Ask the Writer: Patty Somlo
a short interview with Jen Knox
Jen Knox (JK): Hi, Patty! Thanks for taking some time with Unleash. We were thrilled to share your narrative with our writers. Can you tell us a little about your journey as a writer?
Patty Somlo (PS): I have been writing in some form since high school, but I didn’t take my writing seriously until much later. That began in my late twenties when I started working for a public relations agency. The work in PR eventually led to a 10-year journalism career. When I finally got burnt out from that, I entered a creative writing program and received an M.A. in English with a Concentration in Creative Writing several years later. I first focused on writing poetry, then moved to short fiction and creative nonfiction. I have published four books with small publishers, three short story collections and a memoir.
JK: What is the best piece of advice you've received as a creative person?
PS: I’m a person who needs to practice something, in order to learn. So, it wasn’t advice that helped my writing but having my work edited by skilled editors. The best thing I learned was how essential revision is to good writing. Early on, I could often sense that a piece wasn’t working but I didn’t know what was wrong. From my experiences being edited, I learned how revision is like unpeeling the onion to get to the heart of the story or piece. I learned to not leap from here to there, but to detail specific steps along the way. I learned not to generalize but provide concrete details that bring a reader into the work. In other words, I learned what was meant by the advice most writers hear at some point, to show not tell.
JK: Please share with us one (or a few) of your favorite lines of poetry or prose, and explain what strikes you about the passage.
PS: I could pick out a million lines written by Ann Patchett. She is one of my favorite writers of both fiction and nonfiction. One of the things I so admire about her writing is the way she nails character through specific descriptive details. In one of my favorite essays entitled, “The Wall,” about her experience preparing for and testing to get into the Los Angeles Police Department, which is included in her collection, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, she describes one of the police officers. “This session will be run by Officer Crane, a very slim man with a mustache. His uniform is so tight I can make out his abdominal muscles. The sleeves ride his biceps like tourniquets.”
JK: How did you find your first publication? Was it everything you dreamed it’d be?
PS: Not including articles when I was doing PR and working for newspapers, my first poem was published by the Santa Clara Review. It was thrilling to have a creative piece of mine in print. This was before the Internet, so I actually held the book in my hand and it’s still sitting on my shelf with my books, anthologies and literary journals in which I have work.
JK: What are you working on next, and where can our readers connect with you?
PS: I am at the very beginning stages of a memoir on nature and healing. I am at the point of trying to figure out how I might want to structure the book and what it will include. This, for me, is the hardest part of writing a book!
People can connect with me by going to my website: www.pattysomlo.com.
