DL: The following interview I conducted with myself is available to anyone wishing to reproduce it in a blog, on a website on in print media. We ask only that you let us know you are using the piece.
Q. Can you tell our readers what French Boy is about and why you were impelled to write your book? What was driving you to spend the time, energy, and money to get this book out into the world?
A. I wrote impelled by a strong desire to record the life of my community—the Francophone Canadian-American community of New England. This is a book about life in Franco-America in the 1950s. It uses my life as an organizing principle. A good memoir is not only about the individual who is its presenting subject but it is about something bigger, about some whole that the memoir subject is part of. I want to celebrate our experience. I do not want the world to forget we were here.
Q. Can you tell us how long it took from the time you conceived the book to the time you had it published? How many years did you spend in active writing? Were there long breaks in between active writing periods? If so, what happened to get you writing again?
A. Perhaps as have many writers, I had written parts of this book over the years—vignettes and stories. Some had appeared on my blog while many were stored in my computer documents. About two years ago, I collated these pieces, made lists of what I felt was important to write about, and began earnest on a daily basis. Of course, there were breaks, but I always knew I would return to write the missing stories into the book. It was important to me to produce a finished memoir. I never had any doubt I would persevere.
Q. You must have had periods in which you were discouraged or at least less enthusiastic. Can you tell us about how you kept yourself going? What worked for you?
A. Actually, there weren’t any discouraging times. I am a writer of many years and I just set myself to the task. There certainly were times when I wondered if the memoir was “good enough” but never a time when I thought of abandoning it. Questions about its quality just stimulated me to make the story better organized or better articulated. I kept asking myself, “What do I really mean to write here and am I writing it in a way the reader will understand?”
Q. Tell us what the theme of your book is. How did you come upon this theme? Do you feel you were successful in getting your theme across to the reader?
A. Theme, of course, is the soul of your writing. You could say character, action, and setting are the body of the memoir. The body needs a soul to animate it: that’s the theme.
- The first theme that dominated my writing for a long time was that of the immigrant experience. For me, being Franco-American involved an inhibiting sense of otherness. Then there was shame over the loss of language and ancestral culture that was endemic in my generation. Concurrently one feels rootless. The American mythos is not ours: it belongs to another community. Observers may believe we are part of this mythos, but we ourselves feel it does not reflect us. We experience ourselves as “other.” Meanwhile, our “us” is in full dissolution.
- The second is the religious theme. I was young when it seemed that I was being nurtured to become a priest. My environment was very religious and it was natural for a quiet, serious boy like me to come to believe he had a vocation—certainly people were mirroring that to me. At the end of the book, I win a scholarship that permits me to attend a minor seminary. The story is for a sequel.
- The third theme was my desire to become an educated man. My family was working class and I felt that I did not want to follow in the footsteps of the men in my community. So reaching for education and finding an alternative to the working class constitute another strong theme. This is partly resolved by going to the seminary.
I do think that I have developed these themes well. The reader cannot have much doubt about what I am conveying.
Q. Is there anything in particular you would say was the most difficult thing to succeed at in this book? Was it scheduling, research, plotting, point of view, believing in yourself, or what else?
A. I am a seasoned writer so I have long ago learned to handle these issues. As I have said many times in my books and blogs, a plumber doesn’t struggle emotionally with plumbing. It’s just what a plumber does. He goes to work following a process he knows well, arrives at an end, and then moves on to another job. That’s my model as a writer. I proceed in a professional manner and endeavor not to struggle emotionally with my work.
Q. Was there a success trait you have discerned for the process of writing? That is, are there best practices you would recommend to readers that would facilitate completing her/his memoir?
A. Write regularly. If a particular story or vignette does not flow on a given day, move on to another story or vignette. A memoir is long-form writing and eventually everything can fit in its place—or not. Respect the nature of each of your drafts. Write everything you want or can think of into your first draft and then, in the second, you can start to eliminate, move around, or add to. The first draft is not about polish. That’s the work of the second and third drafts.
