AUTHOR PROFILE
Rita Stevens is twice retired — as a teacher in the local schools and as a writer, editor, and wastebasket engineer for a community newspaper. She lives in southwest Michigan where she writes novels about a small newspaper, and stories. She’s keeping fingers crossed for getting the novels published.
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Why do you write?
My mother read to me, which seemed magical, and I wanted to do the magic for myself. And one thing led to another. It’s like one of the paraphilia: wired in, maybe, but also encouraged by something in the environment. Writing scratches the itch.
What other creative activities are you involved in?
Making a garden using Michigan native plants. I keep some foreign transplants out there, too, and it’s a nice blend, often beautiful. (That’s probably some kind of metaphor.)
Who is your favorite author and why?
Great question. It lets me write the words Kurt Vonnegut. War gave him insight into the dark core of Homo sapiens but he was able, mostly, to discipline his writing away from bitterness and into gorgeous absurdity. He skewered hypocrisy with great imagination.
But lucky me, I’m in the Kalamazoo area, where living fiction writers who know their business abound. I follow them with pleasure. Stuart Dybek: his Chicago stories sing. Joe Heywood: in novels and stories, he celebrates Michigan’s Upper Peninsula like nobody else. Bonnie Jo Campbell: without a stumble, she grabs and shakes the grubby Michigan ordinary. Andy Mozina: his story collections and novel (Contrary Motion) have tremendous range. Grace Tiffany: her historical novels bring to life the Middle Ages and English Renaissance. AND, Jaimy Gordon: her Lord of Misrule, about small-time horse racing, is a masterpiece with 1) changing point of view, 2) no quotation marks, and 3) dense language that keeps hitting you upside the head.
But lucky me, I’m in the Kalamazoo area, where living fiction writers who know their business abound. I follow them with pleasure. Stuart Dybek: his Chicago stories sing. Joe Heywood: in novels and stories, he celebrates Michigan’s Upper Peninsula like nobody else. Bonnie Jo Campbell: without a stumble, she grabs and shakes the grubby Michigan ordinary. Andy Mozina: his story collections and novel (Contrary Motion) have tremendous range. Grace Tiffany: her historical novels bring to life the Middle Ages and English Renaissance. AND, Jaimy Gordon: her Lord of Misrule, about small-time horse racing, is a masterpiece with 1) changing point of view, 2) no quotation marks, and 3) dense language that keeps hitting you upside the head.
Tell us about the mechanics of how you write.
I attended a workshop led by an author who writes a murder series, and each novel, we were told, was the result of 20-some single-spaced pages of outline.
I tried. I can’t. I jot down the general arc, but thereafter every story is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Even the three novels I’ve written. And I edit compulsively.
A couple years ago I set up my office in the kitchen — laptop, printer, files, lined up on a long desk just west of the sink. I find it’s a great place to work, with the garden and bird feeders outside the window, fridge and coffee nearby.
I tried. I can’t. I jot down the general arc, but thereafter every story is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Even the three novels I’ve written. And I edit compulsively.
A couple years ago I set up my office in the kitchen — laptop, printer, files, lined up on a long desk just west of the sink. I find it’s a great place to work, with the garden and bird feeders outside the window, fridge and coffee nearby.
Finally, what do you think about Carp, the fish, not our website?
Despite our regional negativity about carp — a looming menace, they’re flinging themselves ever closer to the Great Lakes — I remember three of them with fondness and grief. Our furnace went out while we were up north over Christmas vacation. Goldie, Spottie, and Fluffy died in their bowl on the dining room table, each frozen into its own claustrophobic cell. They didn’t even huddle together for warmth.