Dianne Ebertt Beeaff of ‘On Traigh Lar Beach’: 5 Things You Need to Know to Become a Great Author

An Interview With Theresa Albert

To write successfully requires Patience, Practice, and Persistence, in no particular order.

As part of my interview series on the five things you need to know to become a great author, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dianne Ebertt Beeaff.

Dianne Ebertt Beeaff is the award-winning author of six published books, her latest the short story collection, On Traigh Lar Beach, released by She Writes Press. Also in print are the 2000 best seller A Grand Madness, Ten Years on the Road with U2, its sequel A Grand Madness, U2 Twenty Years After which was a recent Winner in the Music Category in the 2020 National Indie Excellence Awards, the poetry collection Homecoming, an historical fiction novel Power’s Garden, and the non-fiction book entitled Spirit Stones, Unraveling the Megalithic Mysteries of Western Europe’s Prehistoric Monuments. A native of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, Dianne and her husband, Dan, now live in Arizona and are the parents of two children.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you share a story about what brought you to this particular career path?

Thank you for this opportunity. I’m honored to be here.

The single book that made me want to be a writer was a children’s biography of the singer Marion Anderson called Deep River Girl, which I found in third grade in the bookmobile that stopped once a week one street over from my home in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. The challenges Marion faced, her passion — the arc of her life we would call it these days — showed me even then that every person, every thing, every place had a story, and that, perhaps, someday I could tell some of them. I began my writing career in magazine journalism, often writing profiles of people who displayed a similar passion for their work. Later, I applied that same criteria to the books I wrote, first channeling my passion for the remarkable Irish band, U2, into the memoir A Grand Madness, Ten Years on the Road with U2 (2000) and its sequel A Grand Madness, U2 Twenty Years After (2019), as well as other books both before and after.

Can you share the most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your career?

I have had many interesting experiences in my career, but one of the most exciting involved a hike to the remains of the Power family ranch. When I first moved to Arizona, I took several university classes that delved into the history of the American Southwest. One of these brought me to the violent confrontation between Mormon settlers and Texan ranchers in the Gila Valley in the early nineteenth century. This became the background for my historical novel, Power’s Garden (2009), research for which took me deep into the Galiuro Mountains on the edge of the valley, with my husband and son. That extraordinary adventure involved an eight-mile hike into Power’s Garden itself and left us stranded when gas was syphoned from our car, which we’d left back at our base camp.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in your journey to becoming an author? How did you overcome it? Can you share a story that other aspiring writers can learn from?

Like most writers, time management has been one of the biggest challenges I have faced in my career. Though my first publication was a poem published when I was eighteen, I had two small children and was working fulltime when I began writing in earnest. In addition, I’m not a very disciplined writer. I have never been able to stick to so many words a day, so many pages a day, so many hours a day. Too often the next shiny object catches my attention and takes me away from writing. Nevertheless, something very positive has grown from this. I can write almost anywhere and at almost any time, snatching and exploiting the most elusive opportunities. When my son was about two years old, I wrote at odd hours and short snatches of time at a small blue plastic typewriter. I would occasionally give him pots and pans to bang away at while I worked. At one point, he was under my desk throttling away, and suddenly a small pudgy baby hand reached up and punched a typewriter key. But he was back under the desk again and I soldiered on. Learning to be flexible in any area of life is a distinct advantage for any writer.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Not really a funny story, and I can laugh about it now, but many years ago, when I had just begun a freelance writing career, and following on my first article publication — a piece on Anglo-Saxon personal names for the British journal History Today — I wrote a similar piece titled “Totemism and the Domestic Cat.” I fired it off unsolicited to a magazine in Cardiff, Wales, Clan Chattan — Cat Clan — being an ancient Welsh tribe. The response was a letter from the editor which read in part: “I’m afraid that I found the article a rather ‘lack-luster’ affair . . . . a very dry discussion.” Naturally, I was heartbroken. But in retrospect, this is the single most helpful letter I’ve ever gotten in terms of my writing career. This forthright opinion gave me concrete evidence of the importance of studying the market, not only in terms of content, but in terms of specific style. Though I no longer write in the area of magazine journalism, I’ve kept that letter to remind me how important passion for your work, in both words and subject matter, can be to success.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

