Frank Zafiro is the author of the River City crime novels and also writes mainstream fiction under the name Frank Scalise, which is his actual name. Born and raised in Spokane, he joined the U.S. Army after high school graduation and served in Military Intelligence. He’s been a Spokane police officer since 1993 and has served as patrol officer, corporal, detective, sergeant and lieutenant. His current title is captain.

Zafiro has written seriously since he was thirteen, starting out with short stories and poetry. Last week I reviewed his River City series. If you didn’t read that post, let me summarize: I’m a big fan.  As Frank’s latest stalker groupie, I emailed him with a bunch of questions about his journey towards publication and being a writer while working full time.

Here are the questions and his answers. Enjoy!

When and why did you begin writing? 

When?  Well, like most writers, I began pretty early.  Maybe eight or so?  But by ten, I knew I wanted to be a writer, so that is the age I usually give in response to this question.  To be honest, I don’t ever remember I time where I didn’t want to be a writer.

Why? The same reason almost each of you write…because I’m a writer.  

I know that sounds like I’m being a smart alec, but I’m really not.  Much in the same way that a musician plays music or a carpenter works wood, I write because it is who I am.  I’d write even if I couldn’t get anyone to read what I’ve written.  I am a writer.  I write.  I suspect that most of the people reading this understand perfectly.  The rest probably think I’m being pretentious. Read more »

I’ve officially climbed out of the tower. I finished my third degree, and I’m done with academia, at least as a student. And I have to say, I kind of feel like I want to give my brain a bath, get all that academic nonsense outta there. Only the nonsense, not the good sense. But sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference.

Example: My boyfriend and I have been writing language arts lessons for a website for pay this summer. The way it works is you write a lesson, turn it in to the online submission manager, and wait. They give the lesson to three reviewers who then give you feedback. You’re supposed to take that feedback and use it to revise your lesson. Pretty simple really. But yesterday Dylan received reviews of his very first lesson. Two of them were very positive, didn’t want him to change much, but one of them was kind of scathing (if something can be kind of scathing) as if this reviewer (who we’ve decided is a little old lady who hates creativity and fun) was out to get him from the start. Everything was wrong, according to this reviewer, the whole lesson a failure.

Unfortunately, this reminded me of graduate poetry workshops. Read more »

Some news from my world: I’ve been hired to teach at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. I’m incredibly excited about this new development. A couple weeks ago they invited me to give a presentation at their professional development day, which was awesome, so I spent the entire day there last Thursday going to sessions, getting to know the people, and giving my own presentation, and it was great, but I realized something. One of their big challenges, at least in the liberal arts department, is getting these students, who all think they are artists, to write. In session after session, I heard teachers talk about trying to get students to see writing as something they should want to do, something they shouldn’t be afraid of, and for some reason I was a little surprised. I’m not new to students who hate writing, but generally those students don’t see themselves as creative people. Often they see themselves as better at math and science; they’re students who have been put down for their writing by one teacher or another and have given up on themselves as writers. I suppose that can happen to people who are good at visual arts, too, but my assumption, I’ve just learned, has been that words are part of the arts and that artists would most likely have an affinity for them. I was wrong. The teachers at PNCA went on and on about students who think writing is useless and painful and irrelevant. Sigh.

So here’s the question: how is writing like the visual arts? They are both skills that have to be practiced; neither of them are innately learned. There’s one thing. But what about the process? My boyfriend is a writer, visual artist, and musician, and it makes sense to me for all those things to go together, but how do I convince reluctant students of that? Could their hatred come from some learned misconception about what writing is? Maybe these are unanswerable questions until I get in there and meet my students, but I’m curious to know what other people think. If you’re a visual artist, how do you relate to writing? And vice versa? If language really is our most prominent mode of self expression, how do I convince a bunch of visual artists of this? Should I assign multigenre assignments where they’re allowed to incorporate words with images? Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated.

Short post today since I was up late working on a book review, but take a look at the Brevity article here or at a longer article here on Barthelme’s forced retirement after 33 years at the University of Southern Mississippi despite his intention to remain director of the program for another few years. We should be used to this in the arts, to having our interests held as less important by those higher up, but this still feels shocking.

