Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

"I really can't stand most of the people I work with ... there's Guy Tomanty, who does the weather twice a day and thinks he's just about the funniest man in the world; he can't understand why the networks haven't lined up outside his door to put him on the Today show or something. He's so bitter, and everyone can see it when he tries to make us laugh." 

That's a spicy passage from Trudy Hopedale, a satirical dissection of the oblivious rich and powerful people who ran the Washington D.C. media scene at the turn of the century.

Novelist Jeffrey Frank has worn all the hats a writer can wear, and this week he's giving us an insider look at the mind of an editor and the heart of an author.

In addition to a career as a novelist, he's a senior editor at The New Yorker magazine and has worked as a journalist at The Washington Post.

This week he is sharing writing wisdom with us, part of my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
You spent many years as a reporter, and now work as an editor. What's your advice for fledgling writers struggling to balance day-jobs and their fiction? More specifically, how did you manage to find energy to write fiction when your entire career has been intimately involved with writing all day long?

Jeffrey Frank:
I've thought a lot about that, and still do. Continue reading...

 

Editing uses a different kind of energy; it's often puzzle-solving (what piece of the story should go where?) and trying to arrive at ideas. And I would never edit fiction—it cuts too close to what I do. I wouldn't dare.

It's true that when I write as a journalist, I have less time and inclination for fiction. But I would occasionally become enormously engaged and curious about certain subjects, and that could be my temporary undoing.

At The Washington Post, I wrote a magazine piece about Hank Williams's lost daughter that obsessed me for weeks; some of her history was like something out of "Great Expectations."

At The New Yorker not long ago, I became immersed in the novels of the great comic writer Peter De Vries, who was out of print when I wrote about him—and read (or re-read) every one of his novels. During those periods, my fiction suffered.

Otherwise, balancing fiction with a day job shouldn't defeat you. I have no more than two or three hours in me anyway for fiction, and I use them before I go to work. There are weekends, vacations, etc.

I always think of Trollope (every writer does, occasionally) who would get up and write before going to his job in the post office. If he finished a book before he left, he'd start on the next one.

Furthermore, I like being connected to all the frustrations and anxieties of the working world.