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TT: What was your first writing job after you quit the
Seattle Opera?
MA: I started freelancing and it became apparent that I wasn’t a real journalist because I kept making up
facts — which is generally frowned upon in journalism. Basically, it was a voice issue, I couldn’t resist inserting
myself into the story and I couldn’t resist making jokes. It became clear that I needed to be writing first-person essays.
So after nine months of freelancing, they [Just Out] gave me my own column.
TT: So you were writing your columns and working sixty-hour weeks at FASTSIGNS — a business you and Floyd
owned – how long did it take you to write your novel?
MA: I wrote the first draft in a year and a half, while I was working full time. And then we sold the business and
I wrote nine more drafts in as many months. All told, it was ten drafts before I submitted. And that seems to be my average.
I’ve written a couple of screenplays now, and I’m working on this next book, and I seem to have this nine to twelve
draft rhythm. It takes me that many re-writes to get it the way I want it to be.
TT: Anne Lamott talks about the “shitty first draft,” do you agree with her?
MA: Absolutely! I think of it as the “down draft” – you are just getting it down versus the “up
draft” – where you fix it up.
TT: Do you have any writing rituals? Favorite pen or lucky-colored paper?
MA: I’m not superstitious, but I have my preferences. I’m definitely a yellow pad guy; I just don’t
like the look of the white page. And I use Uni-Ball pens, which are notoriously leaky, because I like the way they feel across
the page. I mean, I have ink stains over everything.
TT: Did you handwrite your first draft?
MA: No. No. But, I don’t sit down to really start typing until I’ve heavily outlined, and I’ve
got a critical mass of material. What I think of as the “tipping point” because when the pile tips over it’s
time to start writing in the computer. This is actually not included in that year and a half of writing the first book. In
that case, gathering the file and huge pile of papers took years.
TT: So, you’re in the camp of writers who outline before they start writing.
MA: Absolutely. I notecard. I outline. I wander around. I don’t start writing in the sense of typing until
I see the story very clearly in my head.
TT: Let’s talk about the sex scenes in your book.
MA: Happily!
TT: They are, well . . . pretty explicit. When you’re writing, how much thought do you give to the level of
heat in a scene, and did you find yourself either increasing it or decreasing it in the course of revising?
MA: I didn’t think about heat. I just thought about honesty. I wanted to write about sex honestly. So I found
myself writing explicit sex scenes but there came a point in the early writing process where it started feeling like I was
writing soft-core porn. And I didn’t want that either. The book has some really explicit sex, but it is not the kind
of book you read with one hand, if you know what I mean. I think, particularly in gay fiction, there’s a fair amount
of that where suddenly, in the midst of a very compelling story, you’ll get a steamy and stimulating sex scene –
the kind where you might let your fingers do the walking. To me it takes you out of the realm of the story and suddenly it
becomes porn. There’s nothing wrong with porn; I’m a huge fan of it, but for me to write explicitly, it also needs
to be funny because that takes it out of the soft-core porn realm. My goal was to write the most honest, but funniest sex
scenes, that I could.
TT: What sort of feedback have you had from readers regarding the sex scenes?
MA: I have been told that I may have written the best comic cunnilingus scene in all of literature. So I’m
really proud of that. People ask me what my favorite scene is, and I have to say, that’s my favorite scene too because
it’s honest but funny at the same time.
TT: I heard one author say she sent her book to 137 agents before finding representation. I understand the story
of how you found an agent and publisher is quite different and involves Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club. Can you tell me about that?
MA: I was working at the business that my partner and I ran, which I hated so much I wanted to chew off my arm.
One evening, I went to a reading of Chuck’s at Annie Bloom’s Bookstore, where he was reading from Lullaby. Like anyone else, I went up to him with a copy of his book to sign and told him my name, and in a moment that absolutely
changed the course of my life, he said to me, “Oh yeah, I know who you are. I’ve read your column.” Which
was absolutely overwhelming. To have someone that you respect and admire know who you are was astonishing to me. On the basis
of that, we began to email a bit, and then we found each other actually sitting next to each other at a screenwriting workshop
given by Cynthia Whitcomb through Willamette Writers. It was a six-week workshop, and we had all these weekends where we were looking for someone to have lunch with, so we had
a series of lunches and got to know each other. Based on that and on the strength of the columns alone, he recommended me
to his agent.
