Six Simple Questions With Lee Martin

Welcome to Six Simple Questions With...

This is the second post in a series aimed at providing insight and knowledge to readers and aspiring authors alike.

Last week's guest was Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner and "The New Yorker 20 Under 40" author Philipp Meyer.

Today's guest is Lee Martin, whose 2006 novel The Bright Forever was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

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I could come up with a half-cooked bio of Lee Martin on my own, but the best thing I can tell you about him comes from his own website:

Before landing a job teaching creative writing, he worked in a shoe factory, a garment factory, a tire repairs manufacturing plant, a department store. He earned money umpiring men’s slow-pitch softball games, gathering addresses for the U.S. Census Bureau, delivering pizzas, detasseling corn for the Dekalb Seed Corn Company, flipping burgers at Hardees, and working on a Christmas Tree Farm. Through all those jobs, he kept writing. If that’s what gives you pleasure, he hopes you will, too.

What does it take to become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize? Who knows - but if there is a theme from the first two weeks of this series, it's that the road is often more difficult than you imagined. (Spoiler alert: This is a theme that will continue throughout this series...and if you are an aspiring author, this should not discourage you. Au contraire - it should redouble your resolve to keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. Because you never know how close your breakthrough might be...)

Here Are Six Simple Questions
with Lee Martin:

1) Do you write each day, or do you write "when the mood strikes"?

I try to write each day because regularity produces results, but, alas, teaching and other real life things get in the way, so I'm not always able to write each day.


2) Do you have a "writing spot," or do you move around?

I have a spot, my writing room, where I'm either in a comfy chair with pen and paper, or at my computer. I've also written in hotel rooms and wherever I happen to be at the time.


3) What is the one book (written by someone else) you wish you had written yourself?

Rock Springs by Richard Ford. I love those stories. They helped me write the stories in my first book, The Least You Need to Know.


4) What is the one book you feel every aspiring author should read?

I love what The Great Gatsby has to show us about the structure of a novel. The first two-thirds of the book dramatizes all the major elements and in effect puts into place a brick wall, brick by brick. The final third of the novel involves the pulling out of those bricks, one at a time, until all that can be done with the material is done.


5) What is the best writing advice you have ever heard/read?

From Isak Dinesen: "Write a little every day, without hope, without despair."


6) What is the best advice you can give to aspiring authors?

Follow Isak Dinesen's advice and fall in love with the process. Give little thought to reaching the desired result; it will come if you trust the process.

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"...fall in love with the process. Give little thought to reaching the desired result; it will come if you trust the process."

[Lee Martin's newest offering, Break The Skin]



[Come back next Friday for Six Simple Questions with another awesome guest - one of my fellow authors under the Atticus Umbrella!]

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