The Juggler Interviews, #13: Bonnie Duncan

Bonnie Duncan and I have known each other more than ten years, and I've long been an admirer of her work as a dancer, actress, and all-around creative person and storyteller.  Her husband, Dan Milstein, directed my play, Pieces of Whitey, for Rough & Tumble way back in 2005 in Boston. Bonnie makes up half of the creative performance duo, They Gotta Be Secret Agents, along with Tim Gallagher. They about to bring their show, Poste Restante, back to the Charlestown Working Theater in Boston, February 20-23, which is very exciting--it's one of the most memorable pieces of theatre I've seen in Boston. In addition to be a busy creative performing artist, Bonnie is also the mother of three (delightful) children under the age of five. So I was glad she was able to find some time (after performing in NYC last weekend) to answer some questions.

Hi, Bonnie.  Thanks for appearing on the blog, in my revival of the Juggler Interviews.  Which seems sort of appropriate given your show, Poste Restante, which has a certain magic theatricality to it (though no juggling). 

Can you explain a little bit about the creative process that you and Tim used to create the show?  You'd worked together extensively before, right?  Do you write down a storyline and images, or are you creating a lot of what happens in rehearsal?

Tim and I performed together for 6 years with Snappy Dance Theater (a collaborative dance company based in Boston from 1998-2007) and we naturally gravitated towards each other when developing new work.  Physically, our bodies worked well together and creatively, our minds melded well.  We toured a lot with Snappy so Tim and I became travel friends--we rented a tiny car and sped around the south of France and Italy.  It was amazing!  Once Snappy closed its doors in 2007, we decided we still wanted to work together and started to make new work, not knowing where it would lead us.  Three years, one baby, and a move to Philadelphia later, we finished Poste Restante.

But, let me back up a bit about our process...we usually start a piece with an image or a theme or idea.  We approach the work as dancers first, playing around with movement in rehearsal--videotaping & writing things down, and then we turn to our theatrical sides to shape the phrases and images.  For example, the first piece we made for Poste Restante, "Return to Sender," started out as a very slow, dark love story until one day we met for rehearsal at the Southeast Corridor park by Stony Brook T stop (free rehearsal space!) and Tim was carrying a box.  He simply said, "I want to figure out how to get you in this box."  The piece came together in about 45 minutes because it just clicked with the movement we had.  Here's a video clip of one of our first performances (filmed at HONK! with Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band):

When we decided to make a full-length piece, we explored many themes until we hit upon the Dead Letter Office, an office operated by the US Postal Service to deal with undeliverable mail.  We were so intrigued with what could be held at this office that we focused our work mail from then on.  Each section was developed differently:  there are some stop-motion films that Tim shot in Philadelphia and posted to flickr.  I then edited the film from Boston.  Another section was inspired by a desk lamp in my office; another section was inspired by Tim's design of a hat with shadow screens hanging on it.  Because we took our time developing the show and we did not see each other regularly, we were able to explore a lot of things and find exactly the right theatrical touch for each moment of the piece.  

If anyone out there is interested more in how we make our work, join us for our workshop this Saturday, 2-4 pm @ Charlestown Working Theater---Mission: Demystifying the Creation of Physical Theatre.

So, you guys started They Gotta Be Secret Agents before you had kids, right?  Where does this show fit in the timeline of  you becoming a mother, with the arrival of your first son, and then later with your twins?

Yes, we started the Secret Agents before I had kids.  Tim lived down the street from me at the time.  We made about 20 minutes of the show (9 of which we kept!) and then I got pregnant and Tim moved to Philadelphia.  Needless to say, we took about 13 months off and just mailed each other ideas.  We then met on the weekends in Philly or Boston (working on sections solo in-between rehearsals) until we had our first version of Poste Restante.  My son was 8 months old when we performed at the San Francisco Fringe Festival.  Making the show with a baby was super simple (I can say that now, of course!) because he was not very mobile and slept a lot.  Once he could crawl, my work time was crushed and the grandparents were called upon to help out.  A lot.   We then reworked the show and toured it to Europe the following year, taking my son with us.  It was such an adventure.  People's response to the show was so amazing during that tour--we were invited to perform at festivals all over--but our lives got in the way of pursuing those opportunities immediately:  Tim got accepted to medical school at NYU and I found out I was having twins.  These changes were shocking for both of us.  

But, Tim and I still corresponded a lot and we started a shared Pinterest board that we keep:  http://www.pinterest.com/mizboo/the-future-of-the-secret-agents/ 

When the twins were six months old, we were invited to perform out in Austin, TX so we packed everyone up (plus a grandparent!) and headed out.  We both missed the show terribly so it was a joy to be back on the road together.  The tour wasn't our usual because Tim was studying between shows and I was cooing at the babies---it was surreal for us!

How has being a mother affected your creative process? Time and energy can be at a real premium when you have small kids around  How are you managing to juggle, not just creating a show, but also performing and touring?

Pat, I have to say that you have been a role model of how I want to juggle creating work and being a parent!  Naps and early bedtimes are the short answers to how to how I've made it work.  The longer answer involves erasing how I used to work and redefining my process.  Because I have such regimented time periods these days, I feel like I work to focus my attention within a short block of time as best as I can.  I struggle with it because sometimes I just have to goof off in order to get to the good ideas.  I often feel most days like everything is half-finished.

I made Squirrel Stole My Underpants with only six hours of childcare a week.  My husband (Dan Milstein, director of Rough & Tumble Theatre) and I rehearsed late into the night in our dining room and I would spend weekends building set pieces.  There would be weeks when the kids were sick when we got nothing accomplished.  It was one of the hardest artistic processes I've ever had because just when I would get momentum, someone would get a fever or a babysitter would cancel.  

