Hi, my name is Terry L. White and you can find me at www.terrylwhite.com or at olhippie.chick@yahoo.com. You can also find me poking around the used book sections of thrift stores and at yard sales, looking for books I never read.
2. What did you want to be when you grew up, and how does that tie in with your writing life today?
I wanted to be the queen of the universe, or maybe Katherine Hepburn. I definitely wanted to be Glinda the Good Witch. I could read at a very early age and the characters in books quickly became real to me, so writing down stories was simply the next step.
3. What books influenced your early years, and why?
My grandmother put me in a book club when I was very young and I loved Grimm’s Fairy Tales and books like Treasure Island. I also had access to a book series about a girl named Ruth Fielding, written in the 20's and dealing with the movie industry. It made the art form seem very accessible. Stories made movies. Simple. I also read Gone With The Wind a dozen times while I was in high school, and probably read every novel in the school library and some twice. A good book is every bit as informative and relaxing as a long journey. You go where the author takes you.
4. What do you like to read now?
What is the best book you have read this year? I like to read new literary fiction, and always Steven King. I think King is the novelist of the century for the common man. He lets you look at the monster in the closet – and live. He has a way of touching the pulse of the real America where people get up before first light to work in factories and gas stations. He makes you like his characters and wonder if they can ever get out of the mess he puts them in. The book of the year for me is a real departure from my usual serious fiction: Lily Prior’s La Cuchina. I laughed my ... off! Funniest book I’ve read in years. Highly recommended.
5. Who is your favorite character of all time and why?
No question: Scarlett O’Hara. Scarlett doesn’t let life get her down. She just keeps going, wading through war and social disapproval and failed love with all the aplomb of the Southern belle she really is.
6. What made you choose your genre or subject matter?
Are you kidding? My genre chose me. Someone once said a writer has to open a vein, how true. When I am writing a historical, I just go there, and woe betide the husband, roommate or telemarketer who doesn’t understand the process. I get pretty vague because it is too hard to come back from the other life, it is a lot easier if one just lives there until the story is told.
7. If a young person asked you for advice about his or her writing career, what would you say?
I would tell a young person to work for a newspaper for a few years. It is marvelous discipline and you can learn all sorts of things about how people and government really work. It teaches you to write well about things you are not passionate about and to respect deadlines. One other thing, news writing keeps you humble, people wrap dead fish in them the next day after publication. I would tell them to make connections with publishers and get credits for their work: which means writing, writing, writing and submitting, submitting, submitting. I would tell them to pray, and to learn all they can about marketing. Oh yeah, and not to quit their day job.
8. Five years ago, what was your goal as a writer. What is it now?
For a while, I wanted to sell a lot of books, but after a while I realized I needed to write books, and am not at all good in the marketing aspect. I still don’t have that knack. I wish I did. People say my books are pretty good. So a few years ago, I just wanted to get published. Now I want to be noticed.
9. If you had a magic wish, what would it be?:
I would definitely wish for my books to be noticed. I think that since my work chose me, there may be something in my books that people can learn from. I have that sort of faith. I ask God what I am supposed to do, and sometimes His answer is to write a book, or a poem, or a song. I think I do my part. I don’t know, maybe the doing is the important thing, but being noticed would be nice.
10. Anything else?
I would like to say that any writer has to be in for the long haul and to really be original. I see so many new books that just make me yawn, they are so much like the television show I saw the other night. It is a fine line to write good fiction and not be borrowing ideas from someone in the movie, television or even the book industry. Publishing was always a tough nut to crack and it was always a real trick of what one could produce – and who they knew – to break into the top echelons .Times have really changed for writers. They teach writing in elementary school! Electronic publishing is for the future and books are not going to be paper and ink as they were in the past. Publishing has to go “green” and use much less energy an
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