About Barbara

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's first book, Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within (Harcourt, 2004), was a Los Angeles Times best-seller and won a 2005 ASJA Outstanding Book Award. Her essay, Knitting: My Urban Escape, was anthologized in Knitting Through It: Inspiring Stories for Troubled Times (Voyageur, 2008) and she has a short story due out in April 2010 in Orange County Noir, an anthology published by Akashic Books. She blogs about writing at http://penonfire.blogspot.com and has published essays and articles in Orange Coast Magazine, Westways, The Los Angeles Times, The Writer, Writer's Digest, and more.

She has taught creative writing at UC-Irvine Extension since 2000 (The Inner Game of Writing), and also teaches "Jumpstart Your Writing" online for Gotham Writers Workshop, based in New York City. She produces and hosts "Writers on Writing," which broadcasts from UC-Irvine and streams live at www.kuci.org. The show podcasts on iTunes and at http://writersonwriting.blogspot.com. Barbara was named a 2001 Distinguished Instructor at UC-Irvine Extension and awarded with Literary Magnet #1, on Orange Coast Magazine's Best of Orange County list, 2008. She is founder of the Pen on Fire Speakers Series.

Q&A with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Q: What was it that made you want to become a writer?

A: I can remember growing up with an overwhelming need to express myself with words, but I didn't have the vocabulary. In our household, my native Sicilian dad (he came from Italy when he was a teen) spoke a mishmash of English and Italian that my friends could hardly understand—a source of great embarrassment to me as a teenager. My mother was forced to quit school in the seventh grade, so her English also didn't win any prizes. There wasn't what you'd call conversation in my house—or books, except for maybe Reader's Digest Condensed Books . My parents spoke Italian quite a bit. It was their secret language, although they didn't teach me—I think they wanted me to grow up to be a nice, white Anglo-Saxon American; the description, "Italian-American," did not yet exist in our lexicon. So my desire to write may have stemmed from this primal need to express myself in words.

Q: Were there any teachers along the way that provided encouragement?

A: Thank God for teachers. A few of them planted seeds that, to this day, I still offer up prayers for their good intentions. At North Penn High, in Lansdale, Mrs. Sanderson, Mr. Hefner and Mr. Ribble were teachers who made me feel I had something to offer. Prior to the 11 th grade, I almost quit school; I definitely circled the drain. My parents had split up and things were bad. These teachers were a Godsend. If only they knew how much of an effect they had on me. That's one of the main reasons I continue to teach adults and children: I know the world-changing effect a teacher can have on a life.

And in college I had many mentors, but early on, two in particular—Jeff Weiss and Judith Beth Cohen. They believed in me more than I believed in me. Later, with John Dranow (former husband of poet Louise Gluck) and novelist Kathryn Davis, I came to believe that I was indeed a writer.

Q: What was the inspiration for Pen on Fire ?

A: When my son was a toddler, I taught a private writing workshop in the studio behind our house. For many beginning writers, it's common to feel inspired while in workshop, but once you return home, the inspiration dwindles and you're left scratching around for whatever motivation you can find. One day, at the end of class, after a particularly good couple of hours, one student, Robin Barada, said, "Can we just take you home with us? It's always so inspiring here." I didn't think my husband and son would like me going to live somewhere else, nor did I want do. Instead, I said, "I will write a book for you."

Q: Why did it take you so long to publish your first book?

A: Let me just say this: Pen on Fire may be the first book I published, but it wasn't the first book I wrote. I wrote two novels prior to Pen on Fire —two unpublished novels. I also wrote 100 pages of a mystery, and a book proposal for a book I ended up not selling. The first novel was a learning experience; now I'm ecstatic it didn't get published—the reviews would have been disastrous. The second novel was a learning experience, which I began, actually, as a reaction, in a roundabout way, to getting pregnant. Let me explain: I was 100 pages into writing the mystery I mentioned earlier. At page 100, the bad guy had just emerged from the basement where he was hiding, and covered my main character, Fiona's, mouth, with his hand. That day I learned I was pregnant. I worried that if I kept working on that book, I might scare my baby in utero, so I put it aside and, through freewriting, started writing Starletta's Kitchen. I tried selling it but a few agents had problems with the main male character, a quite repellent fellow; I based him on a former boyfriend who thought I'd be perfect if only I'd get a boob job. The lesson in this for me was: Don't write characters based on people you yearn to avenge. I'm working on another novel that I pray is not one more learning experience. At the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Glen David Gold ( Carter Beats the Devil ) said, in regards to writing one unpublished novel after another, something to the effect that he'd kill himself if Carter was just one more learning experience. I can relate.

Q: What's a typical day like?

A: I have no typical days. I'm very much anti-routine, whenever possible, which may be why I've had so few actual 9-5 jobs. Some days I get up early and walk before my son wakes up, while my husband is still asleep (he's a night owl, sometimes coming to bed a few hours before I get up). Other mornings I get up early, make a cup of chai, and start writing. One thing is true: I have to get writing done first thing or it doesn't get done, or I have to program it into my brain that today is a day when I'll only have bits of time here and there and so need to remember to use those bits.

Q: Who are your favorite authors?

