Ask the Author: Stacy Barton
Answered Questions (7)
Stacy Barton
Forgotten memories remembered
Stacy Barton
write. write. write. write. write anything you can get paid to write. write it better than they expect and send it sooner than they thought. then, curl up in the sun and write what you want to write. let your soul come out. never keep secrets - yours or anyone else's - and never be afraid to write something awful. you never have to show anyone anything, but you must write or you will perish inside a little each day. then those things that make your heart race just as you finish them...show those to someone who already thinks you are fabulous. there will be time enough later for real critique and rewrite.
Stacy Barton
my new book coming in april is LILY HARP -- a novella and stories. the novella is set off the southwest coast of florida on a barrier island named little gasparilla island. i've gone there with my husband and children for over 15 years. it is a place full of poetry that i absolutely adore and i knew i wanted to set a story there. so i did. i walked around the island for a week getting to know her; i wrote about the sun, the water, the mangrove trees, the sunrise and set; the sticky heat. i wrote for a week about the island having no idea who's story i was going to tell. turns out the story was lily harp's - a 17 year old pregnant girl in 1976 who had lost her mother to suicide seven years before. inside the maternal mangroves, with an odd assortment of enemies and friends, she learns what to do with the child she carries.
Stacy Barton
the light on the trees outside the window, that weird sadness that comes over you in the grocery store between the aisles, a phrase read somewhere, my own overwhelming emotion, laughter, family, loss, grief, pretty much anything...
Stacy Barton
promotion for my new book - Lily Harp - a novella and stories! although i wrote a first draft of a new short tonight (shocking) by the time i do my freelance scriptwriting day job for disney and manage family and try to figure out how to use twitter to get people to know about my newbook...there is precious litlte time left to write new stuff! but i have almost 5 stories for a new magical realism short collection....
Stacy Barton
that i get to use the language of poetry and the drama of the stage to tell stories that surprise even me. i get to live inside the very nature of story...that primal, instinctual, basic communal language of us all.
Stacy Barton
hmmm. i write about 30 hours a week. mostly because i entertainment scripts for a living for disney and seaworld etc... so i am always writing. when i sit down to work on my literary books it is usually with such gratefulness that i flood the page with something. basically i believe in natalie goldburg's phrase "go for the jugular." aka "just do it." i also believe that nothing is ever lost, if you write a gem that turns out to be a piece of coal...the gem that was within you will come out later on...somewhere. so there is never, ever anything lost in scratching on the page.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more