About the Author
THE SCENIC APPROACH
Megan Foss, author of "The Monster Between Us"

"When I sit down to work on a chapter or an essay there are two things I start out knowing," Megan Foss, the author of "The Monster Between Us," says. "I know what 'big spin' I want it to impart and I know the scenes I'm going to use to do that." Foss' essay was written in her first creative writing class during her junior year. This essay is the title piece from her book-length manuscript (currently under consideration). "I had taken 'Women In Lit' winter quarter where I read Frankenstein, and wrote this essay the following spring for a class." She knew when she wrote the piece it was going to be a book. Most of the book is double-voiced, meaning it is written through Megan's eyes and her double, "the monster" Mickey Masters.

"For this particular piece the biggest surprise was how much I learned about the craft of writing. I have a tendency towards what I call 'scaffolding', taking too much time and too many words to set up a piece. Initially, the Megan part of the narrative in the beginning was nine pages. You can't make a reader wait that long for a good solid scene. I thought the double voice would be confusing and had no idea if it came clear that the division of identities would come through as one of the most critical components of the text, but it did."

As a single parent who returned to school when her daughter was barely two months old, she divides her time between working two jobs, attending school and raising her child. "Very early on I established a pattern of getting up at three in the morning and working until I had to start getting the both of us ready for the day some time around seven." That pattern changes somewhat depending on summer vacation or school breaks, but there is never a day when Foss doesn't sit down and write for at least two hours. "I suppose my only other idiosyncrasy is that I don't keep a notepad or a journal. I can't write without a keyboard. And I don't make notes because I mull things. I see or feel something and take a mental snapshot and then let it grow from there. This kind of goes back to how I set up scenes."

Foss generally tries to open a piece with some kind of scene. "Monster is very different in that regard. The first scene doesn't occur until the fourth page. My desire is always to set the scene with as few words as possible, but those words have to be extremely well chosen. In my current manuscript I worked very hard at making sure similes and metaphors used to set a scene were raw and edgy because the story is raw and edgy. The scene has to match the tone."

Authors whose work she admires include Mary Shelley, Richard Wright and Michael Moore. Of Moore she says, "he can pack one hell of a punch into very few words, point out the most heinous elements of our society and make us laugh while he does it." Foss also feels Mumia Abu Jamal's "Live From Death Row" should be required reading for every student of nonfiction, "simply because of how much beauty of language and tragedy of circumstance he can pack into those little three page essays."

Foss wants readers to know that; "writing can empower powerless people in amazing ways." She encourages everybody to write whether they want to be a writer or not. "I think the genre (creative nonfiction) has the potential to truly change the way society thinks and does things. As more and more true stories get told, it becomes a little more difficult for the big lies to go unnoticed. I think it's important for people who are marginalized if they get the opportunity to write, then write. I want to be in control of how I am identified. I think it's important to be able to create your own identity rather than let people who have not walked in your shoes and never spent any time with your memories to try and identify you themselves."

Laura Moe