by Cindy Penn of the Midwest Book Review

What inspired Dad Was A Carpenter? What awards has it won and how that has affected your writing career?

About a year after my father died, I began writing about our relationship, kind of a personal journal, to try to sort out my feelings about him. We always had a difficult relationship, but I loved him a great deal and wanted to work through the rough spots. I gave the essay to a writing colleague and he told me it was difficult to read--very sad and depressing, and angry, too. I put it away for another couple of years, then returned to the manuscript. I noticed immediately what was wrong: it was about me, not my father, and so I set to work revising it. I discovered the carpenter and tool metaphor, and caught upon a nice bookend device that pulled the vignettes together. And although I focused on my dad, the way I revealed his character was to relate my own experiences with him, most of which were not sugary sweet. This added just the right amounts of me to the mix, and the result was accepted for publication in a small theological journal called "Dialogue."

The essay, entitled "Three-quarter Inch Marine Ply," received the "Best Personal Essay" award for 1996. It was my first published writings. I thought, "Hmm... perhaps I have something to say on this subject," and began thinking about expanding it into a book. My sister Bonnie is an artist and I asked her to design some woodcuts of tools. My sister Joy is a poet and had written some wonderful poetry about Dad and I asked if I might include it in the book. Finally, my college buddy Bruce Cheever, who had illustrated my novel I Hated Heaven, painted a tool bench, and we were in business.

The book came out in June 1999 at Book Expo in LA. I gave away 300 copies to booksellers--the best money I ever spent on advertising! The first three months we sold $20,000 worth of the book! I entered it in every competition I could find, and was utterly surprised by a phone call in late March of this year from Writer's Digest magazine informing me that the book had won the grand prize in their National Self-Published Book Awards! There would be a cash award, along with a feature article in the August issue, as well as promotion of the book in "Publishers' Weekly."

The very day the article came out I was contacted by a number of literary agents, but the most persistent of which called me not only that day, but every day for a week thereafter! His name is Joe Durepos, and he's based in Chicago. We hit it off and I could tell that he understood the book and what I was trying to say with as much subtlety as possible. Within the week we had signed on together and Joe began to send the book out to the large publishers.

As recently as this week, we began to receive offers for the book from the major publishers. We decided to go with Harper San Francisco, who have a very nice inspirational line of books, and a healthy share of the book market, period. The young editor there, Gideon Weil, is very excited about the book, and we have their promise to rush the book out as early as next spring.

It does sound like a fairy tale, but it doesn't take into account the two years I've spent putting the book together and promoting it myself. This recent pay day is wonderful, but I kind of expected it all along, so positive were the responses to the book that I've been getting for more than a year.

What was the greatest challenge you faced while writing Dad Was A Carpenter and how did you overcome it? What advice do you have for other authors wishing to share a personal experience?

The hardest part about writing about yourself is to be honest. But pure honesty is not necessarily good literature. There has to be a reason someone would want to read my book. I subscribe to the notion that life is hard; that disappointments are many; and that closure is rare and nearly always invisible. So in my writing I'm trying to give the reader a bit of closure, so they can more easily recognize the watershed events of their own lives, and then draw the connections. So I try to speak honestly, but positively. There are, to quote John Gardner, already too many skulls in the volcano. We should be building walls so fewer skulls go in. Life can be difficult, but it is also wonderful. When I pick up a book, I want a positive experience--I already have enough negative in my life.

Secondly, I think the greatest thing an author can do is respect his readership. And that means to understand that I am not Columbus---I am not discovering a new emotional world here. My book is about fathers and sons and loss. Every boy has a father, most men have sons, and everyone has lost someone close to them. So because I respect that, my audience will understand what I'm going through, I don't have to lay out every nuance of emotion. Rather, it's the author's job to create the framework upon which the audience will build the finished structure. Example: I tell the story in the book about wrecking the family car. My dad took me to the junkyard to find a replacement front end for it. He watched while I removed the grill, bumper, radiator, hood and fenders. When we arrived home, he told me to get to work and went inside the house. I was astonished. I was only 16, and knew I couldn't do this by myself. When I complained to him, he just said that I'd earned the right to fix that car. Then he went back to reading. Out in the garage, the impact of my carelessness came home to me. After surprise comes frustration; after frustration comes anger; after anger comes bargaining; after bargaining comes acceptance; after acceptance comes picking up the wrench and getting to work.

