Ask the Author: W.P. Johnson
Answered Questions (5)
W.P. Johnson
A novel entitled A Song For John. I mention it in the question about where I got my idea for my first novel, so there's more details there.
W.P. Johnson
I would say three things, based on my experiences so far.
1. If you want to write, just write. Workshops, MFAs, books on craft, these are all fine and good and you'll learn alot from them, but there's no substitute for hard work. Write every single day, even if you don't want to cause you're tired or hungover.
2. Don't take on more than one big project at a time. There's no better way to let a book die than stopping work on it to start another. Always finish what you start, even if it's terrible.
3. Give yourself a break now and again. Have a drink at the end of the night, or watch a movie. When you take a vacation, don't bring your work with you. Even though writing doesn't feel like work, it's still good to walk away from it once in awhile. Otherwise you'll burn out and those shitty writing sessions will become longer and longer.
1. If you want to write, just write. Workshops, MFAs, books on craft, these are all fine and good and you'll learn alot from them, but there's no substitute for hard work. Write every single day, even if you don't want to cause you're tired or hungover.
2. Don't take on more than one big project at a time. There's no better way to let a book die than stopping work on it to start another. Always finish what you start, even if it's terrible.
3. Give yourself a break now and again. Have a drink at the end of the night, or watch a movie. When you take a vacation, don't bring your work with you. Even though writing doesn't feel like work, it's still good to walk away from it once in awhile. Otherwise you'll burn out and those shitty writing sessions will become longer and longer.
W.P. Johnson
Write a bunch of shitty pages until it goes away. Gotta write the bad ones to get to the good ones.
W.P. Johnson
I don't think there's really much of a choice. If I don't write I get really anxious and have a hard time sleeping.
W.P. Johnson
It's a combination of things.
I've always had this idea about the compartmentalization of human thought (memories, emotions) and the ability to somehow capture it, keep it, give it to someone else. I've written about this before in other stories, but this is the first novel I'm tackling the idea with. In particular, my main antagonist collects the essence of musicians in hopes of somehow achieving transcendence through their collective epiphanies.
As for the seed... I think I just had this idea of a pale man in black going from place to place with a pocket full of glass bottles, collecting people's thoughts. I don't think this is very original, if I have to be honest. The man in black is def something that comes up a lot in dark fantasy. But old ideas can always be done differently and the more I thought about it, the more I started to see a story unfold from start to finish.
The protagonist is a girl named Jolene, but she calls herself Joe. She's sort of inspired by Joan Jett and the singer/guitarist from a band called The Screaming Females, but her experiences are largely drawn from my own experiences playing in bands. She loves music and really values her experience playing live, more so than recordings to the point where she doesn't really listen to records of new bands because she'd rather see them in person. She's the type of person that if a man in black said they wanted to collect her, she'd say no.
And that's pretty much where the whole started to grow. It's a weird story, with elements of fantasy, horror, mystery, and surrealism. And it's pretty much everything I want to say about what music meant to me for a time.
I've always had this idea about the compartmentalization of human thought (memories, emotions) and the ability to somehow capture it, keep it, give it to someone else. I've written about this before in other stories, but this is the first novel I'm tackling the idea with. In particular, my main antagonist collects the essence of musicians in hopes of somehow achieving transcendence through their collective epiphanies.
As for the seed... I think I just had this idea of a pale man in black going from place to place with a pocket full of glass bottles, collecting people's thoughts. I don't think this is very original, if I have to be honest. The man in black is def something that comes up a lot in dark fantasy. But old ideas can always be done differently and the more I thought about it, the more I started to see a story unfold from start to finish.
The protagonist is a girl named Jolene, but she calls herself Joe. She's sort of inspired by Joan Jett and the singer/guitarist from a band called The Screaming Females, but her experiences are largely drawn from my own experiences playing in bands. She loves music and really values her experience playing live, more so than recordings to the point where she doesn't really listen to records of new bands because she'd rather see them in person. She's the type of person that if a man in black said they wanted to collect her, she'd say no.
And that's pretty much where the whole started to grow. It's a weird story, with elements of fantasy, horror, mystery, and surrealism. And it's pretty much everything I want to say about what music meant to me for a time.
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