Once Squirrel was finished, I've been able to schedule performances around family obligations.  One goal for me in touring this show is to go on family adventures.  This past summer my oldest son toured with me to Long Island--he sold popcorn and watched the show each day.  He had his first hotel stay!  For other tours and performances, I've gone alone (woot!) and Dan has held down the house.  Those are all of the good parts of touring with small children.  The hard and exhausting parts are arranging travel plans.  We performed in New York City this past weekend and it was as total nightmare of logistics.  Between the snow storm Thursday, grandparents' travel plans, our need of getting our set back to Boston, a car breaking down, and three babysitters/friends helping out, it felt like a Secret Mission gone awry.  But, we don't make theater to be boring so it's the adventures along the way that make it all worth while.  

Do you use your kids as a captive audience, now that you've been working on shows for younger kids, like Squirrel Stole My Underpants? 

I definitely test material and aesthetics on my kids right now.  I have to admit that I've used rehearsal as a bribe incentive---"if you can get ready for bed then you can see a new scene" sort of thing.  The kids are coming to see Poste Restante for our Sunday matinee with a babysitter.  Dan runs our lights and I'm on stage so what could possibly go wrong?!!  :)

One of the great things about your work, in Poste Restante as well as in your other shows, is the inclusion of theatrical transformations, shifting the embodiment of a character from a real-live human to a puppet or some other object.  For kids, this sort of imaginative fluidity comes naturally. Is this something you've always been interested in seeing on stage?

I've always loved breaking up stage reality so that the audience has to work a bit.  Snappy worked with transformations a lot---moving between theater and dance.  I love performing Poste Restante because our stage magic surprises and delights adult audiences.  We take care of them so that people don't have to worry where they are in the narrative while we play with how we tell the story.

You've toured Poste Restante internationally--any good stories or moments from those shows you can share?  What happened to allow you to bring the show back now?  (I'm glad folks in Boston will have another chance to see it.)

When went through customs in the Czech Republic, we had to explain what was in all of the boxes we carried with us.  We tried to pantomime that we had cardboard and paper in our cardboard boxes.  We pantomimed dancing.  We smiled a lot.  The customs officials were perplexed.  Then, I found one of our show postcards and they nodded their heads, "Ahh, ac-TORS," and we were on our way.

In Prague, we performed in a basement theatre.  And, basement in Prague equals an arched stone tunnel that used to be part of holding cell for prisoners of Prague Castle.  We had the stage measurements but when we got there, things were a lot smaller than we expected.  We barely fit on the stage and had 10 minutes to set up and break down--it felt crazy but when we finished the first performance, the crowd exploded with excitement.  It was the moment when we knew we had something very special.  Here's a video of our walk to the theatre each day:

Tim cooked up this tour after he found out he had the month of February off of medical school.  It has been a joy performing the show again and sharing it with new audiences.  The folks at Charlestown Working Theater are wonderful.  They've supported us for years and it means a lot to be part of their community of artists and audiences.  This is probably our last performances of the show in Boston so it's especially wonderful to be there.

What's up next?

Tim starts his residency in Emergency Medicine in June so we'll continue to mail each other ideas.  We'll slowly work on a new show, probably finishing in 4-5 years.  Meanwhile, I'm keeping busy with a new show I am developing for families that will premiere next January at Puppet Showplace Theatre.

Thanks for the taking the time, Bonnie.  And break a leg this week in Boston!

Thanks for having me, Pat!  And, if readers buy tickets for Thursday's show, they can mention the code "secret" (be sure to use lowercase letters) and get half-price tickets.


Poste Restante in Boston, FEB 20-23 from Bonnie Duncan on Vimeo.

Tim and Bonnie.  Photo by Kathy Moloney

The Juggler Interviews, #12: Diana Renn

Diana Renn and I have been in the same fiction writer's group since 2005.  She's a prolific writer and reviser, and will tear a story or novel apart and rebuild it from bottom up and make it seem all so easy.  She's also a mother of a young, son, now 5 years old.  Her debut novel, Tokyo Heist, a YA mystery, will hit the shelves this week.  We saw many drafts of it in our group, and it's a thrill to see it finally published and have a chance to reach a well-deserved broad audience.  For those of you in the Boston area, she'll have her book launch this Saturday, June 16, at 2pm at Newtonville Book.

She took some time to answer questions in the midst of all the book launch preparations:

It feels like you started bringing in pieces of Tokyo Heist to our writers group quite a while ago (perhaps before I was even a member), how long have you been working on it?

I started writing Tokyo Heist (with a different title, and as an adult novel) in the fall of 2004. From first word to publication, the journey has taken almost eight years!

One thing I’ve always admired about you as a writer is your ability to rewrite, and rewrite some more, and fearlessly tackle anything that wasn’t working. Did this talent come in handy in the process of working with your agent to find a publisher, and then working with an editor?

Thanks! This book was revised extensively, including three times starting over almost from scratch. Revision doesn’t scare me; drafting does. When I’m revising, I have something to work with. I love the feeling of making something stronger.

I actually didn’t do too much revising for my agent. I did revise extensively for my editor. When I got my first edit later (several single-spaced pages of notes!), I admit I was daunted, but then I threw myself into the job. I was glad I’d had so much revision experience; I knew I’d get through it and the book would come out better. Also, I’ve worked as an editor and a writer in educational publishing, and I’m sure that experience trained me to be a good reviser, especially with deadlines in mind.

