WiDo Publishing: What kind of writer are you i.e. where do you get your
ideas? What is your inspiration? Do you find any recurring themes in your
writing?
Ann Best: All of my ideas come from the life I’ve lived and the people I’ve
known. Since I’ve lived quite a long life up to now, that’s a lot of ideas! I
also get inspiration from memoirs, especially ones written in the last decade.
And there are many excellent ones out there. As for themes, I suppose the main
ones in the stories and poems I’ve written are loss and betrayal. And the power
of memory.
WP: When did you start writing? How long have you wanted to be a writer?
Best: I
started writing stories when I was in first grade. I can’t remember ever not
wanting to write stories. In sixth grade I remember the teacher had me stand in
front of the class and read a story I had written. “Call of the Canyon.” I have
no other memory of it other than the title. Then in high school I also started
writing poetry. I took two years of creative writing at the old South High
School (now Salt Lake Community College) where my poems and stories were first
published. I was a senior when I got “special commendation” from the old
Seventeen magazine for a story I submitted to a contest. It was called “The Red
Balloon” and was triggered by a friend’s experience and my own memories of
state fairs that I went to with my father when I was young. I took so many writing and English courses in
high school that in my senior year my counselor said I would have to drop one
of the ones I had signed up for and take something in another field or I
couldn’t graduate with my class. Writing, not boyfriends or marriage, was
always uppermost in my mind. This was the Fifties when a woman’s main goal was
marriage. My goal was to get a story published in Redbook magazine. Improbable
romances I wrote as a teenager, rejected. But I had fun trying.
WP: What are your passions and hobbies?
Best: A hobby, by definition, is something you do
for relaxation. There was a time in my life when I took up knitting. Knitting
and watching early re-runs of the Dick Van Dyke Show. I did this because my two
oldest daughters, ages 3 and 1, demanded all of my attention, and energy. I
have never tried to knit since. Not one of my passions. Besides my children and
grandchildren, my only passions are writing, reading, and movies.
WP: Which leads me into the next question: What do you feel your
strengths and weaknesses are as a writer?
Best: My strength is dialogue, my weakness
descriptive passages. I have to work at the latter. Which is one reason why a
few years ago I got passionately involved in trying to write a screenplay. (The
other reason: I absolutely love movies, especially “old” movies—the classics.)
With my son who was taking film at the University of Utah, I talked
screenwriting, I brainstormed ideas. I read Syd Field’s excellent book about
the foundations of screenwriting, watched many of the movies he recommended,
and began plotting two movies, one based on characters out of my own life, the
other based on a 1955 novella published in Redbook magazine that I still have
in my files.
I learned about plot points, character development, and structure.
But the chapter in Syd Field’s book that was pivotal when I began structuring
“In the Mirror Alone” was his chapter on “The Scene.” The single most important
element in a screenplay. Its purpose: to move the story forward. Always
remember: every scene reveals at least one point of necessary story
information. Necessary, not mundane information. In my earlier writing I had
too many mundane details, details that didn’t do anything for story or
character. In a scene, you only want the things that really matter.
In a movie, character is action, action is character. In a
novel, as narrator you can go beyond the action. You can get into the
character’s mind. You can reveal what she’s thinking and feeling. I like this
about the novel. Novels and movies, two different mediums. I’m passionate about
both of them.
WP: What is your favorite book or books?
Best: I have so many, I hardly know where to begin...Everything by Orson Scott Card, Ann Tyler, and Anne Perry. The novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, and Daphne du Maurier. Wuthering Heights, the book and the movie. Memoirs (next to murder mysteries, my favorite genre): Riding the Bus with My Sister by Rachel Simon, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Safekeeping and A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas, Stop-Time by Frank Conroy, This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolf, Warm Springs by Susan Richards Shreve, Keeping Watch by Laurie King, and all of her Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novels. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.
WP: Why did you decide to submit your manuscript to WiDo?
Best: When I finished the final draft of my novel, one of my readers was Richard Cracroft who suggested several publishers. WiDo was one of them. I went into WiDo's website, read the mission statement, and thought my book might be a good fit. Happily someone, or more than one someone, thought it was, too!
About Ann Best: Ann Carbine Best has lived many stories in Utah, Hawaii, Connecticut, and Virginia that she is currently in the process of writing. But Virginia is her favorite place, and she never wants to leave it. She lives in Harrisonburg, in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, with her middle daughter who was disabled in a car crash in 1986. As her daughter's full-time caregiver, she is housebound and thus has plenty of time to write. Throughout her life she has won awards for her stories, essays, and poetry that have appeared in various magazines and journals, including The Ensign, BYU Studies, Phoebe: the George Mason Review, GW Review, and American Poetry Anthology (the Grand Prize poem). She has a B.A. in English from BYU and an M.F.A. degree in creative writing from George Mason University.