A Conversation with Jeremy T. Wilson: Part II

Welcome everyone to Part II of my conversation with 2012 Nelson Algren Award winning author Jeremy T. Wilson.  Word from the Wrigley Tower is that his winning story is going to be released in THIS Sunday's edition of Printers Row, the Chicago Tribune's literary supplement.  Can you believe it?  Can you wait?  You'll have to wait.  Until Sunday.  Make sure to get your digital and/or print subscription here so you don't miss out.

For those dedicated readers of Logomancers & Logodaedalists, you'll surely recall that we ended Part I of the conversation with Jeremy suggesting that our half-finished stories end up informing our later work.  If you need a refresher--or you somehow, against all odds, missed out on Part I--click here to see what  Katy Perry's been making such a fuss about on her social media sites for the past two months.

Sorry to keep you waiting, Katy.

Part II 

Logomancers:  Yes!  Love it.  All the writing we do is interrelated in more ways than we could ever possibly understand, so in the long view, even when we don't think we're going to write another draft of a given story, we somehow can't avoid it.  I guess my question was more concerned with the development of your process, and I was wondering if you've come to feel, like me, that a lot of the resistances you hit while writing aren't really problems with the story so much as emotional or psychological resistances inside you, and if through your writing practice you've gained more tolerance for those resistances and more skill at working with them so you can avoid either holding on too fiercely to some particular instance of form and content on the one hand or walking away from a line of inquiry in the face of some discomfort on the other?  I sometimes feel development along these lines is the key to getting more power into my work, and I want to say something like: finishing a project is less about imposing my will and more about allowing myself to be captured by a particular (though protean) combination of form and content until I feel release, and that is most likely to happen when the form and content provides a suitable challenge to my current level of emotional complexity.  In more plain terms, I guess I'm trying to suggest that I don't know what's going to engage me in the process, but when it does, it pushes me to grow, and along the way a few pieces manage to get finished.  Does that harmonize with your experience, or do you think about this stuff in some other way?

JTW: Now we're talking! I think about this stuff in a similar way, although I wouldn't be able to articulate it like you do. But this is entirely due to the fact that we've been writing together and talking about these types of issues for several years, and I've stolen most of my process from listening to you talk about yours. I totally agree: "I don't know what's going to engage me in the process." I think this is crucial, the not knowing, and this is a complete reversal from the way I first approached writing stories. I planned everything out, or at least thought of something I wanted to write about, then wrote. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Maybe that works for some people but not for me. (This also may be linked to my fear of writing a novel because I expect some planning has to be involved with that project.) And when I say "works for" I don't mean results in publishable stories. I mean results in a writing process that keeps me curious and alive and engaged emotionally and intellectually, which is the most I can hope for. What I don't feel nearly enough of is the "release" you're talking about, or even the "growth," but I'm not sure that necessarily results in unfinished or unsatisfying stories. From the minute I sit down to write I feel like I'm in a constant battle with those voices that try to analyze a story too quickly or tell me that it's going in the wrong direction, those workshop voices, old English teacher voices, Statler and Waldorf. When I feel best about a piece of writing, these voices usually shut up and I feel what you're talking about. But this is tough to hit and sometimes untrustworthy. I don't know that I'm really answering the question or even staying on topic. Are we talking about endings to stories or finishing stories? They're related, I think. Sometimes I feel a strong release (and this may not even be the best word here, but I'm using it because it's been established) early in the process, an early draft for instance. What then? Is that story "finished" because the necessary emotional weight has been lifted or I believe I've found a satisfying ending to my inquiry? For me, most often the answer to that question is "no." No matter how I've connected to it, the story is not conveying my experience. Being able to recognize this gap is progress. But it's impossible for me to sit down and rewrite that story and expect the same thing to happen, the same thing being a replica of that emotional resonance. So then what? How do we ever feel something is finished?  I don't know. Do you?

By the way, Richard Ford weighed in on our discussion recently in the NYT Book Review. He was asked: "Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?"  He answered: "Most book aren't very good, and there's no reason they should be. Whatever 'talent' may be, it isn't apportioned democratically. Happily, I don't remember the last not-very-good book I didn't finish. Although (which is why I don't review books) sometimes I return to a book I've left unfinished and discover--pleasurably--that it was I, not the book, that was unsatisfactory." Is it just me or is he getting more dickish the older he gets?

Logomancers: Ha. Ha.  I don't have enough data points on Richard Ford to know if he's changing in one way or another.  I remember hearing him on NPR a few years ago and he sounded crotchety and bitter.  Full points for your use of the word, "dickish," however.  That made me laugh.

