Writers At Work
This is the twelfth in Ravenshead's series of interviews with writers.
Michael LaRocca is someone who doesn't stand still for long. In his varied career he has lived in North Carolina, Hong Kong, China and Thailand.
His jobs range from pig farmer to military electronics specialist. In recent years he's settled down a bit, as a teacher, editor,
proof-reader and writer. His early writing talent was obvious and in 1982 (at 16) he was featured in Who's Who in American Writing.
Michael's web-site is here.
Ravenshead (RH) interviewed Michael LaRocca (MLR) in January 2008 and the interview is reproduced here:
An Interview with Michael LaRocca
RH: Can you tell us a bit about your background?
MLR: I was born in Fayettenam -- um, Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA, but I grew up in Roxboro and call it home. That was before Research Triangle Park, so it was just a little town north of Durham. Fireworks were illegal, but I could bicycle up to Virginia to get some.
We moved to Tampa, Florida, when I was 13. Me, Mom and Barry, my little brother. Mom raised us alone. Barry became a cop at age 20, and killed himself in 1985. Mom died in 1989. I moved back to North Carolina and bought some property from Daddy. We built a house where I lived for 9 years before moving to Asia.
My degree is in Electronics Technology, which I used for maybe two years down in Florida. I was one of three white people in the school, so I learned a lot that had nothing to do with electronics.
I've been a dishwasher, security guard, repo man, copier repairman, military electronics specialist, and a bunch of other even more boring stuff. I finally worked at an engineering firm, keeping them all straight because I'm no engineer.
I also managed some hog farms where I was the only English speaker and my crew spoke only Spanish. We had language lessons. Those experiences, plus my college experiences, helped prepare me for life in China and Thailand.
RH: When did you start writing?
MLR: I made up my own comic books and told them to neighborhood kids when I was 9 years old. I probably made up some stories before then as well. I started taking my writing seriously when I was 16, and wrote an award winner. You can find me in the 1982 Who's Who In American Writing, but you don't have to be impressed. I'm not.
RH: Where do your write?
MLR: I really am one of those people who can write anywhere. Longhand on a school bus, typewriter at the kitchen table, computer in a bedroom or office, laptop in a pickup truck while watching my horses eat, in a Muslim noodle shop while eating with chopsticks, standing on a bus in China, in an airport, on a plane...
I usually compose directly on a computer these days, but I still write longhand in those other places if the mood strikes. I ended one novel, years ago, longhand by candlelight during a hurricane and a power outage. The novel in question was horror, so I found that very appropriate. And fun.
RH: What makes you write?
MLR: Every time I read a book that really moves me, I want to do that to a reader. Also, I spend much of my time conceiving of my characters and my conflict. I don't outline. I just struggle to make the first chapter real and compelling. Once I do that, I have to write the rest of the book just to see how it's going to end.
RH: Where do you get ideas from?
MLR: Plagiarism of course. No, seriously, back when I focused on fiction, I often woke up at 3 in the morning with a big "eureka" and scribbled out a short story. For my single novel, a friend gave me the antagonist. I already wanted to write a novel where the protagonist was "what Barry would be like if he were alive today." After the short story collection and the novel, I wrote a book about Mom, since she wasn't able to do it herself and since her story is very powerful. Now I've moved into humor where I'm the butt of every joke, so Asia gives me my ideas.
RH: Although you were born in the US, you have lived in Hong Kong, mainland China, and now Thailand. What drew you to travelling in the first place? What made you want to stay in Asia? How has it affected your view of the world, and your writing?
I like to joke that I left during a Clinton presidency and will return during a Clinton presidency, but I'm not really that political. Just irreverent.
I've always been interested in China. Kwai Chang Caine and Confucius. But I can't speak Chinese, so I took a month-long vacation in Hong Kong. Chinese who speak English, right? No. I was about an hour's bus ride from the business center. But I happened to fall in love with Jan, a lovely Australian lady who was teaching English in Hong Kong, and decided to stay. We got married in October 2000.