You had your son when you were in the thick of writing the main drafts of Tokyo Heist, and then were busy being the parent of a pre-schooler during the sale and subsequent editing. How did you manage to get it all done? What’s your writing schedule like? Do you have a certain routine?

I pushed to finish my first complete draft in the months before my son was born; I finished with just a couple days to spare. I was terrified that once he was born I would never write a complete novel. (I’d written two other attempts at novels, but with many missing scenes – they didn’t feel “complete” to me). At one point I didn’t even care about selling this book. I just wanted to see the words “the end.”

For the first few months after my son was born, in 2007, I set the novel aside. I worked on short stories and essays. One night, in a sleep-deprived haze, I looked at that “finished” novel manuscript of what would become Tokyo Heist. I realized much of what I’d written – 80% of it – really wasn’t working. I’d reached “the end,” but in the wrong way. I nearly trashed it, but I still loved the premise, and some characters, so I started over.

I was fortunate to have some babysitting help, and a son who loved to nap. I worked those naps. Sometimes he only slept in the car, though, so I’d drive to a remote location and work on the novel in the car, on my laptop. I think that’s how I pushed through the next draft. Feedback from my wonderful writing group also kept me going. Some people like to wait to show a complete draft to beta readers, but honesty, if I’d had no sense of audience, I’m not sure I could have pressed on. I was very isolated in those early months of being a mother, and isolated as a writer; I’d given up my teaching job by then. Writing group feedback was a huge motivator and got me banging out more pages.

By 2009 I felt the novel was ready for querying agents. I did that for the better part of a year, with no luck – lots of partial and full requests, but no takers. I got two fresh sets of eyes on the manuscript and some good advice. I revised YET AGAIN. My tireless writing group read the novel YET AGAIN. I queried YET AGAIN. Now my son was napping less, and my babysitting help was less reliable. He wasn’t adjusting well to an attempt at daycare. I had fewer hours to work with but kept querying, spending any available time researching agents and sending the thing out. Finally I got my agent in April 2010. I revised a little for him and he sold the book to Viking in July 2010.

Revising for the editor, which happened in waves over 2011 (mostly last spring and summer) felt harder, time-wise, than drafting. My son was in preschool, which should have given me more time, but he had some health issues and other things going on, and missed a lot of school. It was scary to have real deadlines hanging over my head and a kid who needed to be out of school, or needed to be ferried to various appointments, or just needed attention. I switched to the night shift a lot as I revised.

I don’t remember sleeping much in 2011.

Two of my biggest deadlines happened to hit on two separate weeks when we’d scheduled family vacations last year. This meant our Cape Cod summer rental turned into an office and my husband took on more of the childcare. This meant our family reunion in Seattle was spent with me working in a hotel room a lot while other people entertained our son. In retrospect, I feel lucky these deadlines hit at vacations because I had family around to help and didn’t have to hire sitters.

How did I manage to get it all done? I don’t really know. I think I just scavenged for time whenever I could, and sacrificed some other time-consuming things, like watching TV. Like sleep.

I no longer have a routine. I feel like any time I set a schedule, the rug gets pulled out from under me. Something will go awry in the house, or a school vacation will hit. (Why are there so many school vacation weeks?) In general, though, I have gone back to that night shift, drafting new material from roughly 9 pm to midnight, and using any daytime hours I have to edit/revise that work, catch up on email, and work on promotional activities, including keeping up with my mystery writers blog. The night shift works for me for drafting; it’s the only uninterrupted time I can absolutely count on these days.

You’ve completely leaped into the world of YA publishing and YA mysteries over the past year or so, with your blog, Sleuths, Spies, and Alibis, and Apocalypsies, plus your own personal blog. Plus rewrites. Plus being a mom. And writing new stuff. How are you juggling all of it?

Honestly, I’m in awe to be included in your “Juggler” interview series because when I read about the other people you’ve featured, they seem to get SO much done, juggling SO much more than I do. But then I have to remind myself not to make comparisons, and to remember that some days and weeks are more productive than others. And even if I took something out of the equation – motherhood, rewrites, my mystery blog, whatever – I’d still be juggling, because I’ve always had too much on my plate. I think that’s just how I am. I take on a lot.

I’ve learned to put different weight on different activities and forgive myself if some things slide. My personal blog gets updated weekly, if I’m lucky, and I’m fine with that. I’m involved in an amazing debut author group, the Apocalypsies, with 160 authors, and I try to support this group and participating as much as I can, while accepting that I simply can’t respond to every email or post, or wish every single person a happy birthday, or some weeks I’m on Twitter and some weeks I’m not. I’m starting to pull back on social media (even though with a book launch I know I shouldn’t) so that I can focus more energy on writing the next book. A few years ago I used to try to work harder to get more things done. Now I’m feeling a shift of energy, like I’d rather get less done, but do less better, and not feel so scattered.

I used to set weekly or daily goals for productivity. Now I don’t. I inevitably fail to make those goals – often due to circumstances beyond my control – and then I just feel bad. I make modest lists of morning and afternoon goals.

I’ve seen the book since its early forms. When you started out, you weren’t really writing a lot of YA material During the editing process, how have you and your editor worked to shape the book to make sure it would be a book that met the expectations of young adult readers?
I made the conscious decision to make the novel a YA novel back in 2006. But I didn’t actually read a lot of YA until a couple of years ago – until after the novel sold. In a way that’s a good thing. People say the book is “original” and “unique” in the YA market, and I think it’s because I had no idea what was out there. My editor and I did do some work to add more exciting scenes that would appeal to YA readers. We changed the title from the original one to have more teen appeal and to allow us to use an edgy cover.

