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Steve Theme

 

Steve Theme is an award-winning author and journalist whose work has appeared in Alaska Magazine, WORK Literary Magazine, The Seattle Times and various trade publications and metro daily newspapers. In 2010, Theme won the Oregon Writers Colony Short Story Award for nonfiction. His new memoir, Asphalt Asylum: Hitchhiking the Paths of Change, will be released by Halyard Press in October. Steve lives with his wife and three children in Portland, Oregon. Read more at stevetheme.com.

What is your creative process? Are you a night owl or an early bird? Are you in a writing group or a lone wolf?

I start writing projects by racing: no editing, no stopping, just go. It’s fun and sloppy. Then the work begins and fun becomes satisfaction, pocked with doubt and frustration. The first pass creates the bones, the second pass adds muscle and the third pass covers it with skin—then it’s ready for critiquing.

Without a critique group I’m doomed. The groups I’ve been in, despite the occasional nutty buddies, help in every way. My stories tighten up, the writing gets better, and we give each other encouragement and inspiration. The groups help bring me into the local writing culture. With all the writers, artists and musicians here, I envision Portland in the 2020s becoming like Paris in the 1920s.

Writing in the morning is the most standard for me, before my brain gets tired or the day imposes itself. There’re times though when I like to write late or the very early morning. I’ll sleep in my office and wake up in the middle of the night next to my desk and sit at it. Everything is quiet, dark, and I feel like some inspired crazy man obsessed with his work. Then the sun comes up, I’m tired, and all written-out.

What are you reading now?

Just finished The Bone Clocks by David Mitchel. Next on the hit parade is something about men’s depression, called I Don’t Want to Talk About It, written by an author I don’t know yet.

What are your favorite books of all time?

The River Why, David James Duncan. Far Tortuga, Peter Matthiessen. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Daniel Yergin. Watership Down, Richard Adams. Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966 – 1996, Seamus Heaney…