You can listen to writing advice until you are old and gray, but the truth is, writing is an act of pure will. Today D'Souza talks about finding the time and the will to write in the penultimate installment of our interview.
It's part of my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.Jason Boog:
I worked for two years as a teacher after I came back from Africa. I wasn’t a creative writing teacher, I taught composition at a California community college. The first year, I was an adjunct at two schools, College of the Siskiyous in Weed, and Shasta College 70 miles south in Redding.
Tony D'Souza:
I worked for two years as a teacher after I came back from Africa. I wasn’t a creative writing teacher, I taught composition at a California community college. The first year, I was an adjunct at two schools, College of the Siskiyous in Weed, and Shasta College 70 miles south in Redding.
I went to California with my MA & MFA, but had no real teaching experience. I can’t say I was eager to teach. At that point, I was still deeply in the shock and depression the war in Ivory Coast put me in, and I was firstly in California to be near my best friend who went through the war with me, and secondly to live in a really remote place, such as where I wrote Whiteman.
I lived in an old building in a forested valley on the Upper Sacramento River. I fished and hunted, I taught my classes, and at night, I wrote. I wrote every night. I drank Miller Lite and smoked Camel Lights and wrote and wrote. That first year, I didn’t produce much worth keeping but a single story called “The Man Who Married a Tree”, in the current issue of McSweeney’s (#20).
I had no money, I had to teach my ass off even in the summer to make ends meet. This mix of desperation about the human condition and desperation about the direction my life was taking were what led to writing Whiteman. Being an adjunct is so dispiriting. Better than a day job, yes, but…
People liked me at the two schools, I was young, I had this story about Africa, I generally put on a cheerful face in public, I worked hard. Anytime anyone asked me to do something, I did it, and I even wrote a grant to bring in a distinguished poet that was accepted and funded and turned everyone’s head.
A tenure-track position came open at Shasta College at the end of that adjunct year and I applied and got it. I beat out some crazy number of applicants, like 135. Suddenly, I had a real salary, health care, an office. Still I wasn’t happy. I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t like teaching composition.
All through the summer and fall that I got the full-time job, I went home and worked on Whiteman all night, all weekend long. Long hours. I broke up with the girls I was seeing, I stopped returning phone calls, I neglected my students’ papers, I wrote my book. As soon as my agent sold Whiteman to Harcourt that December (2004), I knew I would resign my job. After the winter break, I did.
The job paid $50,000 plus full benefits, I got a $2000 raise every year, and this was in a rural place where the money went far. After agent fees and taxes on my Whiteman advance, I had something like $25,000 to my name. Not a small amount, just enough. I wanted to spend every penny of it on trying to write a second novel. It was a gamble. But a no-brainer, too.
Pretty soon, I got the NEA, and then publication in the glossies, and my financial worries eased. Soon enough again, I began to write that second novel, The Konkans, which releases from Harcourt in October ’07.
The most important piece of advice I have for a younger writer is a financial one. I managed to stay out of debt all through college and grad school by working and earning scholarships, and the ability to be free afterward was an enormous factor in getting where I am at. Time is the most important thing. Lots of people have talent, some have desire, and the ones who break through, I think, find a way to have time.
Because the work takes time. Time to write, yes, but even more time to read, which is what fertilizes the imagination. If you don’t read a lot, you will not be a good writer. I have met writers who admit they don’t like to read. Not surprisingly, their work stinks. You need time to think, to let your mind go wherever and as far as it will, to wander around and just look at people and the world. So that’s my advice, try to stay out of debt so you can be free to develop yourself.
Is the publishing world changing dramatically? I don’t know that it is. Whether the words are on paper or on a screen, the demands of the art are the same. Maybe the book is dying. That’s all right. Artists will find their art. Revolutionaries will find their revolutions. There is only one thing a writer can control: how hard he works. Don’t get involved with the rest of it.
Bob Rafelson's FIVE EASY PIECES is about inner pain and suffering that just so happens to consume people in all walks of life. It is sometimes hard to watch and Nicholson's character "Robert" is a miserable SOB. However, he is also a very compelling character who affects all around him. He is lonely, he is scared, and he does not know what to do with himself.
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