Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Interview, for 2018 Literary Arts Award in Playwriting
What inspired you to step away from nonfiction and environmental writing and towards playwriting? What were your biggest challenges in tackling a different genre?
I think I was mostly inspired by the experience of going to Wilton’s town meeting many times over the years, and realizing eventually what a drama– of a certain sort – unfolds there. Town meetings have all the requirements of drama: characters, conflict, tension and resolution, and a surface topic beneath which other subjects lurk.
So I found the experience a good one for turning into a play, and as a writing experience, I found writing dialogue liberating – no, or very little, exposition! In reading and attending plays, I think I gradually came to appreciate the power of the simplicity of a play: characters’ words and actions in regard to one another. That’s powerful, and fun to write, especially as a novice playwright. It’s a much different imaginative experience, to write a play rather than prose, than I would have thought before I gave it a try.
What advice do you give your students about writing?
I give them plenty of advice, more than they want! In my creative nonfiction classes, I focus on helping them understand what the tools of nonfiction are, the devices, and how to employ them. Quite often they’ve seen the tools used on the page, they’ve witnessed them being put into action, but they need to have the craft elements named, and called to their attention, and they need suggestions on how they might use this or that tool on this or that occasion.
I also set out some principles, especially about honesty, truth, and vulnerability in nonfiction. One of those principles is that the writer has absolute authority to choose whatever story he or she wants to tell, but whatever they choose, they have to be willing to be honest about it. This comes up a lot when someone writes about a difficult or sensitive topic; they don’t have to write about it, but if they choose to, they have to go all the way, not hold back.
I also advise them to take risks, even if the result doesn’t work out. That’s hard for students to hear, because of course they are eventually graded, and they care too much about grades.
When you’re not teaching or writing, what do you enjoy doing most?
As the owner of an old house in Maine, I spend a lot of time working on it; I’m not sure that counts as enjoyment. But other than that, my wife and I like being in Europe, perhaps at an artist residency, and we have a camp nearby, where I like to swim and float on an old air mattress. I still like to run for exercise, competing occasionally in 5Ks and 10Ks, and to bike and use Colby’s gym. I try to stay up to date on environmental literature, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities. I also spend a lot of time fuming about politics and the fate of the country.
