Ask the Author: Carl Rollyson
Answered Questions (7)
Carl Rollyson
I like that film very much and I’m not sure why I didn’t say more about it. I may not have had that much more information to relate or it may have been a matter of pacing and where I felt I could spend time on a film. Each chapter has its own rhythms and sometimes that means some works do not get the attention they deserve. But a book and how it is shaped has its own logic.
Carl Rollyson
I've never had writer's block, perhaps because I write nonfiction that is narrative, and so I have a story to tell building on what I find during my research.
Carl Rollyson
Having a project that no one can take away from you.
Carl Rollyson
You have to belief in yourself. Quite worrying about the competition and ask yourself why you, as a writer, are uniquely qualified to write. It doesn't matter if you are right. I often begin in a state of self-delusion but eventually I find I actually do have something to contribute.
Carl Rollyson
I am completing a biography of Walter Brennan, winner of three Academy Awards, and a huge television star in the 1950s.
Carl Rollyson
For me writing, which most often means biography, is simply the effort to understand the life of writer, performer, and public figure in ways that no other kind of writing can satisfy. That is enough inspiration for me.
Carl Rollyson
My most recently published book, a biography of Sylvia Plath, is a book I have wanted to do for over a decade. The fiftieth anniversary of her death, however, is what caught a publisher's attention--and the fact that I had new material from archives and interviews and a new approach.
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