One Question Interview: Pete Fromm
A semi-regular series, One Question Interview examines the nature of "good" things in fields as disparate as art, advertising, business, film, food, music, and prose, via one question answered by someone in the know.
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One Question Interview: Pete Fromm
This week's One Question Interview features writer Pete Fromm. Fromm is a five-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Literary Award for his novels IF NOT FOR THIS, AS COOL AS I AM and HOW ALL THIS STARTED, a story collection, DRY RAIN, and the memoir, INDIAN CREEK CHRONICLES. His next book, a memoir about his time in wild places, THE NAMES OF THE STARS, will be published this fall. He is on the faculty of Oregon’s Pacific University’s Low-Residency MFA Program, and lives in Montana with his family.
Joel Wayne: What's good writing?
Pete Fromm: A major component of good writing is, I'd say, invisibility. I do not want to see the author, don't even want to think of him/her. I want to be so caught up in the story I'm not even aware of holding a book in my hand. I want to be in a different skin than my own, seeing through different eyes, thinking with an entirely different mind. There are a gazillion mistakes that will stop a story cold, but there is also prose so beautiful you can't help but stop and admire it, but, either way, the key word is 'stop.'
When I stop, I'm holding a book, thinking construction, thinking word choice, thinking sentences, paragraphs. In other words, the spell is broken.
Writing 'simple,' can be way harder than writing to impress, can take revision and revision cutting back to only the story, never getting in its way, even to show off some of your linguistic pyrotechnics. But, when done right, you've got good writing, spellbinding writing, and you've got what stories are really all about, transportation, a widening of your life beyond your own narrow scope. Don't sit down to be a writer, sit down to show me a story.