Journalism students ask Ted Blain for help with publishin
Ted Blain, a retired Woodberry Forest school teacher, came to campus for three weeks as a substitute teacher in AP Literature. At Woodberry Forest, he had been the advisor of their literary magazine, The
Talon. He also published two novels and some short stories. So we invited him to class to share some of the wisdom he gained over the course of his career.
Jacob Johnson:
What was the biggest motive you pushed for your staff at Woodberry?
TB:
I guess the main thing is just to hit the deadlines . . . that is maybe the hardest part. Deadlines are good. They can focus the mind and get everybody aware that that things need to be finished. But I think that that the best kind of writing occurs over time, so that you’re not trying to do everything at the last minute. You you’ve had a chance to read, to write, to polish, to edit, to rewrite, so that when the deadline approaches, you’re more worried about layout and illustration and getting the pagination right and all those things.
Lauren Boone
What led up to your your interest in English and journalism?
TB:
I’ll try to give you the very, very short version. I grew up here in Roanoke on Rosslyn Avenue, and was typical South Roanoke kid growing up in Roanoke in the 1950s and early 60s. And I can remember when I was maybe 10 years old, I was sick . . . . And my Aunt Margaret brought by a copy of a Hardy Boys book. And I had never before experienced a book that was more words than illustrations. It did have a couple of illustrations, but it was mostly words. And I started reading this book, and the next thing I knew, it was dinner time. I had been completely transported out of my life and out of my sickness and everything else, into the world of this book. And I loved that I it was, it was such a wonderful escape . . . . I loved being in that world so much as a reader that I wanted to be in that world as a writer, too, so I started writing stories, and that’s the thing that I enjoy, even today. The most about writing is to get into the world of the story so that I am living and experiencing what the characters are going through all on their own. If it’s really working, if it’s really working, it’s more like I’m transcribing what I’m seeing rather than reporting what I already know. The best kind of stories I’ve ever written have been ones where I had some vague idea of how it was going to end, but the ending changed as I told the story. It just got to be a more organic process.
Margaret Bass
What do you think is like the most important thing about interviewing somebody?
TB:
First of all, get the person relaxed and confident and trusting you, you know, assuring the person and tell the person the truth. You know, if you’re planning to use the name of the person, make sure the person knows that the person says, don’t use my name. Honor that. But then I think that if you can, if you can record the conversation, it’s going to be more accurate when you try to go back and quote something, but also, I think that it’s it’s important for you to maybe take notes, at least, this is what I experienced. I would be taking notes on what the person was saying. I thought it was really important, but I wouldn’t write it down right away. I’d let the person say that thing and I think, oh yeah, that’s that’s big. That’s good. But then I wouldn’t just jot it right down. I’d let the conversation go on and then casually write something down so that the person wasn’t particularly worried about saying the wrong thing or giving away too much, or revealing something that he or she didn’t want revealed. So I think you need to be just listening really well, and if somebody says something that you don’t understand, just ask for clarification.
Caroline Welfare
So what advice do you have from people who want to further or advance or just start out on their writing skills?
TB: I would say two things, and you’ve heard all these before. This is not going to be news to you. You should read a lot. You should read. I mean, you’ll learn so much about storytelling and writing from reading the work of others. You’ll start out imitating the kinds of things that you read, and then you’ll one day find your own voice as a writer. But the other thing is to write. Don’t wait. Don’t think, well, when I’m in college or after I graduate from college, I’m going to write this story, or I’m going to write, I’m going to capture this remarkable, Memorable Person later. Do it now, even if you’re just keeping a journal, even if you’re just writing it for yourself, go on and do it. Don’t delay. Writers write. They write and and if you say, if you’re dreaming of being an author, that’s the wrong dream. Authors are people who have written things. I take it that everybody in here wants to be a writer, and that means that writers write just kind of write, write it down, even if you run into a snack, you know, you get into the story and you don’t know where it’s going. Okay, put it aside. Either it will work itself out, or it’ll just be this fragment sitting there that you might use years later or never. But the important thing is that you’re writing. My favorite quotation about writing comes from Thomas Mann, the great German, American novelist who said, and he was very accurate about this, writers are people for whom writing is more difficult than it is for everybody else. Writers are people for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Because writers want to get it exactly right. We want to find exactly the right word, exactly the right image, the best pacing, the proper way to conclude whatever it is we’re working on. We want to get every comma and every period just right. We just want to have it right, not almost right or close enough, but write.
Mason Bibby
So I found when I’m writing opinions that sometimes I have to kind of soften the blows a little bit. So do you do the same thing, or do you just say what you believe, regardless of the potential repercussions?
