Ask the Author: Pat Rhoades
Answered Questions (6)
Pat Rhoades
Rodeo Snow is my first published book. I came to it out of grief, two griefs actually. As my son grew up and grew away from me, I missed sharing the details of his life and decided to deal with this very ordinary grief by writing something from the perspective of a 15 year old boy. When Minnesota's beloved senator, Paul Wellstone, died in a plane crash just before an election, that grief became part of the story too. It's funny, but my son became my consultant on the skating stuff in the book which was a great way for us to reconnect.
Pat Rhoades
If I waited to be inspired, I'd never write anything. I just show up and do the work. Sometimes it feels very uninspiring, but things eventually fall into place. I like what Tchaikovsky said : "I sit down to work each morning at 9 a.m. and the muse has learnt to be on time."
Pat Rhoades
A revision of my second YA novel and a first draft of a MG novel. There's theater, graffiti, puppets and summer lake cabins -- lovely stuff!
Pat Rhoades
Read widely and deeply. Find yourself a mentor and/or writing group. Don't just talk about planning to write some day: write now and every day. Persist and have faith. If you keep writing you will get better.
Pat Rhoades
On bad days I'm with Dorothy Parker -- she said, "I hate writing. I love having written." On good days (especially those infrequent heavenly times when the writing just pours out), I love feeling plugged in to this thing that's bigger than puny me and having time vanish (flow, they call it). Where does this stuff that I write come from on those days? I don't know, but I'm grateful for it. Most days I'm just happy to do the work: the good, hard work of writing.
Pat Rhoades
When I feel blocked, I encourage myself to write the most vile, horrible crappy draft possible and congratulate myself on continuing to write. I love reading stories about writers, and people in general, who thought they were failures but kept going. Writing daily, even if it's only fifteen minutes a day, helps -- Around The Writer's Block by Rosanne Bane has some excellent suggestions for pushing through and developing a writing habit. As Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird: "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor ... It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life." I like to hang out in the territory of play which is the opposite of perfectionism.
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