Ask the Author: Thomas Armstrong
Answered Questions (12)
Thomas Armstrong
Actually, since you mentioned it, the plot of my latest book, the novel Childless.
Thomas Armstrong
This is a great question. Very timely! I have no children, and in fact, I've just published my first novel which is called Childless! It's about a childless child psychologist who tries to foil a U.S. government plot to remove childhood from the human genome! It just came out and is available right now at Amazon as an ebook or paperback: https://amzn.to/3QSivnv.
Thomas Armstrong
A Thing that nobody had ever conceived of, began to crawl across the United States. Then it stopped at the White House and began to govern.
Thomas Armstrong
I think I'd like to travel to Charles Dickens' England, and especially London. I'd study the architecture, interview some colorful Dickensian characters, and record some of the great dialects spoken there.
Thomas Armstrong
I've been reading mostly oldie but goodies. I've enjoyed Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, William Makepeace Thackeray's Henry Esmond, Rudyard Kipling's Kim, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Stephen King's Carrie, and Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That. The one contemporary book I read this summer was Sebastian Barry's Days Without End.
Thomas Armstrong
I guess my favorite fictional couple would be Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker and his wife Anna Livia Plurabel, the archetypal husband and wife in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. It is their ability to morph into other couples in other eras and historical places that makes them an almost uncomparable couple in literature.
Thomas Armstrong
I'd say that I hear voices, but I'm afraid people might take it the wrong way. Let's put it another way: I have an active inner verbal world - I'm always saying things to myself and every once in a while, I say something interesting. I try to have these little white squares of paper around so I can write down whatever came to me. Also, whenever I read for pleasure, I always have a pen in my hand so I can jot in the margins interesting ideas, reactions, or ideas for future books. I put these materials in folders, which I eventually draw upon when writing my books.
Thomas Armstrong
I'm spending a few weeks actively promoting my latest book - The Power of the Adolescent Brain: Strategies for Teaching Middle and High School Students. Then, after a month of speaking engagements in Mexico, Colombia, and Indonesia, I'm going to write a children's book on multiple intelligences followed by an update (4th edition) of my book Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, followed by a book on the utter stupidity of our current American educational system.
Thomas Armstrong
You know, I'd say write every day, but I don't write every day, so what kind of advice would THAT be? It does help to have an obsessional quality to your personality - my mind gets a book idea and then like a dog at the other end of a game of tug rope, I just won't let go, even if years go by. It also helps to have some pathology - if everything has gone right in your life, then there's no dark material or conflict to heat things up. Oh yes, one other really big piece of advice: READ A LOT! And don't read mediocre writers - read the best writers that are out there. Fill your mind with the greatest writing voices of all time, and over time they will mingle and coalesce inside you, and out of that rich mixture will emerge your own authentic writer's voice (or voices if you do characters!).
Thomas Armstrong
For me, the best thing about being a writer is the freedom of not having to have a job. If I had to show up for work Monday through Friday at some building somewhere, I would be in big trouble, man! I've heard other writers say this so I don't feel bad writing it down, but this is about all I CAN do! Thank God I can make a living at it (the writing fuels speaking engagements, which also keeps me from having a day job). I feel blessed and grateful!
Thomas Armstrong
I just cycle through the various procrastination tasks that I set up to delay things until I run out of them and have to face the block directly. Then it's just me and the blank screen, and I simply start to write whatever comes into my head. Fortunately, words always come and they almost always have to do with the topic I'm supposed to be writing about! So I guess I'm lucky in that respect!
Thomas Armstrong
My most recent book is The Power of the Adolescent Brain: Strategies for Teaching Middle and High School Students. The book came about when I was asked by a school superintendent to do a workshop on the adolescent brain for his school district. While I'd previously given graduate courses on childhood and adolescent development, and had already written books that included a focus on the teen years (e.g. The Human Odyssey, The Best Schools etc.), I hadn't focused specifically on the adolescent brain, but I said yes anyway, believing that I'd just do the workshop and that would be it. But after putting together the Power Point slides for the presentation, I realized that there was a book there, so I queried my education publisher ASCD, they liked the idea, I spent about six months going through thousands of articles on the adolescent brain, sat down to write the book, and, as the British like to say, Bob's your uncle!
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