Rob Roy
Author of Stoneview (New Society Press)
Read the review here.
A little about myself: Rob Roy, with Jaki, his wife of 35 years, have owned and operated Earthwood Building School in West Chazy, New York, since 1981. Earthwood specializes in “green” building techniques, such as cordwood masonry and earth-sheltered housing. In 2007, Earthwood hosted an international conference on megalithic stone building. The couple have taught low-cost building techniques throughout North America, as well as in New Zealand and Chile. The website for Earthwood is www.cordwoodmasonry.com
When did you start reading, and what did you like to read as a kid?
I was reading by age 5 and started “writing” about the same time. I would dictate Roy Rogers stories to my mother, who hand-printed them (so I could read them back) on four heavy oaktag sheets, taped back to back and top to bottom. This yielded a stiff double-sided document 8.5 inches wide and 22 inches long. I would keep a close eye on how much space was left, so that I could wind the story down to a conclusion. I imagine the action must have been fast and furious by the middle of the last sheet. I surely wish I had one or two of those old stories today!
When you were growing up did you have books in your home? Books were available at home, but I also got a lot of books from the library. I’d go with my mother or older siblings and pick out 5 or 6 to take home.
When did you think about becoming a writer? Was there someone who got you interested in writing?
I don’t think it was intentional, but my parents named me Robert Louis Roy. So I gravitated towards Robert Louis Stevenson, and even played the part of Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island fame, in a Cub Scout play when I was about 8 or 9. After the Roy Rogers dictated stories, the first “book” I wrote myself was Sharkey and the Woodpecker, a story featuring talking animals. Sharkey was a clever squirrel and the Woodpecker was his nemesis, but they wound up the best of friends in the end. The story was illustrated by Anita Halm, my third-grade classmate. She did the most beautiful fine line drawings, not just for a nine-year-old, but for anyone. (Anita, if you read this, get in touch!) I wish I had that book, too. It survived until I left home for world travel at 19 years of age, but was lost while I was away. I remember that my aunt read it years after it was done, and loved it.
I read Wind in the Willows and The Hobbit when I was in the third grade, and even managed The Fellowship of the Ring, before getting bogged down in The Two Towers. This was very soon after Tolkien’s trilogy was published and long before it became well-known. But the books that gave me my love of science, history, archaeology, travel and adventure were comic books, particularly the wonderful Uncle Scrooge McDuck adventures written and drawn by Carl Barks, although no one knew the artist’s name at the time. Barks researched his books thoroughly, using resource material like National Geographic, so his facts and legends were based on real geography, history and classic mythology. Even today, I often get the right response on Jeopardy because of tidbits of information learned from Scrooge/Barks.
While my mother helped launch my writing career at age 5, there were two people who helped me hone my skills. The first was my 11th grade English teacher, Peter Frank. Like Mary Poppins, he just kind of floated into Farmington (Connecticut) High School for my junior year, and moved on when it was finished. He encouraged and helped me with my writing and would often read my one and two-page efforts to the class. He was also the class advisor for a new school literary magazine, with which I became involved. He was the only teacher I ever knew to have students over to his house for discussion groups.
The second major influence on my writing was David Smith, my close neighbor and friend for several years while I lived in Dingwall, Ross-shire, in the Highlands of Scotland. Dave was a successful writer of adventure thrillers along the Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean models, writing under the pen name of David Mariner. We wrote a television play together, and submitted it to the BBC, but it was not accepted. Its value was in teaching me more about writing, and, particularly, the discipline of writing. I was writing an autobiographical novel at the time. Thanks to Dave’s tutelage, I completed it in 9 months, with seven drafts. 350 pages, about 75,000 words. I submitted it to Canongate, a publisher in Edinburgh, and received an excellent personal rejection letter, which indicated that they had almost accepted it for publication, and encouraged me to keep writing. Dave told me, correctly, that it is very unusual to get such an encouraging rejection letter in response to an unsolicited manuscript. I did not write again for several years, but all of my 15 book ideas have been accepted since, although two of them were accepted by the second, not the first, publisher.
How do you write? Do you have a daily routine? What’s good about it? What do you hate about it?
I do not wait for inspiration. Nothing would ever get written. I do a simple outline, so that I know roughly what has to be said in a chapter. Then I just sit down to the keyboard and start writing, without too great a care about the writing quality. I agree with Vonnegut, who said, and I paraphrase: “Writing is the easiest thing in the world. Just say something in words and keep going over it until it sounds right.” That’s my approach. In my earlier years, I would sometimes write two or three thousand words in a day, once, I think, hitting four thousand plus. Of course, I’d spend the entire next day rewriting it to make it intelligible! Now, at 60, I find that I can endure about six hours before my brain is exhausted, but that might still amount to 2000+ words if it is a subject I know well. And I need fewer rewritings than I needed in my 30’s and 40’s. Experience, I guess.
I don’t really “hate” anything about writing. I rather enjoy it. It is lonely work, I suppose, and I welcome a little society after a long day of it.
