Writers-in-Communities Spotlight: Lyle D. Rosdahl

1. At the moment, what project are you collaborating on with WIC?

Trey Moore and I are co-teaching (a new and excellent experience for me) at Krueger Middle School. The seventh graders are wild (what seventh graders aren’t?) but creative and fun to interact with as writers and artists and people. The theme for the project is “Our Part of Town.” We’ve been reading stories and poems about neighborhoods and writing portraits of people and places and each other.

2. What are your writing practices?

I tend to be pretty frenetic when it comes to writing. I get up and move around quite a bit and then sit for half an hour until I get stumped again. Then I pick up everything and move to a bar or a coffee shop or a picnic table. Writing is such a mental process that writers forget about the physicality of it, so I find throwing a ball at the wall or standing out in the sun for a few minutes or picking up a random book can be tremendously helpful in unplugging my brain and making surprising and wonderful connections.

3. What book on the craft of writing do you highly recommend?

I can’t say that I recommend any books on the craft of writing. I can, however, recommend reading a variety of writing including textbooks, field guides, instruction manuals for putting together your Ikea bookcase, scientific treatises, maps, the periodic table and comic books. If you write novels, read a cookbook. Writing is about understanding the world: its beauty, its cultural biases, its political underpinnings. It is also, obviously, about understanding people and what better way to do that than to read everything and anything. And then go talk to some people. Also integral to honing your craft.

4. What writing projects are you working on right now?

Writing’s been very slow recently (I’ve been teaching several classes and doing other work), but I plan to take a semester off in the Spring and spend some time collecting my thoughts. I have several series of things I’m working on including a series of stories inspired (fairly strictly) by loteria cards: La Loteria, a Mystery; La Loteria, Science Fiction; La Loteria, a Western; etc. I’m looking forward to using the same images over and over in different contexts and genres.

***

Lyle D Rosdahl graduated with an MFA from Goddard College and has been published in Tarpaulin Sky and Art Voice. A self published work called “La Loteria,” and other writings, are available to view or download from his website DEADratsPRESS. He facilitates and contributes to Postcard Fiction Collaborative, and is a faculty member of Gemini Ink’s Writers-in-Communities program. Rosdahl also edits the Flash Fiction blog for the San Antonio Current.  He currently lives in San Antonio, Texas.