Interview _ Erik Schmidt

Erik Schmidt lives in Georgia and is a sports editor and a freelance writer.

10 of his short stories appear in the anthology, Cover Stories: A Euphictional Anthology (CreateSpace, 2010).

In this interview, Erik Schmidt talks about his writing:

When did you start writing?

I had to write fictional stories throughout elementary school, but I started taking it seriously — or at least as seriously as any 11-year-old boy can take anything beyond backyard football and baseball cards — in sixth grade.

Our teacher, Mrs. Jacoby, consistently had us write 100-word essays and then read them aloud in class. I remember thinking some of the topics were boring or uninspiring, so I started creating my own themes for my own amusement. They weren’t anything special, but it was important for me to realize that innovation, creative thinking, and stepping outside the expected parameters are huge elements in the writing process.

There was no epiphany or mind-blowing realization in regards to becoming a published writer. When I was a junior in high school, I saw an ad for a sports writer for a twice-weekly newspaper called the Wall Herald in New Jersey. The owner, I think his name was Ed Brown, had his own airport. The Herald ran a regular contest where you had to find a small caricature of Mr. Brown flying a plane somewhere in the paper. If you found him, you won an ice cream sundae. Basically, this wasn’t the New York Times, so I figured, “What the hell?”

I realize this doesn’t paint the most romantic of literary pictures, but I loved sports, I was a decent writer, and this seemed like a better way to earn money than working as a dishwasher or telemarketer. Again, this isn’t a feel good, movie-of-the-week story. I applied for the job, they invited me in for an interview, and I drove down there. I showed them a few clips from my high school paper, the editor looked them over, and then she asked if I had a driver’s license and a car.

I had both.

They hired me.

I subsequently decided to turn this into a career. I majored in journalism at the University of Georgia and ultimately found work as a sports editor at The Oconee Enterprise in Watkinsville, Ga. I’ve had two stints there and along the way I’ve done some freelance work for daily papers, magazines and a website or two.

As for becoming a published writer in the fictional realm, again, there wasn’t any exact “I know what I must be” moment. It was just something I thought I could do and something that would allow a more creative outlet beyond structured sports writing.

I do know several people who absolutely have to write. I’m not one of them. If I write something and someone wants to buy it, that’s great. If not, so be it. I’ll live. Of course, I’ll live better if everyone buys it. I’m certainly not against that scenario.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

Aside from the sports writing that pays my bills, my work can be classified as semi-realistic, humorous fiction. I’ll take a completely believable scenario and let it run a step beyond ordinary. It keeps things in the real world, yet entertains. At least that’s the idea.

I despise the phrase, “target audience.” It confines the human race to three commercially motivated categories: age, gender, and annual income. I don’t write for any of these. I write for people who refuse to take life too seriously. I write for people who aren’t easily offended. I write for people who aren’t afraid to acknowledge that “Corporate America” is nothing more than a two-word excuse that permits the wealthy to abuse the middle and lower classes. Okay, I really don’t write for that third group. But I admire their attitude.

In the writing you are doing, which authors have influenced you the most?

This is always an interesting question, and here I’d like to point out that while I respect the classic writers every kid wades through in high school as well as their modern day contemporaries, I’m not a fan of the traditional style of novel writing. It involves far too much verbiage.

I’ve read books where an author uses three paragraphs to describe a mountain. Honestly, I’m impressed by the vocabulary involved here, but personally, I detest that level of intricacy. It’s not necessary. I know what a mountain looks like. Tell me how high it is and whether or not it’s snow-covered. I can figure out the rest.

As such, I can’t get enough of books from Chuck Klosterman, Dave Barry, and Carl Hiaasen. As journalists, they have a straight-to-the-point style that grabs your attention and doesn’t let go. Just as importantly, they share a biting wit and a tremendous sense of humor. In my opinion, these are the most entertaining writers around. Since I write to entertain and not to fill pages with 17 long-winded portraits of the color blue, theirs is a style I can relate to and embrace.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

First and foremost, as a journalist I talk to a lot of people. Ergo, I have a decent handle on realistic verbal communication which helps put believable dialog in my fictional works. Along these lines, my wife complains to me that I have too much profanity in my stories. My response is simple, “People curse a lot.”

