The Accidental Writer: Interview with Author Robb Grindstaff
I was extremely fortunate to interview the immensely talented Robb Grindstaff. Robb has had a long career as a newspaper editor, publisher, and manager that has taken him around the world. He has two published books – Carry Me Away and Hannah’s Voice.
If you could choose one author to drink beers with, who would he or she be and why?
Do I have to choose just one? I think Ayn Rand would be the most interesting conversation, discussing writing and philosophy and politics. And I could offer to edit her novels down to a more reasonable length.
Ernest Hemingway would be a great discussion on writing, but he’d drink me under the table in five minutes. I’m pretty much a two-beer maximum guy. Then I fall asleep.
Problem here is both of those writers are dead, so they probably wouldn’t be that much fun in the way of conversation. So I’m stuck between my two favorite contemporary writers – John Irving and Dave Eggers. Both are brilliant writers who create the most realistic, captivating characters as well as the most interesting, intriguing sentences. I believe a writer’s job is not just to tell a good story, but say things in the best ways, the best words in the perfect order. A writer who can describe the mundane or usual in a way that makes the reader see it in a new light. A sentence that makes me think, “That’s perfect. How come I didn’t think of saying it that way?”
What’s the first thing that hooks you on a potential story – characters, conflicts, themes, settings, plot, etc.
Almost always character and voice are what hook me into a book. Back to that ‘perfect, new way of saying something’ idea, the writer’s voice and style of expressing the story. Of course, it has to be a story worth reading, worth spending a few hours of my life with. But a great story idea that is written in a mundane way is just an idea, a synopsis of a story, not a story. John Irving and Dave Eggers again come to mind, as well as Haruki Murakami.
As a writer, my stories always come to me in the form of a character first. She shows up and I learn about a fascinating character. Eventually, she starts to tell me her story. Before I can start writing the story, I have to hear the perfect first sentence and the perfect last sentence of the book. Then I can begin the journey with the character to fill in all the sentences in between.
This was true with the character Carrie Destin in Carry Me Away. She just showed up one day and started talking and wouldn’t shut up. I couldn’t type as fast as she talked. She gave me her whole history and the history of her family, which I dutifully wrote down. Once I knew her as well as I know close family members, she trusted me enough to tell me her story. The 30,000 words of back story I had written were set aside, with only the occasional mention or reference in the final version of the novel. But I had to write that first.
For me, themes tend to emerge later, even after the story is completely written. I don’t start with a theme and then try to build a story. The character comes first, the voice second, the story third, and the theme reveals itself through the story. Setting comes with the character. Where the character lives is part of the character. For me, that’s mostly in the South, since that’s where I’ve lived most of my life.
Who is your favorite character and why?
Back to John Irving once more. Garp, from The World According to Garp, has stuck with me for 30+ years since I first read this novel, and I’ve gone back about every ten years to read it again. Same with his novel A Prayer for Owen Meany and the character Owen. It’s those rare books where the character becomes so real to you as you’re reading that you feel like you know this person in real life and you remember them as well or better than your best friend from high school or college.
Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has the same effect. I was 14 when I read this, and the character touched me like no other, probably because I was about the same age as that character, and like most 14-year-olds, caught in the teen angst of that stage in life.
My goal as a writer is to accomplish that – to create characters that readers will remember fondly as an old friend. My favorite reviews and comments from readers are when they say something like “Carrie felt real to me,” or “I’ll never forget Hannah from Hannah’s Voice.” I haven’t yet created a character as strong as Holden or Garp or Owen, but hope to get closer to that with each novel.
If you want to learn more about Robb you can click on this link:
http://evolvedpub.com/product/carry-me-away/
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