Ask the Author: Christopher Noxon
Answered Questions (3)
Christopher Noxon
I’m writing a pilot for ABC based on the book which is weird and fun and may or may not result in an actual TV show. Meanwhile I’ve started work on another book about another family; this one is told through the viewpoints of multiple characters, one of whom is a 12-year-old foster kid named Milo. I’m excited about using more drawing and art in narrative and moving further afield from my own experience. The new book is still set in LA though. And there’s a 50-year-old guy who may or may not be a projection of myself (or Alex) in some imagined and not-terribly-complimentary future. In the end I can’t seem to escape myself.
Christopher Noxon
I carry around a notebook and jot down ideas as they come. But in general, I don't wait for inspiration. With three school-age kids and a wife who often works long hours, I’m a between-dropoff-and-pickup writer, starting at 8:30 and finishing before 2 for bus pickup. I write all over LA, in coffee shops and restaurants and libraries – anywhere but home (where I’m often interrupted by dogs, deliveries or the telephone). I love the ornate Mediterranean reading rooms at the Pasadena Central Library and the sunny modern stacks at the West Hollywood Library and have even written sitting on park benches and in my car while waiting for pickup at school.
My last book was Rejuvenile, a heavily-researched, quasi-sociological survey of adulthood that asked why grown-ups today act so much more like kids than adults of previous generations. When I set out to write a novel, I figured, how different can it be?
Answer: entirely. I may as well have been a cobbler for all the necessary skills I had to write a novel.
That’s not entirely true. To write anything long and lasting you need to first of all keep your butt in the chair and ignore the Internet and your phone and the insistent never-ending desire to right now at this very moment get up and eat a cookie. I learned how to do that writing my first book (notwithstanding the many Mint Milanos).
Everything else about the process was new. The big difference, one that took way too long to recognize but which landed like lightening when I finally did, was the importance of emotion. I had initially outlined Plus One as a series of events – this thing happens, which leads to this thing happening, which eventually leads to a big climax. Only after a few months of churning out surface-y, limp, mostly lifeless prose did I realize that the fiction I love most isn’t built around plot. What happens in the story matters, but what gives it life and energy and propulsion is how people feel. It wasn’t enough for me to outline a series of what TV writers call story beats – I had to dig deeply into how my characters felt and allow those emotions to drive what they did and how they behaved. I had to replace storybeats with what I now –embarrassingly – call emobeats (cue the violins!).
In the end, the process of writing fiction called on more of me – my head, heart, guts – than anything I've done before. Writing a novel is part meditation, part performance, part puzzle. Now that I’ve written one I’m just as excited – and intimidated – by the form as ever.
My last book was Rejuvenile, a heavily-researched, quasi-sociological survey of adulthood that asked why grown-ups today act so much more like kids than adults of previous generations. When I set out to write a novel, I figured, how different can it be?
Answer: entirely. I may as well have been a cobbler for all the necessary skills I had to write a novel.
That’s not entirely true. To write anything long and lasting you need to first of all keep your butt in the chair and ignore the Internet and your phone and the insistent never-ending desire to right now at this very moment get up and eat a cookie. I learned how to do that writing my first book (notwithstanding the many Mint Milanos).
Everything else about the process was new. The big difference, one that took way too long to recognize but which landed like lightening when I finally did, was the importance of emotion. I had initially outlined Plus One as a series of events – this thing happens, which leads to this thing happening, which eventually leads to a big climax. Only after a few months of churning out surface-y, limp, mostly lifeless prose did I realize that the fiction I love most isn’t built around plot. What happens in the story matters, but what gives it life and energy and propulsion is how people feel. It wasn’t enough for me to outline a series of what TV writers call story beats – I had to dig deeply into how my characters felt and allow those emotions to drive what they did and how they behaved. I had to replace storybeats with what I now –embarrassingly – call emobeats (cue the violins!).
In the end, the process of writing fiction called on more of me – my head, heart, guts – than anything I've done before. Writing a novel is part meditation, part performance, part puzzle. Now that I’ve written one I’m just as excited – and intimidated – by the form as ever.
Christopher Noxon
A few years ago, I came to a crossroads in my career and creative life. I’d published a book, had a piece in the New Yorker, appeared on The Colbert Show and pretty much satisfied pretty much every journalistic ambition I’d ever had. Meanwhile my wife Jenji’s career had taken off and the income I brought in as a journalist was no longer a real factor for our family.
And so I did what many partners of successful spouses do: I got domestic. I handled carpools and home repairs and travel plans. I helped out at school and got serious about diet and exercise. I spent many blissful mornings at a coffee place with a small and exotic cohort of men married to women whose success, income and public recognition surpasses their own.
I was having fun and enjoying my time with the kids, but I found myself dogged by insecurities. I felt embarrassed that my wife bore the burden to support our family. I got twitchy and defensive when people asked what I “did.” I was prone to odd outbursts of aggression – peeling out in the minivan at carpool, mowing down kids at a Lasertag birthday party, getting whiplash after leaping off a rooftop into a swimming pool.
Then I did something really stupid: I considered opening a bead store.
Don’t get me wrong: I like beads. They’re nice. I could wax lyrically about the loveliness of a tub of polymer-glazed beads, as glittering and colorful as fish eggs. For all I know there may be a woeful shortage of retail opportunities in the beading community; it could be that given the right push, a boutique bead outlet would grow into a thriving crafting powerhouse.
But I had to face facts: I had no business opening a bead store. The bead store was my rock bottom, my cry for help.
And so I started writing again. And for the first time in my life I wrote without an assignment or editor, without any idea if what I was writing would be published. I just knew there were funny, true and deep stories to be told about men learning how to hold a house, women who win the bread, what it’s like to be arm candy at the Emmys and how it feels to ease off the professional pedal and settle into a support role. I wrote about men who cook and caretake and sing backup for their front-and-center provider wives.
Along the way, I returned again and again to the question: how do men act out against the societal and even biological pressures that can feel conspired against them?
And so I did what many partners of successful spouses do: I got domestic. I handled carpools and home repairs and travel plans. I helped out at school and got serious about diet and exercise. I spent many blissful mornings at a coffee place with a small and exotic cohort of men married to women whose success, income and public recognition surpasses their own.
I was having fun and enjoying my time with the kids, but I found myself dogged by insecurities. I felt embarrassed that my wife bore the burden to support our family. I got twitchy and defensive when people asked what I “did.” I was prone to odd outbursts of aggression – peeling out in the minivan at carpool, mowing down kids at a Lasertag birthday party, getting whiplash after leaping off a rooftop into a swimming pool.
Then I did something really stupid: I considered opening a bead store.
Don’t get me wrong: I like beads. They’re nice. I could wax lyrically about the loveliness of a tub of polymer-glazed beads, as glittering and colorful as fish eggs. For all I know there may be a woeful shortage of retail opportunities in the beading community; it could be that given the right push, a boutique bead outlet would grow into a thriving crafting powerhouse.
But I had to face facts: I had no business opening a bead store. The bead store was my rock bottom, my cry for help.
And so I started writing again. And for the first time in my life I wrote without an assignment or editor, without any idea if what I was writing would be published. I just knew there were funny, true and deep stories to be told about men learning how to hold a house, women who win the bread, what it’s like to be arm candy at the Emmys and how it feels to ease off the professional pedal and settle into a support role. I wrote about men who cook and caretake and sing backup for their front-and-center provider wives.
Along the way, I returned again and again to the question: how do men act out against the societal and even biological pressures that can feel conspired against them?
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