Gabriela Pereira

Interview by BWG member Jerome W. McFadden

Bethlehem Writers Group: Do you believe that someone who is not innately "gifted" can really learn to write fiction well enough to make a career from writing?

Gabriela Pereira: Absolutely. To build a career as a writer, you need four basic things: talent, skill, perseverance, and luck. Talent is that innate “gift” that some writers have more of than others. Skill is the stuff you learn, either in the classroom or by reading and studying the work of great writers. Perseverance is that gutsiness to stick with your writing, even when it’s hard. And luck? Well, that’s just being in the right place, doing the right thing, at the right time. Talent and luck are not things you can control. You can tip the odds a little bit in your favor with luck by having several irons in the fire and showing up where ever opportunities happen to be. The idea, of course, is that if you “show up” to enough places, eventually luck will find you. As far as talent goes though, there’s not much anyone can do about the amount you have. Talent, in my opinion, is the least important part of the success equation. You can make up for talent by building your skills and relentlessly persevering against all odds. No amount of talent will help a lazy writer succeed. I firmly believe that writers should focus on the components of success they can control. Build up your skills by taking classes. Tip the odds of luck in your favor by going to conferences and other networking events. And never EVER give up.

BWG:Your DIY-MFA program focuses on 1) writing with a focus, 2) reading with a purpose, 3) building your community. Can you give a brief synopsis on the importance of each of these 3 activities are for a writer? Do you consider them equally important?

GP: Writing with Focus is about writing with a plan in mind. In the beginning, you might test the waters by trying several different projects, but eventually you’ll need to settle on something and see it through to the end. Writing with focus means taking a writing project from that first kernel of an idea until it’s polished and ready to submit. It’s about understanding and experiencing the entire “life cycle” of the writing process. Reading with Purpose means that instead of reading whatever graces your nightstand, you approach literature strategically, in a way that serves your writing. Reading with purpose means carefully selecting books, absorbing them in a way to remember what you’ve read so that you grow as a writer. Building Your Community is the last (but not least) piece of the DIY MFA puzzle. Building community focuses on exchanging your words, stories, and ideas with others. Tremendous creative growth can happen when you share your work. This includes giving and receiving critiques, attending literary events, and learning to navigate the publishing process. As for which is most important, all three components are essential, but depending on where a writer is in his/her career, one aspect might carry more weight. I like to think of DIY MFA as a pie, where “write,” “read,” and “build” each represent one slice. Sometimes the writing slice takes up more space and the others shrink down to fit. Sometimes all three slices are the same size. The only “rule” is that all three should be in there to some degree. There is an ebb and flow to the creative process, and each writer must make adjustments to suit their unique goals.

BWG: You received your MFA from the New School in NYC. You have since established the DIY MFA as a way for your members to get the "knowledge without the college," Does this subtly infer that the classical academic MFA is not worth the investment?

GP: Ha ha! Great question. Contrary to what might appear, I am in no way “anti-MFA.” I believe the traditional MFA is extremely good for very specific groups of writers to reach very specific goals. The trouble with the traditional MFA system is that it isn’t universal, but it’s the most prominent option for writing education available. Many writers end up enrolling in an MFA when it’s not necessarily the best solution to reach their goals. The traditional MFA is an excellent choice for writers who want to work on literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. It is especially great for writers whose primary career goal is to teach at the college or graduate level. While an MFA is not necessarily “required” in order to teach writing, paired with a strong track record of publishing literary work, it can definitely improve a writer’s chances of landing a coveted academic position. Not every writer wants to teach writing and relatively few writers these days are choosing literary fiction as their niche. For most, the career goal is building a publishing career in more commercial genres. For these writers, an MFA could be nice, but it’s not a deal-breaker. An MFA is very expensive for a degree that’s not essential to one’s career goals. Writers must ask themselves: Does having the degree justify the investment in money and time? Every writer must this decide for himself. The goal of DIY MFA is to offer an alternative when an MFA is not feasible. There are only a select few MFA programs that offer concentrations in children’s writing, young adult, and genre fiction, This means that children’s writers or genre writers have very few options for MFA. Similarly, many writers would love to attend a traditional MFA program, but because of family responsibilities, day jobs, or other constraints, they are unable to do so. DIY MFA gives these writers an alternative to recreate some of that traditional MFA experience, but in a way that is compatible with their lives, and with the type of writing they want to do.