Now I read almost exclusively YA novels – partly because I love the genre, partly because I know many YA authors now, and partly because I love participating in the community of children’s fiction, and keeping up with current and classic YA books helps me to do that.

Now that you’re a mother, did you find that some of your sympathies towards your characters shifted a little? Or was it a good escape from being a mother to inhabit the character of Violet for a while every day?

It was easy tapping into my inner teen and getting into Violet’s head. And refreshing. An escape. My daily life is filled with responsibilities, so it was fun to hang out with Violet in her world -- getting into trouble, sneaking around, outrunning mobsters, etc. However, being a parent does enable me to sympathize with the parent characters. I can’t think about them too much. Sometimes I’d read over a scene where Violet’s grousing about her dad, and I’d think, “Hey, he’s just doing the best he can! Nobody told ever told him how to parent!” But it’s Violet’s book, not her dad’s, and so she gets to grouse.

What’s next? I love the character of Violet—any chance we’ll get to see her in another book someday?

I’m currently working on another YA mystery, with very different characters and a different setting. Tokyo Heist sold as a standalone, but I’d love to write another Violet mystery someday, and have lots of ideas, so we shall see!

Thanks, Diana! And good luck with the release!

Thanks for the interview; it’s great to be in the company of such amazing jugglers! 


Here's new book trailer for the Tokyo Heist:



You can visit Diana's web site at:  www.dianarenn.net.  You can also follower on Twitter at @dianarenn   or on Facebook.

The Juggler Interviews, #11: Laura Harrington

Laura Harrington is an award-winning writer of plays, musicals, operas, radio plays, and her first novel, the heartbreaking and lovely Alice Bliss, has been met with critical acclaim.  She's also the mother of a daughter who recently graduated from college.  I've been a big admirer of Laura's work for the stage, and now I'm a big fan of her novel, too.  She's off in London for the paperback release of Alice Bliss right now, but took some time to answer some questions for me.


You’ve had so much success writing for the stage, both plays, musicals, and operas. What made you decide to write a novel?

A few things conspired to open up this world to me. I was given this incredible award for my music theatre work that gave me two years of writing time. Which was an awe-inspiring moment – so much validation for my theatre career coupled with so much possibility. But I didn’t immediately think: Great! I can’t wait to write my next musical. Instead I thought: This is my chance to be a beginner again, to re-connect to the creative process by trying to do something I’ve never done before. I also wanted to pick up my pen without thinking about anything other than story. No worries about the size of the cast, the cost of production, etc.

Did you find yourself able to do things in prose that you hadn’t been able to do in script form?


Yes and yes and yes. It was so liberating to be able to spend time with a character’s interior voice. I also loved being able to tell a story that unfolded slowly. And it was just plain fun to be able to play with language in new ways.

from the TN Rep production of THE PERFECT 36: "A Woman's Voice"

Your writing for stage often deals with historical topics, and isn’t necessarily grounded in strict realism or traditional styles. For Alice Bliss, for which the writing is heartbreaking and lovely, you chose to write a contemporary story, grounded in realism. How do your approaches to tackling prose and drama differ?

As for all that history: I write about what obsesses me, the things I can’t stop thinking about. In some ways, my stories choose me. I’m also drawn to the voiceless and the displaced. And I’m deeply disturbed about war and wish that I could do something to make a difference.

Is my approach to writing prose and drama really different? I’m not sure. For me it’s all about voice. Once I have the voice and the rhythm of the book, the play, the character, then I just follow it through the first draft. I’m sure that sounds overly simplistic, but it’s as though the world of the play or the book has a voice, a style, a look, a feel and so does each character’s individual voice. I’m fascinated by layering voice/ image/ sound/ smell, etc. For me writing comes from a very, very physical place, from specific physical observations, from all the senses, no matter what genre I’m in.


Your daughter is a recent college graduate. In this interview series, I’ve talked a lot to writers who are in the thick of raising kids. You’ve succeeded!

Thank you! She’s a great kid.

And you’ve written so many plays and operas. How did you do it?
I am blessed with a lot of energy and focus. People are always commenting on how self disciplined I am, but it’s more that I love my work. And, to be honest, I’m pretty driven and ambitious.


What advice can you give those parents of small children (and teenagers) who are also trying to write?

Don’t think about the big picture. Keep it simple and small and write a page a day. I love the story of Andre Dubus III writing his first book. He had 4 kids, was working construction full time and spent 20 minutes a day writing while parked at the cemetery before going home.

In some ways playwriting is ideal for short bursts of time because you really can write a play one scene at a time. I could not have written a novel while my daughter was young. It’s no accident that my writing world expanded as my daughter headed off to college.


I find that when I’m working on a novel, I need a long stretch of predictable time to write, whereas a play is so much shorter, so I can get more done in bursts. What’s your writing schedule like? Does it vary a lot, depending on whether you’re working a play, opera, or novel?


The actual writing process, the day-to-day activity of writing is the same no matter what the form. You have to show up and give yourself to it. But the book took more time, lots more time. I found I had to make my life very, very quiet in order to create the mental space for a book.

One of the best things about writing a book is that the fun part – what I think of as the honeymoon phase when you’re living inside the work – lasts longer.


It seems like Alice Bliss has really struck a chord with many readers, of various ages. You’ve attended many productions of your work for stage. How does the response from readers of Alice Bliss compare to the response you’ve had from your plays and operas?

