Voices on Writing: Mary Roach
by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Mary Roach has created a singular niche for herself by giving topics like sex and death a unique spin. She began as a magazine writer, writing for Salon.com and Discover, covering Eskimo food, flatulence, vaginal weight-lifting, carrot addiction and amputee bowling leagues. She was a National Magazine Award Finalist in 1995, and her column "My Planet" (Reader's Digest) was runner-up for the humor category of the 2005 National Press Club awards. Roach wrote Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, a New York Times Notable Book for 2005, and The New York Times bestseller Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick for 2003, a Northern California Book Awards finalist, and an American Library Association Alex Award (for adult books that appeal to young adults) winner. Roach's books have been translated into 16 languages. Her most recent book is Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (Norton, 2008)

BDB: Talk about your most recent book, Bonk, and what inspired it.

MR: I got the idea for the book when I stumbled onto a reference to the films of Masters and Johnson. Not your average films! These were films of a woman's sexual organs as she's sexually responding to stimulation. The filming was done using a sort of penis-camera attached to an "artificial coition machine." I remember thinking: Whoa. Next book. Sex research.

BDB: And you used yourself and your husband as subjects, a most interesting experience as far as immersion journalism goes. ?Talk about that!

MR: Well, the idea had been to observe someone else, but that was often impossible to do, for privacy reasons. (Understandable, really!) So in some cases, the only way to get access to a project was to be a subject. And, in one case, to press my husband into service as well. We were the first couple to be scanned in 3-D motion-picture ultrasound having sex. It was very odd, very clinical. I was taking notes the whole time. Really much more daunting for Ed. I took him out for a very nice meal afterward. But I still owe him. Big time.

BDB: Any interesting responses when experts learned you also were a subject?

MR: No—means very little to them. All in a day's work, for these guys. Nothing raises their eyebrows!

BDB: How much research do you do before you begin a project? For instance, as regards Bonk, and when did you know when it was time to begin writing? Or do you write, and research, from the start?

MR: I write a chapter as soon as I've got the research for it. So I'm doing both at once, most of the time. Would take too long otherwise, as there's a lot of down time with my books, waiting for research projects to begin.

BDB: And then the lovely first draft ... do you get down a rough and tumble first draft and then revise, or do you revise as you go?

MR: Revise as I go. Always always revising….

BDB: When you revise, what are you looking for? ?

MR: Often trying to pump up the humor, or finesse the wording, or eliminate cliches and lazy writing. Also on the lookout for bad logic, limp explanations, forced humor. My editor catches some of this, but I try to as well.

BDB: Do you read your work aloud?

MR: No. I should, really. I think I'd take out half the book though. Everything seems extraneous when you read aloud! I swore after Stiff that I would do this, but never have.

BDB: You're fascinated by some, um, interesting topics. Why do you think that is?

MR: I think it's just my peculiar sense of curiosity and willingness to indulge it.

BDB: Were you good in science in school?

MR: I got A's, but I hated chemistry and I took the bio for idiots in high school. I loved physics, though. I had a fantastic teacher, Mr. Demont. Good teacher makes all the difference. Never took science in college.

BDB: Prior to writing books, you wrote for magazines and online sites. One thing agents say is to make sure what you have is a book-length project and not a magazine article. How did you know that what you had for Stiff, your first book, was more than a magazine article?

MR: I find that advice both valuable and dangerous. You can pick up almost any book in the bookstore and imagine some agent having said, "This seems like a magazine piece, not a book." Stiff was more like 12 magazine pieces. Though I can't imagine any magazine running any of them, and perhaps that is what made the difference. The freshness of the material and the tone.

BDB: When you wrote Bonk, did you pretty much know where you were going with it, or were you surprised at what you found out in the research and the writing of it?

MR: The latter. I never know where I'm going until I start. It's constantly evolving. I always tell writers not to sweat the proposal too much, as you're bound to head off in completely different directions once you dive in. And no one is going to go back and check your manuscript against your proposal to be sure they match….

BDB: Are you surprised at the popularity of your books?

MR: Yes and no.

BDB: What's on your nightstand right now?

MR: Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman. Funny, funny genius man. His imagination astounds me.

BDB: Judging from your Web site, you obviously like bugs—especially roaches.

MR: I do like them, but prefer that they make their homes somewhere other than my home.

BDB: Any mistakes you made early on that you wish you'd been warned about?

MR: Yes. For many years I assumed that I couldn't do it. That is, come up with a good book idea and write it. Seemed too daunting. Self-doubt is poison!

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Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is editor of The ASJA Monthly and author of the award-winning best-seller, Pen on Fire (Harcourt, 2004).
She hosts Writers on Writing, which podcasts at http://writersonwriting.blogspot.com . Her essay, "Knitting: My Urban Escape," is included in Knitting Through It (Voyageur Press, 2008).