Thanks to the many wonderful people at NPR stations across the country, I've been invited to do several radio interviews.
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Blog and Web Interviews
As a radio guy, blog interviews are new to me, but part of the fun of being an author.They give me a chance to give a little bit of the backstory on how I came to write The Man Who Built Boxes and other stories
INTERVIEW WITH JOHN BAILEY, WFIU
JOHN BAILEY, WFIU: I’d like to begin by talking about your new book of short stories, “The Man Who Built Boxes and Other Stories.” How long has it been in the making?
FRANK TAVARES: Well, the first story, or the oldest story in the book, I think I published about a dozen years or so ago. And I’ve always been a writer my entire professional life, but not fiction. It was about 15 years or so ago that I decided that I really wanted to write my stuff. Everything else had either been for a client or for my day job, which is a professor of communication at Southern Connecticut State University here in New Haven. It always had something that had a measurable outcome. It sold the product. It got into the academic journal. And the fiction started a little differently.
I mean, I’ve written fiction – I’ve got some things in my personal archives that go back to high school – we all wrote fiction in high school, right? But I started doing it seriously not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, and then started publishing in various literary journals. And, John, there’s something about when somebody else – an editor at a journal – reads it and accepts it that makes you start to believe, well, maybe I’m on to something here. So, a couple of years ago a friend started to encourage me to pull things together in a collection. And my reaction was, “yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, one of these days.” And finally, early this year, I said, “OK, all right.” And I spoke with a publisher, and we decided to do this.
And, John, it’s one of these experiences where I figured, well, how hard can this be? All of the stories are written. That’s the hard part, right? And most of them have been published, so I just pull them together, I send them to the publisher, and I go about my merry way! [laughs] John, you didn’t tell me that it was going to be a lot more work than that! It was a very, very interesting four or five months. A lot of decisions. If I’d known about all of the decisions that I would have to make at the beginning, it would have seemed daunting. But, you just do them one at a time, just one at a time.
BAILEY: What surprised you the most during the creation of the book?
TAVARES: I think, how important it was to choose the right stories to nest together in this volume. And also to make the decision about which stories not to include. That was something I hadn’t really thought about. And then the order of the stories hadn’t occurred to me before – well, it did, but not seriously – that it makes a difference how you kind of build the energy of the book from the beginning to the middle and the end.
And then we had this chapter from a novel that I’m working on that didn’t quite fit with the short stories because it didn’t have a … it didn’t tie together well as a short story. And so, figuring out how to include that in here, having the stories end and then a break, and then this chapter from the upcoming novel.
Little things also, John, that I hadn’t thought about. I’m very fond of particular character names, I hadn’t realized it until I read all of these stories together. So there was some confusion when you would go from one story – and here’s John Bailey in this particular story, and then he shows up in another story, but it’s a different John Bailey! And so, having to rethink some of the character names! [laughs] And some of the names are just perfect. I mean, when I named that character John Bailey, that was the perfect name for him! [laughs] And changing it, just, I felt – this is where it’s important to work with an editor that you trust, and that makes all the difference in the world. When she said, it’s OK, I believed her, and it was!
BAILEY: Did you feel, or do you feel, close to any of the stories in particular?
TAVARES: The short answer is, often. And it has to do with getting to know the characters, and as you get to know them. And I know this sounds – I hear writers say this all the time, but it’s true – the characters reveal themselves to you. I know it’s all subconscious, I understand that. But they really do come alive in a particular way that you don’t expect. You get to know them. And so I found myself with some of the characters feeling really close to them. You know, there are little bits and pieces of myself in some of the characters, not all of them. Some of them are really strangers to me at the beginning. They’re personalities that are very different than mine. I don’t understand all of their motivations, certainly at first.
But that’s a long, rambling answer to your short question that, yeah, sometimes I found myself very close to a number of them and missing them and feeling badly about how things turn out for some of them, wishing that they had made a decision a little differently, but that’s the decision that that particular character would make. And it’s easy for the two of us on the outside of the story to read it or look at it and say, it’s not a good idea, don’t do that, don’t do that. And the character basically thumbs his or her nose at me as the reader and the author and says, “I’m sorry! It’s not your life!” [laughs] Well, that sounds kind of strange, doesn’t it?
