Cari Luna talks about The Revolution of Every Day, outline-less drafts, DJ Larry Love and so much more

I can't remember where or when or how I came to know Cari Luna. Maybe it was through a mutual friend of ours, or maybe it was because I kept seeing her fabulous knitting designs, or maybe it was because I adore her name. No matter. I'm just thrilled that we became friends and honored to host her here for her amazing novel, The Revolution of Every Day.  Fierce, original and gorgeously written, it's about a group of squatters in a New York City that no longer exists. 

Thank you, thank you, Cari for being here. 

You used to live in NYC for many years--so I want to ask, how do you know what you had to know to write this book?

The Revolution of Every Day is set in New York’s Lower East Side in 1994-95, in a community of squatted buildings. I was never a squatter, but I lived in the East Village back then. As I wrote the book, I definitely leaned hard on my memories of the neighborhood, but I also did a lot of research. I relied on newspaper articles from the time, list-serv posts among squatters and activists, pamphlets that had been distributed and posted online at a later date, etc. There are also a few excellent books about the Lower East Side squats. Of course, it’s a novel, so there’s also a good deal of invention involved.

So much of the book is really about a New York that's gone--What happened to NYC, do you think, and how can we stop it from becoming more of the investment Banker/Models/Celebrity paradise it's turned into?

I’ll be interested to see how New York shifts now that Bloomberg is out and De Blasio is in, but honestly, I think the damage has been done. The book is set at the very end of an era in NYC that isn’t coming back. I very deliberately set it at that point—what I believe was a tipping point, when gentrification won out. Before that, it was still possible live relatively inexpensively in NYC. And so you could be an artist and not have to spend all of your time and energy just working to cover your rent. You could be a working-class or middle-class family and get by without an insane amount of struggle. There’s always been struggle, sure, but not to the degree that you see now. Policies that favored big business—and particularly Wall Street—are what happened to New York. It’s been remade for the very rich. This isn’t news to anyone, of course.

What's your writing life like? How do you write? 

I’ve got two young kids, so their schedules determine mine. My son is in second grade, so he’s in school five days a week, but my daughter is in preschool just three days a week. Those three days a week are my only writing time during daylight hours. And those school days go by so quickly! Other than that, I write once the family is asleep—usually from about 9:30 or 10pm until 2am. It’s not particularly healthy, and it’s starting to catch up with me, but I’m loathe to let go of that work time at night. It feels like there’s never enough writing time. I’m greedy for it.

I write my first drafts without an outline, and usually without much of a plan. I follow the story and the characters wherever they go, trying to get it down as best I can. I’ve written three novels this way, and counting. The resulting first drafts are somewhat chaotic messes, but it gives me the raw material I need. I do many drafts—ten revisions of my (unpublished) first novel, thirteen drafts of The Revolution of Every Day. (The third novel is only a messy completed first draft at this point, on hold because I’m obsessed with writing a different book right now. I’ll get back to revising the other one soon.) Perhaps I would need fewer drafts if I were to outline, but I can’t imagine I ever will. I’m too in love with those moments when the book surprises you, when it goes somewhere you never would have expected but it feels exactly right. My MFA mentor, Michael Cunningham, told me once that “our books are smarter than we are.” I’ve found that to be true, and so I trust the process.

What's obsessing you now and why?

My novel-in-progress! It’s all I want to think about! It’s all I want to do! I try to be present for the family when I’m with them, but otherwise my head is firmly planted in the new book. It’s about online vs real life identity, and sexual obsession. This means Twitter = research, so you can imagine I’ve been struggling with my productivity a bit.

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

You might have asked for a story about book tour. I would have told you that my best tour story centers around a guy in Philadelphia named DJ Larry Love, and that it’s a story best told in person, over coffee. My reading in Philadelphia this past fall was definitely my Spinal Tap moment, but DJ Larry Love (and a bag of hot soft pretzels) saved the day.

Deborah Jiang-Stein talks about PRISON BABY, being born in prison, identity, rebirth, and roller-skating

Okay, this is one remarkable woman. Deborah Jiang-Stein was born in prison, a fact kept secret from her for many years. Shaped by fear of her own story, desperate and furious, she blazed through her life, finally coming to terms with who she was--and who she could be. It's an astonishing book and I'm honored to host Deborah here. (And P.S. She's one hell of a roller-skater. Because of her, I now have a roller derby name, Attila the Honey. Need I say more?) Thank you so much, Deborah.



 What sparked the writing of this book?  

First, thank you Caroline for asking me on your blog. In the beginning, I wrote this material as a novel. A protagonist born in prison, on a dangerous and adventurous journey in search of her true self.  The usual of three plots, with some crime and drugs added.

