Half Burned and Soaking Wet: Interview with Karen Marguerite Caronna
Karen Marguerite Caronna has written an absurdly funny play about a French poodle, and its staged reading this month at San Francisco’s Phoenix Theater delighted a loyal and thoughtful audience.
Karen’s play, Violette, is part of 3Girls Theater’s Salon Series, which kicked off with Meja Pannell-Tyehimba’s play Ev'ryday Family in November and finishes next June with my work-in-progress, The Trees. A San Francisco Bay Area writer and actor, Karen says she is honored and proud to be a Brady Fellow with 3Girls Theater.
Her play, The Next to the Last Box, was a semi-finalist at Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, a semi-finalist with Playwright’s Foundation, and received a staged reading with 3Girls last June. She has had short plays produced locally, including the NARAL Repro Rights play festival in 2017, and other short plays and developmental readings with Playwright’s Center of San Francisco. She has had poetry published in Rat’s Ass Review and other publications. A California native, her home is in Oakland.
What inspires your work?
Imagination and lived experience fuel my writing. There’s always much inspiration to be discovered. Words and images. Things I read, overheard conversations, snippets of words from someone passing by. Music from a car window. A planet in the night sky. People inside their homes spied through an illuminated window as I walk past, like a stage. Who are they? What are their lives? Are they happy? A brief conversation with a stranger in line at the market can open a world. Friends. It’s all material sooner or later.
What is your process?
I’ve never really analyzed the process. I don’t really have one. I’m not an outliner or journal keeper. It’s all amorphous. It just sort of happens. I sometimes make notes, scraps of paper on my desk--very bad habit. The impressions and observations coalesce into the details of a topic I might be interested in exploring. Then the drafting begins, the process of discovering characters and narrative. I draft in the Final Draft program. I don't have the patience for handwriting anything. I percolate dialogue and narrative while I’m hiking, swimming or some other monotonous physical activity. Pulling weeds. I push through a first draft, then set it aside. Further exploration usually occurs later when I circle back to the manuscript. Editing is done on screen.
How do you work with feedback?
I make notes of feedback I receive from my wonderful, trusted writing workshops, from whom I receive brilliant and honest feedback and support. I have been participating in two different instructor-led workshops for years. Recently, three other women I met through the workshops, and I have banded together for reading and critiquing. We call ourselves, “4plays.”
How do you put your work out to the world?
My submission process is equally loose-jointed. I look for opportunities through various sources, both local and not local. I aim for contests or opportunities without a reading fee. I don’t keep very good track. I don’t like being wedded to anticipating a reply. My best rejection story is about a novel I submitted back in the day when one did such things with a printed copy and a lot of return postage. One day I received, via US postal service, a sealed plastic bag containing the remains of my manuscript, half burned and soaking wet. An attached note stated that the mailbox where my manuscript had been mailed was set on fire and extinguished by the fire department. Apologies, USPS. I hadn’t thought the manuscript was so bad it deserved being torched.
How is writing like sex?
Good writing takes a long time. Attraction (to a subject) love or infatuation, (the characters) affection or anger, the heat of lust with them, conflict, forgiveness, reunion, and then… sigh…that long awaited moment of ultimate, intimate satisfaction. How is writing not like sex? I am never satisfied.
***
I coax sexy writers like Karen Marguerite Caronna to reveal their creative secrets and processes in interviews to inspire you:
Learn more about the programs of 3Girls Theater, putting women's work onstage, where it belongs.
Browse 3GT’s Salon Series staged readings in 2022, including Elizabeth Flanagan’s in January and mine in June.
Feeling inspired? Book a private session with me, The Sexy Grammarian. You always leave private sessions with homework and inspiration, and the first session is always free.