by Paula Panich
Ron Carlson, a wonderful writer, was my teacher. Is my teacher; each new book teaches. (The latest: The Signal) About twenty years ago he said: The most you can hope for is time to write, and a place to write. Period. Any other hope is self-defeating. But isn’t it easy, especially after a long and […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking
by Paula Panich
Q: What do Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, and my character Ruth in my novel Missing Meg have in common with Gardenburgers and the intersection of Melrose and Gower? A: Take a good look at this photograph! It was taken in late 1937 from the south side of Melrose, looking east down the street. The “R.K.O. […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking
by Paula Panich
On June 1, 2009, I wrote the first page, and then some, of my novel Missing Meg. Thirty months! A long or short gestation, depending. But it is a novel, 75,000 words, something that didn’t exist on the last day of May in 2009. Such a short time when you think about the quarter-century of […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking
by Paula Panich
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger’s third book, was published in 1961. The the two long stories had been published previously in The New Yorker, in the Fifties. I had a hard-cover copy. I suspect I had requested it as a Christmas gift. I was in the eighth grade; I can’t imagine where I had heard […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking
by Paula Panich
Writers are notorious for their superstitions and fixed habits. Certain pens, chairs, desks, talismans, even teacups. I’m at work on a novel, set in 1932 Hollywood. I seem to have to start working in the dark. If I can see the dawn, the day is already making its claim on my imagination. A disadvantage is […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking
by Paula Panich
My forty-year affair with Chekhov began innocently enough, with the plays. Perhaps it was The Cherry Orchard. Not quite sure. But when I read his short stories, and then the letters — oh those letters — no retreat was possible. He was mine. We had a 150th birthday party for him here in Los Angeles, […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking
by Paula Panich
These are my dear friends, the writers Maryann Macdonald (light) and Patricia Marx (dark). They are standing in a miraculous place — the damp, underground (o.k., basement) room where Marilynne Robinson wrote one of the great novels of the late 20th-century — Housekeeping. Maryann and Trish, who live in Manhattan, visited me in Northampton, Mass. […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking
by Paula Panich
On Saturday, February 14, my piece, “Remodeling fireplace habits in Southern California” (http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-fireplace14-2009feb14,0,872738.story) ran in the Home Section of the L.A. Times. New regulations regarding open-hearth wood-burning fireplaces are for coming up for Southern California homeowners, but I want to add a few thoughts about seeing those dancing flames. Here’s how I originally began the […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking