I had the recent pleasure of making the acquaintance of a debut novelist who’s soon to be in everyone’s reading library – Irene Woodbury. Irene Woodbury, author of “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis,” is a fiction writer with a twist of humor, compassion, adventure, and a whole lot more! I had the opportunity to get inside the mind of this exciting new writer and am happy to share my behind the scenes’ visit with her.
Irene Woodbury, author of “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis,” is a compelling new writer that you will want to watch for. Expect to see her rise among other great writers such as Elizabeth Gilbert (“Eat, Pray, Love”) and Helen Fielding (“Bridget Jones’s Diary”), two of Woodbury’s greatest inspirations.
Woodbury, who resides in Denver, Colorado, is married with three grown stepsons. Her desire to write started early. Since the age of 8, she spent most of her free time in the public library reading both fiction and non-fiction. Even back then, she had a sense that one day she would write a book. And that she did! I will get into more detail about Woodbury’s novel, “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis,” in a few minutes. Now I would like to share what I learned about Irene Woodbury, who graciously allowed me the opportunity to interview her.
Baconator: If I were to ask your closest friends to describe your personality, what do you think they would say?
Woodbury: I hope they’d say, “she’s funny, generous, great to talk to, but likes to have things her way. Stubborn but loyal, and totally trustworthy. You can tell her anything-she’ll never repeat it. A little shy–it takes a while to get close to her, but once you do, you’re friends for life.”
(After making Irene’s acquaintance, I would have to say personally that she is funny and very personable!)
Baconator: Many non-writers question how authors come up with their ideas for books. What have been some of your inspirations?
Woodbury: Classics like “Madame Bovary,” “The House Of Mirth,” and “Anna Karenina.” These literary masterpieces have had a strong impact on me and my writing style. Two of them feature married women who fall in love with other men, and the lead character in “The House Of Mirth” is a beautiful, gifted, single woman who doesn’t have the social credentials to marry the right man. All three characters end up killing themselves.
By comparison, my book features a confused, unhappy 45-year-old newlywed who goes to Vegas for a girls’ weekend and ends up staying. She ultimately takes on two interesting jobs, makes friends, and meets a few good men. It just shows how dramatically things have changed for fictional women characters, and real women, over the past 150 years. Women today have more options, resources, and independence, so we don’t have to kill ourselves if our marriages are failing, or if we can’t land the right guy. My book is hopeful and humorous. It depicts the same anxieties and challenges that women have always dealt with, but at the end of the day it’s a hopeful book.
Baconator: Do you have any books in mind you are itching to write?
Woodbury: I think it would be interesting to write a sequel to “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis.” There are so many ways I could go with it. I don’t have any specific plans, but I’m thinking about it. I’d also like to write a nonfiction book, maybe a biography of someone I admire. However, at this time, I have no plans in the making. Writing a book is a big commitment. In other words, can my poor husband take another five years of roasted chicken dinners, editorial meltdowns, opening Christmas cards in March, no trips anywhere except to Vegas, and no movies on weekends because I’m at home obsessing and rewriting everything 100 times?
(Let’s hope he can!)
Baconator: What do you think of the stereotype of writers, that they are secluded, often chain smokers, and sometimes anti-social and insomniacs? Do you fit any of the typical stereotypical statements about writers?
Woodbury: Once you go through the demanding, stressful, intense process of writing a novel, you can understand why writers are the way they are. I think a lot of it has to do with control. When you’re writing fiction, you have control over the world you’re creating. The characters do what you want them to do. Nobody can hurt, disappoint, or surprise you. But the minute you stop writing, you’re vulnerable again. You can’t control the real world the way you control the fictional one, so that creates anxiety.
I think a lot of the bad habits, eccentricities, and faults of writers are ways of dealing with this anxiety. Plus, you live in constant fear. If you have a good day, you’re scared that tomorrow won’t be as good. If you have a bad day, you’re scared that tomorrow will be bad also. You’re in a constant state of insecurity, wondering if you’re going to be able to pull it off tomorrow, or even today. I have some of these fears and anxieties, and sometimes it makes you want to hunker down and isolate yourself. What normal human being can put up with all that?
(Very true! Thus, although a poor excuse, part of the reason I smoke!)
Baconator: Are you working on a new book now? Care to share anything on it, or leave us in suspense?
Woodbury: Nothing at the moment. I may do a sequel to “Slot,” or go in a totally different direction. I’m not sure yet, but I miss the escapism of immersing myself in a fictional world every day.
Baconator: What time of day do you find to be more productive for writing?
Woodbury: Best choice: 8 to 11 am. Runner-up: 3 to 7 pm. I try to not write for longer than 3 or 4 hours because, after that point, I lose some of my freshness. I can still write, but the quality isn’t as good.
Baconator: Are you a snacker when writing? If so, your favorite snack.
Woodbury: I’m not coordinated enough to master the art of writing and snacking at the same time. I’ll have to get some popcorn or Doritos and try it.
(I can’t believe she is not a bacon snacker! Who can write without bacon on their side?)
Baconator: Do you develop/write your books old style (paper and pencil) or all computer or combination?
Woodbury: At first, I wrote in long hand because I didn’t have my own computer. But after I had a couple of legal pads filled with chicken scratch, I got a Mac Book and started writing on the computer. Sometimes, if I had a particularly hard passage to write, I went back to the security of long hand because I was comfortable with it.
On my Mac Book, I used this old word processing program called Apple Works because I was comfortable with it. I also had this nervous habit of leaving too many spaces between words and sentences. When I went into the real world and turned the manuscript over to a publisher, all this had to be corrected. It was a little embarrassing explaining this mumbo-jumbo to her. I had to get Microsoft Word installed, and delete the extra spaces so the manuscript could be formatted into Adobe. It was extra work, but I needed to go with what I was comfortable with, so I don’t regret it. Is this TMI, or what?
Baconator: You could never share too much information!
Baconator: What is the best advice you could give any beginner/new writer?
Woodbury: Do what YOU want to do. Don’t write the book your parents, husband, or friends, want you to write. You’re going to have to spend hours working on this every day for months, or years, so it needs to be something you love and believe in. Don’t worry about how others will react to it. Stay true to your own vision.
Now that you have a good feel for who Irene Woodbury is as a person, lets continue on and take a closer look at how Woodbury’s personality played into her writing the book “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis.”
Baconator: Let me start out with telling you, your book was an excellent read. Thank you for sharing it with the world. How long did it take you to complete “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis?”
Woodbury: Thank you for your kind words. It took me a total of 5 years, start to finish.
Baconator: How much of your book “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis” is based off your real life, if any?
Woodbury: Some of the circumstances are similar to my own. I had a job in the corporate world in L.A. I moved to Houston to be with my then-boyfriend, who got a job transfer there. We got married in a dreary little ceremony, with just the two of us, in an industrial suburb surrounded by oil refineries. We lived in a house that had chameleons, hornets’ nests, killer termites, leaks in the roof, and a broken oven. (That was on a good day.) And I was lousy at dinner parties, as I’m sure many people would attest!
My husband was a workaholic. I missed my job, friends, and apartment. I felt lost and a little lonely. But then I started going to school, made friends, and grew to love Texas. I took many literature courses at the University of Houston. The professors were great, so were the students, and the campus was beautiful. I graduated in 1993. I was going to enroll in grad school to study women’s literature, but my husband got transferred to Denver in 1994. I was not a happy camper. We both loved Houston and didn’t want to leave. I still have good friends there. So, some of it is autobiographical, but the whole Las Vegas part is purely fictional. Too bad, because that long weekend with Paula looks like fun!
Baconator: Are the characters based on real life people?
Woodbury: Most of the characters are composites of people I know, or have known. Their traits and personalities are exaggerated. The reality of them would be a lot less interesting and compelling. Other characters I made up out of thin air. I don’t know where they came from.
Baconator: Did you have a solid idea of how you wanted your characters to develop in the story, or did they evolve naturally as you wrote?
Woodbury: As I wrote the book and revised every chapter over and over, they became more real and complex. It took years to get some of them right. Roger, for instance. At first, he was this boring workaholic husband in Houston, but as the years went by, he developed and grew and turned into an attractive, intelligent, sort of passionate, witty guy. It made the book better because it makes Wendy’s choices harder and more controversial. She doesn’t have an easy time making up her mind-and neither do readers.
I came up with characters as I needed them to flesh out and develop the story. The book is like a giant puzzle. The characters are pieces that need to be the right size and shape to complete it.
I started out with Wendy and Roger. Out of necessity, Roger’s bosses and wives came along, then Paula. In Las Vegas, other characters needed to be introduced. I created them as the story moved along.
Baconator: How did you go about choosing the characters’ names in your book?
Woodbury: Coming up with the right names was hard. I changed some of them five to ten times. I Googled popular names for baby boys and girls born in the South to get the names of the characters in Texas and Louisiana. It took me days to get the right name for Maxwell’s aunt in Shreveport who’s going to send the praline cheesecake recipe. It’s Aunt Lottie. I searched through hundreds of names to pick that one, and she isn’t even a real character. She’s just referred to in an e-mail. But it made a big difference in the authenticity and flow of the e-mail. The names are really important because they give you a sense of the character. They also give you a visual. Once you read the name, you can almost see the person-if it’s the right name. And in novel-writing, you need to provide all the visual clues about the characters you can to help the readers assess who they are and what they’re about.
Baconator: If you could rewrite or edit any of “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis,” what, if anything, would you change?
Woodbury: One big mistake I made was that the book was too long. At 175,000 words, it was hard to get an agent or publisher interested, so I cut 36,000 words. That was hard on me, and the book. It took months to re-edit it so that the cut material was still in the book, but in bits and pieces interspersed throughout. Next time, I’ll write a 125,000-word-novel and avoid the extra work and anguish.
Baconator: What was your biggest struggle in writing “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis?”
Woodbury: Achieving the same quality of writing throughout all 28 chapters. I rewrote each one about 100 times so that the level of writing would be consistent throughout the book. It was a real endurance test.
Baconator: If you had to pick out just one favorite line from “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis”, what would it be?
Woodbury: When Maxine asks Wendy during her job interview at Pork Chops, “How many broads can wear Depends and a G-string at the same time?” Talk about a visual! It really makes you wonder.
Baconator: What would you like readers to get from “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis,” without giving the entire storyline away?
Woodbury: That it’s a funny book with a lot of heart. That it’s about someone who’s basically lost and trying to find her way through a transitional point in life. That the characters will seem so real, you will swear you know them. That I laughed a lot while I wrote it, but I also cried.
Baconator: Anything else you would like to share with readers about you or “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis?”
Woodbury: Midlife crisis is often viewed as a silly experience for self-indulgent middle-aged people who have too much time on their hands. That’s a little simplistic, and not fair. We’re not getting any younger, and time is passing. Do what makes you happy. It’s later than you think.
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I don’t think I could have written a better closing than that! You can pick up your copy of “A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis” on Amazon or Barnes & Noble today.
Thank you everyone for allowing me to share with you Irene Woodbury, and thank you Irene for allowing me to share you!