Ask the Author: Andrew Armacost
Answered Questions (5)
Andrew Armacost
I'm putting edits on a project called THE DAY THE NOVEL DIED. It's about a book machine that threatens society with cultural Armageddon. In shaping the book, I was looking for a protracted allegory, a symbol to represent the threat of homogeny...the strip malls...the big box stores...the chain stores...all the factors that are bleaching our culture, making Indianapolis interchangeable with Jacksonville, and so on. So I thought, what if the supply chain rationalization principles of a Walmart were applied to the creation of fiction? That was my starting point.
Andrew Armacost
Writer's block is not a problem for me. My brain is constantly inundating me with story, with narrative. The problem is that I have a family and every moment I spend writing is time that I could be spending with my young children. Often, I'm at the pool or the water park, or wherever, wishing like hell I could write. And when I write, I often feel guilty because I can hear my children playing outside, and want to be with them. So inspiration is not the problem...time is the problem.
Andrew Armacost
I bounce back and forth between bizarro fiction and literary fiction. Right now I'm working on a pair of linked novels that explore the otherness of living as an ex-pat in Asia, the impact that challenges and temptations can have on relationships and notions of "self."
Andrew Armacost
Either you feel compelled to write or you don't. It's not something I would ever encourage anyone to force themselves to do. Writing is a solitary, anti-social, and therefore lonely activity, in many ways. And if you actually try to find an audience, you will face monster gales of rejection. So really, writing is only something you should do if you feel that you cannot stop yourself.
Now, assuming you can't stop yourself, my advice is this....write a book. Show it to no one. Write another one. Show it to no one. Write a third. Show it to no one. Now go back to you first book. Do you still think it's worth a damn? If so, then enter into the process of validating and editing: you will now be able to do so with more distance. If your first book is worthless, and now you know it, it's time to revisit your second, and then your third, and so on. Now repeat the process.
Oh yeah, and don't let writing get in the way of your reading--you'll never grow, if you're shackled to the limited traffic of your own mind.
Lastly, write under a pen name. It'll make you more honest and insulate your personal life from your writing life. I now realize that I should've done this from the start.
Now, assuming you can't stop yourself, my advice is this....write a book. Show it to no one. Write another one. Show it to no one. Write a third. Show it to no one. Now go back to you first book. Do you still think it's worth a damn? If so, then enter into the process of validating and editing: you will now be able to do so with more distance. If your first book is worthless, and now you know it, it's time to revisit your second, and then your third, and so on. Now repeat the process.
Oh yeah, and don't let writing get in the way of your reading--you'll never grow, if you're shackled to the limited traffic of your own mind.
Lastly, write under a pen name. It'll make you more honest and insulate your personal life from your writing life. I now realize that I should've done this from the start.
Andrew Armacost
Life is full of chaos, of randomness. Writing can give form to the seemingly formless, order to disorder.
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