We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Don Carr a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Don, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the toughest things about progressing in your creative career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?
For 18 months I worked on a non-fiction book proposal. My agent at the time connected me with a whistle-blower from an Indiana biofuel plant. The plant was part of a fraud cartel that fleeced over $1 billion from a federal renewable fuels program. During the proposal process, I interviewed several Environmental Protection Agency special agents, including Doug Parker who ran EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division. Parker called the crimes “”the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the environment.”
Sadly, we got scooped by Wired Magazine who did a cover story just a week before we set to pitch and we abandoned the project. However, I would never have stumbled upon making the protagonist of The Midnight Rambler an EPA agent had I never gone through the process.
Don, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
For over fifteen years, I’ve investigated and written about America’s worst polluters from the gas fields of North Dakota to the “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. My writing has been featured in Politico, Sierra Magazine, the Washington DC City Paper, the Huffington Post, Grist, Civil Eats and the Food and Environment Reporting Network.
I’ve appeared on Fox News, the CBS Evening News, Bloomberg TV, and NPR. I;ve also been a Senior Communications and Policy Advisor for the Environmental Working Group, and a Senior Communications Manager for the Environmental Defense Fund.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
When you start writing fiction, you hear a lot about “write what you know.” I took that to mean whatever subject area I had expertise in, or what setting had I inhabited so throughly I knew it by heart — as the de facto subject matter to write about. But what “they” are really talking about — and how to be successful in telling a compelling narrative — is that there’s a difference between story and plot.
My novel’s plot may be about environmental themes, an area I’ve worked in for 15 years, and it’s set in Positano, Italy, where I’ve spent a lot of time, but that won’t make it something readers gravitate to. It does make it accurate and real, which is helpful.
No, what I’ve found with “write what you know” it is the emotional component that really draws the reader in. My “story” is about a father and a daughter reconnecting. Once I realized that, and was able to tap into my own emotional experiences as a father, that’s when I understood what “they” were talking about.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I’ve always written. But it took me a while to get from the part where I wrote because it made me feel good and important to see my name in print, to where I actually enjoyed the creative process of writing. It was always for some professional goal, not to appease my creative impulse.
But in writing my novel I really got to love the process and actual day to day of writing a story with the only goal to entertain readers and not aggrandize myself — and that was both freeing and rewarding.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://doncarrauthor.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doncarrauthor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doncarrauthor/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/don-carr/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/donpcarr
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZI0pEtIdWpdOd6nTcrKB7A