Outside of dialog, I’m sure my personal experiences are similar to those of most other writers. You drink with friends, you spend time with family, you get into the occasional scrape with the law, etc. Some things you remember and draw upon for ideas. Others you don’t.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

In regards to the process of writing, sometimes I worry that my central conflict isn’t strong enough. Sometimes I don’t think I’ve fully developed my main characters. Sometimes I think I’m just rewriting someone else’s story. Sometimes I think my conflict, my characters, and the story I’m writing all suck.

I don’t have a set way to deal with any of this and there’s no way to describe how these issues are resolved. Sometimes I scrap the entire story and sometimes I just make a key tweak or two. That’s it.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

I think getting published is the biggest challenge facing any "new" writer. I’ve spoken to authors at signings and seminars and perused countless books on the topic.

Essentially, if you don’t know someone, the whole process appears to be a crap shoot. I know that may sound bitter or harsh, but let’s face it. Just like you can go to a dive bar and see a random band that sounds just as good as Seether or Nickelback or whoever, there are unpublished writers out there who have written a novel that’s just as good as something you might find on the shelf at Borders or Barnes & Noble. Maybe the published author wrote a better query letter or maybe the agent who read the unpublished author’s query was hung over that day. In my mind, it’s that random. I could be wrong, but that’s my feeling.

Thankfully, the self-publishing world has the capability to dent this norm. Sure, there are self-published works out there that are absolute garbage, but at least self-publishing gives writers the opportunity to find an audience who can label their work as garbage. And I mean that in an incredibly positive sense.

Agents and publishers aren’t the only people on the planet who can read and form an opinion. Just about anyone with a high school diploma has that capacity. Self-publishing allows for the opportunity, at the very least, to succeed or fail without a middle-man censor.

Do you write every day?

I’m not one of these people who designates two, three, or four hours of free time a day to write.

If I feel like writing (aside from my actual sports writing job where knocking out a 12-15-inch story is something I can do in my sleep), I write. If I don’t feel like it, I don’t write.

Obviously, if I was a paid novelist and my livelihood was dependent on the written word, I would change this habit ASAP. However, at this point it’s not necessary to do so.

That being said, I don’t have a process or schedule when I write. If I have an idea for a chapter or a screenplay scene, I write it. If I have another idea, I keep writing. If I’m out of ideas, I stop.

I’ve found that I can’t force quality creativity. Again, if it meant the difference between having the air conditioning on and the power turned off, I would certainly reconsider this thought process. Whether or not I’d succeed is another question.

How many books have you written so far?

I’ve written one novel called Hair Ball that I’m currently in the process of marketing. The log line is as follows: When two fallen rock stars from the days of Guns n Roses attempt to blackmail a Florida politician to finance their career resurrection, they inadvertently intertwine the lives of a Norwegian assassin with a foul-mouthed parrot, a smug attorney suffering from hair envy, and a pop metal tribute band single-handedly keeping the spandex and hair spray industries afloat.

I’ve also written five screenplays, although none of them have sold.

In addition to that, I contributed 10 short stories to a compilation entitled, Cover Stories that was released on June 21, 2010. The material encompasses a wide range of territory, from horror to romance to comedy to stuff I don’t wish to describe for fear of misinterpreting another author’s meaning.

Christian Dumais organized the entire process and centered it around something called euphiction. Chris and some of the other writers busted their tails coming up with a definition for this and there’s actually a Wikipedia entry for it.

Here’s a quick explanation: Euphiction is a writing genre where writers do literary “cover versions” of specific songs, a marriage of musical inspiration with the written word, or a story that works like a three-minute single.

Basically, we all picked an album and wrote stories inspired by the titles of 10 songs from that album. I chose Sugartooth’s self-titled debut, which is really an incredible body of music. However, because I was unable to obtain permission to use the titles, I had to change my story titles at the last minute to avoid any post-publication complications.

Of course, I don’t blame Sugartooth for any of this. They broke up over 10 years ago. My issue is with the corporate stranglehold on such issues and I’ll hold this grudge until the day they pry the Miller Lite bottle from my cold, dead hands.