What makes this story work, I believe, is that I don't moralize at the end. I just tell it. Every parent knows what my dad was doing here. And every kid knows what was expected of me in that situation. By just telling the story and getting out of the way (i.e., resisting the urge to moralize), I let the reader do it for me, and the result is they contribute to the story, and are therefore invested in it. The reader begins to relate to me as a character in the story (it's told in the first person), and they begin to think about my dad in relation to their own father or their own parenting. It seems to work.

You have had varied occupations including illustrator, musician, actor, film director, novelist and attorney. How do you see those experiences influencing your creative process?

It's all part of preparing to write--research, if you will. I came to this realization while I was writing my first novel, I Hated Heaven. I found myself stealing from my life in almost every scene. The protagonist in the story is a builder. I'm a builder. He loves surfing. I love surfing. His wife, April, has great, profound questions about religion and the meaning of life. So do I. These experiences I've had form the nuances of character that make people real. I would be surprised to find out that other authors create their characters out of whole cloth. I think they, too, cobble from their world. In addition, being a lawyer has helped me think logically and clearly about form and function in structuring a story.

My film writing experience has been crucial. A screenplay is a unique literary form. One page equals one minute on the screen, so a two-hour movie is made from a 120 page script. There is no time for dilly-dallying around in a script. Movies are about what the character does, not what he's thinking about. This results in plot-driven stories, which are perfect for most movies. The result for me is an understanding that, character aside, something has to happen in my story--some arc must occur, and that is plot. Character informs every action of every person in the book, but they still have to do something. And directing actors makes me realize how much can be "said" with just a look. There is an old story about the actor Alan Arkin (The Inlaws), who was in his trailer with the director, reading a script, tearing out page after page of dialogue. At the surprised director's question, Arkin said simply, "I'll say it with a look!" More novelists should consider this. But how? A "look" is hard to communicate on the written page. But when you consider that a "look" in literature is the character of the person, then if you flesh them out enough---give them motivation, reasons, and behavior---the audience will know what they mean when they pick their teeth with a toothpick as they frown at the supermarket clerk. More information, given subtly, will result in more readable books and more satisfying characters.

What is your proudest writing related accomplishment?

Telling the truth about my father and having people who knew him well tell me that I captured him in the book. I was afraid I would botch that one.

What is your proudest film related accomplishment? How has film making influenced your writing career?

Surprisingly, it was as an actor in my own film, Fedora. I play the co-worker of the protagonist, Julio, who gets cancer and suffers the indignities and pain of chemotherapy, before being released to go home and die. My character, "Crash," is a loud, abrasive, and apparently racist guy who constantly teases Julio and never comes to visit him in the hospital. Crash is often discussed in the movie, but rarely seen. He represents all the people who don't cope well with life's troubles. At the end, Julio returns home to be surprised by all his friends and family waiting for him in his living room. And every one of them has their head shaved like Julio's--solidarity for his pain. Julio sees Crash at the back of the crowd, wearing a baseball cap, looking cynical and hard. I come forward and Julio says, gesturing around at the bald heads, "Too much for you, huh?" to which I reply, "You didn't think I'd actually shave my head for you, did you?" Julio says, "I guess not." Then I say, "Shows what you know," and remove my cap to reveal a shaved head. Then I tell Julio that the reason I never came by was because my own dad died of cancer and I just couldn't go through it again. Understanding lights Julio's face--as well as the audience's--and we embrace. It's a great moment and I'm proud of it. And I did it by thinking about my father and how it felt when he died. Again: accessing my own emotional reservoir.

What else have you written besides Dad Was A Carpenter? Please provide a brief synopsis, a bit about what inspired it, and where your work may be purchased.