I think you've teased out several of the loose threads in my formulation.  I think I was being too cavalier with my use of the words "released" and "finished."  I guess I intended that something is "finished" when I decide to seek publication with it, but the truth is I continue to fiddle with it until the galleys are in, and as I ready my collections of short stories for submission, I find that I've started working again on some of the stories that have already been published.  I guess the "release" I was talking about really comes in many bursts across many phases of the process.  There is the release you mentioned when you're working on a draft and the story takes a turn near the end that gives it that shape, that surprise, that sort of lift in your chest.  But you're right, odds are you shouldn't stop there.  It may be you need to throw that entire draft out and totally rewrite it because on page six you changed your protagonist from a WWII switchboard operator named Lancelot to a mystic, long-haul trucker named Benfungali.  You can rewrite the story with Benfungali in from the start, and you can make the same turn with the ending, but I agree: you're never going to get that lift or "release" from writing the same thing again without opening yourself up to additional impositions of novelty.  The "release" may still be there for someone reading it for the first time, but to you it will feel familiar unless you put it away for a good LONG while.  Maybe nothing ever gets finished.  Maybe when you're old and winding down you become exceedingly haunted by the things you feel you never got right in your stories and books.  Maybe this is why Richard Ford is getting dickish (assuming he is).

As for the growth, well, I guess I was suggesting that really working with the emotionally hot stuff that bubbles up in the process can make you more tolerant of the emotionally hot stuff in the rest of your life and that watching your mind in a regular disciplined way can help you keep from getting swallowed completely by your thoughts and feelings in your day-to-day life because so much crazy shit comes up when you really open up to it inside the writing process.  I'm not trying to say writing makes you a better person because I think that has got to be a stupid claim, but I think if you approach the work as a way to learn what's in your heart and accept it with decreasing amounts of judgment over time then you can become easier with yourself which will naturally cause you to be more peaceful and understanding with others.  For a long time now I've thought of my writing process as spiritual practice not wholly dissimilar from my meditation or yoga practices, so maybe this "growth" thing is a personal thing for me though I suspect a lot of writers look at it the same way.  We may be kidding ourselves, though. I dunno.  It's especially hard to assign any sort of causality in this case.  It's something I'd like to believe anyway.  What do you think? 

JTW: The more I think about this the more I feel like I don't know. On the one hand I want to say yes, of course, writing is a spiritual practice that helps me feel better about myself and my place in the world (a clumsy paraphrase, I know). I think about all the journal writing I've done, and the project I started after my dad died using the rituals of writing and baseball as a path to healing, and the initial approach I take with young students when I encourage them to write what's on their minds or what pisses them off, and all this makes me think that writing can definitely provide an avenue for personal growth. But then I think about writing stories and I'm not sure I would say the same thing. Forgive me if I'm being all MFA-y, but I want to make a distinction between the act of writing and the craft of writing (not that they're mutually exclusive all the time, but bear with me). What "bubbles" up in an initial draft may not be equal to the time it takes to work that psycho-emotional purge into something resembling a story. There's a point in the process where I allow myself to be conscious of the creation, to examine the connections created in the writing process, to shape the shit. This can't come too early, but whenever it happens it doesn't ever strike me as very spiritual. It's much more fun. Should I be ashamed?  By the way, I'm all in for your story on the mystic trucker Benfungali.

Logomancers: What we’re talking about puts me in mind of something I recently read in a Paris Review interview with Truman Capote.  He said:

I seem to remember reading that Dickens, as he wrote, choked with laughter over his own humor and dripped tears all over the page when one of his characters died. My own theory is that the writer should have considered his wit and dried his tears long, long before setting out to evoke similar reactions in a reader. In other words, I believe the greatest intensity in art in all its shapes is achieved with a deliberate, hard, and cool head.

I wonder if Capote maybe failed to realize the possibility that Dickens was both experiencing the emotions AND regarding them with a deliberate, hard, and cool head.  This may sound hopelessly paradoxical to a lot of people, but I don’t think it is.  In fact, it’s just the sort of capacity I’m suggesting writing might help a person develop, and I’m wondering if it can carry over to the rest of your life so that you can learn to both experience your thoughts and feel your emotions without getting mesmerized into believing you ARE them.  This is at least one of the functions of meditation and development along these lines is the very specific sense in which I was thinking of writing as a spiritual practice, which can be fun or painful or blissful or banal or just about anything else you can imagine.  In that way, what I’m talking about doesn’t exist along a continuum from the heat of a first draft to the cold crafting of a later revision but rather transcends and enfolds all parts of the process by helping us build a place to stand from which we can witness the products of our mind like images projected onto a screen while still enjoying the movie.

But perhaps this is getting a bit esoteric so you can comment on it if you want or we can move on to what I really want to ask which is: what do you hope to get out of your writing?  What are your goals?  How would your writing ideally develop along personal and professional lines?  I know this sounds like many questions, but I kind of feel like it’s only one.

JTW: That's what I was getting at when I said the two aren't mutually exclusive. I don't know that I'd characterize crafting as "cold" either, but I get it. I'm going back to baseball here, but the comparison works for most sports. So many elements go into a good baseball swing, but when you're in the batter's box, you can't think about every single one of them or else you're doomed. The way you stop thinking about them is through practice so that all the parts of your swing become automatic. However, every now and then you're going to be called upon to hit the ball to the right side (I'm speaking as a right handed hitter here) and in order to do that you will have to be conscious of the changes in your approach that help you reach your intended goal of driving the ball to the right side. This is the same with writing.

What I hope to get out of my writing is a career doing something I love doing.  I want to continue to write and continue to teach so that I don't have to sell peaches, even though selling peaches was one of the best jobs I've ever had. But maybe this isn't what you meant. Maybe you meant, what are my goals with the writing itself? Well, I hope to stop using the word "thing" so much. Beyond that, I'm not really sure. You?

Logomancers: My answer is similar.  The main thing for me is to be able to continue writing.  After that, there are these various parts of me that want different and sometimes contradictory things. There is the part of me that wants to be "established," the part that would like to be publicly recognized as a writer and feel I've got the credentials to back that up.  Then there's the part of me concerned about connection.  This is the part of me that wants to find readers in that place where we feel things strongly and unapologetically, where we become more curious about who we really are and what's going on in our hearts and minds. Then there is another part of me that wants to get so deep into the writing, the world drops away entirely and I forget about the mundane concerns of publishing and success and even other people like a literary monk.  I suppose this has to do with notions of truth and freedom.  I’m thinking of truth here as the experience of a sincere, ongoing, and single-minded pursuit rather than a destination, and freedom as the ability to give expression without feeling hobbled or boxed in by the fear of what people might say.

Fortunately as I go along I pay less and less attention to these idealized versions of what kind of writer I'd like to be—as if there were some objective standpoint from which I could define myself—and more willing to accept the ever-changing terrain as I move across it.  That is to say, I’ll take things the way they are because I don’t really believe the fundamentals are going to change.

This reminds me of a story Grace Paley tells in another Paris Review interview:

I said to Auden, Well, do you think I should keep writing? He laughed and then became very solemn. If you’re a writer, he said, you’ll keep writing no matter what. That’s not a question a writer should ask.

Do you ever feel tempted to ask that question?

JTW: Unfortunately, I ask myself that question all the time. But I do agree with Auden's answer, and I believe I'm finally in a place with my writing where I can honestly say that it's true—that I'll write no matter what. For a long time I wanted that to be the case. I wanted to be able to claim that I would write no matter what, because I'm a writer, dammit, I must write!, but it just wasn't true. I thought of myself as a writer but didn't write enough to be one (I think many people who have the desire to write end up here). Now I think I've started a practice that will sustain itself regardless the answer. So ultimately when this question pops up I try to ignore it. I might ask myself on a given night out when I know I've had too much to drink if I should have another drink because I'm having fun and I feel great and I want that feeling to continue because it's fleeting and now I have hold of it and don't want to let it go. The answer is no, I shouldn't have another drink, because one more isn't necessary to sustain the bliss and I'll feel like crap the next day and I'll probably piss my wife off or say something stupid or forget how I got home, but I have one more drink (maybe two) anyway. This strained metaphor is an attempt to articulate how I feel about the question. Should I keep writing? Economics, self-doubt, the publishing industry, countless lit mags, obligations, odds of success, Richard Ford, the cost of daycare, all indicate no. Am I going to write anyway? As sure as I'll have one more drink.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Thanks, Jeremy.  That was awesome.  Thanks to you, too, Dear Reader.  We wouldn't be where we are today without you.

Thought that was awesome? Thought it was sort of okay?  Kind of blown away by how much that sucked and wonder where to find more stuff as eye-poppingly sucky?  Sign up to get the blog, for FREE, by email on the righthand side of the page.  You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  I pledge to be authentically weirder going forward.

Fear Not: Cousin Lars Awaiting Yuvi Zalkow's Novel

A surprising letter from Cousin Lars:

Dear Cousin, 

Why have you not been writing on your terrible blog?  Have you been cowering in the shower with this other fearful man, Mr. Pantslessness?  Perhaps you have not heard of Yuvi Zalkow, but he is the only other artist in this world who has so much fear as you. But let me ask you this, and you can ask Yuvi if you do not know the answer, but the answer is NO ONE, and the question is: who out there is going to hurt you if you show them the full power of your work?  This is not something your fear will admit.  If it did, your fear would die, and your fear does not want to die. Your fear is also a coward.

I am going to read this new book by Yuvi.  It is called A Brilliant Novel in the Works, and you should read it, too, because even though he is full of fear, there is much power in this Yuvi Zalkow. Then maybe when I am free of this place, I will come to your house and we can have a book club meeting, and we will invite Yuvi and the two of you can cry about how hard writing is and how sad you are that no one wants to read your writing and how you have to go to therapy when the truth is that this is not the truth because I will read your writing because there is nothing to do here except look through the bars on the window because no one will play me in ping pong anymore because they are afraid to lose and also they are afraid to get stabbed in the neck with my Blade of Fury which is also a pen that they take away from me, but they do not know that the Blade of Fury returns to my pocket because of its magical properties.

Here my latest painting. 

 

I punch you in the face with it even though I am loving you so much my heart is swelling up and gagging me in the back of the throat. 

Your Cousin, 

Lars

Wow, Lars.  I had no idea you were also awaiting the release of A Brilliant Novel in the Works.  For you Logomancers and Logodaedalists out there who haven't yet heard of Yuvi Zalkow, you should go straight away to his blog and check out his I’m-a-Failed-Writer Video Series.  Yuvi’s got a great perspective, an awesome sense of humor, and creative talent in spades.  I know this book is going to knock Cousin Lars’ hiking sandals off, and I think you'll like it, too.

Results of L&L's First Ever Lyric Writing Contest

The results are in!  After reading thousands of submissions, Logomancers & Logodaedalists narrowed the entries down to a select group of finalists and then passed those finalists to Eek the Freak, L&L's resident poet, who was supposed to choose a winner.  Unfortunately, Eek backed out due to a crisis of nerves, but as this is a common occurrence with Eek, I made sure to keep the stalwart Madame Zabaletsky on call in case she needed to fill in.

Before we get to the results, let me just say that if you're ever in the Chicagoland area and someone steals your catalytic converter, you should go straight away to Iggy's Muffler Shop.

I rolled into Iggy's around 12:15 on a Thursday with no appointment and they had my car fixed before 2 at about a third of the price Midas quoted me over the phone.

As you can tell from the photos, the place is classic, though don't expect them to do much more than grunt at you in what I can only describe as a not unfriendly way.



Okay, now for the main event.  Madame Z., if you please . . .  

Mme. Zabaletsky:  There were many fine contributions to this year's contest, but three of the entries stood out head and shoulders above the rest.  That is why I decided to award winners in three different categories.

THE LOTUS FLOWER OF FAILED COMPASSION AWARD goes to Sam Hollander. 

Wake up in the morning, greet the day with bliss
Try to be a better man, strive to be a catalyst
But I give up before I start, my car is in paralysis
Because my catalytic converter was stole' by some assclown human cyst.

--Chorus--
Sucks to the assclowns who stole it
Sucks to the assclowns who stole it
You can help me move my car but we're gonna have to roll it.
Oh, sucks to the assclowns who stole it.
---------

Leaving behind the past, concentrating on my new version
Learning from mistakes, avoiding old diversions
But it's hard to keep a-moving on when transit is a burden
Can't believe some suck-ass clowns stole my catalytic conversion.

[Chorus]

Buddah says to let yourself go, be an uncarved stone
A lotus leaf on water, a cloud without a home
But my emissions are toxic, and I'm fuming like a stack
My catcon was stolen by some suckass clowns and it ain't coming back.

[Chorus]

bridge:
Like a bear in a truck on a train in a cave on a mic on a PA set to ten all up in your ear. Unpleasant to hear.
Stolen to be melted down, by an obnoxious two-bit suckass clown... but baby, don't frown.

[Chorus]  

Mr. Hollander clearly knows his way around a musical score, and while I cannot discern whether he's had classical training or acquired this knowledge as a drug-addled frat boy who spent too much time printing guitar tabs off the internet, I found this submission accomplished and undeniably compelling.  The folksy clash between the narrator's desire for transcendence and his unassailable anger at the putative "ass clowns" who stole his catalytic converter drives the song forward with an irresistible comic tension.  I was also won over by the virtuosic bravado with which Mr. Hollander integrated the realizations of the nondual schools and the Facebook traffic on Mr. Driscoll's page.  Every piece of the puzzle was used, and used to harmonious effect, as in a well-fashioned sonnet.  This is a masterful effort, one which will stand the test of space and time (for anyone still bound by those confines to existence).

THE TERRIFYING TWANG OF THE LONELY HEART STRINGS AWARD goes to mmcxl for taking the theme and making it his or her own.   

Her chrome is still shiny.
Her paint is still bright.
But underneath her beauty,
Something isn't right.

Swore I would love her.
Swore I'd never hurt her.
But then I went and stole
Her catalytic converter.

Chorus 1:
Yes, I stole the catalytic converter to her heart.
Before she could make me a spare part.
I melted it down with our wedding rings.
Got a hundred dollars and a thousand knocks and pings.

Used to rev her up,
Get her running good.
I was always tinkerin'
Under her hood.

Wanted to love her.
Wanted to pervert her.
Never thought I'd stoop so low
As her catalytic converter.

Chorus 2:
Yes, I stole the catalytic converter to her heart.
So, gentlemen, her engines will not start.
Turn your key, you'll just hear the roar
Of an old wreck that don't love me any more.

I found it a delightfully twisted and fittingly desperate choice to tell the story of a lover who has ruined his or her beloved from the perspective of a self-loathing barfly haunted by his or her narcissism, misogyny, and sadistic tendencies.  Full points for taking such a bizarre and demented narrative stance and making it ring true.  However, it would have meant still more to me had the author not remained somewhat hidden behind the shadowy moniker, mmcxl.  When in Rome, indeed, but we are not in Rome.  Not that another pseudonym would have been any better--an artist pretending to be a made up person is a distasteful conceit, especially in a case such as this.  Here is a subtle work brimming with psychological depravity, a piece that acrobatically defies any attempted critique, and the only mystery here should be how something so marvelously strange could be made by a mere mortal.

THE I'D LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT BADASSERY AWARD goes to Jenny B.  

Roaring like a GTO
(Use Danzig Voice)

We have a shameful admission
There's a secret we share
My 4-Runner has toxic emissions
And we're doing bad things to the air

-- Chorus --
Now we drive and we drive
Never felt so alive
We ride slow (owow)
Roaring like a GTO

One night as she slept outside
Something was taken from her (erer)
Under her sleek backside
There's no catalytic converter

[Chorus]

The neighbors ears are pained
At night when I turn her over
Her exhaust is unrestrained
Hydrocarbon indecent exposure

'80's drum breakdown...

[Chorus]

And we drive and we drive and we drive
Never felt so alive
We ride slowowow
Roaring like a GTO
Whoa whoa whoa
Roaring like a GTO
Roaring like a GTOooooo!

A sort of unbridled power courses through these lyrics, and the furious anger of the perpetually wronged stokes the furnace of this churning locomotive.  Like the other winners, it is a highly accomplished piece of art, though I did feel at times the author might have been holding something back, perhaps for fear that the full storm of her literary power might have been too much for her mind or the mind of anyone who laid eyes upon it.  Though this threat can feel real, it is never something to be afraid of, and the artist must submit to power wherever it appears.  I hope the author will continue to let the dogs out, as Mr. Driscoll is fond of saying.  If this meaty piece is any indication, I suspect Jenny B.'s inner conflagration will continue to produce a whirlwind of great and towering art.

Congratulations to all who entered and especially those few who rose to the top of the heap.  It takes tremendous effort to excavate the creative fire from the belly, and it takes an equal amount of courage to share what you've shaped to be weighed and measured by the world.  Thank you for playing your hands.  You've each served your art wonderfully well.

Thanks, Mme. Z.  For my part I have nothing to say except that each of these winners blew me away, and I'm thrilled that writers of such high caliber arose to display their deep creative capabilities.  As promised, there will be a prize, but since each of these winners clearly deserves more than the $100,000 limit--beyond which my backer, the esteemed oil baron, Logodaedalist J.J. Hamperstead, refuses to go--each winner will receive an athletic sock (used but clean) with a forgery of Katy Perry's signature in pink Sharpie.  As you may well know, I do a perfect Katy Perry forgery, and I'm sure we can all agree that as this young lady's meteoric rise continues, it won't be long before an individual could sell one of those socks and retire.  Sam Hollander, mmcxl, and Jenny B., please send me your mailing addresses so you can get your sock, and once again, my hat is off.  You are Logomancers & Logodaedalists of the highest order.

Next up will be Part II of my conversation with Jeremy T. Wilson (unless I decide to post something else first).

Baby, You're Not Really a Firework. You're More Like a Tough Nut

Logomancers,

I've been feeling low lately.  Nothing very bad has happened, but there's been something of a perfect storm of small setbacks and let downs, and it's knocked me for a loop.  That's at least part of the reason I've gotten behind on the blog.  I've been writing, sure, but the fun has been gone, and this blog is nothing without the fun.