How long did it take you to come up with the material that appears in Cover Stories?

From start to finish, I think it took about a year. I wasn’t really paying attention.

We went the self-publishing route, and I believe that was the thinking from Day 1. Simply put, it was more practical.

The down side, of course, is that we have to market the book ourselves. Thankfully, we have several authors on board who are incredibly accomplished at this. They love virtual cafes, blogs, etc. Their passion has proven to be a tremendous boon.

Which aspects of the work you put into the book did you find most difficult?

Choosing which album to base the stories on was by far the most difficult task — unless you count the current marketing process. I have a rich CD collection and depending on the day, any one of them could be in my top 10.

Honestly, I ended up choosing Sugartooth because a friend and I had just been discussing little-known bands that deserved to make it big. A day or two later, Derrek Carriveau, one of the other writers and a close friend of Chris’s, sent me an email asking if I’d be interested in participating in this project. It made my decision a lot easier.

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

I liked the challenge of the word limit. Christian set a strict cap of 1,000 words per story. As I mentioned earlier in the interview, I’m not a fan of unnecessary verbiage. However, to create a protagonist, plot, crisis, and resolution all within 1,000 words still proved difficult at times. Fortunately, I think the most I ever had to cut was about 100 words.

Also, as a music lover, the idea of assisting in the pioneering of what will hopefully become an accepted genre in euphiction was very appealing.

What sets your contribution to Cover Stories apart from other things you've written?

Working as part of a collaborative effort was unique. Also, I only knew two of the writers, Derrek and Chris, going into this, so reading thoughts from “strangers” was a new experience.

However, with one or two exceptions, the content of my stories is similar to what I usually write about. I didn’t branch out too much. It’s not that I feel my style is unchangeable. I just happen to like it.

What will your next book be about?

I’m currently writing a yet-to-be-titled novel about a Jewish Little League team subjected to a roster overhaul. It’s kind of South Park meets The Bad News Bears.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Well, I’ve won several awards as a sports writer from the Georgia Press Association, but honestly, just completing Hair Ball was my biggest achievement. Even if I never make a dime off that book, I’m extremely proud of the finished product. I busted my ass on it, and seeing it through to an actual ending was very rewarding.

Related articles:

• Christian A. Dumais [Interview_2], Conversations with Writers, August 20, 2011
• Music Made New: A Review of Cover Stories: A Euphictional Anthology (2010, coverstoriesbook.com), By Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews, December 2, 2010
• A Conversation on Euphiction with N. Pendleton, By Christian A. Dumais, coverstoriesbook.com, July 14, 2010

[Interview] Chris Hardy

Poet, musician and song-writer, Chris Hardy has written and published two poetry collections, Swimming In The Deep Diamond Mine (Hub Editions 2002) and A Moment Of Attention (Original Plus Press, August 2008).

His poems have also been featured in magazines that include Acumen; Tears In The Fence; and Poetry Review.

In this interview, Chris Hardy talks about his writing:

When did you start writing?

I started writing poetry at school in the 1960’s, influenced and inspired by reading English poetry, especially John Keats, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare and William Blake.

As for publishing, this started in the 1970’s when I came across poetry magazines in London, where I was living. I submitted poems to them and began to get published: Stand, Poetry Review and Slow Dancer were amongst the first to take my poems. It was easy to find out how to do this, but to get a collection published, while easier then than now, was still difficult. In fact, I did not think of doing so until later.

Throughout this period, and up to now, I was also playing guitar in bands and as a solo musician, and writing tunes and songs ... I have always felt that, if there were no poems being written, as I could not find anything to write about or did not feel like writing, then at least there was still the music -- and visa versa.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

I write lyric poetry, by which I mean pieces of writing in a verse form that do not extend much beyond four or five pages.

Most of my poems are less than 40 lines long. I write like this because that is what my imagination creates. I sometimes intend to put together something longer but this rarely happens, mainly because it is ‘put together’ -- is artificial.

Over many years, I have come to rely on my imagination finding the material it needs in my experiences and making something new from that. What is produced is then shaped by me into a verse form -- stanzas, lines, punctuation etc -- that seems to emerge from the poem.

Often the first few lines set the form.