TT: Had he read your manuscript?
MA: No. I would seriously doubt he’s even yet read the book, but he had read enough of the columns to know
that he liked the voice and he felt confident recommending me to his agent. Then his agent recommended me to Chuck’s
editor at Random House, and he bought the book in just two days – which never happens. It was sort of astonishing. At
the beginning of October of 2003 I didn’t have an agent and by the end of the month I had two book deals and a movie
deal. It was that fast! The book came out in 2004.
TT: Do you believe in writer’s block?
MA: Yeah, absolutely. I believe that all artists get blocked.
TT: Did you ever experience writer’s block while writing How I Paid for College?
MA: No, it was actually the opposite because I had suppressed the impulse for so long that, when I finally gave
myself permission to say what I wanted to say, it just came flooding out. It’s more of a problem now that I am writing
full-time. Lately for me, I will produce a chunk of something that is really working and then I’m kind of spent and
I have to replenish quickly because I’m going to get up the next morning and do it again. I often feel, not so much
blocked, but spent.
TT: How do you recharge?
MA: Through stimulation of the senses. None of this is original with me, I learned it from reading Julia Cameron’s
The Artist's Way, which is all about artists breaking through blocks. A lot of the principles that I live by came out of this book.
To answer your question, I find that mindless right-brained activities are really helpful — walks, long showers, hot
tubs or a drive. I’ll get to a place on the page and I’ll think, “I have no idea what to write.” Or,
“I can’t see it. I just don’t see what’s happening now.” And, at that point, it is time to go
drop off my dry cleaning and hopefully when I come back it will be there. Sometimes it might take twenty-four hours before
I really see it and that’s frustrating because I feel like I can’t move on until something has come.
TT: I understand that you lost sixty pounds a couple of years ago - do you have any dieting tips?
MA: Eat less and exercise more. It’s not fun — it’s simple, but not easy. It’s easy to understand,
but it’s hard as hell to do and I still struggle with it. Particularly, with the book I’m writing now, it has
been hard for me to diet. I think the sophomore novel is a daunting task anyway. The first novel, no one has any expectations
of it, whatsoever. The second time around, there are myriad psychological hurdles one has to overcome. I have found it very
hard to control my eating while working on this book, because of that same impulse where I want to creatively stimulate and
fill. I’ve talked to other writers about this. My friend, Susie Gilman, who wrote Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, and I both say that we put on ten pounds with every book. Because where you are constantly outputting there is this impulse
to input. Food stimulates the senses and it gives this physical manifestation of filling. You are actually truly filling yourself.
I read an interview with Dan Brown where he said that when he’s working, he has a clock that stops at fifty minutes
of the hour and when it goes off, he takes ten minutes and does push-ups, sit-ups, and calisthenics — which is a really
healthy and a smart thing to do. Yes, it’s good to get oxygen into your system, but I can’t seem to get my head
around the idea that after outputting a bunch of words what I need is oxygen. Pound cake is what I need.
TT: What is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to you on a book tour?
MA: The first thing that comes to mind is the woman who asked me to sign her book to her sock puppet. I said, “To
whom should I make it out?” And she said, “To Munchie!” And she pulls this little sock puppet out of her
purse, and I found myself conversing with the sock puppet. I needed to get the spelling of the name, so I actually talked
to the sock puppet. I deliberately did not ask her if she wanted to be on my email list because she seemed . . . well, there
are some people that seem delightfully eccentric and then there are some that truly seem unbalanced and she seemed unbalanced
to me.
TT: What advice would you give to an aspiring novelist?
MA: I would say first of all, just get it down. Write yourself a note and stick it on your computer that says “I’ll
fix it later.” All too often people get stuck and allow their vision of what it should be to stop them from writing
it. I know it is painful to write bad sentences, but I’m convinced that the only reason that my stuff turns out well
is simply because I’m willing to rewrite it so much. So I’d say that’s the biggest thing, be willing to
write crap.
TT: Who is your inspiration? When you get down and feel like running away and joining the circus, who inspires you?