Last night I had a dream.  I was visited by the angel Esmeralda.  She descended out of the sky above Oscar the Grouch's trash can.  Above her head, I could just see the glistening wires they use to whisk muppets through the air.  Her skin was purple and fuzzy, her dress was white muslin, and her wings were silver taffeta with chrome tinsel around the perimeter.  In her hand, she held a sparkling crystal wand with a star on the end of it, and it bounced jauntily in time as she sang these words to me:

Blickety blickety blockety,
bitter bitter snew.
Slip and slap,
and doubedly drat,
click and glick and brew.
Sam and fam and gorshdram,
alster fingdom boo,
forsten burnen hom potash,
alden grumbed grew.

I couldn't make anymore sense out of it than you probably can, and I didn't feel any better when I woke up, but I did feel a sort of awareness growing that this, too, shall pass, which is something I didn't quite have in my sights before.

I don't know if Angel Esmeralda's poem will be of any use to you, but I thought I'd share it in case it might help someone else out there who is stuck in a rut.  I also thought it might serve as a reminder to trust in your resilience, in the manifold and sometimes strange things inside you that can manifest and help you get back on your feet.

David

P.S.  I should have the winners of L&L's lyric writing contest next week.  Apologies for the delay.

A Conversation with Jeremy T. Wilson: Part I

Logomancer Jeremy T. Wilson

I first met 2012 Nelson Algren Award winner Jeremy T. Wilson while volunteering at 826CHI.  I'd be up in front of a class of twenty or so second graders trying to get them to focus long enough to collaborate on an original story while Jeremy sat in the back reading and presumably assisting Admiral Moody, 826CHI's unappeasable curmudgeon of a publisher.  Every now and then my walkie talkie would hiss to life, and Admiral Moody would come on to threaten my job if I didn't get him a story pronto, a call which would set the kids squeaking and bouncing with glee.  I never did figure out the exact nature of the relationship between Jeremy and Admiral Moody, but Jeremy was the only person I ever knew who got to go back there to see the reclusive man in the flesh.

Jeremy and I also volunteered for the small-group storytelling 826 does with the slightly older kids.  The first time I heard one of Jeremy's groups get up to read their story I was blown away by its imaginative verve and humor.  It simply towered above the other groups' offerings.  "He must have had a really good group," I told myself.  Then it happened again, and again, and again.  I knew this guy was a writer, and I had to get to know him.

Jeremy and I started getting together for beers about once a month, and then I pitched the idea that we meet to write, each of us working on our own stuff, for two or three timed periods of 45 minutes each.  For two years we sat down once or twice a week with our laptops open across the table like we might be playing Battleship and banged furiously away at the keys until the timer released us.  From there we transitioned into writing a screenplay together.  You should know that it's going to be really good, and you should consider making an offer now before we put it on Ebay and the bidding war drives it out of reach.

Over that time, Jeremy has not only won the prestigious Algren Award--a BFD in the non-sarcastic use of that acronym (if there be such a thing)--he's also become a father, completed an MFA at Northwestern, travelled to Prague on a fellowship to participate in a writing workshop led by Stuart Dybek, and steadily published his short stories in literary magazines, one of which got him nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Getting nominated for a Pushcart is about the coolest thing that can happen to a short-story writer.  If he wins, I'll probably be unable to face him and will string myself up with a suicide note pinned to my shirt that says, "I am happy to hear about your latest award."  Yes, I stole that image from Philip Roth (and I realize mine is not nearly as funny).

Here then is Part I of our rangy conversation about writing, publishing, reading and lots of stuff you wouldn't think has anything to do with any of that other stuff.

Logomancers: A lot of writers are looking for that big breakthrough moment, that moment when someone recognizes their work and all of a sudden it's like you're writing downhill for the rest of your life, but once you've been publishing for awhile, you start to realize it doesn't happen quite that way, right? I mean, you get a little attention here and a little attention there and sometimes one thing leads to another but sooner or later the dust settles, and it's just you and the page and now what? How has it been writing in the aftermath of winning the Algren Award?

JTW: Right after everyone heard the news on Sunday my email and Facebook wall lit up with congratulations and warm wishes and it felt so incredibly great to be recognized and to have so many people want to read my story. As you know, we're used to getting fired up when a rejection letter tells us we don't suck so badly, so this felt like winning the lottery. But by Tuesday it was all over. And it was just another Tuesday where I had to get the job done, which is the theme of this answer.