I have a knot in my stomach.  I’ve just been to conversationalreading.com, after Googling one of my favorite authors, Lorrie Moore. I read a conversation entitled, “Lorrie Moore’s Sad Decline.”  It might have been months ago that this conversational thread occurred, but it’s new to me, and I have to say, it scares me.  Not that people are critical of Moore’s work.  Not that they are snarky.  Not that they might be right.  What scares me is the possibility–maybe inevitability–of an artist’s decline, and the implication of where decline might start.

You see, the most cutting comment in this conversation (in my opinion) was not really aimed at Moore’s writing, but at her life:

I’ve written elsewhere that the early landing of a tenure-track position at the University of Wisconsin has led to a dearth of experience in a life that was uneventful to begin with.

This implies that to write well, or interestingly, one has to lead an interesting life.  Or at least, it might help.  This more than implies that a professorship cuts off life’s potential.  One might infer that any steady job, any career that interferes with writing time and lacks creative spark might sap away a young writer’s potential. Read more »

I was in traffic the other day. There was a homeless woman on the side of the road with a sign that read “Need Money To Feed My Dog, God Bless.” At her side was an Australian Sheppard, cowering in the bushes. When I’m trapped at a traffic signal with a homeless person begging for money, I usually stare right at them. The woman took this as an offer for money, but gave up after I didn’t roll my window down. She had a good look at my car—a heap of shattered plastic and divot ridden pot metal filled with garbage. In her defense, it looks like I live in my car, and in a way I do. According to the IRS, the woman begging at the side of the road and I were probably in the same tax bracket.

Read more »

This site has a plethora of lessons, exercises, and activities for K-12 reading and writing teachers.

After reading Laura’s last post about what she learned from teaching third graders, I thought I’d do a shameless plug for one of my favorite websites, ReadWriteThing.org.

(Disclaimer: I write for this site, so I may be a little biased, but I don’t think so. It really is one of the best professional sites for language arts teachers. One reason I’m sure of this is because of the process I go through as a writer of lessons and activities for the site. Everything is peer-reviewed, so once I write a lesson and turn it in, it goes to a professional teacher/writer in the field for review. Then it comes back to me with notes for revision–unless I’m having a really good day and they think my work is brilliant–at which time I make revisions and corrections before turning it in for final approval. It’s quite a process, but it’s worth it because the material on the site ends up being top quality.)

Anyhow, I was also thinking about all the writers in MFA programs out there doing service in schools like we do at Eastern with Writers in the Community. They should definitely know about this site. It’s super easy to navigate, and you can search for anything from handouts and activities to complete units that will last weeks. It’s something all reading and writing teachers should know about, even those at the college level because many of the high school level lessons can easily be adapted for college students. So if any of you are teachers or thinking of going into teaching after you graduate, I highly recommend this site.

For graduates, the dating, and law-breakers: (from Barnes and Noble Studios)

Don't quit your day job. You could actually make a difference there.

For the past several months I’ve been looking for jobs in Portland, Oregon, where I’ll be moving after graduation. Every job I’ve applied for so far has been in academia, either in community colleges or universities, and applying for those jobs felt safe, sensible, as if teaching in higher education is the next logical step for someone with an MFA. But on Sunday I came across a job that I’m qualified for, that provides full benefits, that is full time–in other words, a job that is more stable than adjunct work–and that is outside of the protective nest of academia, the nest where all the other poets and writers seem to live and convene, where they share their connections and resources and encouragement. Also, this would be more than just a desk job. I would be working for a non-profit organization with at-risk youth in public schools (that is, if I get it) full time, which means this wouldn’t be the kind of job where I could occasionally write notes for poems at my desk/cubicle or the kind that is free of intellectual and emotional strain. This job, as far as I can tell, would be a challenge. And I would be doing something that I consider to be important: giving kids the same chance I had at education.

Read more »

I don’t know what you’re doing for money right now, but you could be doing better. Here are just a few of the job opportunities available for writers, as posted on Craigslist. (True story: The daughter of a former co-worker landed a job writing for Ellen by answering a Craigslist ad seeking a writer.) Read more »