Kenny: I've already mentioned my novel I Hated Heaven. It's a comic after-life romantic-adventure which takes place in Heaven. The hero, Tom Waring, is a Christian, a true believer. His wife, April, is an agnostic. When Tom gets ill and is about to die, April surprises them both when she leans forward and says, "If there is something over there, you've got to promise me you'll come back and tell me!" Tom nods weakly.

When Tom finds himself in Heaven, it's not the Club Med afterlife vacation he imagined. Instead of a harp and halo, they give him a cell phone, a day planner, give him a job and send him to school. And when his request to return to April to deliver the good news is routinely denied, Tom must make a fateful decision: Should he risk everything--even his very soul--to keep his promise to April? Of course! And so begins his hero's journey back to Eart to deliver his message.

The book began as a screenplay, but wouldn't fit into the 120 page format, so I arrogantly thought, Well! I'll just write the great American novel! But it was rejected by every publisher in the solar system, so I self-published. Now, two years later, I've sold 20,000 copies, and I've got a movie deal!

Compare the genres you have written within. What do you find it be the easiest to write? What are the challenges you've faced going between such diverse subject areas?

I've written historical fiction, science fiction, romantic comedy, murder-mystery, memoir, and children's books. Each has its challenges. But the important part of writing any book is to write it when it's ready. Do the research. For me, at least, if I try to force it out of my head prematurely, it either won't come at all, or it is junk. I believe in the maxim: "Writer's block is the result of insufficient research." So what I do is character sketches, background information, time and place study, take pictures of the area, talk to people, record dialects, improve my vocabulary, and read, read, read, books in the same genre. I constantly work on plot, diagramming the ups and downs of each scene. The result should be an upward-arcing saw tooth, toward the climax. Only when the research is finished am I ready to write the book. Then it usually comes quickly.

What are your greatest writing related pet peeves? If you could wave a magic wand and change the writing world, what changes would you make?

Of course it's the difficulty of just getting read. But this is quickly changing. I have a website where my writing can be found. There is a wonderful site called www.authorsden.com  which posts bios and writing samples of anybody. I think that this site, or another like it, will be the Contemporary Authors of the future. In the past, sending out manuscripts and query letters took so much time and money. Now I email my News Releases with the click of a button, and can follow up just as easily. I can converse via short, succinct emails with busy editors I could never get in touch with before. The key now, more than ever, is to create an interesting hook to entice them to read further. I've no doubt that using the Internet I could get interest today in I Hated Heaven, simply because of my title and the questions it raises. Whether the book would be their cup of tea is another matter, but I'd get in the door.

For new writers reading this interview, what is a typical day like for you? What are your writing habits?

 I have several jobs: I'm a contractor and an attorney, so these fill most of my time. But I'm always thinking, doing my "research" (above), and working out details of the stories. I tell my stories to anyone who will listen and watch their faces for reactions. If they look bored, it's my story that's boring them. I take that to heart. And these same people, who've never written a thing, often have the most wonderful insights into my stories, and I steal liberally from them!

When I get in the writing flow, I start early. Water all the plants, dust the credenza, unhook the phone, sit down at my desk, and begin by writing in my journal. I have an egg timer and I give myself 15 minutes. The first few minutes are the hardest, and so writing about myself is the easiest way to tackle the chore. After 15 minutes I'm raring to go and I shift to my book. I write for most of the morning, drinking a lot of water and eating fruit. Otherwise I get sugar headaches. I stay away from caffeine. It's a false starter and if you need it to get going each day, you're upsetting nature's balance.

I start each day by going back several days and editing what I wrote. By the time I get to the blank bottom of the page, I'm back in the world of my story, and it usually flows from there. If it doesn't, I go back even further and edit. I pull out all sappy sentimentality (if I recognize it as such--it takes several tries, sometimes!) and clean up my rather sloppy prose. I strive for simplicity and iconography--objects and situations that have talismanic meaning, which is just a fifty cent word for "metaphor." In Dad Was A Carpenter, the tools quickly become icons, and carpentry is parenting. The reader gets that, so when I refer to any tool or building event, the reader says subconsciously, "Ah! Here comes a parenting lesson!" And yet it's subtle enough that you don't consciously know it.

