“When Dad spoke, the bar became quiet. Vines slithered up the bar stools; tunnels opened at our feet. And Tommy Goodman, my father’s tunnel-rat friend, a man I learned to imagine from Dad’s war stories, pulled up a seat next to us and rested his head on the glossy surface of the bar … Before I knew it, they would be gone, two boys headed out to the war. I trailed behind, mopping up blood with cocktail napkins.”That’s a hallucinogenic passage from Danielle Trussoni's memoir, Falling Through the Earth. The book examines her troubled childhood, where she struggled with divorce, poverty and her father’s demons from the Vietnam War.
This week, Trussoni will show us how she turned a lifetime of memories into a vivid, living document. Today, she explains how she survived the grueling process of finishing her first book—surviving rejection and personal struggles to make this award-winning (one of the New York Times’ top ten books of the year) book a reality.
Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
You overcame some tough odds in your small town to become a writer--what motivated you to write in a childhood where writing was not encouraged? As an adult, you must have struggled as a fledgling writer, economically and time-wise, how did you balance your life responsibilities and writing life?
Danielle Trussoni:
It is really weird that I wanted to be a writer, considering where I came from. Continue reading...
I see kids in elementary school going to Creative Writing Camps, and I think: What would I have done if I were in a poetry or fiction workshop when I was 9?
Would it have helped? I really don’t know. I think that one of the most important elements one needs to have to be a writer is to be totally idealistic and stubborn. I didn’t feel that I couldn’t be a writer because I was the only person I knew who wanted to do it.
As an adult, I sacrificed everything in order to write. I lived for many years with an income of $10,000 a year or less, no health insurance, doing this and that so that I could have time to write.
But truthfully, I didn’t start writing in earnest until I was at Iowa. Going to the Writers Workshop gave me the time and the funding I needed to start.
» "I sacrificed everything in order to write" : How One Writer Survived the Long, Long Road To Publication from ThePublishingSpot
“When Dad spoke, the bar became quiet. Vines slithered up the bar stools; tunnels opened at our feet. And Tommy Goodman, my father’s tunnel-rat friend, a man I learned to imagine from Dad’s war stories, pulled up a seat next... [Read More]
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