Local author interview Gregory Frost

Gregory Frost's Latest Book

About three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of taking a three-day lecture given by author Gregory Frost at the PWC. Frost teaches creative writing at Swarthmore College, right here in the Philadelphia area. From the his first statement that ‘the first stories were fantasy stories’ to his staggering mental bibliography of books in a number of genres I was blown away by this local writer immediately and have a quarter of a notebook  full of thoughts and ideas inspired by his words. I learned about a thousand little things to take into account for my own personal journey as a writer, but I thought I’d contact Mr. Frost and ask him some questions for a more universal audience. Luckily for all of us, he had a few minutes to answer my questions, which I have below.

In terms of pedigree, Gregory Frost is a multiple time published author with eight novels to his name, his work in several anthologies and numerous published short stories. He knows enough about writing to teach at a major liberal arts school and is active in the local writing scene. I can’t tell you how lucky I am to get him at the top of my list of interviews.

What was your first job related to writing, how did you get it?

 If you define “job” here as something someone paid for (assuming barter counts), the answer is that around 1975, two friends of mine who were in a TV directing class at the University of Iowa, where I was also a student, asked me to write episodes of a faux sf series for them to direct. We’re talking Christmas tree lights for special effects. I took a short story idea I’d written at the time and bastardized it (and believe me that could only have helped it) and wrote three episodes of a time travel series for them about a college student (duh) who figures out that his professor has discovered how to travel not only through time but through alternate timelines, but who as a result gets pulled into an alternate reality himself and discovers a legion of other time travelers, and so forth.  For this piece of journeyman scribbling I was paid in giant cans ("tubes" in Oz-speak) of Foster’s Lager.  That made for huge incentives to finish each piece.

What's your #1 piece of advice to other writers, getting started or trying to keep the momentum going?

 B-I-C: Butt In Chair.  Not that I take my own advice often enough, but that is all there is to it finally.  If you don’t sit down and write, then you will accomplish nothing.  That does not mean you won’t write one or two or twelve novels that are bad, that don’t work or won’t sell.  But if you don’t write them and get to the one that does work, does sell, the rest is hypothetical. You’ll have a hypothetical career. You’ll be writing a book real soon now.  I heard Justin Cronin say once that as he was leaving the graduate workshop program at the University of Iowa he asked his advisor (and the head of the program) what he should do now, and the man replied, “Write for ten years.”  He said it was the best advice anyone had given him, and it took him almost exactly ten years to produce his first novel. You can tell someone young that and it doesn't sound so daunting.  It’s harder to say it to a fifty-year-old who’s always had a hankering to write but repressed it, didn’t act on it, for decades.  All I can tell you is, I’m sorry, if you’re serious you will have to put in the time.  The rest is posturing, and there are plenty of people who are good at that, who go from conference to workshop to conference and learn nothing.  Don’t be one of them.

Where or from whom do you take writing advice?

 Depends on what we’re talking about.  If I am looking for feedback on something I’m writing, that might be someone like Karen Joy Fowler or Kelly Link, both of whom volunteered to take time from their own writing to be first readers for my novel, Fitcher’s Brides.  It might be my friends Oz Whiston and Fran Grote, who both have acted as first readers on my last couple of projects.  I think it’s important to have a couple of good readers (who cannot be family members, I’m sorry, but no) to offer impressions of your work; but it’s also important not to use them too often or too early.  I’ve seen people serve up their very rough first drafts to workshop groups, and I think that’s a terrible mistake because once your first readers have seen this work, they’re tainted. You can’t use them reliably again because they will never approach the work as a reader might again. They’ll have a kind of prescience about it, about what’s going to happen, about whose story this is, and that will truly screw up their feedback. You can ask them to look at some specific revisionary element, but they can't be your first readers twice. 

If we’re talking about advice in general, I take it from a lot of places. From other writers that I talk with about writing; from books like Charles Baxter’s Burning Down the House, Ben Yagoda’s The Sound on the Page, or Carole Burns’ Off the Page.  There is Janet Burroway’s definitive text Writing Fiction, and John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. And then there are teaching collections of stories, like Madison Smartt Bell’s Narrative Design, and T.C. Boyle’s Doubletakes. All of those provide insights into writing, into the relationship of the writer to the story and of the story to the reader.  Anything that makes you think about fiction differently, see your writing differently, is good.

What are you working on now?

I just turned in a short story for a commemorative anthology that Greg Schauer, the owner of Between Books (in Claymont, DE) is doing to celebrate his store’s 20^th anniversary.  And I’m trying out working on two things at once, which I have not traditionally done. One, called Unreal Estate, is a supernatural romance mystery, maybe the start of a series, and I’m final drafting (I hope) that.  And some members of the Philadelphia Stories writing group are doing a kind of hive mind writing collective right now, like a stripped down version of NaNoWriMo, so I’m attempting to push through a first draft in a kind of guerilla “take no prisoners” fashion. No idea what that’ll create, because it’s not the way I work traditionally, but I feel like I want to try it out. I’ve gone through my career that way, trying not to do the same thing over and over, which is somewhat antithetical to what publishing likes.  There is another Shadowbridge book on the back burner but I want to get through these other projects first.  The Shadowbridge fantasies are intricate and very much products of the lizard brain, and they don't come out quickly. 

What do you have on the shelves we have to read? (yes, this is a bit like asking which is your favorite child.)

Well, Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet, a duology, is what’s out and fresh at the moment. Certainly the books I’m proudest of right now (to go with your "favorite child" analogy).  They comprise a large story that flows around and incorporates smaller stories, tales within tales, tales performed on stage, tales that echo something going on in the aspic in which they’re embedded.  It’s probably my 1001 Nights and I don’t expect to repeat that, as it took a long time to develop and emerge.  Some ideas, like the thing I’m approaching guerilla-writing style, come to you with the larger structure in place, comprehensible. Fitcher's Brides did that. Others, like the Shadowbridge novels, are to me more akin to feeling your way down a flight of stairs in the dark. All you can do is hold onto the railing and hope none of the treads is missing.

Who is your favorite current writer?

I’m right now re-reading and enjoying Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I haven’t read since I was a teen.  I just finished Dennis Tafoya’s extraordinary first novel, Dope Thief, which reads like poetry written in broken glass.  But if forced to pick one, I’ve become terribly enamored of Christopher Brookmyre, a mad Scots writer of mad comic thrillers like Quite Ugly One Morning and A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away.  He’s evil and brilliant, and between him and all the Donald Westlake "Dortmunders" I still have to read, I’ve got my really exceptional popcorn books sewn up for years to come.

What's unique about writing in the Philly area?

 The community of writers around here is extraordinary.  There’s a strong science fiction community, with writers galore.  I’m a member of the Philadelphia Liars Club, which includes local authors such as Jonathan Maberry, L.A. Banks, Kelly Simmons, William Lashner, Jon McGoran, and Merry Jones; our styles and stories are incredibly varied, but what a band of outlaws to belong to.  I’m friends with exceptional local poets like Leonard Gontarek and Nathalie Anderson, and artists and illustrators like Charley Parker and Rich Grote.  So I like the way the layers overlap, and communities aren’t insular.  I think one of the things that I find sad is how few local independent bookshops there are.  That’s maybe not unique in this universe of corporate rapacity, but with a literary community that includes Kelly Writers House and the Free Library author series, I hate seeing my world go to the behemoths.

So, here's a local gentleman who knows his stuff. I look forward to picking up some of his recomendations and I know the Shadowbridge books have just jumped to the top of my TBR list.  I hope you'll join me in thanking Mr. Frost for taking the time.

You can also read this inteview and comments at my blog here.