Why I Write
An interview with the Author's Guild
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Because I’m good at it.
Flannery O’Connor
In December 2024 I was featured on the Author’s Guild website as part of their member’s spotlight. This is the interview we conducted.
Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world?
Flannery O’Connor was once asked, “Why do you write?” She said, “Because I’m good at it.” That’s the essence of why I write. It’s a gift. To let that gift rust or rot is, at root, supreme ingratitude. I use to have a business card that said, “I’m a word man.” And then adapting something Winston Churchill said, I wrote, “Words are the only objects of human creation that endure through the ages. Pyramids decay, buildings crumble, and paintings fade. But words–whether three thousand years old or three minutes old–possess the potential to enter the soul as fresh and as forceful as the day they were first uttered or penned.” That’s why writing is important to me and is important to the world.
What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block?
I have no great insights on curing writer’s block. Some, I know, take walks around the block or strolls in the park. I think that’s beneficial. But for me, generally there are three practices I follow. Take hot showers. Something about the mindlessness of bathing and standing in the steam seems to open up mental pores. To keep from taking multiple showers a day, however, I read. If I’m writing nonfiction, I tend to read about a different subject than the one I’m wrestling with. Thinking about a different topic often helps make mental connections with the topic I’m writing about. If I’m writing fiction, I read authors whose style I admire. I then try to mimic their style with the section I’m jammed on. Something about trying to write like those whom you admire allows you to hurdle the blocks. I write. I attack the gate of the citadel like a battering ram, throwing words at it until I finally knock it down. Sometimes you can’t walk enough miles, take enough showers, or read enough books to get you on the other side of the wall. In those cases, you just have to attack, attack, attack. You can always come back and rewrite and revise.
What is your favorite time to write?
I’m best in the morning and early afternoon, from 7 to 1 or so. I usually have another push in me later in the afternoon and evening, from 5 to 8 or so.
What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers?
If you can do anything else, do it. Writing, professionally, isn’t for the faint of heart and you need the skin of a rhinoceros. I’ve found Stephen King’s advice in “On Writing” to pay dividends to no end with editors: “Concentrate on the mundane housekeeping jobs, like fixing misspellings and picking up inconsistencies. There’ll be plenty; only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, ‘Oh well, let it go, that’s what copyeditors are for.’”
What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age?
What is exciting about writing and publishing in this day and age, for me, at least, are all the possible ways for a writer to find and reach readers, which is the other side of the writing coin. Writers may write for themselves, but they publish for others. And there has been no time in the history of publishing where writers have had so many various means to connect with readers, whether through traditional means like publishing books and articles in magazines (print and online), but also through (until now) untraditional means like email newsletters, serializations, podcasts, and video. All of these means are within reach of writers who take the time to engage in them.
Derrick G. Jeter’s Blood Touching Blood is out now with Y’allogyPress.
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Thank you, Rich.