This two-part interview with Pamela Hobart Carter appeared on Elena Hartwell's Arc of a Writer on February 1 and 15, 2016. With Elena's permission, I'm very pleased to reprint the complete interview for you.
Author, Playwright ... Geologist!
Pam grew up in Montreal. A geologist by training, Pam taught
everything from preschool to science pedagogy for thirty years. She practices
timed writing with two Seattle groups. With Arleen Williams, she founded No Talking Dogs Press which puts out short books in easy English
for immigrants. She is writing a novel.
You wrote a series of short books for Adults learning
English. How did you get started with the series? What was the process of
working with Arleen Williams?
I wrote The Old House on
South Sixteenth Street
because my friend, Arleen, couldn’t find the texts she wanted
for her ESL classes. The Old House … features adult characters
with adult problems in picture-book-easy English. It was really fun to write
with the constraint of keeping the language simple, so I wrote two sequels and
a second series. Meanwhile, Arleen wrote a series of stories centered on
American holidays, explaining many of their oddities. We each wrote six
stories. We wrote the drafts independently, then read and edited them aloud,
together, so they became joint-efforts. Our process involved lots of cups of
tea, dozens of brownies, and pounds of walnuts and almonds. In 2015 we
published them under the imprint NoTalking Dogs Press.
How does working as a playwright differ from working as a novelist?
I am finding I do a few of the same things whether writing
plays or my current novel. I plunk down some stuff, then I sort out actions on
index cards and churn out scene lists and diagrams—a repeating cycle of
seat-of-the-pants generating of stuff followed by organizing stints. I think of
what a drawing teacher in college told me, “Don’t erase the wrong line until
you’ve drawn the right line.” I like to have material on the page which I can
erase or embellish.
I
shuffle the material a lot. My current novel has had a slew of different
openings and I haven’t even roughed in a first draft yet.
When
I’m writing a script, I hear voices. But they’re useful, so please don’t call
in the white coats yet. I read aloud if I’m not hearing them. Before writing
their speeches I prepare the script by alternating, or otherwise intermixing,
my characters’ names. Sometimes I have to delete these, but sometimes having
the character’s name waiting ahead of me makes me come up with how that figment
of my imagination would respond to the last remark.
I
am lucky to have a wonderful playwriting critique group. We read each other’s
scripts aloud so the playwright can listen, and we discuss. I depend on their
suggestions to rewrite. I am extra lucky if a group of actors reads my script
and I get feedback from them and any audience. From one “mean” reading by an
excellent actor, I realized I needed to rewrite her character. I gave her
character a softer lexicon so she could not be interpreted as a mean character
in the future. Plays become group projects. When my plays have been produced,
I’ve been fascinated to see how the director and actors make something new,
which may not resemble what I initially imagined.
I
broke off from the novel I’m working on to write a one-act comedy last fall.
The playwriting buzzed along in a way that the novel-writing had not. The form
of a play, as speech-and-response, action-reaction-reaction …, feels natural to
me. Now that I’m writing a novel, I have all those other aspects of
scene-writing, such as descriptions of person, action, location, thought, and
emotion to contend with. Readers of my first section urge me to flesh these out
more than I have. Most of all, I have the greater length to contend with. I
need bigger stretches of time and longer focus.
So,
the biggest difference may involve pace. I’m finding it’s okay to move slowly
in writing the novel. I’m learning to take my time and not rush. A novel is
big. It’s a lot to figure out and make sense of, but the schedule is wholly my
own. This novel will take much longer than a play!
How does your training as a geologist impact your approach to writing?
I
am a scientist at heart. My training in geology gives me an experimental
approach. If something doesn’t fly, I change it, and send it off again. I love
collecting and tracking data, as in, how many times I submit in a year, how
many of those are rejections, and so forth. (Last year a poem I had submitted
twenty times was published.) I’ve written plays with science content—one
thought experiment for Infinity Box Theatre Project about robots, The Robot Decision, and two featuring
the endangered parrot, the kakapo. Geological content crops up in a few of my
poems.
What impact does your timed writing
practice (with two different groups in Seattle) have on your writing?
Timed
writing practice is the opposite of writer’s block. Writing to the clock,
allowing the writing to be ugly and/or raw, and writing with company keeps my
pen moving and words falling onto the page. If ever I’m feeling stuck, I know
to give myself a time-frame, to sit, and to write until the alarm sounds.
Practicing timed writing keeps me optimistic. Practicing timed writing with a
group transforms my solo activity into a social one and has given me community.
What are you working on now?
I’m
working on a novel about color, art, and creativity. My novel’s heroine
protects art and color in her beige-dominated world where Color Rules restrict.
It’s a mess and it’s going to take me a long time to arrive at a first draft,
and I’m having a blast.
The
poem I’m wrestling with is “All Lines Dissolve” which features a goddess and
waiting.
And
I’m hoping for a couple of play readings this year.
Final Words of Wisdom
Wisdom is a big ask! Are final words of randomness okay?
When I’m scared or too serious, I remind myself:
No one is making me write. I do this because it is a good
time.
I can make it anything I can imagine, and I can imagine much.
