Bob Welch with Norma Sax
/Bob Welch is an American author of more than two dozen books, an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon, award winning journalist. He has been honored multiple times by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists,[1] and won The Seattle Times C.B. Blethen Award for Distinguished Feature Writing and was awarded the National Society of Newspaper Columnists “Best Writing” award two times. Track & Field Writers of America’ named his recent book, The Wizard of Foz: Dick Fosbury’s One-Man High-Jump Revolution, the 2019 “Book of the Year.
Bob's latest book is "Letters from Dachau: A Father's Witness of War, a Daughter's Dream of Peace", that he wrote along with Clarice Wilsey, whose father was a doctor with the US Army division that liberated Dachau. The story recounts her father's heroics in World War II and her family's struggle living with the changed man who returned home. http://bobwelch.net/
1. Where did you grow up and how did your upbringing influence your desire to become a writer?
I grew up in Corvallis and was influenced by parents who encouraged me to make life an adventure (courtesy of my father, who took me on high-Cascades hiking and fishing trips) and to use my imagination (courtesy of my mother, who bought me a Tudor Tru-Election electric football set for my fifth birthday and, when it broke, suggested I simply create my own games in my head.) I did so, then wrote stories and drew “photos” based on each game. When I decided to smear mud on the metal playing field to give it a more authentic feel – no artificial turf in the late 1950s and early 1960s – she was all for it, even though it came from her garden. Neither of my parents was a writer. But both my sister (Linda Crew) and I became writers. Go figure.
2. What is the most challenging part of the writing process for you and how do you address it?
Getting initial traction. It’s easy to write when you have a great feel for your story, when you can start seeing it take shape, when you can imagine where it might go.
It’s tough in the early going when you’re “living on a prayer.” That’s why I’ve come to believe the difference between those who write and those who wish they could write is a willingness to endure the painful process in order to bring the story to fruition. Everyone talks about writing as art. But it’s also endurance. And discipline. And being stubborn enough to not quit. So I “address it” by persevering even when I want to quit. I’ve always been inspired by that Hemingway line: “Easy writing makes hard reading.”
3. You’ve led many writing workshops and university classes for beginners and seasoned writers. What is the biggest challenge you hear the most from workshop and college students and what advice do you give?
Two main obstacles for most people: (a) an unwillingness to really think through their story at the start and (b) a desire to want to have written a book instead of a desire to write a book.
With the former, I mean lack of focus. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, and writers create in all sorts of different ways; but most beginners don’t spend enough time figuring out what, specifically, their story is about. I highly recommend Jon Franklin’s Writing for Story, which revolutionized how I think about writing everything from an 800-word column to a 75,000-word book. Franklin teaches a method of understanding your story that involves three-word descriptions. It is, I would imagine, the closest writers ever get to Navy SEAL training. A hard concept to grasp. But once you understand it, you’ll never look at a story the same way again.
With the latter, I mean lack of – here’s that word again – discipline. I find a lot of people who somehow think writing should be easy. Goodness, what other pursuit immediately builds in a reason to stop – the mythical “writer’s block,” ‑ as if we’d be OK with our knee surgeon were she, in mid-procedure, to toss aside her scalpel and say, “I’m outta here. Just not feeling it today.” Lots of would-be writers like the idea of writing, but not the actual process of writing. Nothing floats my boat like opening my mail and finding a book that one of my students talked about five years before — and there it is, finished. Once you face the fact that writing can be hard, it becomes way easier. And you find yourself in stretches of wonder as I did recently in Yachats, waking up at 3:22 a.m. with an idea, starting to write, and not finishing until 10 p.m.
4. You’ve taught writing to inmates. How has that influenced how you teach non-incarcerated students? Has it influenced your own writing process and, if so, how?
What the writers at the Oregon State Penitentiary taught me is how easily those of us on the “outside” squander our freedom, our opportunities, our possibilities. Goodness, these guys hung on my every word. They were hungry to learn. When asked to read aloud, the hands shot up across the room like native spears in a tribal war. This is not a blanket condemnation of young people, the University of Oregon in general or the School of Journalism & Speech in particular, but I found only occasional glimmers of this while teaching at the university level. I was, from 1990 to 2015, disappointed to see a marked drop in many young people when it comes writing. And absolutely fired up to see the enthusiasm in the state pen. Conversely, I drove home from Salem telling myself: never take for granted the freedom you have to write.
5. Your books have covered a wide range of topics from World War II to an Olympic high jumper to children’s stories. How do you pick your topics?
Somewhere I read if you want to make a lot of money as a writer, you find a single topic that connects with readers and then just modify it with each new book. John Grisham has succeeded wonderfully at that. In other words, if the audience just loved your trumpet solo, don’t bring out your banjo in the second act. I have, however, done just the opposite – and proven the theory absolutely … correct. I have made very average sums of money switching from this direction to that, but the pursuit itself has made me rich. In the people I’ve met, the place I’ve gone, the experiences I’ve had. In the wonder of making some sort of difference in a sometimes-awful world. In making someone laugh. Yes, I’ve simply followed my muse — sports early on in life, column writing, books, children’s books (when I became a grandfather) and now doing lots of helping others write books. I once heard that Grisham created his own miniature baseball park for his children, but, hey, Welch Stadium was amazing, if small, in its day.
I love to write about people who overcome obstacles, who are quietly heroic, who don’t pine for the spotlight but deserve it. I have never had much enthusiasm for writing about the rich, the famous, and the beautiful because I often find their stories to be not stories at all. Once a publisher tried to interest me in writing a book about an NBA basketball player. He went on and on about all that the guy had accomplished, which actually wasn’t all that much to begin with. But when I said, “So, what’s the story?” the guy had no comeback. I love true storytelling, not just vomiting up stats and superlatives about someone.
6. What keeps you interested in a topic? How do you maintain your passion for a subject as you do the heavy lifting of researching and writing?
My newspaper background helped me as a book-writer in numerous ways, among them forcing me to get interested in a subject that I wasn’t immediately fascinated about. When I was a features writer in Bellevue, Washington, my editor assigned me a “Home” story on doorknobs. Ten years into my career by then, I didn’t frown or shrug my shoulders. I just said, how can I write the best story possible on doorknobs? I had fun with it. I challenged myself to get to the end this story and say, Dang, that guy made me care about doorknobs. It wound up winning a statewide award. In other words, I’m convinced you can become interested in virtually any subject if you have to. I am most interested in people, and nearly everything I write winds up “there.” But I’ve taught myself to “get interested” in stuff that I might not necessarily have had an innate interest to begin with. When I started American Nightingale, an Oregon Book Award finalist about a Jewish immigrant who was the first U.S. nurse to die after the landings at Normandy, I had no particular interest in war, nursing or the Jewish culture. Two years later I was enthralled with all three. The key to staying interested in a subject is the fun of anticipating the questions readers will have, finding answers for those questions and becoming an “expert” on the subject in the process.
7. You write non-fiction that requires a great deal of research. What are your go-to research resources?
Doors. Metaphorical doors. You just keep pushing until one of them opens. If you can’t find something out by going through the front door, I’ve told students, come in the side window. Or down the chimney. In the last two decades, of course, the Web has revolutionized the information-gathering process, and I use it as much as anyone. But great researchers have something far more powerful than the Web: imaginations and a sense of desperation. It’s a powerful combination. When I was a kid and I’d lose a sock, my mother would say: “Where would you look if you were the last person on earth?” And I’d find it. Because I had to. It’s the same way when looking for missing information. You start pushing on doors. Scan the web. Send emails. Make phone calls. Talk to people. Read books. Watch movies. Ask an interviewee a question in a different way than you asked it the first time. Just do what you (legally) have to do. I just finished a 70,000-word rough draft on a book about an American soldier and a German soldier who save each other’s lives in their twilight years, both having suffered from severe PTSD. I had nine notebooks of hard-copy info, maps, interviews, articles, etc. – probably 1,500 pages — and used maybe 10% of that info in writing the first draft. Now I get to go back and write the book “from the information back into the story.” So, your best resource is the stuff between your ears.
8. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
First, decide how badly you want to succeed. And then be willing to make the sacrifice to get there. Not everybody needs to commit to “writing four hours every day” or “keeping a journal every night.” But if you do make the commitment to getting good, then honor your effort by putting in the blood, sweat and tears.
Writers need the confidence to believe they have something to say to the world, the humility to let others help them say it better, the endurance to keep going when it hurts, and the courage to overcome their fears. Ha, what’s so hard about that?
Thanks so, much, Bob. http://bobwelch.net/