Ask the Author: A. Jay Adler
Answered Questions (4)
A. Jay Adler
My natural impulse in life is to write. I am inspired by the range of human experience -- the emotions music generates in me, the writing of others, the events of the world around me, the world of ideas, introspection -- and my constant synthesis of them all in my thinking through the day.
A. Jay Adler
I was working on a still unfinished poem titled "Devotions and Departures." It contrasts some historical figures who lived their lives close to home and community against those who journeyed far from home, some returning, some not, in consideration of how each of them died. I needed one more historical representation, not famous, but an actual life. My research over several weeks for just the right life, led me on an extraordinary journey of my own. I came, first, to some deep understanding of one reason I was having such a hard time finding the person I wanted -- and I encountered, along the way, the historical event, with many revelations, that inspired the story I mention elsewhere on which I am currently at work.
A. Jay Adler
I am currently adapting a California film noir screenplay I wrote twenty years ago into a novel. The screenplay was called Double Down. Now that is a chapter title, and the novel is titled They Called It Paradise. However, I have interrupted that work because of my excitement over long short story / novela I was inspired to write from a great historical event. I don't want to say more about it right now.
A. Jay Adler
I have never experienced writer's block. Too often in life I have been kept from writing by the demands of making a living and other life business, so that by the time I got the chance to write again, the words were burning a hole in me. I get stuck at various points in a poem or a story for a time. Many years ago, inexplicably, communion with a cigarette reliably broke that logjam. In the many years since smoking, I've had no such regular resort, but I break through to a solution, sometimes after a long time a way from a piece of work. But that is all different from what people call writer's block. That I have not had.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more