BAILEY: During the process of creating this book, what did you learn about yourself?
TAVARES: Wow. … First of all, just in terms of the process, I understood in a whole new way how important patience is, and persistence, in terms of getting the story out. I used to think, when I first started writing – or actually, when I first thought about writing fiction – that I don’t have the time. If I had these critical masses of time, then I could write the novel, or I could finish the short story, or I could do this, and I don’t, so that’s why I can’t. I’m not one of those people, I used to tell myself, that could ride on the bus to work and do paragraphs on the back of envelopes. And then I realized that that was all just an excuse.
And one of the things I’ve really come to believe is that, somebody asked me, a colleague asked me not too long ago, have you thought about teaching fiction writing at the university? And I was aghast! I said, oh, I couldn’t teach writing! How could I do it? How could I question somebody else’s ideas? I can grade writing, business writing. I can tell you what’s working and what isn’t working, but in terms of the ideas, the creativity, I feel kind of at a loss. And I pursued the thought with my colleague a little bit further on, and then I realized that one of the things that I would have trouble in teaching writing is how I finally came to believe that you have no excuse for not writing.
And, this sounds a little harsh to somebody who might be starting out as a writer, but I’ve come to discover and realize and believe – this is me – there is no muse. You can’t sit around waiting for the muse. There very seldom is inspiration, and when you have it, it’s lucky, but don’t count on it. The only thing about writing that you really need to understand is you have to get off your duff and sit down in front of the pad or the laptop and do it. There’s no trick to it. And as I found myself talking about it with my colleague, I realized, probably a good thing I don’t teach writing! [laughs] That might be just a little discouraging to somebody who’s playing with ideas!
And so I found that, OK, maybe I don’t have the critical mass of time. Maybe I might have on some days only 15 or 20 minutes, or even less than that. And maybe I don’t write every single day. But the important thing is that I need to sit down as often as I can. And maybe it’s just a sentence, maybe I’m rewriting a paragraph, maybe I’ll have a day where I’ll have the freedom to do a couple of pages, and that is just OK. Because sooner or later, it’s like taking the step as you go on the journey. Every day it’s a little bit more than you had the day before and pretty soon you turn around and you look and, son of a gun, there’s the first draft of a story, and the rest of it is writing it.
The other thing you asked me – to remind both of us what your original question was! [laughs] – what did I learn about myself in the process of doing this, aside from the persistence and how important it is, is that I need to trust myself in my storytelling. And I learned that by doing it, but also I had a mentor to whom this particular volume is dedicated, a fellow named Leo Connellan who’s no longer with us. He died about ten years ago. He was the poet laureate of the state of Connecticut for a number of years and a widely published poet. I don’t write poetry but I understood how he talked about the power of words. He officed for a while on our campus so I got to know him a little bit, and he taught me how to trust my writing.
He said, you have to be careful listening to what other people tell you about what’s working and what isn’t working. You have to trust yourself in terms of getting the words out on the page, and then you can go back and rework it. And if you think something is not as strong as it could be, you know, every one of these stories I probably reworked at least a dozen times, and some of them twice that to get them to the point where I felt that they held together fairly well. So another little piece of learning about myself is trusting yourself and trusting the characters as you create them. See, I’m not – I do have a reality check here. I did say, “as I create the characters,” even though I also talk about them revealing themselves.
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JOHN BAILEY, WFIU: I’d like to begin by talking about your new book of short stories, “The Man Who Built Boxes and Other Stories.” How long has it been in the making?
FRANK TAVARES: Well, the first story, or the oldest story in the book, I think I published about a dozen years or so ago. And I’ve always been a writer my entire professional life, but not fiction. It was about 15 years or so ago that I decided that I really wanted to write my stuff. Everything else had either been for a client or for my day job, which is a professor of communication at Southern Connecticut State University here in New Haven. It always had something that had a measurable outcome. It sold the product. It got into the academic journal. And the fiction started a little differently.