A reader lives in the world of the book for much longer than an audience member lives in the world of a play. I would say that the response of readers has been more intense, perhaps because of that longer, more personal and more private relationship with a book.

from Pilgrim Theatre production of N (Bonaparte) directed by Kim Mancuso

Marketing a book is very different from marketing a play. These days, the author of a book bears a lot more responsibility for getting the word out, even when you’re with a large publisher. Talk about some of the lessons you’ve learned about marketing a book. Do you think they’ll have any use for you in your work for stage?

Book marketing feels very different from marketing for the theatre because - if you’re lucky - it lasts such a long time. I was working intensely on the hardcover release of Alice Bliss for a solid 6 months. And now it’s time to work on the paperback release, which will be more extensive.

Lessons learned? Getting up to speed with social media, learning how to reach out to and engage with readers and fellow writers. Learning how open and friendly and supportive novelists can be. Meeting dozens of book bloggers – a world I did not even know existed. There is a very generous spirit at the moment and the world of books feels very open. I don’t know if this openness will last, or whether it is just the first flush of all of this social media potential.

The contact and connections with other writers has been amazing and really fun. I’ve found people who are friendly, open, and supportive; I’ve met and corresponded with writers in South Africa, England, Sweden, Canada, and all over the US.


What are you working on now?

I’m about to begin work on a commission from Playwrights Horizons, to write Alice Bliss, the musical, with the composer Jenny Giering and lyricist Adam Gwon.

And I’m deep into my second book. My next novel begins with water, as Alice Bliss does. There’s a large Irish Catholic family with six kids. It’s 1966 and the Viet Nam war changes everything.


Thanks for taking the time for this, Laura!
Thank you, Pat. Always fun to talk with you. 

You can read more about Laura and her work at  www.lauraharringtonbooks.com and www.laura-harrington.com.

The next installment of the Juggler Interviews will feature a talk with Diana Renn.

the Juggler Interviews, #9: Mark Dunn

This week I got to talk with Mark Dunn, whom I first met in the late '90s, when we were both having our plays produced in Denver, directed by the same director.  We stayed in touch and become friends over the years.  In terms of juggling writing for different media, Mark has always been an inspiration and role model for me, moving effortlessly from writing mostly plays to writing a variety of books (including one of my very favorite novels, Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters ). 

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, you were getting a lot of productions, at small and mid-size theatres across the country. Belles and Five Tellers Dancing in the Rain were getting a lot of productions . You had a dozen full-length plays published by Samuel French, DPS and Dramatic Publishing. And then your first novel, Ella Minnow Pea, came out and was a big hit. Ella Minnow Pea has been followed by a whole string of books—what was the transition like, moving from writing plays to books (and moving, physically, from New York to Albuquerque)?

The transition was stranger than I expected.  I went from working exclusively in a very artistically collaborative medium to one in which the writer has to do most of the heavy lifting.  I often make the comparison when I'm teaching writing workshops between the playscript serving as a blueprint which then is taken by the director and the actors and from which the physical play is constructed -- contrasted with a novel which serves as the creative entity itself and lives or dies only on the basis of the text itself upon the page.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each: as a playwright I like working with people who bring their own forms of creativity and artistic insight into the mix.  Together we create this (hopefully) beautiful piece of theatre that takes its author's original story idea and shapes it into something that everyone has a stake in.  (And woe to the playwright who gets too proprietary about his work.)  But a novelist doesn't get to benefit from the overlay of other talents and perspectives, except in terms of editorial input.  And I've had editors who were very hands-off.  I've had the other kinds of editors, as well, resulting in (in one sad case) clashing visions that resulted in my publishing house siding with my editor and dropping the book altogether.  The physical move from New York to New Mexico paralleled my shift in large part from writing plays to books.  I drew a lot of creative energy as a playwright from living in a theatre town like New York.  But an author can pen his books anywhere, so my wife and I picked a place that was quieter and little more sedate than the Big Apple.  The irony is that I really did want to keep my hand in and perhaps write a new play every year or so and suddenly I had entered a community in which being in the theatre was considered more of an avocation than a vocation.  To put it bluntly, I moved to a town with an enormous number of community theatres, and very little opportunities for professional playwrights to develop new work.

Was Ella Minnow Pea the first novel that you wrote, or the first that was published?

Ella was my first published novel, but I had written Welcome to Higby several years before.  After Ella was published, my publisher asked what I'd be working on next, and I handed him Higby.  It worked out pretty well, although the books being so different from each other, spoke to different sets of readers (and some fans of my "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable Ella Minnow Pea" were looking for something similar and instead, I gave them a book about a small town in Mississippi).

How long did it take for you to find a publisher for Ella?

Quite a while.  I couldn't get an agent for an odd book like Ella and had a hard time landing this unagented novel with a publisher.  Most of the queries to both agents and publishers (for which I received responses) met with form-letter rejections.  Good luck was eventually on my side, though.  MacAdam/Cage had just opened its doors the year before and was still hungry for manuscripts, even to the point of accepting unsolicited manuscripts from unrepresented authors.  Even MacAdam/Cage doesn't do that today.  Interestingly, when the hardback did well and there was a bidding war among several of the large publishing houses for the paperback rights, I had a private laugh over the fact that each of these publishers participating in the auction for Ella's paperback rights, had rejected the book when I had first queried them about it.

It seemed like for a while you dived headfirst into writing books, but you’ve managed to keep your hand in theatre. What makes it so hard to leave playwriting?

Many of the things I noted above, but I should also say that as one who is basically a storyteller, and a storyteller who first learned to tell stories through dialogue, playwriting has always been a comfortable vehicle for me.  As a writer who enjoys challenges, I've always felt that the idea of holding an audience's interest for two hours through people simply talking to one another on a stage was a challenge that I especially loved.

