Interviews

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An Interview with Bruce Patterson

Originally published in ForeWord Magazine.

Read Karl Helicher’s review of Walking Tractor for ForeWord Magazine.

When did you start reading, and what did you like to read as a kid?

I was born with a tongue-tying stutter that made me mostly mute throughout my formative years. Partly because of the stigma, I never applied myself at school. But reading came easy for me and I enjoyed the little bit I did. I remember being fascinated by Edith Hamilton’s take on Greek Mythology, and reading children’s encyclopedias cover-to-cover.

When you were growing up did you have books in your home?

My parents grew up in the Chicago slums during the Great Depression. Neither of them got much in the way of formal education, and music, cards and parties provided them with entertainment. My mom did a little recreational reading, and my dad read for self-improvement—never fiction.

When did you think about becoming a writer?

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a talker. Forced to passively listen to others, sometimes I’d think, “If I could talk, I could do better.” It wasn’t until I was eighteen years old and I returned from infantry combat in Vietnam that words poured out of me. I’d lost six weeks to malarial fevers, and when I came to I was in a hospital in Hawaii. My new reality hit me like a sledgehammer, and my original writings were cathartic. At first it felt like I’d been invaded and occupied, but with time I realized it was an aspect of me that had always been there—I just hadn’t noticed was all.

How do you write? Do you have a daily routine? What’s good about it? What do you hate about it?

I compose the first thing in the morning when my mind is clear. I'll keep going as long as I can, and that’s rarely more than three or four hours. Then I'll spend about an equal amount of time polishing what I've written during previous sessions.

The best part of writing is when your story takes over and “tells” you where to go. The worst part is giving yourself a hearty “attaboy” after a job well done, putting your output into the cooler, taking it out some days later and seeing, with your fresh eyes, that you’d wasted your time.

What is some good advice that you’ve received concerning writing? What’s some advice that you could offer young writers?

The single best piece of advice I ever got was to learn how to make people laugh. Also, never fall in love with the sound of your own words. Without pandering (know the precise meaning of that term), write for your audience.

How did you find a publisher for this book? What has your experience as a publisher been like?

My self-published book was literally homemade. I came up with the idea of combining 24 of my stories with 24 of my color photos, an old friend took over the book design, and I did the typesetting. My wife was my proofreader, my eldest son my editor, my daughter-in-law my original web designer and my nephew my production manager, warehouseman and business advisor. My nephew also helped design the original book covers.

I printed 900 copies with the minimum objective of establishing myself in the local market and a maximum objective of signing with a publisher that would take my work national. Since I signed with Heyday before I got to a second printing, my experience as a self-publisher was short and very sweet.

In August of ’06 I attended the Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference. Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday Books, was also there, and I took the opportunity to pitch him. I showed him my book, the reviews I’d gotten, a list of my accounts and my sales figures, and he seemed genuinely interested. He told me that he must consult with his people, but he thought I had a good shot. I signed with Heyday four months later.

What are you working on now?

I recently submitted a book-length manuscript to my publisher, and at the moment I’m between projects. I write some for the Anderson Valley Advertiser and will, I suppose, soon start on another collection of stories.