I mean, I’ve written fiction – I’ve got some things in my personal archives that go back to high school – we all wrote fiction in high school, right? But I started doing it seriously not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, and then started publishing in various literary journals. And, John, there’s something about when somebody else – an editor at a journal – reads it and accepts it that makes you start to believe, well, maybe I’m on to something here. So, a couple of years ago a friend started to encourage me to pull things together in a collection. And my reaction was, “yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, one of these days.” And finally, early this year, I said, “OK, all right.” And I spoke with a publisher, and we decided to do this.
And, John, it’s one of these experiences where I figured, well, how hard can this be? All of the stories are written. That’s the hard part, right? And most of them have been published, so I just pull them together, I send them to the publisher, and I go about my merry way! [laughs] John, you didn’t tell me that it was going to be a lot more work than that! It was a very, very interesting four or five months. A lot of decisions. If I’d known about all of the decisions that I would have to make at the beginning, it would have seemed daunting. But, you just do them one at a time, just one at a time.
BAILEY: What surprised you the most during the creation of the book?
TAVARES: I think, how important it was to choose the right stories to nest together in this volume. And also to make the decision about which stories not to include. That was something I hadn’t really thought about. And then the order of the stories hadn’t occurred to me before – well, it did, but not seriously – that it makes a difference how you kind of build the energy of the book from the beginning to the middle and the end.
And then we had this chapter from a novel that I’m working on that didn’t quite fit with the short stories because it didn’t have a … it didn’t tie together well as a short story. And so, figuring out how to include that in here, having the stories end and then a break, and then this chapter from the upcoming novel.
Little things also, John, that I hadn’t thought about. I’m very fond of particular character names, I hadn’t realized it until I read all of these stories together. So there was some confusion when you would go from one story – and here’s John Bailey in this particular story, and then he shows up in another story, but it’s a different John Bailey! And so, having to rethink some of the character names! [laughs] And some of the names are just perfect. I mean, when I named that character John Bailey, that was the perfect name for him! [laughs] And changing it, just, I felt – this is where it’s important to work with an editor that you trust, and that makes all the difference in the world. When she said, it’s OK, I believed her, and it was!
BAILEY: Did you feel, or do you feel, close to any of the stories in particular?
TAVARES: The short answer is, often. And it has to do with getting to know the characters, and as you get to know them. And I know this sounds – I hear writers say this all the time, but it’s true – the characters reveal themselves to you. I know it’s all subconscious, I understand that. But they really do come alive in a particular way that you don’t expect. You get to know them. And so I found myself with some of the characters feeling really close to them. You know, there are little bits and pieces of myself in some of the characters, not all of them. Some of them are really strangers to me at the beginning. They’re personalities that are very different than mine. I don’t understand all of their motivations, certainly at first.
But that’s a long, rambling answer to your short question that, yeah, sometimes I found myself very close to a number of them and missing them and feeling badly about how things turn out for some of them, wishing that they had made a decision a little differently, but that’s the decision that that particular character would make. And it’s easy for the two of us on the outside of the story to read it or look at it and say, it’s not a good idea, don’t do that, don’t do that. And the character basically thumbs his or her nose at me as the reader and the author and says, “I’m sorry! It’s not your life!” [laughs] Well, that sounds kind of strange, doesn’t it?
BAILEY: During the process of creating this book, what did you learn about yourself?
TAVARES: Wow. … First of all, just in terms of the process, I understood in a whole new way how important patience is, and persistence, in terms of getting the story out. I used to think, when I first started writing – or actually, when I first thought about writing fiction – that I don’t have the time. If I had these critical masses of time, then I could write the novel, or I could finish the short story, or I could do this, and I don’t, so that’s why I can’t. I’m not one of those people, I used to tell myself, that could ride on the bus to work and do paragraphs on the back of envelopes. And then I realized that that was all just an excuse.
And one of the things I’ve really come to believe is that, somebody asked me, a colleague asked me not too long ago, have you thought about teaching fiction writing at the university? And I was aghast! I said, oh, I couldn’t teach writing! How could I do it? How could I question somebody else’s ideas? I can grade writing, business writing. I can tell you what’s working and what isn’t working, but in terms of the ideas, the creativity, I feel kind of at a loss. And I pursued the thought with my colleague a little bit further on, and then I realized that one of the things that I would have trouble in teaching writing is how I finally came to believe that you have no excuse for not writing.
