Holly LeCraw: On Writing
So, did you always want to be a writer?
I think I always did, although often I wouldn’t admit it to myself. It just seemed the height of hubris. I was one of those children who read constantly, constantly–hundreds and hundreds of books. Being a writer just seemed like the most magical, incredible thing in the world to me, and so it seemed delusional to aspire to actually be one. I struggled with that for years.
Did you write as a child?
I wrote short things. I wrote poetry. I didn’t imagine whole stories so much; later on I thought that was a sign of something terribly wrong with me and my talent, or lack thereof, but it turned out to be all right. I was more interested in capturing moments, feelings–what you might call emotional texture. I felt astounded by the world a good deal of the time. I didn’t think that was real writing, though.
The Swimming Pool is your first book, and you’re 43. Have you been writing all this time?
Thank you. Yes. I am 43.
(I should mention that when I started The Swimming Pool, I thought of Marcella as much older than me–terribly middle-aged. Now–what with the time it took to write the book, plus the process of finding an agent, selling the book, ramping up to publication–well, now I suppose we are contemporaries.)
What did I do all that time? The short answer is I dithered, and tried to do every legit sort of writing-type thing that wasn’t writing.
I grew up working in my father’s bookstore, Oxford Books, in Atlanta. You would think that all that exposure to books and publishing would demystify writing as a career for me, but somehow it had the opposite effect. For a while I thought I might be a teacher. Then, in college, I began doing more acting–I had started in high school with musical theater, and then I began to do some straight plays. I loved being on stage but I found acting very difficult. It’s quite similar to writing in some ways; but the process of building a character, of making choices as that character, is both more internal and more external. And, of course, you’re doing it in front of an audience, and you don’t get to revise. I thought about becoming an actor professionally, but I just wasn’t ready for that level of hardship. I think I knew I didn’t have enough love for it.
My father wanted me to come back to Atlanta and work for him, but I thought I needed to be at a different part of the book process. I went to the Denver Publishing Institute, worked in academic publishing in Boston for about five minutes, waitressed and wrote, temped and wrote, gave up yet again and went to grad school–not for an MFA but for a Ph.D. This was at the height of deconstruction and identity politics and what my husband called “the Jacques Derrida Show.” Truth and beauty, of which I am quite fond, were pretty much verboten as concepts. I did get my master’s, but I realized that yet again I was at the wrong place on the literary spectrum, and that I’d basically exhausted all my non-writing options. You know, you can run, but you cannot hide.
I have heard a number of writers, when asked for advice, say that you should only write if you can’t not write. That is what I spent a number of years proving to myself: I really have to do it, otherwise I’m miserable. As soon as I finally realized that, I buckled down. Whenever I wanted to give up, I just reminded myself that I’d tried that before, and it hadn’t worked.
Do you feel at a disadvantage not having an MFA?
No, I don’t. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them; if I wanted to teach, I would definitely need one. My friends with MFAs certainly seem to have learned a lot. But at the point where I really would have thought about getting an MFA, I had just completed my master’s in English Lit–which, by the way, I didn’t pay for, because the department gave fellowships, and I was a T.A. The last thing I wanted to do was go back to school yet again, and this time pay for it.
To be honest, though, there was also some stubbornness on my part. I just thought I could do it myself; and I did. I did take several workshops at the Boston Center for Adult Education and the Harvard Extension. Boston of course is just lousy with writers, and there are fabulous teachers everywhere. And now, here in Boston, there’s Grub Street, which is a great writer’s organization that offers a lot of classes. I also went to summer workshops at Bennington (the program now is a low-residency MFA) and Sewanee. So I do think workshops have a lot of value.
I think in the end, though, the main thing that workshops teach you is to trust yourself. Your main job in a workshop is to filter all the feedback you’re getting. Some of it will be complete crap, some of it will be half and half and some of it right on the money. It’s a lab; you’re running experiments in how to engage the reader. You’re learning what works and what doesn’t. And you learn that you can’t fool anyone, ever–if you secretly think something isn’t working, then it’s not.
And you also learn that you can’t please everyone. You learn–if you didn’t already know–that there is such a thing as literary taste, and your own taste, your own instinct, is most important.
You’ve got three kids. How is it being both a writer and a mother?
Well, you know, mothers work. They all work in the home, and a lot of them work out of the home, and both ways have their challenges. This is a weird job I’ve got, and I think of it as much more than a job, but when it comes down to it I’m a working mom and I am always trying to balance. It’s both harder and easier that I get to dictate my own schedule–honestly, in the end, probably easier. But when my kids were younger, and I just did not have the time or the mental space to get anything done–that was very, very hard. Probably what’s hardest is that, as a novelist, what you crave are solid blocks of time, long opportunities for solitude and concentration–which is sort of antithetical to being at home with little kids.
When the kids were very little, I also had a lot of guilt. One of them, when he was about two, would sit at the bottom of the stairs that led up to my study and cry. That was just horrible. So I figured out it was better for me to have them out of the house if at all possible. Nannies work for other people, but they didn’t work as well for me; I was very very grateful for preschool. And pre-pre-school. Also, at that point I wasn’t bringing in any money–so I felt better justifying it as, you know, educational time for them, rather than time for me. And I do think they’re turning out quite well.
So when do you get your writing done?
Now the kids are all in school–real school–and so I write while they’re gone, and sometimes I go away for a long weekend and I don’t talk for three or four days and I just totally sink into the work. But that’s a luxury. Mostly it has to be day in, day out. It has taken a long time, but I have learned to switch gears a little more quickly. I’m still not great at it.
I also say “no” a lot. You have to get really good at saying no. Nicely, of course. No, I can’t have coffee, no, I can’t have lunch, no, I can’t head that committee. No, I absolutely can not be a room parent. Room parents are the saints of this world! Of course you have to say yes occasionally–I would say, though, just pick your yeses carefully, and for maximum impact. I also have to admit it is another great luxury, now, to have a contract for the next book. It’s much easier for me to say no when I know I have an actual obligation to someone.
I would like to point out, though, that no one ever asks a male writer what it’s like to be a dad and a writer. I don’t care that it’s the 21st century; people still don’t think that way. But, I have to say, it cuts both ways, and I have often thought that I have it easier than my male counterparts. The male writers I know have much more anxiety about being the breadwinners. They put much more pressure on themselves that way. Whereas for a long time I got to fly under radar–I seemed like I was a stay-at-home mom, but really I had this other project going on, and then I got to burst out and say, ta-da! Look, I wrote a book!
And I can’t say it enough: my husband was and is very, very supportive. I could not have written this book and mothered three kids without him. Of course, I did tell him–I said, I have to do this. And he agreed. He gets that this is my sanity.
So it’s a vocation.
Yes. I always wanted one. I feel very, very blessed to have a passion, and to be able to follow it.