My then-agent found interest from two top tier editors who both engaged with me about how to better develop the manuscript. When I mentioned the story was based on my life, they suggested I write memoir, but I just wasn't interested. I felt cautious and anyway, I’d already backed away from a few screenwriters and producers who approached me around the same time. At the time, none of it felt right so I put the story of my life in a box. 

I wasn't ready to make my story public, either, and also didn't even know the full story then. Still don’t. But in the beginning I knew just a few facts but not all. That was ten years ago.

I'd already published short stories in small literary magazines and fiction called me more than memoir so I worked on a manuscript of linked short stories I wanted to finish. (About to finish it now. ) I was also raising two young children then. Fast forward ten years, when I finally committed to memoir, it took all this time for me to pull a more universal meaning out of my story. All these years to know it's not really a prison or adoption story, but a wider tale about the ravages of secrecy, stigma, and shame. 

From the beginning to publication, it’s been a long road of persistence: 56 publisher rejections and three hard workings agents. I did everything backwards, and even the road to publication. My gratitude swells for my editor Gayatri Patnaik at Beacon Press for picking up my book. This happened without an agent, a rare chance these days. I hope everyone persists in whatever they want.

So much of this amazing book is about identity: how we form our sense of our selves and how other people help form it, as well. It took incredible courage for you to change. Can you talk a bit about that? 

The change happened out of necessity. I'm gutsy in my drive for survival, not always courageous in other areas. I'm driven by curiosity. Those together guided me around the corner towards transformation. I was on a path where I would've either killed someone else or myself. I was physically unhealthy, mentally imbalanced, and all around unwell. Dis-ease in every sense. I knew I needed help, knew I needed to invent myself anew. Something also sparked inside—I wondered if I had a greater purpose in life than the destruction I was causing as I moved from state to state.

In some ways I felt like a civilian non-CIA version of Jason Bourne in the Bourne Trilogy movies, only a female spin off and not as violent. His wildness and desperation, unable to outrun himself, and on the hunt for his memory and his true identity, this was my life as I grappled with the losses and trauma, stigma and mystery of my prison birth.

Nothing is stagnant in my life, not even my identity. Adoption is all about invention and reinvention, and in fact I think if we're lucky, any major loss drives us to invent ourselves. I am not just the woman born in prison. I am many things. In many ways I believe I'm still defining myself. Maybe we all are until our very end.

You felt a terrible stigma about being a prison baby, yet you longed for your birth mother. How were you able to deal with these two opposing needs?

Still, I haven't. I yearn for what I lost, the mother I lost, and yet I wouldn't be who I am today if we'd stayed together. I've resolved that sometimes we're presented with impossible choices and unbearable circumstances.

Women in prison, and men, are looked upon as second-class. So the stigma remains, I just don’t take it on.

Can you talk about why it took you two decades to tell your parents that you knew about your prison birth? What were you afraid might happen if you told? Or was it simply that you had shut down, that you didn’t want to talk about it. 

Before I could tell anyone else and talk about my prison birth, especially speak to my parents about it, I needed to not feel so afraid of my own story. It scared me, who I was and where I came from. Not prison so much as the differentness, and even now that can still bug me sometimes but there's nothing I can do to change it. Now, though, I've stopped feeling scared of myself. 

How therapeutic or traumatizing was the writing? What surprised you as you wrote, and how did you change during the writing? 

What a wonderful question. The therapeutic influence happened for me before I could write the story, not during. I had to speak it first, just say the fact, "I was born in prison" and not feel like I would pass out from terror every time I said it. Because when I admitted it, I also had to say how much trauma and loss it caused, and how much pain I caused others as I battled through to accept myself, my family, and the truth of my story. I had to heal before I could write the story.

The process of writing was traumatic because it forced me to re-live some of the trauma, as well as recalling the illegal activities of my former life. Writing this book immersed me into real-time pain, not just the recollection of it.

I know from FB, what an extraordinary mother you are to your daughter, who is a magnificent young woman now in college. Given your background, did you have fears about being a parent. And did you consciously decide how you were going to raise her? 

I've raised my children by instinct. Most of all I’ve wanted them aware of the basic values of self-honesty, kindness, and respect, and to live with eagerness, curiosity, and an open heart. I figure if day to day they live these, most everything else falls into place.

I don't envy my children with a mother from my background. Can you imagine?! A mother born in prison and a mother who almost ended up in prison—I've made sure they wouldn't wander into the darkness the way I did.

You also work with women in prison. Can you talk about what that’s like? 

