One Woman's Writing Retreat: Interview Osha Gray Davidson

Interview

LH: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer, and was there a moment when you felt, "I'm a real writer now"?

OD: My decision to be a writer came in my 20's and was born of necessity. I was a single father of a 3-year-old girl (now getting her Master's in Development and the Environment at the London School of Economics--hey, a Dad can brag!) and needed to make a living from home. I'd always liked writing so I figured I'd give it a shot. And it worked--after just 20 years of struggling to earn a living.

LH: How much leeway do you have in choosing your topics? Did you query Rolling Stone with ideas, for instance, or did they assign the stories? You mentioned that people who might not otherwise want to be interviewed warm up when they learn it's for Rolling Stone. What experiences have you had along those lines?

OD: I'm very fortunate in that I suggest story ideas and my editor at RS (and elsewhere) says yes or no. That's how it usually works for free-lancers, so the fortunate part is that my editor at RS says yes to 80% of my story ideas.

Writing for Rolling Stone has a definite cache. My favorite experience along those lines is the time up in Alaska when I was doing a story about logging old growth trees in the Tongass National Forest. I needed to get the loggers' side of things and they weren't very friendly to reporters. Somehow, I was allowed in to see their logging operation. The manager introduced me to the men in the yard--where the cut trees are stacked and graded. As soon as they heard the word "reporter" you could feel the chill in the air. (Yes, this was Alaska, but it was summer and the chill definitely came from the loggers.) So, there I was standing in front of three very large and scowling men who were holding even larger chain saws. The manager said, "And he works for Rolling Stone." Maybe he thought that would anger the men even more. Instead, they looked at each other, grinned and asked if I'd put them on the cover. I told them that depended on how well they sang and the three of them put down their chain saws, formed a chorus-line and started belting out "On the Cover of the Rolling Stone." When they were done, I told them not to quit their day job and then we talked a bit. Very relaxed from that point on.

LH: So many places don't accept submissions from unpublished writers, which feels like a real Catch-22. What would you advise someone who's not yet published?

OD: There are a couple of different routes that come to mind. Start off with the small magazines that accept new writers (although many large magazines really do care about the quality of the writing--and if it meets their needs at that moment--more than the writer's bio). Or, just go for it. Send a really great query to your first choice. It takes chutzpah to be a writer so get used to it from the start.

OD: I'm sure this has been said many times before but, that's like asking "Which of your children do you love the most?" I'm proud of all of them, just for different reasons. And I hope I'll be proudest of my next book. I'm constantly working to write better.

As for the easiest/hardest question, that's . . . well, easy. Writing is always difficult for me. And for every other writer I know, except Jane Smiley.

LH: Writing strikes me as one of those vocations that can become your entire life. What have you learned about balancing it with a relationship and family? How do you get away from it when necessary? Do you find a spiritual connection in your work? Have you had to overcome the bogeymen of procrastination, perfectionism and fear of rejection?

OD: Absolutely, it can take over everything. I'm still working at achieving a balance. This is another reason you need to love what you're doing in writing. What a tragedy to sacrifice so much time you could have spent with family, hiking, etc., for something you don't believe in. It's bad enough when you do believe in it!

I think my Midwestern work ethic makes procrastination moot. I have to worry more about getting away from my work than getting to it. Crazy, but there it is. It's interesting that you asked about "perfectionism" in the same syntaxical breath as "fear of rejection." I think the former is often used to cover up the latter. What I mean is that I've seen people sit on a manuscript for years, claiming they "want to get it just right," when it seemed more likely to me that they were really just afraid that someone won't like it. Someone will always not like my work. So what? There are all sorts of ways to deal with fear of rejection and whatever works for an individual is fine. For me, I was more afraid of looking back someday and finding that I had allowed fear of rejection to narrow my life, than I was of rejection.

I saved the spiritual question for last. Of course, people will differ on what is "spiritual" but since you asked me: yes, I think just about everything I write is in some sense spiritual. This is such a large topic that I won't go into it further except to say that one of my favorite novels is Howards End by E. M. Forster and its epigraph is "Only connect." I tend to write about connections--and the lack thereof.

LH: What are you reading now? Do you agree with the old saw, "You write what you read?"

OD: I'm reading Philip Roth's new novel The Plot Against America, Inheritance, by former Iowa City neighbor and friend, L. Samantha Chang (which is wonderful!), and just finished Disposable People, by Kevin Bales, about the new global slavery. I also subscribe to and read The New Yorker, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, Mother Jones, the New York Review of Books, a bunch of environmental magazines, The New York Times on-line, and lots of other Web-based media. I also subscribe to High Country News and Indian Country Today. Both great newspapers. HCN deals with important topics in my region and ICT is the best newspaper for keeping up with Indian issues in the United States.

I believe you are what you read, and you write who you are, so I guess it follows that you write what you read.

OD: If you mean in the flesh relationships, friends, then the answer is: very little. I don't know that many other writers. On the other hand, my relationships (family, friends, enemies) play a vital role in my writing.

LH: How did you get involved with IMAX's Coral Reef Adventure, and what's the most unusual thing you've done as a writer?

OD: The producer contacted me as a source for reef scientists and ended up hiring me to write the screenplay. A cool gig, which would have been even cooler if they hadn't tossed out nearly every line of narration that I wrote. After I saw the "rough cut," a kind of "nearly final draft" but on film, I was shocked and angry. When I complained to the producer he just laughed. "Congratulations!" he said, in that smooth voice producers must take classes to learn, "You're a real Hollywood screenwriter now: you're bitching about how we murdered your script."

One thing I love about being a writer is that if you do it long enough, you end up with a huge list of really unusual things that you've done as a writer. Just one example: bonding with a sea turtle 1/4 mile off the coast of Maui, and 60 feet down.

LH: For what sort of work are you researching slavery in Brazil? And how do you keep your spirits up, confronting things like this and the destruction of the environment, and abuses in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison?

OD: The slavery in Brazil is among agricultural workers clearing land for cattle farms. I don't usually need to work at keeping my spirits up. First, my family and friends are wonderful. Second, I live in the southwest and can go hiking in wild desert only a few miles from my house. And it's precisely because I'm confronting, through writing, really awful things that I do have hope. Instead of just reading about them, or even just knowing they're going on, without knowing the specifics, I'm doing something about them. Writing is empowering, both to the writer and to the reader. Because I'm a journalist, a source in the military gave me the entire Taguba Report about Abu Ghraib, including the several thousands of pages of interviews and internal Army memos that had never been published before. After writing my Rolling Stone piece about Abu Ghraib I turned all the documents over to the Center for Public Integrity, which is now posting them on their Web site. Reporters all over the world are using these now to expose the involvement of high-ranking military officials and honchos and honchas in the Administration. I agree with H. L. Mencken's dictum that "A journalist's job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Amen.

OD: I'm working on a new book, the story of the GOP and environmental policy, from TR to GWB. Great cast of characters! I also plan on writing more for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and maybe some other magazines.

Lisa Hannon works for a research company and edits a corporate newsletter. Read more about her here.