Do you find it difficult, as a writer, to go back and forth, or is it actually helpful?

These days I make that transition fairly easily.  It's like an artist who spends part of his time painting in oil and part of his time painting in watercolor, which requires two very different techniques, but after a while you get used to the adjustments.  With plays I work small and work concise.  There's an economy of words that must be respected.  My canvas is much, much larger with my novels and I have the chance to explore the contours of my novels' characters, which I can't do with my play characters.  My latest book, though, offers an interesting challenge -- American Decameron is 100 short stories.  As I've worked through these stories, I've found that I've had to apply some of my playwriting rules of saying much with fewer words.  But in large part that's just a difference between long form writing and short form writing -- the same way that my one-act plays require a different approach than my full length plays.

Do you find that you have more freedom to challenge yourself and your audience when writing books? When I look at some of the work you’ve done, Ella Minnow Pea, Ibid , Under the Harrow , and your upcoming American Decameron, it seems like you’ve set up extremely difficult situations for yourself as a writer (for example, in Ella Minnow Pea, you are forced to progressively use fewer and fewer letters of the alphabet, Ibid is told entirely in footnotes), and the reader gets sucked in with seeing whether you can pull it off. It’s so cool that you’re able to write like this, yet at the same time, it seems like the publishing industry is becoming more risk-averse in terms of what they’ll publish. This would seem especially difficult for a writer like you, who is not writing in an established genre. What’s your take on the state of American publishing right now?

And that pretty much defines where I am right now.  I do really enjoy the constraints and the challenges and the chance to do things that few if any authors have done before.  I can safely say that no author has ever written a book about a disappearing alphabet in which the alphabet literally disappears from the book as it goes along.  Ella Minnow Pea has now become fodder for literary trivia -- a weird but fun honor.  But because I tend to do things that have few comparables, it puts me in an awkward and mostly unfortunate situation with regard to extremely risk-averse and conservative publishers (which pretty much defines all of the medium to large-size houses right now.)  American Decameron was rejected by one editor after another when my agent started sending it around because it was a big book, because it was comprised of short stories in a day in which very few short story collections are being published (not that A.D. is a "collection" in the traditional sense), because it can't be easily described by an editor to those of her superiors who will ultimately decide its fate.  And that's the problem with the industry right now.  Hard economics has made it much more difficult to take on a book that may have the potential to break out on its own and turn itself into a publishing phenomenon, but also could end up falling far short and lose the house money.  So what we have is fear and parochialism in the industry.  Something similar, I noticed, happened with my published plays over the last four years of this recession.  The community theatres that generally license my work from the play catalogs stopped scheduling plays in their seasons that weren't in what I call the "cobweb canon."  We saw a lot of productions around the country of old plays (often tired, old plays) with familiar titles.  Most of my plays don't have familiar titles and so my playwriting revenue went into a several-year slump.

You’ve written one book for kids, The Age Altertron (Calamitous Adventures of Rodney and Wayne, Cosmic Repairboys) . How did you approach writing for a younger audience?

I put myself as best I could into the head of the young pre-teen reader.  I kept the language simple but not patronizingly so.  What worked best for me is writing the kind of book that I would have enjoyed reading when I was twelve.  But it definitely required the shifting of a few gears.  Then again, I shift gears a lot.  Every book I write requires its own voice and its own storytelling tool box.

I love that you’ve been able to do some non-fiction work—you wrote ZOUNDS!: A Browser's Dictionary of Interjections and you and your wife, Mary, put together the comprehensive, United States Counties. Again, you seem able to make some big, fun leaps into other types of projects. How do you balance it all? Do you tend to have a lot of projects running all at once?

I actually do work on more than one project at a time -- unless I have a deadline that forces me to concentrate on one particular book or play until I'm finished.  I shuffle through them in such a way that I keep myself engaged and energized on each one.  Maybe that's why I'm allowed to tell people that I don't get writer's block.  If I find myself getting to a point where I'm going to have work myself through a tough spot, I move to something else and then come back.  Often my return involves backing up a few chapters or pages and then going at it with a running start.  I also have projects that I've set aside, that I like to come back to from time to time.  My maxim usually is that anything I write can be made better if I keep working on it.  It's only my published work that I'm not allowed to tinker with anymore.  On occasion I've taken work out that's ten, twelve years old and now with a more mature eye, I can reshape it in a way that makes it more satisfying for me.

What is your writing schedule like for a novel, a book of non-fiction, a play? Does it vary a lot?

The non-fiction can be a slog.  The county encyclopedia as the exception to all my usual rules was like working each day in a salt mine.  On the other hand I usually am having so much fun with my books and plays that it's hard to pull myself away when I'm "in the zone."  People wonder why I'm able to write such long books.  Under the Harrow, for example is 200,000 words, and American Decameron will be 250,000.  In large part it's because I really enjoy spending time with the characters I've created.  I'm also not averse to research and so many of my books have been pretty heavily researched.  I like discovering things in my research that will serve my story and characters and even sometimes shift things in an unexpected new direction.

How do you organize the research that you do? (I’m using Scrivener now and really like it.) I’d love to hear about the tools that you use. You worked for a long time at the New York Public Library. Did you learn any good tricks there?