In 1997 I published my first story in an anthology titled O' Georgia: A Collection of Georgia's Newest and Most Promising Writers. Don't look for it. Trouble was I believed the subtitle. I believed that not only was I new I was also promising. I didn't publish another story until 2007. I was 23 when that first story got published and I thought, like you said, that I'd be writing downhill for the rest of my life. What happened instead was that my friends read the story and no one came begging for more, which was good because I didn't have more unless they wanted to read my journals. It was also good because at that point I had no idea what I was doing even though I thought I did. Since the agents and publishers didn't line up the driveway I had to go out and find a job. I guess I'm telling you this story just to say that it took me a long time to realize that no matter what recognition you receive there will always be a moment when the dust settles, when it's just another Tuesday and it's "you and the page and now what?" So if you can do this everyday, make it a habit, sit in front of your computer or in front of your paper or typewriter or whatever and make yourself get the job done, you start to get used to writing without anyone paying attention. This is not easy. But don't you think that to write from a place that feels most free you really have to convince yourself that nobody's watching and you'll never have success again? It reminds me of Bull Durham. Crash Davis says of baseball: "You've got to play this game with fear and arrogance." I think that's true for writing as well. Look at me, I just compared baseball and writing. No one has ever done that except for me and Marianne Moore. Nuke LaLoosh repeats Crash's words back to him saying jokingly: "Fear and ignorance." I think that's also true of writing. 

Logomancers: I totally agree you have to write like no one is watching or like you'll never have success again. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that you have to get rid of the thought that no one is watching and that you'll never have success again because in so far as ANY ideas about what you're doing arise while you're writing, you're asking for trouble. I know whenever that happens to me, I lose track of what I'm writing and then I look down on the page and there it is, a platitude or some sort of soft shortcut I didn't feel at all and never meant to take because I've lost the thread of the voice and the current of the inquiry. My mind has moved onto other things, and it's obvious on the page. Do you ever feel like you see this happening when you are reading someone else's story? I remember some writing book I read one time suggested that when your mind wanders while reading, it may not be you, it may be that the writer's mind was wandering while he or she was writing. It's probably not always true, but that idea has stuck with me, and sometimes I feel like the whole discipline of writing is nothing more than a repeated effort to bring all of my attention to the work so that I'm listening, seeing, and pushing forward with a sort of intense inquisitiveness. It reminds me of a quote by William James, "The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will." Maybe we could also add "good writing" to that list. I like what you said about needing both fear and arrogance AND fear and ignorance (because who would ever think being a writer is a good idea?). Do you think we should also add fear and loathing? How do you approach your discipline when the work turns on you and you start to hate it and yourself for not only making something so terrible but for ever deluding yourself into thinking it might be worth someone else's $12.95?

JTW: I'll work backwards on this one. I guess I rarely get to the point where I hate something I'm working on that much because if I hate it to the point of self-loathing I'll just stop and write something else or go for a run or read someone's work that inspires me and makes me feel like I can continue doing the ultimately silly thing that is writing stories. But I do get to the point where the story stops on me and for one reason or another I just can't keep going. At that point I put the work away or send it to a trusted friend/reader or send it to a trusted friend/reader and then put it away. Sometimes I come back to it sometimes I don't. I don't know if this really answers the question or if I'm even really being honest here now that I think about it, of course I hate what I'm writing sometimes! But it just makes me want to try to wrestle with it until one of us gives in. The key is not to give in too easily. This can be difficult.

For the most part books are still pretty cheap dates considering all the cool shit you can get into in a book. I'm not trying to say that a short story or novel can save the world or anything, but it can help strengthen the imagination or help a person feel the slightest bit of empathy or excitement for a character or culture or experience that is new or foreign or alien, and maybe that does turn out to change a little morsel of something in a person's soul. That's worth $12.95. Actually, it's so valuable it should really be free. So support your local library. I see your William James and raise you some Joseph Conrad: "Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life." Is it possible to read without using your imagination?

My mind wanders all the time when I'm reading and writing. I'm glad to hear that I can now blame the author instead of the fact that the Braves are on my TV. I have this experience you're talking about far more frequently in a novel than I do in short stories, which sounds obvious. Somewhere in the middle of most novels I read I feel like I could stop. I'm bored. I don't care anymore. Nothing new is happening. Pages and pages of beautiful prose are killing the plot slowly and elegantly. Maybe me saying all this proves I'm a novice. Maybe it means I'm a short story writer. I read recently someone saying that certain writers are one or the other, a novelist or a short story writer, and that some writers can do both, but they are always better at one than the other. Is this true? Probably not. Richard Ford has written like a bad ass in both forms. There are others. Give me some others.

"Writing is nothing more than a repeated effort to bring all of my attention to the work so that I'm listening, seeing, and pushing forward with a sort of intense inquisitiveness." This is really good, and I wish I'd said it. You sound like a writer.

Logomancers: I wish I could take all the credit for that. I think I got at least half of that from Madame Zabaletsky. It sounds to me like you have a pretty healthy strategy for dealing with frustration and getting stuck. Was that something you had to learn? I mean, you may not have erred on the side of banging your head against the keyboard like me and Don Music, but did you err on the side of walking away from a particular piece and never coming back?

I agree that books are an excellent value, but sometimes I'm awed by the fact that there are so many of them out there, and I imagine my words going into a giant pile of all the words that have ever been written, and I think, "Who could get any use out of that heap and why would I ever add to it?" I know what you mean, though. Stories help us exercise and strengthen our imaginations, and I do believe that the imagination can open us to an ever-widening, more inclusive perspective. That's definitely worth $12.95 or a trip to the library, and what you said earlier about success probably holds for value, too. If you worry about the value of what you're writing while you're writing, you're dead, and it's not like you can stop writing, so why worry?

I don't want to make too much out of who's responsible for the wandering attention thing. I feel like reading is a collaborative act between the reader and the writer to co-create an imaginal experience. I want to say you need both attention and imagination to read or write, but I also feel there is a distinction here that deserves to be aired. I'm thinking here of something Richard Hugo says in his essay, In Defense of Creative-Writing Classes. Hugo writes:

"From experience and observation, I've come to believe reading has as serious a relation to writing as do any number of activities such as staring pensively out the window or driving to Laramie. A very serious relation at times. At other times no relation at all. The writing of a poem or story is a creative act, and by 'creative' I mean it contains and feeds off its own impulse. It is difficult and speculative to relate that impulse to any one thing other than itself. Please understand, I'm speaking of the impulse to write and not the finished work."

I included this mostly because it supports my suspicion that the lethargy you feel when reading a novel has no bearing on your expertise as a writer or whether you're best suited to write in one form of another. I can think of lots of writers who have killed it in both forms: Hemingway, Faulkner, Nabakov, Graham Greene, Conrad, Henry James, Joyce Carol Oates, Salinger, Delillo, J. Joyce, Marquez, Wharton, Cheever, Bradbury (rest in peace), Capote, Calvino, Tobias Wolff, Baldwin, Gardner, Updike and that's just from looking up at the books on my shelf. I suspect writers probably tend towards one form over another, but who knows what the future will bring? Do you feel any pressure to write a novel? Do you feel like that's something you want or have to do someday?

JTW: I think you made the point that is to be made about this when you said writers probably tend toward one form or the other, and just because we primarily write short stories doesn't mean we always will, unless we're Alice Munro. But yeah, I think there's always some kind of pressure to write a novel. Novels are serious business and if you want to be taken seriously you have to write one. Not to mention the fact that nobody reads short stories and only a fraction more than nobody read novels. I don't really believe that but that's what I hear. I do want to write a novel and hope that I can and will.

For me, reading has much more of a relationship to my writing than would a trip to Laramie. If I'm not reading I'm not writing and if I'm not writing I'm not reading. I've heard people say they can't read other writers’ work when they're writing. If that's true, then when are these people reading? Either they're not writing enough or not reading enough or are so gifted they don't have to read. That's not me. When I'm not reading I can feel my impulse to write fading. The opposite is also true. The more I read the more I write. As far as the influence a specific book I'm reading has on my written work at the time, I see Hugo's point, a lot or a little, but the act of reading is inextricably linked to the act of writing.

"Who could get any use out of that heap and why would I ever add to it?"

Well, you, my dear friend, that's who. And because you've gotten use out of it is as good a reason to add to the heap as any. This line of thinking is an express train to Nihilist Town. I don't want to curl up into a ball on my couch and lament the universe's vanity, so I guess I'll write a story. I never considered myself the optimist in our relationship.

I have lots of pieces I've written and never come back to, don't you? This is a byproduct of making writing a habit. It's impossible that every day you'll sit down and start a line of creative inquiry worth pursuing. Sometimes it's a dead end. But when you don't make a habit of writing it becomes more and more difficult to recognize those dead ends and to let them go. "But I've spent three months on this story, I can't just stop working on it!" Sure you can, it sucks, move on. A lot of times these false starts will find themselves into other stories or will resurrect themselves in a different form, so, really, my use of the phrase "dead end" is inaccurate. There are no dead ends.

Had Jeremy considered this conversation when he said there are no dead ends?  Will Jeremy and David ever resolve their artistic differences?  Does anyone, including them, care?  
Tune in next time for Part II of L&L's ongoing conversation with Jeremy T. Wilson.

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