It's my pleasure to have novelist, Jeri Cafesin, visiting Over Coffee today.
Many writers question our writing process, our ability to tell a story that takes readers to another place and another time. Writers are also readers and have read many good author's works. We can't help of comparing ourselves to those we respect and admire. Some how our writing, at least in our eyes, seem like *crap* in comparison to *real* authors.
Jeri touches on that insecurity and why we write.
I sat on the floor in the
back of a bookstore in old town Pasadena perusing the selections. It was
Saturday, late afternoon, another sunny day in L.A. I didn’t notice the store
owners hustling everyone out the door and they didn’t see me in the back on the
floor. After a while I picked a book I liked, got up and went to pay for it.
The store was empty except for an old man sitting at a large desk awkwardly
placed in the center of the main aisle. It blocked my way to the checkout so it
was impossible to ignore him.
I greeted him with a quick
‘Hi,’ and smiled as I wriggled around the desk. He smiled back and asked me if
I could get him a glass of water before the signing. I told him I didn’t work
at the store. Then he asked me what I was still doing there. Buying a book, I
told him. He took the book out of my hand and read the title, looked at me and
smiled. This is good, he assured me, and handed the book back but kept staring
at me with this funny grin on his face, like he had a secret.
He looked familiar but I
couldn’t place him. There was a tall stack of books on the desk next to him. The Martian Chronicles, one of my all time
favorites. Then I noticed the sign on the easel in front of the desk. Ray
Bradbury Live! Today at 5:00.
I blushed. He smiled with my
acknowledgment. Ray Bradbury was one of my few idols and he was sitting in
front of me. I was speechless at first, which is rare for me. The man was what
I aspired to be, a great writer. I picked up one of the ‘special addition’ hard
cover books on the desk and held it up. This is really good, too, I assured
him. He laughed. In the all years I’d been writing fiction I was sure nothing
I’d written touched his talent. And then I got sad.
I felt the tears come. I
couldn’t stop them. I smiled at him, put his book back in the stack and turned
away, started to walk to the checkout but he stopped me. He asked me what was
up but I told him he couldn’t possibly understand, knowing who he was, what he
was, and what I was not. Try me, he insisted.
So I did. I explained that I
wrote too, but didn’t label myself a writer. Though it was easy for me to
recognize talent when I read it, it was impossible for me to see it in my own
work. Every time I put word to paper I questioned if it was any good.
Surprisingly, he laughed.
Then he told me that he too had the same question running through his head with
everything he wrote. More often than not when he read his own work he thought
it was crap.
I was astonished. The man was
a renowned novelist. How could he still question if he was any good? I had
assumed once my work was recognized the uncertainty would never plague me
again. The idea that I would have to battle my self-effacing ego the rest of my
life, published or not was appalling, and I told him so.
His expression softened and
he shook his head. Then he asked me why I write.
I’d never really considered
the question before. I’d been writing for as long as I could remember, diaries
and journals when I was younger, then stories and eventually novels. I assumed
once I got good enough someone would publish me and I could quit my day job and
write full time, but that hadn’t happened yet. Clearly I wasn’t good enough.
Perhaps I never would be. I constantly questioned when I should give it up,
though the thought of not writing anymore was on par with going blind.
I write because I love to, I
told him.
He smiled. Good answer, he
said. The question is not if you’re any good, but if you love the process of
writing. Published or not, keep writing as long as you love doing it.
And so I have. I still get
disheartened, every other day it seems I’m back to black, trying to talk myself
into making my day job my career. Even though I’m publishing now there isn’t
any money in it. Yet. Hope springs eternal. Good or not, published or not I
keep writing though, because I love to write.
Thanks Ray.
REVERB, Jeri Cafesin, Available now.
Music was all he needed music and then the music was gone.
James Michael Whren is brilliant, beautiful, wealthy, and taken with himself, or more precisely, his genius for creating music. The object of desire for many, his greatest passion is for his muse.
But on the evening after his brother's funeral, his father turns his life upside down, and James is left abandoned in hell with no one to save him.
He finally escapes, and on his run for freedom he's forced to confront the man he was as he seeks asylum from old friends and ex-lovers. Humbled and almost defeated, he finds refuge on a small Greek island. But with solitude comes madness
Then he meets Elisabeth.
Reverb is a story of redemption, and follows one man's extraordinary journey of emotional growth through his discovery of his capacity to love. EXCERPT
J. Cafesin is an L.A. native, born and raised on the Valley side of the
Hollywood Hills, among the TV and movie studios. Creativity abound and
inspired growing up with the kids of producers, directors and screenwriters
living in the quiet suburb.
Journals were kept under the bed or close at hand to scribble prose,
lyrics, or manic rants, but art and illustration were the focus during the
early years. A BA in Advertising Design, and three years as an Art Director in
corporate servitude pushed her from the proverbial window and into freelance as
a floater for CBS, NBC, and movie studios from Transworld Entertainment to
Lucas Films Ltd. Attending UCLA film school at night, she finished her first
screenplay before quitting their program to escape the wild and crazy Hollywood
scene, and moved to the San Francisco area to focus on corporate and literary
writing.
Now a freelance writer of fiction, essay and copy in the Bay Area, J.
Cafesin is currently working on her second contemporary romance; a YA series of
short fables; and adapting her Sci-Fi screenplay into a third novel. Her
articles are featured regularly in local and national print publications.
Essays on her ongoing blogspot have been translated into multiple languages and
distributed globally: jcafesin.blogspot.com
J. Cafesin resides on the eastern slope of the redwood laden Oakland
Hills with her husband/best friend, two gorgeous, talented, spectacular kids,
and a bratty but cute pound-hound Shepherd-mix.
You can find her: Website, Facebook, Twitter, Blog
Three days
and seven drafts later I gave her what I thought was brief. Ahem, need I say it
was in need of a major blood transfusion when I got it back? Then she added the
word “concise”, sigh…I thought two pages was concise.
