Spotlight On…

Today, Ethel Rohan invites J.A. Tyler to light-up Dark Sky. Bring your shades.

Writing wise, where are you now? Where are you going?

Where I am now is in a book called WATER. It is about 60K words at this point (twice as long as any book I’ve ever written) and should finish around 75-85K. It goes from rain to flood to dryness to the last water in the world to flood again. I’m not sure where it is coming from or where it is going, but children are killing other children and children are rescuing other children and somewhere in there is a boy lost in the woods and a retelling of Noah and a breakfast of tumbleweeds and a story about a man who takes an axe into the woods. I have asked myself to write something that breaks open language, and I am trying my best to adhere to that.

You are remarkably prolific. What informs your creative process? How do you keep inspired?

I write as often as I can, and honestly I pour out much deletion-worthy material when I am between books. I had just finished a collaborative novel(la) with John Dermot Woods (slated to publish with Jaded Ibis in 2011) before I began WATER, and at that point I didn’t know why I was writing all of this strange and sad vignettes about children in a playground, killing one another. I erased or trashed each of them nearly every day, just writing them because they needed to be written, until I realized that what I was really trying to start was a new book, then the narrative came together a little sharper and I was able to officially start the writing process. And in that time, the only thing that really kept me going was that if I don’t write, I feel like shit. If I don’t write, I am grumpy and sore and unpleasant to be around. I write because I must, and that keeps me going at all times.

In addition to writing, you sport many fancy hats. Do you worry about spreading yourself too thin and diluting the quality of your writing, editing, and living?

I do worry about it on occasion, but this is the challenge with being a writer and an editor. And funny enough, this is also the benefit of being a writer and an editor. If I didn’t edit with so many other places I would simply sit around and write, and quite frankly, much more of what I write would be terrible. I wouldn’t have anything keeping me away from writing so it wouldn’t feel so immensely wonderful to get back to it. As it stands now, the editing or reviewing work with other journals and presses keeps me from writing so that when I return to it, I better understand how to get the words on the page and I greatly appreciate the time rather than taking it for granted. Plus, reading and editing so much other works gives me a much better perspective on my own, eliminating many of the wrong turns I would otherwise take.

How has the Internet impacted your reading and writing? What is the future of print publication?

I really did start reading literature on the internet via Mud Luscious Press’s online quarterly – it was the way I asked myself to read more of and from online writers. Since then I’ve come to understand how valuable the online community of writers and editors is and what those online journals can do for our books (reviews, interviews, etc.) and for our writing (publishing excerpts, moments, movements, etc.). I believe the future of print publication is remarkably the same as what it has been for so long – people will still want to publish books, to read printed books, and those will be split in some fashion between big and small publishers. But what I’ve learned is how the online portion of our literature can be such a tremendous proving ground – it doesn’t take me many submissions of a work-in-progress to learn if the book I’m working on is hitting editors and readers in the way I want – something that would take many years in the print-only journals but takes mere months in the world of the internet.

Tell us something that most people don’t know about you?

I have an intense fear of death. I can only think about it, legitimately, for maybe ten seconds before I make a strange unstoppable guttural sound (the sound of fear) and must close my eyes tight and force myself to think about something else. Oddly, I write about death all the time, but when I am handing it out, on my time, in my way, to people who know it is coming, it is something altogether different.

If you didn’t write, what would your life look like?

If I didn’t write I believe my life would be a strange nuanced version of what it is now. I would still have my wife and my kids and my extended family and friends. I would still have my job and my dog and my fear of death. I would still have my horrid three-cylinder car and my love of Ricky Gervais and my obsession with coffee. But it would be a changed life, a life with far less imagination and wonderment, a life with less twang and less smile and less love and less color, a life with less life in it.

Please tell us your favorite, and why:

a. Musical: Chicago (It takes narrative and shreds it, pieces it back together like cobblestone, winds it up in itself and spits it back out in a ball where one end still leads to another, but only if you are willing to follow it through)

b. Fable/Fairy Tale: Little Red Riding Hood (This story has everything I love in a narrative – a child, loss, being lost, violence, menace, danger, redemption, sadness, sorrow, loneliness, cunning, bravery, deception – I cannot list all that makes this story the most vibrant and telling story)

c. Movie: The Edge (Written by David Mamet and starring Elle Macpherson, Harold Perineau, Alec Baldwin, and Anthony Hopkins. Plus there is a bear)

d. Painting: Dali’s take on Don Quixote (The splatter of ink, the blotches and the chaotic feeling, I want my writing to read that way, to breakdown and buildup as that piece of art does)

e. Place: The screened in front porch facing west from my Uncle’s farm house (There is a barn and a view of mountains, and when the clouds come in they come in around us in three-hundred and sixty degrees)

Please do a five minute free-write with the words “green oranges” and share.

Noah is wanting fruit but the seeds that he is planting are seeds of houses and women. The seeds Noah plants have barrels of drinking water and combs of pretzels in them. The Noah that is planting this garden on this ark is the Noah who has muscled boards and nails into place and who no longer has a memory of oranges. Green. Green leaves on the trees that are no longer green that are no longer trees that are no longer leaves. Noah holding what is not an orange but a rock, what is not a seed of fruit trees but the hollow left-over shell of what was a ladybug. Green oranges. Images that won’t come or don’t come. Images that are mistaken or rotten. Noah on an ark he is building, is halfway through making, is coughing out his throat and sloughing from his shoulders. This Noah a Noah planting everything but an orange tree, everything but green leaves. Noah planting a new civilization on the deck of an ark he is building and will some day, when the rain stops, have no more memories of.

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J. A. Tyler is the author of seven novel(la)s: INCONCEIVABLE WILSON (Scrambler Books, 2009), SINATRA (Vox Press, 2010), IN LOVE WITH A GHOST (Willows Wept Press, 2010), A MAN OF GLASS & ALL THE WAYS WE HAVE FAILED (Fugue State Press, 2011), NO ONE TOLD ME I WOULD DISAPPEAR with John Dermot Woods (Jaded Ibis Press, 2011), A SHINY, UNUSED HEART (Black Coffee Press, 2011), & THE ZOO, A GOING (Dzanc Books, 2013). He is also founding editor of Mud Luscious Press. To read more, visit: www.mudlusciouspress.com.