My work with women in prison is my passion, my duty, one of my loves. Ten  years ago I was conducting writing and creativity workshops in a few women’s prisons, and after a while a warden suggested I speak to the total population.

Prison gyms fill with hundreds of folding chairs and I’m there with nothing but a  hand-held mic and my story and a carrying a universe of hope I want to hand each of them face to face. I wasn’t born as a speaker but for sure I was born for this work in prisons.

While I haven’t been incarcerated, other than my infant year inside, I use story as a tool for social change. Each of the women I meet can do the same, use their story to mentor others. Most are in for nonviolent drug related charges, just like my prison mother.

What's obsessing you now?  One thing: I'm obsessed about reaching all the prisons that have invited me for a One Read book club for Prison Baby. After the inmates read, they’ve asked me to present a workshop and speaking engagement. 

Actually I am obsessed 28 times. I’ll reach 30,000 incarcerated women in total! My vision is to find ways to fund this work so I can reach each of these prisons within the next 18 months.

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

What about roller-skating? You didn't ask me about roller-skating! You and I have discussed skating before, which I love. The freedom, the flying on wheels even though I like to skate slow, I love it all.

I've been invited to guest skate in a few derby bouts and hope this happens. Prison Baby on wheels.

All this to say that my story and book carry a weight of seriousness and one way I've survived and metabolized the pain is to live with some humor, play, and have fun. I’m not frivolous here. For some reason, as adults, true play stops. But I see it as a necessity, and the best nudge I know for creativity and transformation.

Plenty of research shows how the brain’s functions better with play, and that play also fosters learning and teaches perseverance and replenishes emotional wounds—key tools for overcoming hardship.  This is how I’ve survived. I believe in balance, on skates and in life. 

Amy Hatvany talks about SAFE WITH ME, organ donation, single parenthood and why vanilla bean paste is the bomb

Amy Hatvany is not just a terrific author. She's also warm, funny and so supportive that she deserves to be in the Writers Hall of Fame. She's the author of Heart Like Mine, Outside the Lines, Best Kept Secret, The Language of Sisters, The Kind of Love That Saves You and her newest, Safe With Me. I'm so thrilled to have her here. Thank you, Amy!

I always ask, what sparked this particular book?

It actually came from an article I read over a decade ago, about a woman in New York city who was having her home remodeled. She became friendly with one of the workers and as the two of them got to know each other, she shared the fact that her husband was recovering from a kidney transplant. When the worker told her that he had actually donated one of his own kidneys to a stranger the previous year, they compared surgery dates and doctors names and it turned out that the worker was the person who saved the woman’s husband’s life.

I still get chills thinking about the two of them coincidentally crossing paths. The story idea grew from there.

SAFE WITH ME is about so many different things, organ donation, single parenthood, to name two--what was the research like? Did anything surprise you? 

Having been a single parent myself, I didn’t have to do a ton of research around that particular aspect of the book. Organ donation, however, is something with which I haven’t had personal experience, so I was lucky enough to connect with a counselor at a Seattle-based organ procurement organization. She was enormously helpful in explaining the logistics of the process, but more importantly, what clients and the families of those clients go through emotionally. One thing that didn’t necessarily surprise me, but struck me as an immensely profound thought was the fact that the many parents of a child in need of an organ transplant are essentially praying for another child to die so that their child can be saved. As a mother, I was initially horrified by this thought, but as I began to flesh out Olivia in the story, I began to understand it as being just another part of the process. There is grief on both sides, and it’s what happens when those two sides come together that I wanted to explore.

I was struck by something you said, about who we do or do not share the most intimate parts of ourselves with others, and how that sharing creates a bond. Could you talk about that please? 

At the beginning of the story, all three main characters in the story, Hannah, Olivia, and Maddie, ache to find a feeling of safety, both figuratively, and in Olivia and Maddie’s case, physically. They are all in flux, struggling with fear and grief and uncertainty, and it is only after they meet that the dynamics in each of their personal situations begin to change. None of them have an easy time with trust or vulnerability, and I wanted to explore how important that very basic need within us–to have people in our lives with whom we feel safe–is to our survival. The title sprang from that exploration.

SAFE WITH ME is also about deep grief and the loss of a child. You're a mother--how difficult was this to write? 

It was excruciating, really. I had the first scene in my head long before I began writing and it haunted me. The idea of losing one of my children is the most painful thing I could imagine. Not too far into the story, I realized right along with Hannah, who loses her daughter, Emily, that children who lose their parents are orphans, spouses are either widows or widowers, but there is no word for a parent who loses a child. A profound finding, I thought, and totally understandable. The significance of that kind of loss is simply too devastating to fit into one word.