I do not sit down thinking I must write a poem and this is the topic, nor do I attend writing classes where topics are set. Again to me all this produces is artificial, manufactured, poetry.

I trust my imagination to make something, using words, from my knowledge and life: the poem, if it is a poem, will reveal what I was aware of but did not ‘see’ or ‘know’ before. Of course this leads to periods of anxiety when nothing appears, sometimes for months ... but I have to remind myself then that this does not matter ... what does matter is that whatever is written is necessary (to me) and ‘authentic’.

Who is your target audience?

I do not have a target audience. Once the poem is finished -- has been amended, added to, shaped and left lying around for a while -- I will try to get it published in a magazine or anthology, but why I do this is a good question: I think it is simply to get some sort of response or reaction.

I often try new poems out on other writers I meet at ‘Stanza’ meetings, but only rarely do I hear anything that I am willing or able to make use of to improve a poem -- though it does happen at times.

There is definitely also a desire to get some sort of recognition and approval, especially through getting poems into famous magazines like the The Rialto or The North, or winning prizes in competitions, and the odd prize covers the cost of all the postage!

I think it probably took 10 years of trying, once a year, sending six poems, to get one poem recently into The Rialto ... And I, and I am sure other writers, read these magazines asking ourselves, ‘You print that and not mine?!’

There is also a competitive element: many writers are competitive, with each other and with the publishing establishment: it becomes a small victory to finally get a poem published ... guitarists, by the way, are the same.

In the writing you are doing, which authors influenced you most?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Frost At Midnight), John Keats (Bright Star), Wilfred Owen (Spring Offensive, Futility), Isaac Rosenberg (Dead Man’s Dump), Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas (Lights Out), Shakespeare (Hamlet, Othello), Gary Snyder (Turtle Island, Rip Rap), Allen Ginsberg (Howl etc) and other ‘beats’ -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and also Robert Duncan, e e cummings, William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, T S Eliot (Wasteland, Prufrock), Ezra Pound (Cathay), Philip Larkin (Whitsun Weddings, Aubade), Sylvia Plath, early Ted Hughes, the very Larkinesque Carol Anne Duffy more recently.

I also find inspiration sometimes in the excellent poems that frequently appear in the small magazines I subscribe to: Magma, Tears In The Fence, Rialto etc.

I have been influenced, at least in approach and subject matter, by novelists such as Leo Tolstoy, William Faulkner, Hemingway, Joseph Conrad: these and many other authors, of course, write from their own experience, which connects their work directly to reality. They all firstly create a physical world from imagery and through this and from this arises any underlying meaning: fact is far stranger than fiction and, once fiction is made from fact, fiction cannot lie.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

I will start a poem with a word or a line that I have heard, thought of or remembered and these are often connected to memories, or from something just seen or read or heard. Memory is especially important ...

Once the poem gets going, I know it is something worth continuing with if I arrive, at some point, at something I had not clearly seen or known before I began. But whatever this is, it comes from and relates to some sort of inner or sensory experience.

I rarely, if ever, write about things I have never felt or known. In this connection I am not interested in any sort of Science Fiction, Television serials and do not usually watch films, or if I do, I cannot take them seriously as Art. Exceptions are 40’s and 50’s Westerns (High Noon), Some Like It Hot, Paths Of Glory, Doctor Strangelove, The Godfather ...

The Wire is the sort of TV I like and other than that, a few documentaries, and sport.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

The biggest challenges are twofold: writing something; getting it published. I have written above about both these things.

I do not ‘practise’ writing poems as I practise guitar: every day for at least one or two hours.

I have to be patient and calm and wait for the moment, which is also a mood -- when I become aware that anything and everything in the ordinary world is of interest and has a mystery: it is inexplicably strange that we are here, like this.

Then it takes a prompt: a word, an image, a memory, a line of verse, a phrase.

Getting published takes patience and thick skin.

You have to learn to take rejection and keep going. You also have to read plenty of poetry and research the scene -- there are, for example, many online magazines now. You also have to put up with interminable delay by most magazine editors. Very few of them will respond within three months, most take longer and some never reply even if you send, as you must, an s.a.e. The worst offenders in this regard are the editors of Arete, Poetry London, The London Magazine ... and as other excellent and very busy magazine editors do manage to reply promptly, I cannot excuse those who do not. The best are Acumen, Tears In The Fence, Smiths Knoll, Poetry Review, The North ...