Any particular story to tell concerning the writing of this book?
The question requires a little background. For about 30 years, I have been writing books in the alternative building field, with occasional forays into loosely related subjects like stone circles, mortgage freedom and sauna. Most of my books have been very subject specific: cordwood masonry, earth-sheltered housing, timber framing, sauna, stone circles, etc. But Stoneview is different. It takes the reader through several different alternative building disciplines, all of which were covered in earlier books. But there is sufficient depth in each technique – the floating slab foundation, cordwood masonry wall building, (octagonal) timber framing and living roofs – for the owner-builder to duplicate the Stoneview guesthouse at our Earthwood Building School in West Chazy, New York. No other book is required to duplicate the little (325 square foot) cabin.
Writing the book was fairly easy, and it went quite quickly, about three months. I didn’t have a contract on the book, although I was offered one by New Society Publishers (www.newsociety.com). At 60, I guess I no longer feel the need to suffer the pressure of deadlines. The book was easy to write because (A) my wife Jaki and I took copious digital images of the actual Stoneview building project and (B) I knew the building techniques really well. A fun part of the book, for me, was reacquainting myself with certain aspects of plane geometry, which I had taught in a Massachusetts prep school 40 years earlier, specifically the geometry of the octagon. I share the fun with the reader for a few pages, aided by fine computer line drawings from my friend, Doug Kerr.
What’s some good advice that you’ve received concerning writing? What’s some advice that you could offer young writers?
When I was still an unpublished writer, I told my friend Dave Smith that I would write on days that I felt inspired to write. Dave, who maintained a very strict writing regimen, during which nothing got in the way, soon set me straight, to my eternal gratitude. If you wait for inspiration or until you “feel like writing,” you’ll never get anything finished. Have a specific time set aside for writing … and write. Writer’s block? Here’s one way to get rid of it: Start writing! Get words down. It doesn’t matter if they are good or bad. As long as you know what you are supposed to be writing about that day, get writing! Think of these words as your clay. Make it into a fine sculpture later.
Starting a book can be particularly daunting. When I wrote my autobiographical novel, I just started writing, and ended up throwing out the first six pages. Page seven was the right place for the book to start. It was like the story was already in progress, without a lot of unnecessary background and introduction. With non-fiction, as with fiction, outline the whole book, by chapter. This outline can be as detailed as you want, just so you know what you’re writing about that day. Then write it, as fast as you can, without too much concern for quality. Finally, using Vonnegut’s advice, “rewrite it until it sounds right,”
How did you find the publisher for this book? What has your experience with the publisher been like?
I had done three books with Chelsea Green Publishing Company in Vermont, and submitted an idea for a new book on cordwood masonry, because Sterling, NewYork, was letting my old cordwood book go out of print. Chelsea declined the idea, so I sent it to New Society, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, who picked it up. They have not turned down a book since. After doing Cordwood Building (2003), Timber Framing for the Rest of Us (2004) and Earth-Sheltered Houses (2006) with them, publisher Chris Plant and his wife, Judith, stayed with us at Earthwood while they were out east on business. They were actually our first guests at Stoneview, and offered me a contract on the book, which I wouldn’t sign until I had submitted a completed manuscript. Now I’m working on another book for them, again without a contract.
I have done 15 books with three major publishers. I have been fortunate to have good experiences and relationships with all three, but I find New Society to be the most satisfying – and fun - to work with. We get along very well, they do a quality job on the books, and they keep their book prices affordable for owner-builders who don’t have a lot of money in the first place.
What are you working on at the moment?
For over eight years, I have been the editor/publisher/writer of Club Meg News, the Journal for Stone Circle Builders and Enthusiasts. It comes out twice a year, at the summer and winter solstice. Doug Kerr and I are just finishing up the Winter Solstice 2007 issue. It is quite possible that we may have the smallest subscription list of any publication on the planet.
My winter writing will be a return to a book that started a few years ago, one that I have always wanted to write. Unfortunately, other books - for which I had contracts - got in the way. I can’t tell you what it is about except that it is completely different from anything I’ve done before, and my most creative work since Stone Circles. Dave Smith taught me 37 years ago: “Books are copyright, Rob. Ideas are not.”
What are you reading?
I just read a couple of thrillers by James Rollins. They remind me of the page-turners that my friend David (Smith) Mariner used to write. Before that, I read Forgotten Vilcabamba, another page-turning adventure story – but absolutely true – by my friend Vince Lee. In the book, Vince documents the location of the important sites of the last days of the Inca in Peru, from ground evidence recorded during four separate expeditions into the rain and cloud forests north of Cuzco.
And I still read Uncle Scrooge! Fortunately, for the past 15 years or so, the Carl Barks legacy has been taken over by a wonderful artist/writer named Don Rosa, with whom I have had some email correspondence. We have backgrounds in stone masonry in common. Rosa researches his books every bit as thoroughly as Barks, and can draw panels and write dialog that make me laugh out loud.