When we tired of Hong Kong, we moved to mainland China. I was working by Internet -- I still do -- so I could live anywhere. Jan is a career teacher who taught English to Chinese students in Australia, then in Hong Kong, so China seemed natural. When we finally burned out on life in China, we moved to Thailand because we weren't ready for "the west" yet.
RH: Why Thailand in particular?
MLR: No cat quarantine laws. I rescued Miss Picasso from the Hong Kong SPCA, and eight years later she's watching me during this interview. I set up a little editing business here called Calico Consulting. She's the logo and the calico.
I've picked up an international perspective, though, so that affects my writing. Also, I can't remember the US well enough to set fiction there and I don't understand China or Thailand well enough to set fiction here -- I can't even speak the languages despite my best efforts -- so that's moved my writing into nonfiction. This odyssey, eight years and counting, will always affect my writing because it'll always affect who I am.
RH: You have written both fiction and non-fiction: autobiography, travel, short stories, humour and thrillers. Which do you prefer writing and why?
MLR: I take pride in the fact that I rarely write in the same genre twice. It's the result of having a shorter attention span than most of my readers, and also of wanting to master new skills.
I really do miss the creative fire that possessed me to spew out fiction fast and furious. Once I got past that first chapter, I wrote in marathon sessions where I was the stereotype who forgot to eat, sleep, bathe... They're draining sessions, but at the time, wow.
However, now I take pleasure in writing short and hopefully insightful pieces that are distilled down to their very essence, with no wasted words and no possibility of misunderstanding. I also enjoy using the language, for its beauty as well as for its utility, and I bring over 20 years of fiction writing experience to my nonfiction.
In short, I enjoy creating. Fiction, nonfiction, Italian spaghetti sauce, or a web-site. It's all good.
RH: Was writing the book about your Mother's life, "Rising From The Ashes", a cathartic experience?
MLR: First of all, I have a very different impression of this book than many of my readers. They're just so stunned by all the bad stuff that they don't always realize just how much fun I had growing up or how much love was in my family. I meet readers in person -- I'm never comfortable around them -- and they say things like "My God, how did you survive?" But I've read this book years after publication and laughed out loud, same as I did while writing it. I think most readers don't remember that aspect until long after reading it.
Anyway, Jan spent ten months telling me to write my life story. She said those tales were why she fell in love with me. Meanwhile I thought writing "about me" would just bore people silly. I've always been a philosophy and imagination guy. But finally I realized that I should write Mom's story, not mine. Then I outlined it -- my only outline -- one evening on hotel stationary in about an hour, at a resort in Koh Samui (Thailand) that Mom could've never afforded. Back home in Hong Kong, I wrote the book in a month.
It took a bit of time to edit it, but even so, it was a case of getting it all out of me and onto paper before I forgot it. No time to dwell on the events during that process. Now I've gotten to the point where, if I can't remember something about my past, I use the book for reference. Getting old is tough.
Barry died in 1985, Mom died in 1989, and I wrote the book in 2000. I believe I'd worked through most of those feelings before the writing. So I don't think it was cathartic in my case. But I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.
RH: As well as writing, you work as an editor and proofreader. Do you find that reading other people's work acts as a catalyst for your own writing?
MLR: I do feed off the energy of new authors. I used to have that energy myself. There's nothing like it.
When I wrote my four books in 2000, I felt "finished." Then I taught Advanced English Writing at Zhejiang SciTech University in Hangzhou, China, and working with those students inspired me enough to make me write my fifth book.
These days, working as an editor and proofreader keeps my writing skills honed and ready for use. Ideas are the hard part. The rest is just work, albeit pleasant work. Constantly editing and proofreading the works of others ensures that, if I do get some ideas, I won't be intimidated by the amount of work that comes after that step. I do that other work all the time.
RH: Which writers have influenced your style of writing?
MLR: About 20 years ago, if I read a lot of books by Stephen King, I wrote like Stephen King. If I read Robert Ludlum, I wrote like Robert Ludlum. Or Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Ozzy Osbourne, whoever. Eventually, I started writing like Michael LaRocca.