Do you write everyday?

No. I do not write everyday, but I am ready to write -- I try to remember to have a notebook on me at all times. I have written poems on beaches, in lecture theatres, in bed, on buses ... all I need is some paper and a pencil or pen.

I do not type until I have re-written by hand several times.

I use a manuscript nook for drafting, sometimes I compose straight into it. I have kept quite a few of these as they are a sort of mine or quarry -- there is stuff in there that I might be able to use -- fragments, abandoned poems and also many notes, quotes, pictures.

I stop writing when I have nothing else to write down.

But one important rule, that I have to remind myself of is that, once I start I must not stop to correct, re-consider, censor ... that is fatal, as, if there is anything there, it might find its way out buried in a load of verbiage and imagery that can be pared away later.

Another helpful way of finding what a poem is about is getting someone else to read it -- they will sometimes see what the poem is really trying to reveal, or is really concerned about, and suggest ways of bringing this out, making the poem, in fact.

On the whole, I do not agree with the often expressed notion that a poem is ‘never finished’: I read poems written years ago and, while noticing that I might not have phrased or structured it like that now, I do not wish to re-write it ... it is better to start afresh. I have written many poems that took hours to get right, then found that what I have left is not really worth doing anything with. I will leave it, and possibly make use of any images, phrases, lines in a future poem.

How many collections have you written so far?

I have published two collections: Swimming In The Deep Diamond Mine (Hub Editions 2002) and A Moment Of Attention (Original Plus Press, August 2008).

I began publishing poems in magazines in about 1980 with a poem called Knife, in Orbis -- a magazine that I still send work to. Poems in Other Poetry, Stand, Poetry Review and Pennine Platform followed, as well as poems in magazines that are now extinct -- Slow Dancer, Urbane Gorilla, Oasis etc.

Since then poems have appeared regularly, in numerous magazines (over 60) including The North, The Rialto, Smiths Knoll, Tears in the Fence, Acumen, Brittle Star and many others.

Some of my poems have won prizes, for example in the National Poetry Society’s and London Writers’ poetry competitions, and a poem, highly commended by the judges, is in the 2009 Forward Prize Anthology.

More poems and information can be found at the following websites and ‘zines’ (online magazines) myspace.com/mrchrishardy, greatworks.org.uk, poetrypf.co.uk, nthposition.com and poetrylibrary.org.uk

How would you describe A Moment Of Attention?

My latest book, A Moment Of Attention, contains a large number of poems and is somewhat erratically ordered on a thematic line from birth/beginnings to death/endings but with a questing, searching poem at the end that celebrates (I hope) the wonder of the easily accessible world. The title poem also emphasis this: it is about an old barn but the underlying idea is that life is just this brief moment of consciousness -- what is happening now is all there is, and the poem tries to show and say how easy it is to forget this and live disconnected from what is really happening, unaware -- like a person walking on a mountain and making a phone call.

Sam Smith, with his Original Plus Press, picked up the manuscript immediately he received it, and proved to be a most efficient and careful editor -- this is why I went along with him and did not try anywhere else. If you find a friend stick with him ...

What sets A Moment Of Attention apart from the other things you've written?

Poets usually simply collect together what poems they have that have not appeared in a book but that might or might not have been published elsewhere and then try to make a ‘Collection’: this means a book containing poems that are not going to be on one theme or in one style, but it is important to try and make the ‘running order’ work: each poem should complement, or contrast with, its neighbour.

Getting this order right takes several attempts and is never completely satisfactory. I compare it to constructing a musical ‘set’ for a band’s performance ... the songs chosen need to enhance each other and the performance.

My poems have always been on a number of limited themes: life, nature, death, truth, mystery, other people and myself, time, fate, history, religion ... in this, both my collections are similar and the next one will be too.