TB: I think it’s really important to keep the audience in mind if, if you are writing for the North cross community, you want to try to persuade as many people as possible, don’t you? You want to convince them that your opinion is a good opinion, and that what you are saying is really worth buying into. So if you start off just blasting away and insulting large numbers of people in the community, you’re not likely to succeed in that goal. And Lauren was doing a similar exercise for me in English class last week where I asked her to write about a movie review and to evaluate the reviewer’s response to the movie. And the exercise was to show that she understood the other side of the question, to demonstrate that she understood the opposite of what she was going to be saying, so that then, when she got to her point, she had already shown the other side, that she got their concerns and caught on to what they would have said if they had been in her position. Is that helpful? I think that your question basically is, do I just blast away, or am I diplomatic? And I think that diplomacy is likely to win you more readers.
Mia Esposito
What do you when you have writers block?
TB: Take a walk. I’m really serious about that. I used to think that I was so weird because I would sit there and I would think, Okay, I’m here in front of my computer. I’ve got to figure this out. And then finally, after the blood had sprung out of my forehead, and I was so frustrated, and I couldn’t stand it anymore, we just get out and go for a walk.
Caroline Welfare
What is your favorite genre to read or write?
I really enjoy all kinds of writing, fiction and nonfiction, or reading fiction and nonfiction. I like to alternate, actually, between one of the other for writing. I mean, I’ve had most of my success publishing with mystery stories. That’s my main thing. But the story that Lauren is reading for her next English class is not a mystery story, so a literary story. So I like to write that. I also like to write non fiction blogs.
Kaitlyn Perkins
I was just wondering if there was one publication that you thought would be like, good for us to read, to, like, study, like to see how they do things like, what would you choose?
TB: I choose the New Yorker magazine. It’s not pitched at high school kids. Florence heard me say this already. You’d be eavesdropping on a conversation that was not intended for you, but you can still learn a lot about writing from reading the articles in the New Yorker, just really good writing.
Joaquin Downey
So where do you get your inspiration from for your writing, and when you get it, how do you like convert it and apply it to an actual story?
TB: I never know where, when something is going to come along that catches my fancy. Lauren, this is going to be repetitious for you. You may hear this again in English class, but I was recently watching an interview with Billy Collins, the poet sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library. This was a zoom call, and then I was watching this interview with Billy Collins. And Billy Collins, the poet, was reading some of his poems, and two of the poems referred to bananas, and I that really stuck in my head. I was wondering what's up with Billy Collins and bananas, and why? Why does he seem to have that as a motif? So then I wrote a parody, just for fun, a parody of a Billy Collins poem featuring a banana, and then that was fun to write. So I thought, I'm not through with this yet. I went a little more so who would write this poem? How can I put this into a story? And that turned into a story so it can be anything. It can be absolutely anything. You just want to be watching. You just want to be open to anything that comes along. You
want to be observant.
Talon. He also published two novels and some short stories. So we invited him to class to share some of the wisdom he gained over the course of his career.
Jacob Johnson:
What was the biggest motive you pushed for your staff at Woodberry?
TB:
I guess the main thing is just to hit the deadlines . . . that is maybe the hardest part. Deadlines are good. They can focus the mind and get everybody aware that that things need to be finished. But I think that that the best kind of writing occurs over time, so that you’re not trying to do everything at the last minute. You you’ve had a chance to read, to write, to polish, to edit, to rewrite, so that when the deadline approaches, you’re more worried about layout and illustration and getting the pagination right and all those things.
Lauren Boone
What led up to your your interest in English and journalism?
TB:
I’ll try to give you the very, very short version. I grew up here in Roanoke on Rosslyn Avenue, and was typical South Roanoke kid growing up in Roanoke in the 1950s and early 60s. And I can remember when I was maybe 10 years old, I was sick . . . . And my Aunt Margaret brought by a copy of a Hardy Boys book. And I had never before experienced a book that was more words than illustrations. It did have a couple of illustrations, but it was mostly words. And I started reading this book, and the next thing I knew, it was dinner time. I had been completely transported out of my life and out of my sickness and everything else, into the world of this book. And I loved that I it was, it was such a wonderful escape . . . . I loved being in that world so much as a reader that I wanted to be in that world as a writer, too, so I started writing stories, and that’s the thing that I enjoy, even today. The most about writing is to get into the world of the story so that I am living and experiencing what the characters are going through all on their own. If it’s really working, if it’s really working, it’s more like I’m transcribing what I’m seeing rather than reporting what I already know. The best kind of stories I’ve ever written have been ones where I had some vague idea of how it was going to end, but the ending changed as I told the story. It just got to be a more organic process.
Margaret Bass
What do you think is like the most important thing about interviewing somebody?
TB:
First of all, get the person relaxed and confident and trusting you, you know, assuring the person and tell the person the truth. You know, if you’re planning to use the name of the person, make sure the person knows that the person says, don’t use my name. Honor that. But then I think that if you can, if you can record the conversation, it’s going to be more accurate when you try to go back and quote something, but also, I think that it’s it’s important for you to maybe take notes, at least, this is what I experienced. I would be taking notes on what the person was saying. I thought it was really important, but I wouldn’t write it down right away. I’d let the person say that thing and I think, oh yeah, that’s that’s big. That’s good. But then I wouldn’t just jot it right down. I’d let the conversation go on and then casually write something down so that the person wasn’t particularly worried about saying the wrong thing or giving away too much, or revealing something that he or she didn’t want revealed. So I think you need to be just listening really well, and if somebody says something that you don’t understand, just ask for clarification.