About six years ago, one of my students read The Chronicles of a Madman, which is my short story anthology, and wrote like Michael LaRocca. I was so flattered. Then he read a book by Peter Hessler and wrote like him. Etc. I was so happy to see Kapa finally write like Kapa. English is my first language and his second, but he writes it faster than I do. It's been a privilege to know him.
Who influences my style now? Lu Xun. Ralph Wiley. Because they wrote clean, with no wasted words, as I try to do. But beyond that, maybe I'm too old and cussed to be influenced.
RH: What's the easiest thing about writing? What's the hardest?
MLR: Sloppy writing is often the result of sloppy thinking. I find that both thinking and writing come very naturally to me. I get some ideas, I record them before I forget them, and the result will be some writing. That's easy.
These days, the hardest part is wondering "Did I already write about that somewhere?" Yeah, probably. So what? One thing I learned from lecturing, first for students in China and then for doctors in Thailand, is that repetition is a great way to cut out the deadwood and the unclear, and to incorporate more original ideas and missing parts.
I believe that's the "secret" of Shakespeare's greatness, by the way. Unlike most authors, he recited his words night after night and had to do something to keep his ideas fresh to himself.
RH: Have other people's comments affected your writing?
MLR: No, then yes, then no. Nice clear answer there, innit?
In the 1980s, I wrote like a maniac. Short stories, poems, novels, whatever. I was very prolific. Also very unpublishable. Whenever an agent or publisher told me how to improve, I did not listen. "You don't understand me. I ain't changing!" I was an idiot.
In 2000, I was living in Hong Kong but not legally allowed to work there. Tourist visa. So, while my loving lovely wife supported me, I learned to self-edit. I joined on-line workshops and listened to the feedback. Some I accepted and some I rejected, but I thought about all of it. That's how I learned to turn my unreadable crap into something special, as well as to write new stuff. It also explains "four books in one year," which must've had some of our readers' jaws dropping. Only two were brand new. The other two came from my slush pile.
In the process of being published, I worked with publishers' editors. Again, they made suggestions. If I could make the change without compromising my vision, I did. No big deal. But on a few points -- only a few -- I had to draw my line in the sand. Choose my battles. Often the result was that I clarified something rather than just tossing it on out of there. Vigilante Justice, in particular, was very corroborative. That's my only published novel, and I love it. Barry would be proud, since that's my "if he were alive" book.
Nowadays, I'm probably writing the way Stephen King suggested in On Writing (RH: A very good book for writers). Write with the windows closed, rewrite with them open. In other words, when I write my first draft, it's for me and me alone. That's my heart on those pages. If the writer feels no passion, he won't inspire passion in his readers. What I write is what comes from me, and that's the only part of the writing process that nobody but me can do. There are many fine editors, publishers, agents, artists, etc. But every writer has his own voice. When I write, I speak in that voice, because it is mine. Nobody else can do that part.
Then when I self-edit, I think of "the reader." My writing is stuffed with ideas, but the author should never bore and always entertain. Self-editing involves cutting. Stephen King mentioned cutting 10%, but I have chopped a 40,000-word "novel" into a 22,000-word novella. Yeah I'm proud.
If a chapter or a paragraph or a sentence has two meanings, assume the reader will choose the wrong one and write it another way.
Simplify, simplify, and simplify. Good writing is like a window pane, so whip out your Windex and elbow grease. Make it very easy for your reader to see what you're on about.
I do these things in anticipation of comments readers have not yet made. In the process of creation, I just let it fly fast and furious and record my ideas before they get away. But in self-editing, I think of my readers. A writer should work very hard so that his reader doesn't have to work at all. The reader should just read. Based on the comments I get these days, I'm doing my job. That makes me feel good.
RH: You went down the e-publishing route with some of your earlier books. Would you recommend that to other writers?
MLR: In the year 2000, I lived in Hong Kong. My experience with traditional print publishing in the US was receiving over 100 rejection letters. I went to e-publishing because email is faster than snail mail, and I expected more rejection. Instead, I published four books in one year, I learned how to edit, and I got a major rush from all the positive emails from my readers, and from those three EPPIE finalist awards. For me at that time, it was the only way to go.