What has changed is my style: I now take much more notice of rhyme and rhythm and am focusing more on both, especially the iambic beat and the 10/11 syllable line. However, I have to guard against this interfering with the actual moment of writing ... and it is also apparent to me that my imagination is producing poems that contain a lot of half and full rhymes, that they condition the writing and unfortunately can also limit it ...

What will your next book be about?

My next collection is not in any sort of order yet. I have a Word file with about 50 poems in it, and an associated file with about 20 poems that I now do not intend to use ... there are many other poems that are in neither file.

The main file has the title, Write Me A Few Of Your Lines. This is the title of a poem about the great American blues musician Fred McDowell, the poem was published on a USA poetry website lucidrhythms.com. If the collection turns out to be about discovery (the poem is about how Fred was ‘discovered’) and revelation, then it will not be that different to the previous collections and poems!

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Keeping going when inspiration is absent, there is nothing to say and no one wants to publish what poems I have that I think are interesting and well-constructed enough to find an audience.

Even if you win a prize in the National Poetry Competition, or get a poem in the Forward Anthology or into a ‘prestigious’ magazine, nothing will probably change in your life -- it takes luck, contacts and, of course, the right poem to make money and a name ... most poets, in any case, do not want to earn a living as poets. This would mean writing to order like a journalist or forcing the pace as novelists do -- poetry should be written in the corners of your life and you need to live, not write, to write it.

Far too many poets work in Universities and especially on ‘creative writing’ courses: this means that their only experiences, from which the poems must come, are of writing and talking about writing. But the poetry that is about poetry is the most pointless, self-regarding and unenlightening of all ...

To me, the ideal poet’s life would be that lived by Gary Snyder, who worked in the forests of North America, or even Owen and Sassoon’s wars, T S Eliot’s bank and Larkin’s library administration. Wallace Stevens, Yeats and Arnold all worked in the world and wrote in a separate but connected existence -- as if life, work and poetry were connected rooms.

Some of the best poets are mainly thought of as novelists -- Thomas Hardy, D H Lawrence: their poems are, to some readers, superior to their books because they were written to express essential emotions and experiences; not to support a fiction but to re-create a powerful perception of a fundamental experience.

Possibly related books:

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Related article:

[Interview] Siobhan Logan, Conversations with Writers, February 20, 2010

[Interview] Shelley Blake: poet and freelance writer

Shelley Blake has been writing from a very early age. Some of her work has been published in magazines that include The Program Melbourne; Inpress Magazine; The Skinny; and, The Ranfurly Review.

In 2006, her poem, "Hidden" was runner-up in the Poetry Category of the Amnesty International and Sydney Pen, Freedom Writer's Awards. Two years earlier, she had been awarded membership with Golden Key International Honour Society based on results of the work she did in her Bachelor of Media Studies with LaTrobe University.

In this interview, Shelley Blake talks about her writing:

When did you start writing?

I began writing from a young age, around 15. I was always fascinated with song lyrics, from artists like Jeff Buckley, Thom York and Nick Cave. The first poetry I read was from Australian writer Luke Davies, who is still one of my favourite writers.

I always wanted to work in environmental science, but when I was around 14 I realised I wasn't inclined to the 'sciences'. I begun writing at around this age which lead me to study literature and journalism at university.

I began writing for arts publications in Melbourne and working for environmental groups after university, so in this was able to blend my two passions.

I don't know if it was a conscious decision to become a published writer as such, but writing is better shared then kept too close to ones self.

How would you describe your writing?

I am really experimenting with short prose poetry at the moment. I have been quite transient in the past 12 months, travelling through Europe and parts of England and Scotland.

My current work has been inspired by the changing landscape, complex human struggle and relationships and the idea of contentment.

Who influenced you most?

I don't know if it's the 'who' so much as 'what' ... relationships, humans, nature, peace, questioning, love, struggle.

I think there is poetry is everything, it's just everywhere.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

My main concerns I think are universal when it comes to writing and the arts in general. The financial struggle and the need to balance your art with surviving and paying the bills.

What part of the work do you enjoy most?

I enjoy the free flow, the creative process, it is so necessary to me, it's just like breathing.

Who is your target audience?

I don't know that I have a target audience.

Related articles:

"Shelley Blake, poet and freelance writer", New Writing International, April 28, 2009.

Possibly related books:

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