Q. What makes for a successful memoir? Do you feel your memoir was a success?
A. A memoir is written with an audience in mind. If it speaks to that audience and is received by it, then it is a success. Of course, we always hope for some commercial success, and that involves marketing. Commercial success is different from critical success. My hope for French Boy is that it will achieve both.
Q. How do you recommend people deal with sensitive material that relatives might take offense at?
A. While it is important to tell the truth in a memoir, it is also important to realize that all the truth need not be published. In an earlier draft, write it down—all of it. In a later draft, you have a stronger sense of the story arc. If what you think of as truth can be eliminated without affecting the story’s drama or arc, then it is probably there because of something you need and not because of something the story needs. In addition, much “truth” can be extrapolated by the perceptive reader without the writer mentioning it explicitly. That’s a quality of the best writing
For French Boy, I sent a mid-composition copy to my siblings asking them to tell me if they found passages to be unsupportive of our parents. I got a few suggestions for tweaks but there was no rebellion against what I had written. A memoir is not the occasion to throw stones, and I did not want to do that. Remember: we all live in glass houses!
Q. Did you envision yourself as a writer before you began this book? What is your identity as a writer now?
A. Yes, of course, I thought of myself as a writer. I’ve earned my living with words so French Boy does not change much in that regard. I love to write and often start to write as soon as I get up.
Q. Will you write another memoir?
A. Yes, I already have some 150 pages of the sequel to French Boy. It is about my seminary experience. I’ve written a lot of facts without yet having a story arc or discernible theme that I am satisfied with. Pushing ahead on this book will be work for this winter.
Q. Is selling important to you? If that was part of the memoir writer’s experience for you, what sort of outreach have you done to pursue sales: did you speak to groups, do guest blogging, do interviews, etc.?
A. Yes, selling the book is important. While I have no illusion that French Boy will prove popular outside the Franco market, it is comforting to experience people caring enough about your effort to pay you for a book.
My marketing involves every possible avenue. Of course, marketing can quickly become eviscerating and so I do choose well the outreach I invest in.
Q. Can you tell our readers what French Boy is about and why you were impelled to write your book? What was driving you to spend the time, energy, and money to get this book out into the world?
A. I wrote impelled by a strong desire to record the life of my community—the Francophone Canadian-American community of New England. This is a book about life in Franco-America in the 1950s. It uses my life as an organizing principle. A good memoir is not only about the individual who is its presenting subject but it is about something bigger, about some whole that the memoir subject is part of. I want to celebrate our experience. I do not want the world to forget we were here.
Q. Can you tell us how long it took from the time you conceived the book to the time you had it published? How many years did you spend in active writing? Were there long breaks in between active writing periods? If so, what happened to get you writing again?
A. Perhaps as have many writers, I had written parts of this book over the years—vignettes and stories. Some had appeared on my blog while many were stored in my computer documents. About two years ago, I collated these pieces, made lists of what I felt was important to write about, and began writing in earnest on a daily basis. Of course, there were breaks, but I always knew I would return to write the missing stories into the book. It was important to me to produce a finished memoir. I never had any doubt I would persevere.
Q. You must have had periods in which you were discouraged or at least less enthusiastic. Can you tell us about how you kept yourself going? What worked for you?
A. Actually, there weren’t any discouraging times. I am a writer of many years and I just set myself to the task. There certainly were times when I wondered if the memoir was “good enough” but never a time when I thought of abandoning it. Questions about its quality just stimulated me to make the story better organized or better articulated. I kept asking myself, “What do I really mean to write here and am I writing it in a way the reader will understand?”
Q. Tell us what the theme of your book is. How did you come upon this theme? Do you feel you were successful in getting your theme across to the reader?
A. Theme, of course, is the soul of your writing. You could say character, action, and setting are the body of the memoir. The body needs a soul to animate it: that’s the theme.