MA: Jacqueline Susann. No question, I think about her constantly. I actually identify with her to a certain degree
because she was a failed actress, and I look at my own misbegotten careers, and I can certainly identify with someone who
felt from a very young age that she had a place in the world of entertainment but that she simply didn’t find the right
venue until quite late in life. She was forty-five when she published her first book. And her first book was not Valley of the Dolls. I take enormous solace in the fact that I was thirty-eight when my first book came out. If I were Jacqueline Susann right
now, I would still be out in Siberia.
On top of that, I take enormous inspiration from her because she is an example of the triumph of ambition over talent. Have
you ever tried to read any of those books? They’re horrible! They are virtually unreadable. I’m a big fan of trash,
don’t get me wrong, but this is just illiterate. I took Valley of the Dolls with me on a vacation once, expecting to indulge in its juicy, Jackie Collins appeal, but it wasn’t even as good as
Jackie Collins. I couldn’t even follow the story. I was bored, which was the worst thing, and yet I took enormous solace
and thought, “Wow, if Jacqueline Susann could take this piece of crap and publicize it to the point of it being this
global juggernaut, there is hope for us all.”
Some people think, “What would Jesus do?” I think, “What would Jackie do?” I’m dead serious.
There are a lot of situations where I think, “Well, what would Jacqueline Susann do right now? She’d get on the
horn and do what it took to make sure that this book got the attention it deserved. She would sit down and write another draft.”
So, more so than anyone else, it’s Jacqueline Susann.
TT: Jacqueline Susann? I’m surprised!
MA: Not the answer you were expecting, huh? I have a sort of ongoing list of people who are late-bloomers to keep
me encouraged. When I say late-bloomers, I don’t mean people who took a long time to achieve something, I mean people
whose life’s work was a total mystery to them until late in life. Julia Child didn’t start cooking until she was
thirty-seven. As she said, “Up until then, I ate.” It is not like she had spent twenty years studying how to be
a chef and then burst forth on the world. She didn’t. I find that so intriguing; that there are people walking around
in this world doing something and everyone thinks of them as a certain kind of person and they haven’t even thought
of the thing for which they will become well known. I find that fascinating.
Luckily, we all have Grandma Moses to think about, who was eighty before she started painting. The only reason she did it
is because she couldn’t do needlepoint any longer. The way she put it, “If I didn’t paint, I would’ve
raised chickens.” So there is always the possibility you could really excel at something that you haven’t even
conceived of yet. I take enormous solace in that.
I think it’s very easy when you reach a certain age to give up on yourself. To think, “Well, I’m never going
to do anything.” And I’m not saying it’s possible for everybody in this world to have the kind of exposure
or achievement of Jacqueline Susann or Grandma Moses, but I think everybody is searching to find the thing in their life that
they feel has meaning. And just because one hasn’t found it by a certain age doesn’t mean that it won’t
happen. I think the worst thing you can do is give up.
I used to torture myself on my birthday. When I turned thirty-three, it was a disturbing birthday because I realized that,
by the time Jesus was my age, he was dead. And I thought, “Well, God, what have I done lately?” This was someone
whose entire life’s work was completed already. For my thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth birthdays, I continued to torture
myself by going through the litany of people who had achieved their life’s work and had died young. And I thought, “I
haven’t even hung up the cup hooks in the kitchen.” You know what I mean? Schubert was dead by the time he was
thirty-five. It was the birthday after that when I finally started looking at it the other way around – who hadn’t
even started yet? Because, yeah, there were plenty of people who had flamed out, but who hadn’t even started?
TT: Can you tell me about your new book and when we can expect it?
MA: If all goes as planned, it will be out in the fall of 2007. It’s another domestic/social comedy and it’s
called Holidazed. It’s about a soccer mom who gets fed up with creating everyone else’s magical holiday,
and she rebels by taking a walk on the weird side. That’s the Hollywood log line.
TT: Marc, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me, and I look forward to your new book!
Want more Marc? Well, there's more of this interview in our print zine, The Expat Issue, where he talks to Tiffany about opera, British beer, and finding his true voice in Europe.
Visit Marc's web site at www.marcacito.com
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