I use no tools beyond the cerebral ones I've acquired through trial and error and intuition.  For the county encyclopedia Mary and I created a large WORD database divided into state folders and county files and using the same template into which to plug in information and text, so that at the end of the day, the county articles were nearly written from the assembly of information in each file.  But I'm an old fashioned researcher.  I've spent thousands of hours sitting in library reading rooms with either my laptop or pencils and spiral-bound notebooks, jotting down facts that I felt might be useful in my plays and fiction projects.  I'm an armchair cultural historian of the 20th century, so often I was building around information I already knew.  With respect to my last novel, Under the Harrow, it was necessary for me to sit with the Encyclopedia Britannica from the 1880s and browse through nearly every page to get a sense as to what it was that my characters would know, since they were quarantined neo-Victorians who had only this encyclopedia, a Bible, and the novels of Dickens from which to create the lions' share of their world-knowledge.  In the course of all that browsing, I discovered several things that furthered the plot of my novel such as the fact that the encyclopedia had quite a few translations of Egyptian hieroglyphics words and phrases (plot point!), or that there were little snippets of Victorian poetry throughout.  I was surprised to learn that as far back as the late 1880s most scientists had a strong feeling that the invention of lighter-than-aircraft was only a few years away.  How prescient was that!

What projects are you working on right now? (Weren’t you working on a board game at one point? Wasn’t there going to be a musical of Ella Minnow Pea?).

In between working on edits of American Decameron, I've been spending time with an old play from around 2000 that I didn't do much with back then, as well as a science fiction Young Adult novel I've been working on now and then for the last eight years.  Alas, I had to give up my quixotic dream of becoming a game designer since there is no more competitive industry on this planet and especially in this day in which Hasbro has cornered 90 percent of the board game market (and has its own in-house designers).  Not that I don't have at least five games either prototyped or living in my head.  The Ella Minnow Pea musical premiered about three years ago at the University of Michigan and its book writer/lyricist and composer have taken it through a few more rewrites before hooking up with a theatre company in New York where I believe it's slated for a workshop production next year.  I'm not too well looped into the project at this point.  They just keep paying their option every year and I try to make sure it doesn't get too expensive for them since they're very talented and I'd love to see them eventually get a good New York production.

Thanks, Mark!

Juggler Interviews, #8: Donna Hoke

Donna is a fellow member of the Playwright Submission Binge, the big online community dedicated to marketing for playwrights that I started about ten years ago.  In addition to being a playwright, she also edits and writes for magazines and newspapers, creates crossword puzzles, oh, and also happens to be a single mom of two sets of twins.  If that doesn't qualify her as an extreme juggler, I don't know what does.  She took a few minutes to answer questions on how she does it.


Okay, you’re a single mom with four kids, and you’re writing plays, magazine articles, a children’s book, crossword puzzles.  How do you find the time to get any writing done?   (Or get anything done.)

My girls are 17 and my boys are 11 (two sets of twins), so obviously getting things done is a little easier now than it was when they were younger, but this season, I'm juggling three baseball teams, so very often it's not by much! In my old house, my desk was in the playroom; in this house, my office is often where everybody ends up even though it's the smallest room in the house. When they were younger, and I needed a couple of hours, I'd send them to clean their room because I knew they'd get caught up in something and, thinking they were supposed to be cleaning, not come back for a while. When they were younger still, I sometimes had an interview scheduled and would have to stick them in their cribs for thirty minutes so I knew they'd be safe while I was on the phone. I really hated that.

Having twins did make it easier in some ways because they always had someone to play with, so it wasn't always "Mom, come play Barbies." Still, I've been on my own with them since they were three and eight, and it's forever been a case of squeezing work in between the cracks, which has included some pretty late hours, a lot of sacrificed time, and a lot of guilt. I don't recommend it as a way to work, but I was always here, and I hope that there's something to be said for quantity time over quality time. (I worry that they'll ultimately remember me as "that woman behind the desk"!) I do try to make sure we always sit down to dinner together and, that when things are slow, I give the time to them. I schedule time with them, too, actually put it on the calendar, so I know we'll do it. And I have a self-imposed rule to not be out more than two nights unless absolutely necessary. One saving grace is that they think the things I do are cool, and have told me they're proud of me. That helps.

So on top of all this, I started writing plays four years ago! Since I don't really make any money at it, people always ask why and, especially how. Why? Because it was a writing outlet I needed to have after years of writing magazine articles. I'd tried short stories, and I dabble in poetry, but after writing my first scene, I knew this was it. And how? Whenever I can. Because of my lifestyle, my writing is a lot of percolating and note taking and then, when I can find a few quiet hours, I turn those things into pages. Years of practice writing on deadline is helpful then.    

It seems like you’re working on a lot of things at once.  Do you find that you work on one project until it’s at a good stopping point, and then move to the next, or are you able to move back and forth fairly fluidly?

It's all ongoing. At any given time, I might have editorial planning (I'm the editor of four local semi-annual magazines), assigning, editing, proofreading, writing, a crossword assignment, and a play in the works. In fact, right now is one of those times! I prioritize everything according to deadline and, every day, I have a list that I do my best to work through. I live by that list. If my kids need me to do things, they know how to get them done: put them on the list. When there is no paid work that needs to be done on a given day, I do playwriting. That's the best way I can find to balance it.


I’m intrigued by your work with crosswords.  How long does it take to construct one?  Do you find that it helps your other writing?  I would think the mental nimbleness would actually be helpful for both writing both plays and articles.

How long it takes depends on the size: the bigger it is, the longer it takes. And if a theme for a larger puzzle is particularly complicated, it can take a very long time. I think making crosswords makes me better at doing crosswords but I'm not sure it helps with writing, at least not in any quantifiable way. Ironically, I never did them before I made them, but now I enjoy them very much. I got into making them through a combination of ignorance and audacity, but it's been a fun ride. When I set up my website, I added custom crosswords and I've been surprised by the response. I've recently made gift puzzles for a Washington Post columnist and a Texas state senator. It's fun working with the clients because they're so excited that they have thought of this perfect gift; they really get into working on it with me. And when I've had puzzles in the New York Times, it's fun to know that Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton are doing them.