- The first theme that dominated my writing for a long time was that of the immigrant experience. For me, being Franco-American involved an inhibiting sense of otherness. Then there was shame over the loss of language and ancestral culture that was endemic in my generation. Concurrently one feels rootless. The American mythos is not ours: it belongs to another community. Observers may believe we are part of this mythos, but we ourselves feel it does not reflect us. We experience ourselves as “other.” Meanwhile, our “us” is in full dissolution.
- The second is the religious theme. I was young when it seemed that I was being nurtured to become a priest. My environment was very religious and it was natural for a quiet, serious boy like me to come to believe he had a vocation—certainly people were mirroring that to me. At the end of the book, I win a scholarship that permits me to attend a minor seminary. The story is for a sequel.
- The third theme was my desire to become an educated man. My family was working class and I felt that I did not want to follow in the footsteps of the men in my community. So reaching for education and finding an alternative to the working class constitute another strong theme. This is partly resolved by going to the seminary.
I do think that I have developed these themes well. The reader cannot have much doubt about what I am conveying.
Q. Is there anything in particular you would say was the most difficult thing to succeed at in this book? Was it scheduling, research, plotting, point of view, believing in yourself, or what else?
A. I am a seasoned writer so I have long ago learned to handle these issues. As I have said many times in my books and blogs, a plumber doesn’t struggle emotionally with plumbing. It’s just what a plumber does. He goes to work following a process he knows well, arrives at an end, and then moves on to another job. That’s my model as a writer. I proceed in a professional manner and endeavor not to struggle emotionally with my work.
Q. Was there a success trait you have discerned for the process of writing? That is, are there best practices you would recommend to readers that would facilitate completing their memoirs?
A. Write regularly. If a particular story or vignette does not flow on a given day, move on to another story or vignette. A memoir is long-form writing and eventually everything can fit in its place—or not. Respect the nature of each of your drafts. Write everything you want or can think of into your first draft and then, in the second, you can start to eliminate, move around, or add to. The first draft is not about polish. That’s the work of the second and third drafts.
Q. What makes for a successful memoir? Do you feel your memoir was a success?
A. A memoir is written with an audience in mind. If it speaks to that audience and is received by it, then it is a success. Of course, we always hope for some commercial success, and that involves marketing. Commercial success is different from critical success. My hope for French Boy is that it will achieve both.
Q. How do you recommend people deal with sensitive material that relatives might take offense at?
A. While it is important to tell the truth in a memoir, it is also important to realize that all the truth need not be published. In an earlier draft, write it down—all of it. In a later draft, you have a stronger sense of the story arc. If what you think of as truth can be eliminated without affecting the story’s drama or arc, then it is probably there because of something you need and not because of something the story needs. In addition, much “truth” can be extrapolated by the perceptive reader without the writer mentioning it explicitly. That’s a quality of the best writing
For French Boy, I sent a mid-composition copy to my siblings asking them to tell me if they found passages to be unsupportive of our parents. I got a few suggestions for tweaks but there was no rebellion against what I had written. A memoir is not the occasion to throw stones, and I did not want to do that. Remember: we all live in glass houses!
Q. Did you envision yourself as a writer before you began this book? What is your identity as a writer now?
A. Yes, of course, I thought of myself as a writer. I’ve earned my living with words so French Boy does not change much in that regard. I love to write and often start to write as soon as I get up.
Q. Will you write another memoir?
A. Yes, I already have some 150 pages of the sequel to French Boy. It is about my seminary experience. I’ve written a lot of facts without yet having a story arc or discernible theme that I am satisfied with. Pushing ahead on this book will be work for this winter.
Q. Is selling important to you? If that was part of the memoir writer’s experience for you, what sort of outreach have you done to pursue sales: did you speak to groups, do guest blogging, do interviews, etc.?
A. Yes, selling the book is important. While I have no illusion that French Boy will prove popular outside the Franco market, it is comforting to experience people caring enough about your effort to pay you for a book.
My marketing involves every possible avenue. Of course, marketing can quickly become eviscerating and so I do choose well the outreach I invest in.
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