Joshua’s Comments (group member since Apr 02, 2013)

Joshua’s comments from the Ask Dana Sachs & Joshua Henkin - Tuesday, April 16th! group.

Dana wrote: "Even though Josh and I are friends, I haven't had enough chances to ask him about his book (we don't live in the same city, unfortunately). So, I'll ask a question here. Can you write a bit about h..."
Dana--that's such a hard question to answer, but a really important one. I'd be curious to know the same thing from you. For me, it's really a matter of asking myself a lot of questions about them, and principally of living with them day in and day out for a long time. It's a bit like parenting--you spend enough time with your children and you really get to know them, and i think the same is true of one's characters. I'd like to ask you something, which is about the role of research in your work. There's such a strong sense of history in your book, yet your novel in the best sense doesn't feel like it's researched. In other words, it wears its knowledge lightly. How do you do that?

Drew wrote: "Joshua,

I see that you're coming back to Ann Arbor on Monday to sign books. I'll be there. How did your years at the University of Michigan affect your writing?

Drew"

Great, Drew. I look forward to meeting you. Please do come over and say hi. I lived in Ann Arbor for 8 years, starting in my mid twenties and into my early thirties, so it was a really instrumental time for me--and it's also the time when I really started to write; I got my MFA in fiction writing from U of M. A good chunk of my last novel, Matrimony, takes place in Ann Arbor, and though it's been a while since I lived there I have such fond feelings for it. I'm really looking forward to being back--and to getting a sandwich at Zingerman's! I recently did a radio interview where I talked about Zingerman's at length.

Drew wrote: "Oh no! I feel bad asking a question of Joshua, when there aren't any questions for Dana yet.

Joshua, I was very impressed with how well you got inside the heads (and hearts) of all the main chara..."

Thanks, Drew. I think writers are gossips at heart. We watch and listen and pay careful attention. I think that's our disposition. My mother likes to say that when I was a toddler I insisted on being picked up and I had to look into every store window. That's what a fiction writer is like: someone who has to look into every store window. Whether your characters are male or female, young or old, rich or poor, shy or gregarious, If you live with them long enough they start to come to life for you, and if they come to life for you, that's the first step toward making them come to life for the reader.

Emily wrote: "Joshua-I thought your book was an incredibly engrossing and poignant read-you really have a handle on adult sibling relations! I'm interested in the craft of putting together a novel-how do you ke..."

Thanks, Emily, and you're right, it's hard to get that balance in terms of craft. For me, story grows out of character instead of the other way around. In other words, to my mind fiction is first and foremost about creating interesting and compelling characters, and I think if you know your characters, really know them, then the story will arise from that. Say I have a character and I ask myself, does she sleep on her stomach, her back, or her side? You might think that's a banal detail, but nothing is banal if it's given meaning, as all things in fiction should. What if she sleeps on her side because she hears better in one hear and she sleeps on her good ear so as not to hear the sound of her infant crying. Out of a seemingly banal detail grows a whole story.

Deb wrote: "I would like to tell Joshua that I truly enjoyed his book. I would like to ask him how he comes up with his story-lines and characters"

Thanks for your kindness, Deb. I don't plan out my story in advance. If you do that, you get what a friend of mine calls Lipton-Cup-a-Story; you end up injecting your characters into a preordained plot, and what they do doesn't end up feeling organic. Instead, I try to put my characters in situations where the stakes are high and there's the potential for conflict, and then I just see what happens. I think of the Passover question: Why is this night different from all other nights? That's the central fiction question, too. So in this case I had a situation of a son's having died and two parents who are splitting up, and that seemed promising to me. But beyond that, I didn't know anything. I think if there's no surprise for the reader there's no surprise for the writer. You proceed by intuition. Not that everything you intuit works. Not by a long stretch! I threw out more than two thousand pages. So you have to bark up a lot of wrong trees to get to the right tree. But they key is to bark.

Jackie wrote: "Hi my name is Jackie, and I just wanted to tell Joshua that I enjoyed his book. For me it was a really good page turner. I enjoyed reading about all of the characters in the book. I do have one que..."

Thanks for the kind words, Jackie. I really appreciate them. I'm not in general a sequels kind of guy, in that I spend so much time on a book that by the time I'm done with it I'm sick of the characters and ready to move on. And I'm already working on a new novel and on a bunch of short stories. That said, I don't think it's out of the question that I might return to these characters down the line. It's a book that covers a short time span (three days), and though certain things are resolved at the end of the book, there's much still to come for these characters, so I wouldn't rule out returning to them.

Rina wrote: "I just wanted to say to Joshua that I enjoyed his book despite its sadness. I, as an avid reader, can only say that I thought the writing was lovely and the character and stories wove neatly into ..."

Thanks so much, Rina. That means a lot to me. A writer spends a lot of time on a book (in this instance, five years and more than 2000 discarded pages), so it's nice to see it out in the world and to have people reading it. I've talked to a lot of book clubs about the book, and there's nothing more rewarding than getting to hear the various responses to your story and your characters.

Hi, everyone. I'm really happy to be joining you for this discussion. And I'm particularly pleased to be participating with Dana, who is not only a great writer but an old and close friend. I look forward to answering your questions.

Josh