Caroline Welfare
So what advice do you have from people who want to further or advance or just start out on their writing skills?
TB: I would say two things, and you’ve heard all these before. This is not going to be news to you. You should read a lot. You should read. I mean, you’ll learn so much about storytelling and writing from reading the work of others. You’ll start out imitating the kinds of things that you read, and then you’ll one day find your own voice as a writer. But the other thing is to write. Don’t wait. Don’t think, well, when I’m in college or after I graduate from college, I’m going to write this story, or I’m going to write, I’m going to capture this remarkable, Memorable Person later. Do it now, even if you’re just keeping a journal, even if you’re just writing it for yourself, go on and do it. Don’t delay. Writers write. They write and and if you say, if you’re dreaming of being an author, that’s the wrong dream. Authors are people who have written things. I take it that everybody in here wants to be a writer, and that means that writers write just kind of write, write it down, even if you run into a snack, you know, you get into the story and you don’t know where it’s going. Okay, put it aside. Either it will work itself out, or it’ll just be this fragment sitting there that you might use years later or never. But the important thing is that you’re writing. My favorite quotation about writing comes from Thomas Mann, the great German, American novelist who said, and he was very accurate about this, writers are people for whom writing is more difficult than it is for everybody else. Writers are people for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Because writers want to get it exactly right. We want to find exactly the right word, exactly the right image, the best pacing, the proper way to conclude whatever it is we’re working on. We want to get every comma and every period just right. We just want to have it right, not almost right or close enough, but write.
Mason Bibby
So I found when I’m writing opinions that sometimes I have to kind of soften the blows a little bit. So do you do the same thing, or do you just say what you believe, regardless of the potential repercussions?
TB: I think it’s really important to keep the audience in mind if, if you are writing for the North cross community, you want to try to persuade as many people as possible, don’t you? You want to convince them that your opinion is a good opinion, and that what you are saying is really worth buying into. So if you start off just blasting away and insulting large numbers of people in the community, you’re not likely to succeed in that goal. And Lauren was doing a similar exercise for me in English class last week where I asked her to write about a movie review and to evaluate the reviewer’s response to the movie. And the exercise was to show that she understood the other side of the question, to demonstrate that she understood the opposite of what she was going to be saying, so that then, when she got to her point, she had already shown the other side, that she got their concerns and caught on to what they would have said if they had been in her position. Is that helpful? I think that your question basically is, do I just blast away, or am I diplomatic? And I think that diplomacy is likely to win you more readers.
Mia Esposito
What do you when you have writers block?
TB: Take a walk. I’m really serious about that. I used to think that I was so weird because I would sit there and I would think, Okay, I’m here in front of my computer. I’ve got to figure this out. And then finally, after the blood had sprung out of my forehead, and I was so frustrated, and I couldn’t stand it anymore, we just get out and go for a walk.
Caroline Welfare
What is your favorite genre to read or write?
I really enjoy all kinds of writing, fiction and nonfiction, or reading fiction and nonfiction. I like to alternate, actually, between one of the other for writing. I mean, I’ve had most of my success publishing with mystery stories. That’s my main thing. But the story that Lauren is reading for her next English class is not a mystery story, so a literary story. So I like to write that. I also like to write non fiction blogs.
Kaitlyn Perkins
I was just wondering if there was one publication that you thought would be like, good for us to read, to, like, study, like to see how they do things like, what would you choose?
TB: I choose the New Yorker magazine. It’s not pitched at high school kids. Florence heard me say this already. You’d be eavesdropping on a conversation that was not intended for you, but you can still learn a lot about writing from reading the articles in the New Yorker, just really good writing.
Joaquin Downey
So where do you get your inspiration from for your writing, and when you get it, how do you like convert it and apply it to an actual story?
TB: I never know where, when something is going to come along that catches my fancy. Lauren, this is going to be repetitious for you. You may hear this again in English class, but I was recently watching an interview with Billy Collins, the poet sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library. This was a zoom call, and then I was watching this interview with Billy Collins. And Billy Collins, the poet, was reading some of his poems, and two of the poems referred to bananas, and I that really stuck in my head. I was wondering what's up with Billy Collins and bananas, and why? Why does he seem to have that as a motif? So then I wrote a parody, just for fun, a parody of a Billy Collins poem featuring a banana, and then that was fun to write. So I thought, I'm not through with this yet. I went a little more so who would write this poem? How can I put this into a story? And that turned into a story so it can be anything. It can be absolutely anything. You just want to be watching. You just want to be open to anything that comes along. You
want to be observant.