BWG: Does the classical academic MFA really prepare the student for an actual writing career, or are they instead centered on preparing someone for the trade of teaching writing?

GP: This truly depends on the individual MFA program. In my own experience at The New School Writing For Children program, we received a lot of exposure to the business aspects of writing. The professors and administration placed a lot of emphasis on how to build a writing career. Workshop teachers would bring in guest speakers from the industry to talk about marketing or the submission process. My own thesis advisor was a publisher at Abrams (a major children’s publishing house) so I frequently attended these meetings in her office and was able to get a taste of the industry behind the scenes. One professor even had us submit mock query letters, then had agents and editors give feedback. These opportunities were invaluable, and I credit them for my voracious need to learn everything I can about the publishing industry. Not all MFA programs are like this. I think the opportunities we received in the Writing for Children program at The New School were truly unique and for that I am tremendously grateful.

BWG: You are a frequent presenter at some very prestigious writing conferences during the year, including the annual Writer's Digest Conference and Thrillerfest in NYC, as well as some more local conferences. Do you find a vast difference in these various conferences from the point of view of organization, teaching quality, and participants?

GP: Aw shucks. This question is making me blush, but speaking at conferences and other events is hands-down my favorite part of my job. I’ve loved attending conferences since I stumbled into them as a newbie writer in 2007. The more events I can squeeze into my year, the happier I am. The quality of the events and participants is not something I really worry about as a speaker, if that makes any sense. When I speak, my number one concern is bringing my best material and doing my utmost to create a positive and informative experience for those attending my sessions. The “prestige” of an event doesn’t matter so much as the engagement of the writers in the audience. From a handful of students in a church basement to several hundred in a fancy ballroom, my approach is the same: help writers improve their craft. It’s that simple. I am known for bringing the same level of intellectual intensity to my workshops and presentations, whether I’m teaching poetry writing to first-graders or studying post-modernist literature with graduate students. I refuse to “dumb down” any material, and I firmly believe that everyone is capable of writing something wonderful. This means that every writer’s work should be treated with the same level of seriousness and respect, regardless of “experience” or “skill level.” I’ve discovered that the more I challenge my students, the more they will rise to the occasion and create something unexpected and outstanding.

BWG: What are your tips on how to work a writing conference?

GP: I have oh-so-many tips that I could probably teach a whole presentation just on this. In a nutshell - networking boils down to three things: be genuine, play well with others, and don’t do anything stupid. The place where writers get themselves into trouble is when they get so worked up about trying to get the most out of the conference that one of two problems arise. First: They put so much pressure on themselves that they get nervous and freeze up. This keeps them from taking leaps of faith and making crucial connections that could open doors for them later on. Or: They want to get the most out of a conference so they go all out. They accost and corner agents or editors, “pitching” their project at every turn. They act like “that guy.” You know “that guy”? We’ve all seen him (or her) at some event and it’s painful to watch. As long as you act like a normal well-behaved person, and are not “that guy,” you’ll be fine. One other major tip: Perfect the art of the follow-up. It flabbergasts me how few people actually follow-up after a networking event. I speak in front of hundreds of people each year and I can count the number of follow-up emails I get on one hand. If you send a kind, genuine, polite follow-up email you will automatically be MILES ahead of the game, because nobody else is doing it. The ideal time-frame for a follow-up email is one-to-two weeks after the conference. It’s long enough to let people setting in after getting back, but not so long that they forget who you are.

BWG: Can you explain how your "one tiny blog post" led to a full time business and book deal?