But e-publishing has changed. We're still waiting for the right hardware, and I do hope Kindle with a lower price tag is the answer. The vast majority of readers don't buy e-books. I do, but then I print them because I can't stand to read on a computer screen either. But if I could carry something with the size, weight and resolution of a paperback but which could hold 200 paperbacks, that would be awesome. I'd probably never buy another print book if I could do that. I'm also aware that some readers will never accept what I just wrote.
My e-publishers also offered a Print-On-Demand (POD) option, and that's very cool. Listed on Amazon, available in the bookstores. If the only way you can sell your e-books is on your e-publisher's web-site, expect a dozen readers. Maybe 100 if you're a marketing maniac like me. Traditional print means thousands of readers. For me, it isn't about the money, although I never turn money away. It's about the readers. I always want more.
I've knowingly written books that no traditional print publisher, large or small, would touch. Some are too short, some cross genres, some are just impossible to market. For those books, I like the e- publisher with POD as an option. If an author doesn't have those limitations, I wouldn't recommend e-publishing. Not anymore.
Back in the good old days (only seven years ago), e-publishers replied super-fast, gave you two free edits with two different editors, and put you into "print" in about six months. Nowadays they have just as much backlog as traditional print publishers. Their independence is their only remaining virtue, and while it's the most important virtue in my book, it doesn't always sell your books.
RH: How hard was it to find a more traditional publisher for "Vigilante Justice"?
MLR: It was far too easy. This was a CrossroadsPub e-book. When CrossroadsPub vanished, because the publisher stole all the royalties and ran away, I was approached by Michele Bardley, Senior Editor for Hard Shell Word Factory, about reprinting it in both e-book and paperback formats. In other words, the publisher came to me. I said yes. Wow, that was easy.
RH: Please tell us about "Who Moved My Underwear?", your NaNoWriMo entry for 2007.
MLR: I spent so many years mocking NaNoWriMo, because "where I come from" writers are writing all the time, every day. We don't need no special month!
After I wrote those four books in 2000, they were published in 2001. Then both my publishers vanished and I found others. Then I moved to China and turned into a writing teacher. Finally, in 2003, I wrote one more book. And that, I thought, was that. No more writing for me.
Meanwhile, I had started publishing a free email newsletter, and that became my major creative output for years. Was there a book in there? Probably. Would I ever get around to doing the hard work to make it one? Probably not.
So I was publishing my November 3 issue of the newsletter, and I realized it was NaNoWriMo. So I typed "I'm gonna write a book this month" and sent out my newsletter. It was a whim, perhaps a drunken one. Well, after publicly outing myself like that, I felt I had to actually do it. So I dove into my archive of essays, notes, and random spewing. It was a train wreck. I turned all that into my sixth book, Who Moved My Underwear? 65,000 words, because 50,000 just weren't enough.
Okay, the title. Who Moved My Rice? was about my move to China, and just like the title it rips off, it's about adjusting to change. One reviewer said that his favorite line was "life's too short to wear bad underwear." I always thought of that line as a throwaway, but from it, the title of the sequel was born. Who Moved My Underwear? It's memorable, at any rate.
RH: What are you currently working on?
MLR: I've spent four years thinking of myself as a retired author. Or perhaps, I've spent seven years thinking of myself as a retired author and calling Who Moved My Rice? a fluke. Now I will revise that. I was once an author who sometimes edits and now I'm an editor who sometimes writes.
Meanwhile, I appear to have a gift for finding publishers who blow up soon after publishing me. Of my five published titles, two are still in print. One has been "coming soon" for about two years. Two others, my best and my worst, are homeless. I'm trying to change that. And then there's the newbie, completed less than a month ago, that I haven't even begun to shop around yet.
Meanwhile I've edited over 200 published novels and textbooks and am constantly working on adding to their number. 200. Are you as impressed as I am?