And, this sounds a little harsh to somebody who might be starting out as a writer, but I’ve come to discover and realize and believe – this is me – there is no muse. You can’t sit around waiting for the muse. There very seldom is inspiration, and when you have it, it’s lucky, but don’t count on it. The only thing about writing that you really need to understand is you have to get off your duff and sit down in front of the pad or the laptop and do it. There’s no trick to it. And as I found myself talking about it with my colleague, I realized, probably a good thing I don’t teach writing! [laughs] That might be just a little discouraging to somebody who’s playing with ideas!
And so I found that, OK, maybe I don’t have the critical mass of time. Maybe I might have on some days only 15 or 20 minutes, or even less than that. And maybe I don’t write every single day. But the important thing is that I need to sit down as often as I can. And maybe it’s just a sentence, maybe I’m rewriting a paragraph, maybe I’ll have a day where I’ll have the freedom to do a couple of pages, and that is just OK. Because sooner or later, it’s like taking the step as you go on the journey. Every day it’s a little bit more than you had the day before and pretty soon you turn around and you look and, son of a gun, there’s the first draft of a story, and the rest of it is writing it.
The other thing you asked me – to remind both of us what your original question was! [laughs] – what did I learn about myself in the process of doing this, aside from the persistence and how important it is, is that I need to trust myself in my storytelling. And I learned that by doing it, but also I had a mentor to whom this particular volume is dedicated, a fellow named Leo Connellan who’s no longer with us. He died about ten years ago. He was the poet laureate of the state of Connecticut for a number of years and a widely published poet. I don’t write poetry but I understood how he talked about the power of words. He officed for a while on our campus so I got to know him a little bit, and he taught me how to trust my writing.
He said, you have to be careful listening to what other people tell you about what’s working and what isn’t working. You have to trust yourself in terms of getting the words out on the page, and then you can go back and rework it. And if you think something is not as strong as it could be, you know, every one of these stories I probably reworked at least a dozen times, and some of them twice that to get them to the point where I felt that they held together fairly well. So another little piece of learning about myself is trusting yourself and trusting the characters as you create them. See, I’m not – I do have a reality check here. I did say, “as I create the characters,” even though I also talk about them revealing themselves.
READ MORE
W3 Sidecar interview with Marissa Toffoli
"When you’re writing fiction, you ‘control’ everything. It’s the blessing and the curse."
1. What have you learned from your current project?
Putting together a collection of stories was much harder than I thought it would be. My early thinking was that all of the stories are finished, most of them previously published, so, how hard could this be? Over the course of the project I was surprised by how many individual decisions there were to be made. Starting with which stories to include—or exclude. The order of the stories. Which title would work best. It was a real learning experience.
2. How have your goals as a writer changed over time?
Writing has been a part of my entire professional life. For most of those years the majority of my writing was very specific and not fiction. It was client based. Advertising. Marketing. Proposals. Academic essays. All things with a very specific goal and audience, and often with a measurable outcome attached.
I did start writing fiction very early. I have fragments of creative prose and poetry in my personal archives going back into my high school years, and earlier. But I didn’t pursue an actual “fiction” project until the 90s. I got tired of hearing myself complain about “wanting to be a writer” and challenged myself to just do it. So I started my first novel manuscript. While I was completing those last chapters, I began work on a second novel. As I finished that one, I started a third, then a fourth. None of these were published, but I continued sharpening my skills. Along the line, I began writing short stories to fill in the gaps. Not just the gaps between the longer form projects, but as an escape route from those projects when I felt stuck, or overwhelmed. I’ve always made sure I’ve had multiple writing projects going so I could switch back and forth among them.
When I started to publish the shorts, it gave me the affirmation and motivation to persevere. As I continue with my fiction writing, I realize that I’m in a very different place from where I was when I first had the courage to jump off that cliff.
One of my mentors, the late Leo Connellan, former Connecticut State Poet Laureate taught me two very important things. First, believe in my writing. The second thing, I’ll note in my response to the next question.