GP: Back in 2009, I started a personal blog where I wrote about writing, design, music, math, and my many other geeky obsessions. Then in the spring of 2010–when I was graduating from with my own traditional MFA–I wrote a post where I posed the question “If there was a do-it-yourself version of an MFA, would you do it?” At the time, I had maybe twelve readers on my blog (one of them was my mother). When I wrote that post, all these people started showing up and leaving comments. Each comment was unique, but the overall theme was the same: “I wanted to get an MFA, but then such-and-such happened and I now I can’t go back to school. DIY version would be just the ticket.” That September, I decided to do my own personal DIY MFA blog challenge: I wrote a post every single day on only this topic. The goal was twofold. First, I wanted to test the market to see how much traction and buzz I could build around the DIY MFA concept. Second, I needed to see if the idea had mileage. If I could find something to say about it every day for a month, I knew I would have enough material for the long haul and could turn it into something. It took about six years of “baby steps” to build up DIY MFA to where it is now. From a tiny personal blog, it’s now grown into an official business and my full-time job. I’m also fortunate to have a team of a dozen people sharing this journey with me.

BWG: What are your basic thoughts on how writers should market - brand themselves in today's turbulent world of social media, especially if someone does not see themselves as a self marketer or salesperson?

GP: Many writers resist having to market their books. We think: “It’s not enough that we have to write the books, now we’re responsible for selling them too?” As a die-hard introvert I can understand the sentiment. Then one day it occurred to me: would I blindly hand off the writing of my book to someone else? Of course not. I’m a control freak, as I imagine many writers are or we wouldn’t spend so much of our free time “playing god” with our characters. The thought of handing over control of my creative process to someone else makes my pulse start to race. If I’m so bent on controlling the writing of my book, why on earth would I consider ceding control of my marketing for it? These days, I like to think of my being a writer as being the CEO of my writing career. I might not do everything personally. I have a developer who writes the complex code for my website, an agent to shop my books to publishers, and a wonderful editor helping me polish my current book into the best version possible. Still, as the CEO, it’s up to me to understand the strategy behind every aspect of my writing career. I might not code my website, but know the basic principles of how it works and I can dip in behind the scenes to fix a typo or a broken link. Similarly, I might not micromanage every tiny detail of my book marketing (I have a team member focusing just on that) but I’m the one driving the bus and making the big strategic decisions. Many writers think they’re not “sales-y” enough to take care of the marketing side of their careers. That’s nonsense. As writers, it’s our job to get inside our characters’ heads and understand their motivations. Marketing is the exact same thing, but instead of trying to understand your characters, you need to understand your potential readers. Storytelling is a key component to marketing so the skills that make you a strong writer are the same ones you use to market and sell your books. If you shift your mindset slightly, you can become a phenomenal marketer.

BWG: What interested you to write middle-grade fiction & are there other genres that you have not yet attempted, why, and what's keeping you from trying?

GP: When I first started writing, I dabbled in different genres: literary fiction, women’s fiction, romance, you name it. But no matter what I wrote, sooner or later it all sounded like the narrator was an eleven-year-old kid. After a while I just stopped fighting that “kid voice” and decided to write middle grade fiction. In my second-to-last semester of the MFA program, I started experimenting with YA. I think I did some of my best writing that semester, but the subject of that project hit too close to home and I wasn’t in a place where I could write that to see that novel through to the end. It was too personal, too raw, too hard to write. Recently, though, I’ve started thinking about that story more and more, so I soon may be able to tackle that project again. After graduation, of course, DIY MFA started taking up all my time and had to set my fiction writing aside. I’ve often say that someday DIY MFA will become a day job (instead of a 24-hour-a-day job) and then I’ll be able to devote more time to fiction again. I have a hunch that this will be soon, late 2016 or 2017.

BWG: Tell us about your upcoming book launch with Writer's Digest publications?

GP: The book is DIY MFA: Write with Focus, Read with Purpose, Build Your Community. It is my signature book, a definitive volume containing everything that relates to DIY MFA. I wanted to make the book as complete as possible, to make it a one-stop-shop for writers. In addition to devoting almost half of the book to an in-depth study of craft, I also delve into the reading and community components. I hope this book will become a go-to manual for writers wanting to DIY the MFA experience. I am SO excited about this book and cannot wait for the releases in early July. I’m now in the process of ironing out launch details with my publisher and my team, and we have some exciting plans to celebrate. I can’t share any details yet, but if you join the DIY MFA email list you'll be the first to hear about them.