Donna's also written a children's book.

How did you get into writing magazine and newspaper articles?  I’ve often thought about doing it, to make some extra money, but it seems very hard to break into.  Have you been doing it long enough that you have relationships with editors, so they come to you, or are you constantly writing proposals for more articles?

I went to school for Speech Pathology and Audiology; I loved the subject matter and did well with it, but it became painfully clear to everyone once I began working in schools that it wasn't for me. I graduated with a BS, then stayed on another year taking 21 credits of English a semester to get a BA. After I got the BA, I moved to the New York city area and applied for magazine jobs. I worked for seven years full-time, freelancing even as I did for former employers and as the Entertainment Editor for Silent News, the newspaper for deaf readers (a great way to combine my degrees). When my daughters were born prematurely and I'd used all my leave for bedrest, I opted to stay home. When a couple of calls started coming in, I realized I didn't have to go back to full-time work. Without that full-time experience, though, I don't know that I'd have been able to succeed as a freelancer. It helps enormously to know how the whole thing works, to gain experience being edited, etc. It also helps you make contacts; I still get work from editors I worked with in my very first job. I think I've been able to maintain it for so long because I rarely say no to an assignment (you never know where it might lead), and I never miss a deadline. You wouldn't believe how many writers think deadlines are suggestions.

Parker Morrison, Amber Scott and Justin Hambey rehearse Write This Way at Santa Ana's Theatre Out

When did you start writing plays?  What drew you to theatre after working in other forms for so long?  (It certainly wasn’t for the money.)

I've always loved theater, though living in New Jersey with young children, I didn't get to as much as I would have liked. When I moved to Buffalo in 2004, there was so much theater and it was so accessible. I immediately got a subscription to Road Less Traveled Theater because I liked their dual mission: to bring younger people into theater and to showcase local playwrights. RLTT had a new play workshop and, back in 2004, it had few members and it seemed they produced nearly everything that came out of it. At some point, I thought, "I should try this." So I wrote my first play, COCKEYED TODAY, and applied for and got into the 2009 workshop.

That year, it had really taken off and had ten playwrights; at the same time, RLTT adjusted its mission so that were not doing only local playwrights. This was a good thing, because it raised the bar for everything they did.  I loved the workshop and the playwright community, and I learned so much. The following year, I submitted another play, THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR; RLTT opened their season with it in 2010, and the play become their second highest-grossing play in their eight-year history, and the highest-grossing world premiere. That gave me a little more confidence, so I started sending out my work. I've had quite a few nibbles and readings on COUPLE, but no second production yet, and my short plays have been produced in cities across the country, and also in Seoul and Manchester.

 


The Buffalo theater community has been very good to me. I've had or will have work produced in four theaters here, and read in a fifth. And last month, I became an ensemble playwright at RLTT, which is an honor because I really believe in this company. I love that I can be so active locally because it's very hard for me to do the physical networking that seems to be necessary to get things done. Maybe someday when my kids are grown, I can go to conferences more easily or, with any luck, a residency. I have eight years to get to that point so it's a goal.

As for the scene for new plays, it's pretty incredible; we're able to support a pretty large playwriting community here. In November, I wrote a blog post for 2amt, and I counted that up to that early point in the season, we'd already seen productions of thirteen new plays in Buffalo. Nobody realizes what a vibrant and active theater community we have here, the second largest in the state outside of New York, with twenty-plus professional or semi-professional theater companies and the second largest free outdoor Shakespeare festival in the country, second only to NYC. I'm starting to sound like a commercial, so I'll share this video for anybody who really wants to know more: 

But in short, I'm a fan of and an ambassador for all we do here. In fact, I should also mention that this past Sunday, for the first time, the Dramatists Guild came to run a town hall meeting here for our playwrights and named me their newest regional rep. It's exciting for us that we're being noticed, and they seemed impressed with the opportunity here.

You’re offering a free online play workshop—what’s that all about?  How does it work?

Essentially, I thought I would be a liaison for playwrights who want feedback on their plays from other playwrights. If you give me your name, I put you on a list. If you read somebody's play and offer quality feedback, you earn a credit which you can then use to have a play of yours read. It's very informal, and is just another tool that playwrights can use when they're developing plays.    

What’s coming up for you, in terms of new plays being produced or developed, or articles and books?    

I'm currently co-curating a play festival for Buffalo United Artists called BUA Takes Ten: GLBT short plays, and I'll also have a play in it, as well as in Subversive Shorts in June. Road Less Traveled will premiere my play, SEEDS, in March 2013, and I am developing FLOWERS IN THE DESERT in the current workshop. I've also got short plays coming up in Montana, California, Washington. Magazine-wise, I'm always either assigning, editing, proofing, writing, or closing one. I just did a profile of A.R. Gurney, who will visit Buffalo in May as Road Less Traveled's American Theater Master; it's fun when I can combine interests that way. And I'm marketing my kids' book, Neko and the Twiggets (www.nekoandthetwiggets.com)--about a family of mice who live in a an orchestra member's double bass-- to orchestra gift shops across the country.

Any tips for writers who are also parents on how to balance writing and family?

   

I think being organized helps tremendously, but you know, it's like when people ask me, "How do you manage two sets of twins?" I don't know any different, and I just do it. I know that's not very helpful!

That's the way it works, though isn't it?  Thanks for taking the time, Donna!

You can learn more about Donna's work at her website:  www.donnahoke.com