3. What’s your writing process or routine like?
I’m an early morning guy. Often the first one up in the house. Take out the dog, fix a cup of tea, piece of toast, then sit in front of my laptop. Friends laugh when they see my work space. My home office is the largest room in our house with four work surfaces, and a great view of post-glacial hills in the distance. But when I really need to get something done, I have a small desk set up in the corner of a walk in closet. There is my laptop, (along with the equipment for my NPR voice work.) There is no window. It is sound isolated. Few distractions. That’s where I love to do the “real” work.
I don’t manage to write every day, but often when I’m reluctant to drag myself out of bed early in the morning, I repeat quietly, so as not to disturb my spouse, an admonition that Leo Connellan shared with me: “Writers, Frank. Writers write.”
For me, I’ve learned over the years, that there’s no magic, no muse, only occasional inspiration. The key is to just get your sorry butt out of the sack and do it. Very powerful.
4. What are you working on now?
I’m in the last stages of the first draft of a novel, Digging up Mr. Bradley. The first chapter is included as an addendum to my recent collection of short stories, The Man Who Built Boxes. These last few chapters have been slow as I’ve come to realize two minor subplots haven’t been developed as effectively as I need them to be. (Yes, I acknowledge the passive voice of that last sentence, but admit that it makes the task seem less daunting.) I need to wade back into the depths of the earlier chapters and fix the problem before I can finish those last chapters. When I admitted this to myself, it was a bit disheartening as I had the illusion things were tying up nicely. But I know I can do it. It will just take a little longer than I’d hoped. One of the many challenges and rewards of being a writer.
Digging up Mr. Bradley actually started as a short story. It was an earlier version of the chapter that appears in the collection. As I submitted it to various literary journals and reread it and reworked it, I realized I really wanted to know what happened. With many short stories it’s okay to end without all of the questions answered. That can create a satisfying energy of its own as a reader might fantasize about what might take place. But in the case of Mr. Bradley, I really wanted to find out. So the journey began.
5. Why do you write?
It’s a deceptively difficult question. It’s easy to say, “Because I enjoy it so much,” or “Because I have to.” But it doesn’t uncover the deeper motivations. I’ve been thinking about this recently, although I find myself not really wanting to know too much about it. It’s that old belief that if something seems to be working okay, don’t go poking at it with a stick—leave it alone.
I suppose for me that it has to do with the illusion of control. There are so many aspects of our lives over which we have such limited “control.” But when you’re writing fiction, you “control” everything. It’s the blessing and the curse. As I find myself in more situations where I’m talking about my writing, it’s been interesting to hear how others interpret or identify themes or motivations in characters. At first I quietly resisted that. “No!” I’d want to say. “That’s not why the character did that!” And then I realized, well, sometimes even on Planet Frank, I don’t always know my own characters’ motivations, and can be surprised by the paths they take. It’s been amazing to see how others interpret things I’ve created. That’s a good thing I think. And very satisfying. Maybe my answer to “why do you write” is as simple as that. It’s very satisfying. It allows me to explore things I wouldn’t otherwise, meet characters I wouldn’t otherwise, and allows me to view things around me in new and exciting ways.
- See more at: http://w3sidecar.tumblr.com/post/62915367322/frank-tavares#sthash.g1iFicp4.dpuf
"When you’re writing fiction, you ‘control’ everything. It’s the blessing and the curse."
1. What have you learned from your current project?
Putting together a collection of stories was much harder than I thought it would be. My early thinking was that all of the stories are finished, most of them previously published, so, how hard could this be? Over the course of the project I was surprised by how many individual decisions there were to be made. Starting with which stories to include—or exclude. The order of the stories. Which title would work best. It was a real learning experience.
2. How have your goals as a writer changed over time?
Writing has been a part of my entire professional life. For most of those years the majority of my writing was very specific and not fiction. It was client based. Advertising. Marketing. Proposals. Academic essays. All things with a very specific goal and audience, and often with a measurable outcome attached.