I am presently working on a second short story collection, this one based in Arizona and involving characters from my first short story collection, On Tràigh Lar Beach (2020). I am also working on a third memoir with the working title Infinite Paradise, a natural history account of the cottage my father built on sixteen acres along the Conestoga River in Southern Ontario, Canada, in the late 1950s. Structured around the seasons, it will include physical, historical, anecdotal, and spiritual perspectives, along with a few pencil drawings and photographs. I grew up in this remarkable space, and just as my passion for the music and vision of U2 informed A Grand Madness, U2 Twenty Years After and its prequel, A Grand Madness, Ten Years on the Road with U2, I hope to bring my deep reverence and affection for Paradise to this project.

Can you share the most interesting story that you shared in your book?

As A Grand Madness, U2 Twenty Years After, is so personal, for me there are lots of interesting stories. One of my favorites is the short account of passing along copies of the first U2 book, A Grand Madness, Ten Years on the Road with U2, to the band members themselves, especially an episode with bassist Adam Clayton. As he browsed through the book, he repeatedly asked me where my children were, which totally flummoxed me. How did he know I had children? Was he implying I should be home taking care of them? It finally occurred to me that he’d already seen a copy of the book left in the studio the day before by Bono, and that really gratified me.

What is the main empowering lesson you want your readers to take away after finishing your book?

I would hope that readers would not only open to or have their view of this remarkable band expanded, but to realize that the simple prerequisites of admiration and enthusiasm make almost everyone a fan of something or someone, and that it’s legitimate to express your passion, whether it’s for gardening, baseball, birding, or some aspect of contemporary culture. As the book’s preface says, “if you’re not a U2 fan, this book will give you insight into and some appreciation and understanding of a fan’s mind-set. But if you are a fan, especially a U2 fan, you’ll know exactly what I mean.”

Based on your experience, what are the “5 Things You Need to Know to Become a Great Author”? Please share a story or example for each.

1. If you want to be a writer, you have to write, write, write! The writing always comes first, beyond any desire for fans or fame or publication. Write what you’re ‘called’ to write, if you have to, but write, write, write.
2. Have a good story and tell it well. The most beautiful prose can rarely stand alone, without the firm foundation of a good story to support it.
3. Be open and willing to help market your work. As the publication industry stands now, you can’t shrink from marketing. With all the competition out there, even writers at big presses have to dabble. The trick is to keep the writing and the marketing in balance.
4. Don’t compare yourself to others. There will always be someone better than you and there will always be someone worse.
5. To write successfully requires Patience, Practice, and Persistence, in no particular order.

What is the one habit you believe contributed the most to you becoming a great writer? (i.e. perseverance, discipline, play, craft study). Can you share a story or example?

I’ve never seen myself as a ‘great’ writer. A good writer, maybe. Occasionally a very good writer. But I would say the attribute that contributed most to getting there would be persistence. Writing through a variety of near constant obstacles has given me the ability to write anywhere, snatching at the smallest or shortest opportunity to get some work done. Additionally, journal writing kept me going when ‘real’ work couldn’t be done.

Which literature do you draw inspiration from? Why?

Just as I write across genres in both fiction and non-fiction, I read the same. I draw inspiration from many areas of literature, though there are a few fiction genres that don’t interest me to either read or write. At the present time, I’m reading Seamus Heaney’s Door into the Dark (a poem a night), Jennifer Ackerman’s The Bird Way, A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent and Think, and 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, Edited by Lorrie Moore. Reading in nearly all genres, fiction and non-fiction, keeps me engaged and excited about the writing life.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I’m not certain I have much influence on anyone, except, perhaps, my children, but if I did, I would like to put my efforts into expanding diversity in the U.S. and perhaps around the world. To me this seems the last best hope for humanity’s survival in a violent and increasingly intolerant world, beyond addressing the existential threat of climate change.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

I love to connect with readers! I can be found on Instagram: @Diannebeeaff ; Facebook: @diannebeeaff ; and lastly, on my website: www.debeeaff.wordpress.com

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspiring!