Welcome to Who’s on Fourth where we interview one member of the YeahWrite community and the interview will publish the fourth Monday of each month. Next in the series features Arden Ruth interviewing Tara of Laissez Faire.
YeahWrite on YeahWrite: Arden interviews Tara
In early 2015, Tara first stumbled upon our little community when another writer submitted one of her posts to our grid. Luckily, she decided to stick around since then.
A YeahWrite member put one of my nonfiction articles up on the grids. I was curious as to why there were more visitors from link paths I didn’t recognize. I had just started my third blog, Laissez Faire, in January of that year and had tentatively put up some fiction. I kept coming back to YeahWrite because it was interesting to be able to read the stories of regulars and a safe place to share and test the waters. No pressure. I found rejections difficult at first, but since they are the nicest rejections I’m ever likely to get, they helped me to cope with the anxiety. I was apprehensive about putting my fiction “out there,” but it was a change and an opportunity to be among writers.
You can usually find Tara hanging our with myself and others on the fiction|poetry grid, though she usually shies away from one of those.
I am rarely on any other grid except fiction. I try some of the poetry like Haiku or simple rhyme schemes, but when a poem type needs to scan, I am “tone” deaf. I can’t seem to write those.
You are not alone, Tara! As always, I wanted to know what advice Tara would give to any newcomers to our page who might be a little nervous about diving onto one or both of our grids.
Write something and hit the send button. Eat cake or have an adult beverage to take your mind off of the voice that tells you to “undo”! Don’t be afraid to comment on other’s stories, or be afraid and do it anyway. The more you give, the more you get.
Tara has been writing for as far back as she can recall. She has a few goals for her writing as well, including publication.
It started with rewriting books and movies in my head if I didn’t like the ending or thought a character wasn’t to my liking. Story thoughts would keep me up at night. I was probably about ten when I switched from construction paper to notebooks. I even took an over-priced correspondence course for writing children’s literature when I was eighteen. I printed my stories on a dot matrix printer and sent them in the mail with three twenty-nine cent stamps. I want to publish one of my short fiction pieces; to reach that goal, I started sending out a few. I desperately want to finish my novella; I keep writing it in my head but I can’t seem to do anything when I get to the keyboard.
When Tara isn’t writing, you can find her doing all sorts of different things, but she’d probably most likely prefer sleeping.
You can find me refereeing my children (seven-year-old girl and five-year-old boy) and being followed by two cats and a puppy. I teach algebra at a local college (I know it doesn’t follow), and back in the day when I wasn’t so tired I could be found reading Lord of the Rings, Dune, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Clan of the Cave Bear yearly. These days I play Monster Legends and watch Netflix because I am too tired for anything that requires a lot of brain effort. My favorite activity these days is ignoring the laundry.
Mine too!
Tara, thank you for letting us get to know you a little better here at YeahWrite. We are so happy to have you in our community! Make sure you follow Tara’s blog, Laissez Faire. You can also follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
Oh, you want more? Well here are five things you never knew about Tara:
- She has always wanted to go to Comic Con or Australia (possibly a Comic Con in Australia?);
- She has made her own soap;
- When her mom would ground her from TV, she would read the World Book Encyclopedia;
- She sometimes reads the ending of books first; and
- Both of her children were born at home.
Are you ready for the YeahWrite #311 Weekly Writing Challenges opening this week? We hope so! Your badges await in the sidebar. Grab the code, paste into the text or HTML view of your post, then submit your post to the grids for a little friendly competition. We’re glad you’re here.
About the author:
