Literary L.A. and a chat with writer, blogger and former student Scott Doyle

For anyone out there who still thinks L.A. isn’t literary, here are a few recent random encounters. At a groovy Fourth of July party in Nichols Canyon, I struck up a conversation with a man who turned out to’ve spent eight years in San Quentin. Now he’s a screenwriter. Name of John Carlen. “You know Eddie Bunker?” I asked. Eddie Bunker, author of NO BEAST SO FIERCE, DOG EAT DOG, EDUCATION OF A FELON, and so forth, did 18 years in San Question. He died in 2005, and is sorely missed. He and I had the same editor, Jim Fitzgerald. I still remember meeting Eddie the first time at a dinner at his house in Hancock Park. He’d cooked Chicken Diablo. While the rest of us ate, he sat at the head of the table, smoking a cigar, and flipping through a book with graphic photos of crime scenes. When he hit the one displaying a decapitated head sitting forlornly in the middle of a rural road, he couldn’t stop laughing. I also invited him to guest lecture at a class I taught at UCLA Extension. Eddie appeared in khakis, and a salmon-colored button-down shirt so stiffly starched, it stayed up around his neck when he sat down. When he told the class stories from prison, his blue eyes rolled back in his head. I don’t think those students were ever the same. If they wanted to create edge in their writing, I think they got a taste of what the true thing is. “Eddie and I were tight,” said Carlen. “Until there was a shoot-out on my lawn…” Only in L.A. I can’t wait to see Carlen’s film “Sonny,” based on his life. When he was still a kid, he was supposedly turned out by his grandmother. If that’s not a true Texan tale of entrepreneurship.

Then the other day, I was eating quiche and drinking an elixir at Topanga’s Water Lily Café and ran into a friend who was reading about Pocohantas. I mentioned these upscale hilltop book parties I’d been attending recently, and he told me about once years ago going to a Ken Kesey book party up at Kesey’s farm. The party revelers were half hippies and half suits driving up in monster foreign cars. “He had a stage set up in the swamp. I sat on the bus. Tripping. I saw Kesey through the bus window, then more Ken Keseys reflected in each of the rest of the windows.” “Was the book for sale at the swamp?” I asked. “I don’t remember,” he said. “But I know Kesey moved a lot of books when he was alive.” I guess still it all comes down to, you’re either off the bus, or you’re on the bus.

Today, before I create the short story rondelay with Lisa Teasley and Tod Goldberg later this evening, I’m going to do a short post featuring one of the best students I’ve ever had the honor with whom to work. Scott Doyle is a beautiful short story writer. He also has a blog spotlighting the short story. He is a testament to apprentice writers everywhere with his commitment to craft, the many courses he’s taken, the endless drafts he’s written, the perseverance. And now, on September 12th, his stories will be celebrated in Sally Shore’s acclaimed New Short Fiction Series.

BF: Could you give us a quick bio?

SD: Before relocating to the West Coast to focus on writing I was in Boston, where along with my brother I started Rhythm & Muse, a small indie store selling books and CDs. The store is hanging in there and I go back and help during the holiday rush. Before that I was a pastry chef.

BF: How does having worked as a pastry chef inform your writing?

SD: Well, my brief pastry career was a response to my first career, as a community activist, where you were constantly juggling a dozen things, and nothing was tangible, purely in the moment. In a kitchen you’re often insanely busy but there’s also a pure, physical focus on what’s in front of you. At its best writing is like that, too. It’s funny, in the last year cooking has been coming up in my stories: the perfect crystals in cocoa butter, the layers in puff pastry.

BF: When did you win UCLA Extension’s prestigious Kirkwood Prize?

SD: In 2005, for a still unpublished story called “Head in Bag” that’s part of the novel-in-stories I’m writing. I just reworked it in a rewrite class Charles Wyatt teaches at UCLA where you workshop the same story three times in ten weeks. Intense. The new version is up at my blog.

BF: What is this Sally Shore deal? A live magazine — can you elaborate?

SD: The New Short Fiction Series is similar to Cedering Fox’s WordTheatre, but the names aren’t as high profile and there’s more a focus on emerging writers. Sally Shore, who runs it, bills it as a ‘live literary magazine.’ It’s actors reading short stories, and it’s fascinating because they give the words a kind of breathing room you don’t see during author readings. In the past they’ve featured writers like Aimee Bender, Gina Ochsner, and Lee Montgomery. It’s at 8pm the second Friday of every month at the Beverly Hills Public Library. Mine is on Sept 12 and they’re mostly focusing on the novel-in-stories, called “Claudia.”

BF: What are your thoughts on the short story? Is that the form that speaks to you most?

SD: I feel the short story found me rather than the other way around. I came out here with one half-written novel and an idea for a second. Then I wrote a story (one of the pieces the NSFS is doing) that was unlike anything I’d ever done. For the first time I experienced as a writer what I’d experienced as a reader encountering Aimee Bender’s “Skinless.” That’s a story that literally leaves you at the edge of a cliff, holding your breath. It’s said the short story is about capturing a moment, which is only half-true. It’s about the moment that suggests a whole life: Hemingway’s iceberg principle. Amy Hempel does that really well: there are so many things ‘off-stage’ that you don’t see, but you know they’re there.

BF: Why did you do a short story-focused blog yourself?

SD: I just wanted to promote and celebrate a form that’s really possessed me. The internet is great for obsessive niches. One of the other things I’ve done is consolidate a lot of information and resources for the beginning to intermediate writer on the whole world of literary magazines, how and where to submit, etc., which can be pretty overwhelming at first.

BF: Did you like working with me as a teacher?

SD: Rachel you bring such a particular energy to a workshop I had to come up with a new term to describe it: “the archeological dig approach.” You’ll dig around in a story until your shovel hits something substantial: a line of dialogue that sings, an image that resonates. And then you’ll hold it up like it’s a mysterious clue: what could this possibly be? what strange culture might have left this behind? I’ve tried to retain that spirit because I think especially in early drafts we think we’re writing one thing but what’s actually on the page is something different, and the words on the page, the best of them, are smarter than we are. If we pay attention to those early nuggets, and treat them like clues, the story will find its way and take us along.

Along those lines, for those who are interested, I run a business called Writers On Fire that provides luxury writing retreats and private writing coaching. I also occasionally conduct workshops. There’s a one-day workshop in Malibu coming up on July 27th. If you would like an invitation, or want to inquire about other offerings, feel free to contact me at rachel@rachelresnick.com. The focus for this workshop is banging out a book – whether novel or memoir. Part of the secret is taking the initial leap.

I hope you enjoyed the post. I’m curious about your experiences with teachers. Have you taken courses in writing? Do you find them helpful? Hurtful? Unnecessary? What about writing groups? Are these more effective in person, online? And why do you love reading and writing short stories?

And here are the links:
Scott’s short story blog
Sally Shore’s series
Writers On Fire

RR