What I have also worked on is not working so much. When I started my little editing business, I'd do anything that paid. Now I know what I like, what I don't, what I'm good at, what I stink at, and where the money is. If you're an author, have you ever been offended by agents who are "taking no new clients at this time?" As a freelance editor, I'm getting extremely close to that point. You can hate me if you want.
RH: When is your next book published and what is it about?
MLR: The Chronicles of a Madman is my first-born and most dearly beloved. I first published it in 1983 as a 75-page short story anthology Self- published, actually. Part humor, part horror, part American existentialism. I coined that latter phrase, because nobody knows what it means. Not even me.
In 1989, I self-published it again. Sold out again. It was slightly larger but it still sucked.
In 2000, when I dusted off my slush pile, these are the stories that I used. Then I was inspired enough to write many new stories. A teenager's creativity, an adult editor's sensibility, and I'm extremely proud of it. Many of the stories were published in many magazines, and with that pedigree I felt ready to finally publish it properly.
In 2001, Wordbeams accepted it. Then they closed their doors before it was published. Wordbeams, for those not in the know, was extremely successful because of their reputation for quality, but Susan Bodendorfer's back crapped out. She had to close the company or die, basically. I think she made the right choice.
In 2002, I think it was, Zumaya Publications published it. We had some good years together before I decided not to renew the contract. I had some unrealistic expectations of sales figures for e-published short story anthologies. Oops.
And at long last, the Books Unbound edition, edited yet again and at over 200 pages, is coming soon. When you see how many editions there have been, surely you think the author is sick of it. Yeah, I was. My editor at Books Unbound rekindled my passion. I'm thrilled to see it coming back, because it's better than ever now.
RH: Do you have any advice for other writers?
MLR: My web-site is filled with my advice for other writers. Overfilled. I hate to repeat myself, so I'll point my fellow authors there. And then repeat myself anyway.
Writing is a calling but publishing is a business. When you write, write what you would like to read. Write what moves you. Then later, much later, you'll find people who like what you like. Those are your readers. Worry about them later.
Read. Read voraciously. If you don't love to read, you cannot write what others will love to read.
Honest feedback is a gift. Be grateful if you can get it. I get honest feedback from my wife, and I know how lucky that makes me. But as I've said before, you don't have to accept every suggestion. Not even from your wife. But think about them all, because if you hear it from one reader, there will be others who have the same thoughts. Change what you can, stick to your guns when you can't. That's your name on the spine and nobody else's. But do listen.
Oh, and whenever you finish writing a book, don't forget to celebrate. Most people who "want to write a book" never do. You did. Be proud.
RH: How is Picasso getting on?
MLR: I love the question, of course. And to anyone who wasn't paying attention before, Picasso is a lady cat. So named because she's quite colorful. Born February 2000, rescued from the Hong Kong SPCA in September 2000. She's been with us throughout our many travels. I think it's two countries, three hotels, five cities, ten apartments, and one house.
When I lived in North Carolina, I used to rearrange the furniture when I did my weekly vacuuming and watch my two cats freak out and complain all day. Or week. Yeah, I'm mean. But Picasso, on the other hand, gets bored if there's no change.
In November, I adopted a new kitten because I thought Picasso might be getting bored. Well, she hated him, so I found him another home. Now he lives with three kittens his own age, and one loving Hill Tribe boy who works for me whenever I can convince him to wake up and show up.
Picasso, meanwhile, will be very happily flying solo the rest of her days. She's set in her ways. Since Barnabas (the kitten) has gone, Picasso has gone into her second childhood. Or is it her fifth? I've lost count.
If we translate her actual years into "cat years," she's 47. That makes her older than me. But in fact, she's bolting and rolling and purring and being a very happy kitten. She looks like one too, since she is rather small. And beautiful. She had three days on the SPCA's 2002 A-Cat-A-Day Calendar, but she's not just another pretty face. She's the most intelligent member of the family, by far. Photos here. She looks better than I write, so check it out.
RH: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, and good luck with all your future ventures.
MLR: Thank you. It's been a pleasure..