Q&A with After Dinner Conversation author, Darcy Alvey
A bite-sized interview for your Sunday morning.
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Read Darcy Alvey’s short story, "Emancipation”:
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Q&A
Is there any standard publishing or writing advice that you disagree with? Or any standard advice that you feel is too often neglected?
Best advice I ever received is to read, read, read. Read authors you love over and over. Read first sentences. Read final paragraphs. Read punctuation, dialog, point of view, vocabulary, chapter heads. Read closely to see what works and why it works. Read aloud for cadence. Read even as you write. Take breaks in your writing to read. It will spark ideas, new ways of saying something. Collect words like precious coins and beautiful sentences and paragraphs that knock your socks off.
Is your process for writing philosophical fiction different from the way you approach other works?
All of my stories have a philosophical undertone. They try to explain something about life, why things work the way they do. Quite literally, the term "philosophy" means, "love of wisdom." Most of my stories center around a personal truth come to me through life experiences, a coming to wisdom, a moment in time that changes everything. Not necessarily a big moment, a small moment that helps me see the world in a different way, celebrating our common humanity, our bond to each other no matter our race, our heritage, our religious views, our economic situation.
Are there any ideas or topics that you wish you had the courage to write about?
I’m not sure I could ever write a detailed sex scene, one with exposed body parts flailing about, one with sweat and smells and sounds. My favorite sex scenes are often inuendo, the psyche more than the nuts and bolts. (Just because of this question I am going to take my hands away from my face and try writing a graphic sex scene, see what it feels like. That’s kind of the point of writing, isn’t it? Facing fears?)
Describe your ideal reader.
Someone who reads with joy, with delight, with an open mind, who is into a story for all it has to offer, who waves their fist in the air at a beautiful sentence. My ideal reader spends time with the words, knowing they are the building blocks of the sentences, the paragraphs, the arc of the story. They dive in deep and stay there for a while, writhe around, enjoy the ride.
How do you come up with ideas for your short stories?
I have what I think of as epiphanies, moments of clarity that illuminate something profound about life, personal truths that I want to share. They’re not always big truths. Small profundities, I think of them. For instance, in “Emancipation,” my story in After Dinner Conversation, the question becomes should the “for better or worse” in a marriage vow tie a woman to a life of unhappiness? I have always written from a woman’s point of view. That’s what I know, that’s what I want to explore. I like stories that are rooted in the grit of life, that illustrate the little triumphs, the failings, the effort to do better.
Darcy Alvey is an editor and author, with a degree in journalism from San Diego State University. As a working journalist she rose to Editor in Chief of Life After 50, a Los Angeles-based monthly magazine for older adults with a readership of 500,000. She wrote many of the feature stories herself, receiving several national writing awards through the North American Mature Publishers Association.
She left journalism to pursue creative writing full time, with a focus on short stories. She has had short stories included in a variety of publications including, Wilderness House Literary Review, Foundling Review, The Write Room, Waypoints, 34th Parallel, San Diego Writers Ink, and upcoming this spring in After Dinner Conversation, and this fall in Westwind UCLA.
When not at work on a short story, she is happiest taking her two young grandchildren to the beach and searching for shells.
I love bite-sized interviews! Yes to continuous reading and small epiphanies.