Dee Porter
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St. Mary's High School in Stockton, California
I. Biography
Not every teenager knows what they are going to be when they are in high school. Dee Porter knew what she wanted to be one day in the middle of a boring physiology class at her Los Angeles high school. The class was so boring that she used to write stories and share them with the boy sitting next to her. It was him who told her that her stories had potential. From there she knew she wanted to be a writer.
Dee Porter was born in Burbank, California before the smog was too thick. It was the smog that prompted her to move to Lodi where her stepchildren were living in 1975. She started making phone calls to various people about writing articles or teaching writing classes. It was a chance glimpse at the television that led to her first break. She saw Sacramento's authors being interviewed and gave them a call. They in turn invited her to join their circle of writers. She became involved in numerous clubs and workshops and the teaching of various writing courses. Knowing people and knowing the market have been the keys to Dee Porter's success. "You have to know who to call," she advises to the beginning writers.
One contribution Dee Porter made to the educational process of writing was a creative writing class which she designed and subsequently taught at Delta College. According to her, Delta needed a good writing class, and she was willing to teach it. But first, she needed to teach herself. She went to the library and checked out a stack of "how-to" books and taught herself the art of writing. She learned such things as how to kill off characters, and how to form a plot. She put this knowledge to use in the form of articles and short stories. In the end it was actually a different woman who taught the class but Porter felt that her research was a valuable asset. For her community, Dee Porter wrote articles for The Stockton Valley Lifestyles and travel calls for The Stockton Showcase.
A little farther down the road, she was writing articles for such prestigious magazines as Writer's Digest , and conducting interviews of such people as Jack Cannfield (the Chicken Soup Books creator), Mary Higgins Clark, and Olivia Goldsmith, who wrote The First Wives Club. She also wrote for the Lodi News Sentinel and she wrote an article for The California Highway Patrol magazine about the first woman to be hung in California who was from Stockton. In 1982, Dee began one of her first and biggest accomplishments in Lodi. The Lodi writers association started out with twenty people at the first meeting. The organization began mainly for the purpose of discussion, but it grew into the largest group of writers in the San Joaquin County, complete with guest speakers. It was through her writers' association that she got involved in the San Joaquin Task Force Against Violence. One of her most recent books called Gangs: A Handbook for Community Awareness absorbed three years of her time and effort. Dee Porter has written about gang awareness through having one-on-one discussions with gang members. She has been interviewed about gangs in the communities.
Dee Porter, when asked if writing comes naturally to her, responded by saying, "Plots come easy to me, I overcome writer's block by brainstorming with friends and making story maps." Outside opinions, critiques, and ideas from fellow colleagues are her greatest source of evaluation. She warns that you have to be careful of where you brainstorm however. She and a friend received suspicious looks from two policemen listening in on their murder mystery plot in a restaurant one day.
Another source of inspiration came from her husband, Jim. Sadly, she lost Jim in a car accident a year ago. Still, he remains an inspiration to her today. She claimed that it is always easier to be a writer if you have love and support from your spouse.
Dee Porter's best advice to interested writers is to know the market, "You have to know all the details about marketing a book, such as mailing in seasonal stories six months in advance." Although she is happy with her current status as a writer, Dee Porter would like to climb higher on the scale to success. A screenplay that she is currently writing could be her next big break. The valley will certainly be watching.
II. Sources
Porter, Dee. Personal Interview. 12 Feb. 1999
III. Literary Works
1999 Writer's Market 8000 Editors Who Buy What You Write (1998); coauthored with Kirsten Holm
1999 Novel and Short Stories Writer's Market: 2000 Places To Sell Your Fiction (1999); coauthored with Barbara Kuroff
Gangs: A Handbook For Community Awareness (1997); coauthored with Rick Landre and Mike Miller
IV. Contact:
Home Phone Number: (209) 334-0603
This essay was submitted by students of Matthew Weeks, a teacher at St. Mary's High School in Stockton, California.