A: That's like asking, "What's your favorite food?" I've had so many favorites. Some change, some remain the same. I tend to read literary fiction—and mystery writers whose style is more literary—narrative nonfiction and poetry. And because I have a young son, I've also grown to appreciate children's fiction. Here's what comes to mind at this very minute: I've been on an Anita Shreve kick. I read a couple of her books a couple years ago, but I'm reading them again and especially love Light on Snow. I also love Chris Bohjalian and T. Jefferson Parker's fiction. Joan Didion's essays in The White Album and Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Andre Dubus' Meditations from a Moveable Chair. Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. David Mamet's South of the Northeast Kingdom. Dani Shapiro's Slow Motion. Jo-Ann Mapson's Blue Rodeo and Goodbye, Earl. Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Debbie Bull's Blue Jelly. Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. 84 Charring Cross Road by Helene Hanff. Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. My favorite short story writers are Ron Carlson and Raymond Carver. Favorite poets are Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, Michael Ryan, Robert Hass and Stephen Dunn. I love children's author Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie), and Louis Sachar's Holes is a classic. I could go on and on but I had better stop now.

Q: By the way, what is your favorite food?

A: Depends on my mood! Hot fudge sundaes are always a favorite, but I can't think of the last time I ate one and I won't be eating them daily—or even monthly—until ours is a Woody Allen universe in which hot fudge sundaes are considered healthy and non-fattening. I've been a vegetarian since 1981, and so is my family.

Q: What about journals—paper or otherwise?

A: I read the Los Angeles Times online. There's way too much paper in this house, so I visit online sites for news, such as the New York Times and Slate.com. I read the New Yorker, Tin House, Poets and Writers, The Writer, Los Angeles Magazine, and a handful of others. Daily I visit the ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors) forum (www.asja.org). And otherwise, I spend too much time following links on Facebook, Stumbleupon, etcetera.

Q: What if you don't come from a literary background—can you still become a writer?

A: Earlier I said the books in our house were Reader's Digest Condensed Books . I was not kidding. My father read The New York Daily News and my mother read magazines like True Romance and The National Enquirer, which she tried to hide from me. The TV was on most of the time. I never saw my parents reading books and they didn't read to me. The only time I remember, as a child, going to the library was when I visited my half-sister, Jeanne, in Kansas one summer. She took me to the library where I checked out a pile of books—it was such a thrill! There are more authors than you'd think—some award-winning, too—that came from non-literary backgrounds: poet Stephen Dunn, author Susan Straight. Musicians come from non-musical backgrounds, artists come from non-artistic backgrounds. I believe if it's in your heart and soul, and if it's your destiny, you will find your way to it—whatever it is.

Q: How did your radio show come about?

A: Soon after I began working on Pen on Fire (when my10-year-old son was a toddler), I made contact with a New York editor at a major publishing house. I sent him my fledgling book which was in the form of a book proposal—30 or so pages of text with a bio, overview and marketing information. The editors liked it but the marketing department nixed the deal. "Who is she?" they wanted to know. I taught at home, did little freelancing. My name just wasn't out there.

On a molecular level, I must have heard what they said. I began looking into enjoyable ways I could become more of a presence in the literary community. One was teaching at the university, another was making an effort to get into national publications. And the third was to start a radio show with authors as guests. UCI, where my show broadcasts from, has training sessions every quarter and I took one. I passed the FCC test and was on my way. The show's been running six-and-a-half years now, and I know if it weren't for the show, there are so many authors I would never have met. My personality is more introverted; I'm not the type to call up an author or e-mail them and convince them to let me take them to lunch to chat. That's not me at all. Plus, most authors hardly have time to go out to lunch with their friends, let alone kind, lunch-treating strangers.

Q: What about books about writing—which do you favor (other than your own, of course)?

A: Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life, Abigail Thomas' Thinking About Memoir, Flannery O'Conner's Mysteries and Manners. Natalie Goldberg'sThunder and Lightning. Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream. And of course Brenda Ueland's 1938 classic If You Want to Write.

 

Q: What is the biggest obstacle to beginning writers?

A: It's that innocuous piece of furniture in everybody's house—the television! And the Internet, of course. You have got to learn to turn it off. Fortunate for me, my husband sometimes watches videos, but not TV.

Q: What advice to you have for beginning writers?

A: Other than not watching TV or playing on the Internet until you've written? Decide that writing is a priority and make time for it. If you're in love with someone, you make time for him or her, right? Likewise, you must make time for writing. Instead of going out to lunch, dinner, to the movies, or to a concert, write. So many Sundays when I was working on Starletta's Kitchen and Pen on Fire, I sat at my desk and kissed my husband and son goodbye as they walked happily out the door on their way to the beach or the park. I had no idea if my books would ever be published. I was writing because I had to, because I knew that if I didn't, they would never be finished. Well, as it turned out, one wasn't published (so far), and one was. Do I regret not going to the beach those days with my family? I must admit, I do a little. But we had many good, fun days back then, and I believe—I hope —that my working hard and getting a book published will also be good for my son—for all of us—in the long run. Often it's a matter of balance. While you should not sacrifice your family for your art, you need to get work done, too. It's your job to figure out how to best do that.