to do: they write for no pay because it gives them a deadline (they say) or they decide their book (or story) only needs one more pass, if that, and they start sending it out (prematurely) and it gets rejected and then they badmouth the publishing industry (which, frankly, does deserve it, to a point).

You may be thinking: I have this opinion because I need paying students to help keep me afloat. Wrong. These writers that I see go astray are often the ones I’ve told I’d let stay in the workshop for free, because I see their need.

This brings me back to that old saw: Why do we think writing is different from learning another art form? That we only need to be writing seriously a year or two and then we’re ready to go it alone? That is so wrong.

Most of us need workshops for a loooonnnnnggggg time. Years, actually. We need to hear what other writers–our chosen critiques–have to say. Because just get out there and start dealing with agents and publishers and if your skin is thin from years of seclusion, you will give up the whole dealybob of writing to publish.

Well, my dinner is finished now. I have a piece of basil stuck in my throat. I’m going to get up and pour some more pinot. And I’m going to wait for my friend (former student) to post to this very controversial post and tell me how I’m full of it.

Is anyone else worrying about the avian flu? You read the papers and soon you’re freaking out, looking for Tamiflu, thinking you will stock up.

I hate how the media does that.

Well, next Thursday, November 16 (is that a Thursday?), one of my guests will be Marc Siegel, M.D., author of False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear. Read more about him here

. Of course his book is not about fear as concerns writers but writers are also immobilized by fear–fear of not succeeding, fear of discovering that their work stinks, fear that they will never ever write one decent paragraph or story or book.

Speaking of books, my other guest that night will be the new book editor at the Los Angeles Times, David Ulin. He was on before with his book, The Myth of Solid Ground

. We’ll talk about changes at the book review. I’m happy about David’s new post and happy most of his writer friends are women. Maybe this means we’ll start seeing more books by women covered by the Book Review–finally!

In my January 29, 2005 blog on, well, blogging, I talked about whether blogging takes time away from your writing. One of my blog visitors wrote to me recently and asked me to go more into blogs, so here goes.

Now that I have had this blog for nine months, I have a few more things to say about blogs and why I think they are a good thing. And how I avoid having my blog take time away from writing.

First off, I blog irregularly–as you know, if you’ve been checking in here. Once, twice a week at most. I know some bloggers who post long blogs almost daily and while I like to read their blogs, I can’t personally keep this up. It would take time away from writing, for sure.

But here’s the thing….I have tracking software that allows me to see where most of the activity is, in regards to my web site and what I have seen is that this blog seems to generate the most hits.

I started my blog because my editor at Harcourt thought it would be a great way to keep my Web site fresh, without having to revise the web site itself. When you have a web site, you need to give folks a reason to return. This blog seems to do that. Of course now and then we add features to the web site–there’s the TV show I did with Barry Kibrick, on my site, and I’ve begun archiving radio shows. And soon I will start posting chapters on my web site that didn’t make it into Pen on Fire.

There you have it–my three cents on why to blog and how to not let it rob time from your writing. (Other things, frankly, have the ability to take time from my writing more than blogging does….!)

Hopefully this answers your questions….!

First I want to tell you why you cannot leave anonymous comments anymore: Because I was receiving so many frivolous comments–not rude, just Web site promos and, well, yukky spam.

So I decided to only accept comments from registered users. I apologize for the hassle, but, frankly, not a lot of people, I find, comment anyway, or they write to me personally, and I just grew tired of spending time tossing comments into the trash.

That said, I would love to hear your comments! I hope you’ll take the time to register with Blogger.com if you haven’t already.

More soon…..

We finally have four radio shows archived on my Web site, thanks to Rob Roy and Dave Mosso. And more will be coming in the future. One is with literary agent John Ware, another is with narrative nonfiction author Judy Blunt and novelist Robert Stone, and the third is Ron Carlson, short story writer.

Go here

and click on the right side of the screen where it says “audio archive.”

Yay!