Tell us about your writing life these days. Do you have rituals? Do you outline? Do you have three novels bubbling in the back of your mind or do you take a long time to figure out what you want to write about next. And how do you know when an idea is a good one? 

The only ritual I have is that I must go straight to my desk each morning and begin working. I can’t take a shower or exercise or clean or play with my dogs or the day will be lost to distraction. I get my cup of coffee, plop on my Bose noise-cancelling headphones and either research or write. Both, perhaps, depending on the day.

I’m also not a huge outliner, but I do jot down a three-act structure of a book and the turning points at the end of the first and second acts which propel the story along. Those points give me something at which to aim. Before I begin writing, I absolutely need to pinpoint the larger question I am trying to answer, the overall driving force behind the action of the book. Of course this is usually hampered by the two or three other ideas for novels leaping around in my brain, so I often need to get the bare bones of those stories onto the page before I can truly focus on my current work in progress. I know a story idea is a good one when it won’t leave me alone. When I’m walking my dogs and find myself in an unfamiliar neighborhood because I’ve been so caught up in the idea that I didn’t pay attention to where I was going. When I can’t sleep because characters are chattering in my head. That’s when I know I’ve stumbled upon something compelling enough to build upon.

What's obsessing you now and why?

This is not related to books in any way, shape, or form, but I am completely obsessed with the discovery of using vanilla bean paste in my baked goods. Worlds better than vanilla extract in terms of adding amazing flavor to my creations. I tend to bake when I’m working on an new idea, or waiting for my editor to get back to me on revisions, so I’ve stocked up on this ingredient and have been putting it to great use!

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

I was waiting for you to ask me about what movies I’ve fallen in love with this year, since we share that particular passion! I adored “Enough Said;” Nicole Holofcener is one of the most talented writer/directors working today. Her first film, “Walking and Talking” introduced me to her particular brand of humor and realism and to Catherine Keener, whom I also adore. I talk about Nicole incessantly and can’t recommend her films enough.

Therese Walsh, author of THE MOON SISTERS talks about the subconscious, muddling towards characters, and so much more

I'm honored to host Therese Walsh, author of the wonderful new novel, The Moon Sisters.  Thank you, Therese!

When I’m ready to start a new story, I sit with ideas but not crystal clear ones. Rather, these ideas are like partially formed apparitions; they blink and sway and leave me feeling both unsure about my vision and entranced by it.

When I first sat to write “The Moon Sisters,” I had a fairly good idea about the book’s themes and who one of the sisters would be—a dreamy synesthete named Olivia Moon, who could see music and smell her mother on the sun and knew the taste of hope. Her sister, Jazz, was much less revealing, which made things interesting when she claimed the first chapter for her own. She was angry, this sister—bitter and put upon.  She didn’t want to cooperate with me any more than she wanted to cooperate with Olivia, who had plans to track down a legendary will-o’-the-wisp light—a different sort of partially formed apparition that blinks and sways and lures with false promises. Olivia wanted to find one of these wisps because it was her mother’s dream to see one, and her mother had died without this wish fulfilled. Though Olivia believed that seeing a light would help in some significant way, I couldn’t pinpoint the why of that, exactly; and every time I tried to saddle Olivia with a simple reason, like a desire to lay her mother’s spirit to rest, it rang hollow.

Whatever Olivia’s fuzzy logic, Jazz was not interested in the trip. She let me know, almost immediately, that she had other priorities, like starting her new job at a funeral home—the same funeral home her mother’s body had been laid out in just a few months earlier. She wanted to work there, but she wouldn’t tell me why. Fascination with death? Obvious. But why?

Each chapter of The Moon Sisters begins with some form of reflection from either Olivia or Jazz. Sometimes these reflections are a single memory, sometimes they're puzzle-piece realizations about how life up to that point created the person they had become. I fell in love with these segments, and would look forward to writing them and learning more about the girls and their troubled mother, Beth, as the story progressed.

And eventually—eventually—there it was, toward the end of my draft. Illumination. When I realized why Jazz wanted to work in a funeral home, I cried. When I realized why Olivia wanted so desperately to connect with a will-o’-the-wisp light, I cried again.

If you’re a writer, and you’re one who knows all that’s needed about a canvas of characters before you begin writing, then I applaud you. I am not like you, though. I have to muddle through until my characters trust me—or until my subconscious bubbles to the surface. I have to write and write to learn why because it does not come any other way, and never easily.  And perhaps I’m a touch masochistic, but I think I like this blink-sway process. As the characters come to trust me with their issues, I come to trust myself with them as well.