I did start writing fiction very early. I have fragments of creative prose and poetry in my personal archives going back into my high school years, and earlier. But I didn’t pursue an actual “fiction” project until the 90s. I got tired of hearing myself complain about “wanting to be a writer” and challenged myself to just do it. So I started my first novel manuscript. While I was completing those last chapters, I began work on a second novel. As I finished that one, I started a third, then a fourth. None of these were published, but I continued sharpening my skills. Along the line, I began writing short stories to fill in the gaps. Not just the gaps between the longer form projects, but as an escape route from those projects when I felt stuck, or overwhelmed. I’ve always made sure I’ve had multiple writing projects going so I could switch back and forth among them.
When I started to publish the shorts, it gave me the affirmation and motivation to persevere. As I continue with my fiction writing, I realize that I’m in a very different place from where I was when I first had the courage to jump off that cliff.
One of my mentors, the late Leo Connellan, former Connecticut State Poet Laureate taught me two very important things. First, believe in my writing. The second thing, I’ll note in my response to the next question.
3. What’s your writing process or routine like?
I’m an early morning guy. Often the first one up in the house. Take out the dog, fix a cup of tea, piece of toast, then sit in front of my laptop. Friends laugh when they see my work space. My home office is the largest room in our house with four work surfaces, and a great view of post-glacial hills in the distance. But when I really need to get something done, I have a small desk set up in the corner of a walk in closet. There is my laptop, (along with the equipment for my NPR voice work.) There is no window. It is sound isolated. Few distractions. That’s where I love to do the “real” work.
I don’t manage to write every day, but often when I’m reluctant to drag myself out of bed early in the morning, I repeat quietly, so as not to disturb my spouse, an admonition that Leo Connellan shared with me: “Writers, Frank. Writers write.”
For me, I’ve learned over the years, that there’s no magic, no muse, only occasional inspiration. The key is to just get your sorry butt out of the sack and do it. Very powerful.
4. What are you working on now?
I’m in the last stages of the first draft of a novel, Digging up Mr. Bradley. The first chapter is included as an addendum to my recent collection of short stories, The Man Who Built Boxes. These last few chapters have been slow as I’ve come to realize two minor subplots haven’t been developed as effectively as I need them to be. (Yes, I acknowledge the passive voice of that last sentence, but admit that it makes the task seem less daunting.) I need to wade back into the depths of the earlier chapters and fix the problem before I can finish those last chapters. When I admitted this to myself, it was a bit disheartening as I had the illusion things were tying up nicely. But I know I can do it. It will just take a little longer than I’d hoped. One of the many challenges and rewards of being a writer.
Digging up Mr. Bradley actually started as a short story. It was an earlier version of the chapter that appears in the collection. As I submitted it to various literary journals and reread it and reworked it, I realized I really wanted to know what happened. With many short stories it’s okay to end without all of the questions answered. That can create a satisfying energy of its own as a reader might fantasize about what might take place. But in the case of Mr. Bradley, I really wanted to find out. So the journey began.
5. Why do you write?
It’s a deceptively difficult question. It’s easy to say, “Because I enjoy it so much,” or “Because I have to.” But it doesn’t uncover the deeper motivations. I’ve been thinking about this recently, although I find myself not really wanting to know too much about it. It’s that old belief that if something seems to be working okay, don’t go poking at it with a stick—leave it alone.
I suppose for me that it has to do with the illusion of control. There are so many aspects of our lives over which we have such limited “control.” But when you’re writing fiction, you “control” everything. It’s the blessing and the curse. As I find myself in more situations where I’m talking about my writing, it’s been interesting to hear how others interpret or identify themes or motivations in characters. At first I quietly resisted that. “No!” I’d want to say. “That’s not why the character did that!” And then I realized, well, sometimes even on Planet Frank, I don’t always know my own characters’ motivations, and can be surprised by the paths they take. It’s been amazing to see how others interpret things I’ve created. That’s a good thing I think. And very satisfying. Maybe my answer to “why do you write” is as simple as that. It’s very satisfying. It allows me to explore things I wouldn’t otherwise, meet characters I wouldn’t otherwise, and allows me to view things around me in new and exciting ways.
- See more at: http://w3sidecar.tumblr.com/post/62915367322/frank-tavares#sthash.g1iFicp4.dpuf