Ask the Author: Robert Duncan
Answered Questions (9)
Robert Duncan
Loudmouth was a completely unknown quantity, a UFO (literally, more or less), driven by a traumatic experience in the streets of San Francisco. I didn't know what I was writing. I didn't know where it would go, what it would be. I just had to write and did so, compulsively, obsessively, for 13 months — at which point I looked back and thought that this crazy unburdening, with cutting and embellishing, might actually be a set of linked short stories or a memoir or maybe even a novel. Five years later, I more or less figured it all out. It's a novel, but based on the adventures of my youth.
Robert Duncan
I try not to wait for inspiration. That's a fool's errand. I just sit and spew. Or at least sit (see answer above). There are a million stories in every single minute of the world and not many less in every minute of your own life. Just break it down. I mean, look at Proust. Look at Karl Ove Knausgaard.
Robert Duncan
Working on launching Loudmouth, my first novel, due out Oct, 2020, from mighty Three Rooms Press. Beyond that I've been writing a blog for the last three years that's ostensibly about a Korean-Brazilian-owned, mom-and-pop Italian restaurant in a small, Northern California town, but is really about things as big as love and family and fate. All along I've planned to turn the blog into a book, maybe a novel, maybe nonfiction, as well as a play. I also have a straight-up novel I've been working on for a few years about modern art and rocketry and the trajectory of great ideas. So far it's called 59Burst.
Robert Duncan
Exact same advice I gave my late, great Pembroke Welsh Corgi: Sit. Sit. Sit. Stay. Stay. Stay.
Robert Duncan
You get to do what you are hopelessly impelled to do.
Robert Duncan
Writing something, anything, has never been a problem for me. I'm full of words and stories (and b.s.). Writing something that's good, rich, deep — that's the hard part. Getting beyond the point where you hate every word you've written. Which comes right after the point where you love everything. Dealing with those drastic and frequent oscillations is the most challenging part of making stories. I do it by telling myself no one's going to read it anyway (while hoping just the opposite).
Robert Duncan
For months, my daughter kept hearing a scratching sound inside her pillow at night, but dismissed it as her overactive imagination. When she couldn't take it any more, she pulled apart the pillow and discovered a three-foot worm.
Robert Duncan
Kinda like the world I already live in — minus its deadly epidemic. I mean, I occasionally get to write books. Got my first novel, Loudmouth, coming in October, after three nonfiction books. Both my kids are writers, and my wife's an artist. When I was in high school, I used to think I wanted to be Dean Moriarty from On The Road or maybe Mick Jagger — a fictional character if ever I've seen one, living in a fictional universe of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. In short, I wanted to be cool. Or at least rich and famous. Glad it never happened.
Robert Duncan
Summer. Wow, isn't that a nice thought, from the standpoint of the Spring of Corona. I imagine that, at this rate, I'll still be working my way through Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, on my way to reading the entire trilogy. I like reading long books and multi-book stories. Apropos of which, I'm determined this year to finally finish In Search of Lost Time, which I've loved so far. In between the long stuff, I try to read a few shorter books — first on that list: Deacon King Kong.
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