When I'm done writing for the day (four hours is a good day), I reward myself. I have a good lunch, go for a long walk, or take a drive into the canyon with my camera. I try to forget the writing, yet because I worked at it all morning, I've also received that nice endorphin release that gives me great pleasure and peace. I call friends and chat, and use the other side of my brain for the rest of the day: I try to figure out how to sell more books. I make phone calls, write news releases, call vendors and set up author signings. It's all fun, and helps balance things out, which is the key, I believe to creativity: keeping your gas tank full, both with the mundane and the exhilarating.

What are you reading now? Who are your favorite authors and how do you see their work influencing your own?

I just finished Robert Harris' Archangel, a story about modern Russia, set in the detective mode. I just started Hitchcock On Hitchcock, a book about the famous director, taken from his personal writings. I've always been a fan of his movies, because of the economy of dialogue they use. I'm also in the middle of The Gospel According to Jesus, a fascinating book where the author, a gospel scholar, has excised the "false" portions of the gospels, in favor of the pure through-line of Jesus's life and sayings, and condensed them all into the short but powerful Gospel of Jesus. It's a challenging book, but as a Christian, I am once again moved by the great teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. (This is research for my next book, The Welcoming Door, which is a re-telling of the parable of the prodigal son, focusing on the father and the elder brother, and which features a 25-year-old carpenter from Nazareth, Jeshua ben Joseph, who has been hired by the father to remodel the front door to his house. Jeshua becomes privy to the events chronicled in the parable, and with subtlety and love, he gently prepares the family for the inevitable return of the prodigal. It will be 64 pages, four-color process, and will feature 30 illustrations from a wonderful, classically-trained oil painter, Kirk Richards, who paints like a Dutch master. The book is due out spring 2001.)

What advice do you think is most important to new writers?

Kenny: Do not be afraid to let others read your work. Tell them your stories. Listen to their feedback--don't defend! The truth of their comments will resonate over time and it will often be the only thing you remember about your conversation with them a week later. Don't be afraid to edit! Willa Cather, that great American storyteller, said, "An artist must kill her babies." A gruesome phrase, to be sure, but dead-on when it comes to writing. Of course you love the scene you just wrote, but don't be afraid to go back and reconsider. Does it do what you wanted it to do? Do you even know its purpose? If it doesn't work, start over! Edit, edit, edit. Learn the rules of the trade and incorporate them into your writing. Be a sponge and pay attention to the world around you. And above all, have something positive to say! As a writer, it's your sacred duty to make my life as a reader more meaningful. This does not mean you have to be Pollyanna, but if you don't have any answers to the painful issues you raise, why are you wasting my time? Give me some insight, some answers, some hope. Otherwise, just turn back and stare into the volcano with all the other doomsayers. I want vision and hope in my life, not negativity.

What else would you like to share that we've not touched upon?

The marketplace is very clever. It knows, somehow, if your work is good. Authors who are published generally write good stories. Those who are not published cannot. It does no good to shake one's fist at the parapets, demanding to get in. Better to construct a ladder to scale the walls. Your ladder is your writing, and it must be as good as you can make it: sturdy, constructed of fine materials, the right length, and able to support the philosophical weight of our story. And you must scale the wall in the right place---not necessarily in the front of the castle, either. Go 'round the back, look for a chink in the masonry, and get in that way. Join writers' and readers' groups, enter all competitions, make connections, visit bookstores and ponder the gaps in the inventory and how you might fill them. Make it a priority. If you have hobbies you love more than writing, you are not a writer, because it will take most of your so-called "free" time to get this show on the road. But if you're lucky in addition to being hard-working, you will succeed. There is no doubt. Life has taught you many great stories to tell. And if you can tell a joke, you can write. All that remains is doing it! Good luck!