The Writers' Blog Tour is a series of four questions answered by a writer, who then invites two more writers to answer the same questions. I've been introduced to the tour by Lauren B. Davis, author of the compelling novel "The Empty Room."
• Lauren's answers to the Writers' Blog Tour questions
• other authors on the tour (also check #writersblogtour on Twitter):
I'm posting my four answers across four different sites. Enjoy!
• Question 1: Why do I write what I do?
• Question 2: What am I working on?
• Question 3: How does my work differ from other work in its genre?
• Question 4: How does my writing process work?
3. How does my work differ from other work in its genre?
I have been told that Teaching Will is different because it tells more than one story. I've entwined the tale of my creating an after-school Shakespeare program with my own story of being a child, discovering the theatre, becoming an actor, then facing the painful end of that career.
The combining of those stories came out of a recognition that I could only be empathetic to these children if I clearly recalled my own childhood. This results in a dual narrative, not a clear-cut beginning-to-end story, not a how-to manual. Then I added a poem, which I'm told never belongs in a memoir unless the author is a poet.
I've also done some literary knitting in my second novel, The Novel Class, which is a contemporary tale of women in Los Angeles struggling during the recent recession. These women meet in a novel class in which they're studying Faulkner's Light in August, a story set in the Great Depression. As my modern characters struggle, they search for modes of survival much like Faulkner's characters did.
For someone who can't knit, I find myself twisting yarns a lot.