Ask the Author: John Everett Branch Jr.
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John Everett Branch Jr.
If you want to write, write—that’s the main thing. A little more fully, I’d say you should read, and think about what you read, and write, and think about what you write. It’s possible to learn some things by looking for advice, but it’s also possible to spend a lot of time doing that which could be better spent in other ways. Stop reading my words and go write your own!
John Everett Branch Jr.
Why do people talk about “summer reading�? No one thinks of any other season of the year in this way: there’s no autumn, winter, or spring reading. (Northrop Frye employed the seasons in , but he didn’t propose reading by the calendar.) No one who has finished school, and not everyone who’s still in it, has extra time for reading during the summer; parents whose children are of school age may have less time in those months. The whole idea is, I think, largely an artifact from that period in our life when we did (if we grew up in America, anyway, for things are different elsewhere) have whole days free, or when, if we worked, at least we had no homework.
But it might be amusing to resort to fantasy in answering the question. Summer, then, is a dream of freedom and time, and summer reading would mean living in a book for hours on end; it would mean catching up on old desires as well as picking new things at leisure, as they struck my fancy. A visit to a bookstore now and then, to wander among the continent-shelves and island-displays� A few book readings or author discussions, to hear a writer’s second voice� A plunge into some hefty volumes in the stacks I have at home, such as The Tale of Genji, by Lady Murasaki, or The Novel: A Biography, by Michael Schmidt, or The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer� I’d read Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans; I’d escape into the novels in the Aubrey-Maturin series, by Patrick O’Brian, that I haven’t yet enjoyed; I’d get around to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and a few other books pertaining to Paris that are half hidden on a lower shelf. And William Gibson’s nonfiction collection, and Jorge Luis Borges’s essays on literature. Most of these are books that I already have. Who knows what I might think of, or hear about, or find in a shop? The sun would rise and loll about endlessly in the sky as I read. Each day would be long and full of adventure, and when I went to sleep at night I’d know that another one, very much like it or very different, would follow.
But it might be amusing to resort to fantasy in answering the question. Summer, then, is a dream of freedom and time, and summer reading would mean living in a book for hours on end; it would mean catching up on old desires as well as picking new things at leisure, as they struck my fancy. A visit to a bookstore now and then, to wander among the continent-shelves and island-displays� A few book readings or author discussions, to hear a writer’s second voice� A plunge into some hefty volumes in the stacks I have at home, such as The Tale of Genji, by Lady Murasaki, or The Novel: A Biography, by Michael Schmidt, or The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer� I’d read Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans; I’d escape into the novels in the Aubrey-Maturin series, by Patrick O’Brian, that I haven’t yet enjoyed; I’d get around to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and a few other books pertaining to Paris that are half hidden on a lower shelf. And William Gibson’s nonfiction collection, and Jorge Luis Borges’s essays on literature. Most of these are books that I already have. Who knows what I might think of, or hear about, or find in a shop? The sun would rise and loll about endlessly in the sky as I read. Each day would be long and full of adventure, and when I went to sleep at night I’d know that another one, very much like it or very different, would follow.
John Everett Branch Jr.
I don’t deal with writer’s block, because I have never yet had writer’s block. I’ve never lacked ideas to write about; while I seldom know, from the moment I pick up an idea, what the first words should be, I can always start jotting notes and find the beginning later; and though I don’t always finish what I start, it’s almost never because I can’t but only because I don’t. If for now I don’t see how to conclude a story, I simply set it aside, knowing that I can return to it later.
For myself, I don’t even believe in writer’s block. In part this is because it doesn’t happen to me, and in part it’s because the concept is fishy. As I noted in , other creative endeavors are not, that I know of, attended by blocks. I’ve never heard of architect’s block or chef’s block. In any case, there are ways around the kind of obstacle that the term “writer’s block� connotes; there are ways to stimulate the imagination, a few of which are mentioned in a New Yorker web article that my blog post links to.
If the question really means “What advice do you have for dealing with writer’s block?� I can answer that. Write down ideas whenever they occur to you, keep them in a file, and read through the file now and then. If you don’t know how to begin a project, start by writing notes. Work consistently. If you start to run out of steam in any given session, stop and do something else. If you find yourself stalled, try a creativity exercise.
For myself, I don’t even believe in writer’s block. In part this is because it doesn’t happen to me, and in part it’s because the concept is fishy. As I noted in , other creative endeavors are not, that I know of, attended by blocks. I’ve never heard of architect’s block or chef’s block. In any case, there are ways around the kind of obstacle that the term “writer’s block� connotes; there are ways to stimulate the imagination, a few of which are mentioned in a New Yorker web article that my blog post links to.
If the question really means “What advice do you have for dealing with writer’s block?� I can answer that. Write down ideas whenever they occur to you, keep them in a file, and read through the file now and then. If you don’t know how to begin a project, start by writing notes. Work consistently. If you start to run out of steam in any given session, stop and do something else. If you find yourself stalled, try a creativity exercise.
John Everett Branch Jr.
There’s more than one kind of mystery. In a sense, other people are a mystery. Why is X the way she is? Why did Y, during a certain period of his life, do the things he did? In a related sense, I’m a mystery to myself. How much of my character was shaped by genetics and how much by circumstance, accident, habits of thought and behavior I fell into? But answers to most of these questions wouldn’t lead to a good mystery plot. A question whose answer might pay off in that regard happens to occupy part of my mind these days. After he finished college in Texas, where he and I grew up, a friend of mine ended up moving to Mexico, where he had various adventures that I know little about, one of which was fatal. As I put it in , “Before he was (apparently) murdered by a vengeful former lover who was (apparently) a member of a crime family, he wrote a science-fiction novel.� How did these things come about?
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