An Interview with Jim Hougan
Jim Hougan (aka "John Case") is an American thriller writer. He is an award winning investigative journalist who has written several non-fiction intelligence books. Jim Hougan has also co-authored six novels with Carolyn Hougan under the penname “John Case”. The last novel they published, THE GENSIS CODE, was a New York Times bestseller. How did you get into writing? At what age did you know you wanted to be a writer? I decided to be a writer when I read "The Sun Also Rises."
What was your first book or story that you completed? Did you ever get it published? My first publication was a book of poetry ("Anticipating Machine"), which was put out by Quixote Press in Madison, Wisconsin, back in the 60s. My first commercial effort was "Decadence: Radical Nostalgia, Narcissism and Decline in the Seventies."
How did you finally get published? When were you able to write on a full time basis? Please explain your success story? I was lucky enough to get a job on a weekly newspaper (the Prince George's Sentinel) in the Washington, D.C. area, after which I became a reporter for the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. While there, I won an Alicia Patterson and Rockfeller Foundation fellowship that sent me to Spain, England and Greece for a year, reporting on contemporary Western youth movements and the Generals' dictatorship in Greece. Soon afterwards, I went to work for Harper's Magazine, got an agent - and publication followed.
How do you stay motivated to finish a novel? How do you stay focused? Desperation, financial and existential. What is your writing schedule like? Do you write in the mornings, evenings, and for how long? I write for three hours a day, at no particular time - unless I don't. How do you get your ideas? What is your method for remembering them? Newspaper reporting, and especially investigative reporting, is a source of many ideas. And I have around 30 linear feet of files that help me remember. The best and most important ideas suggest themselves when I'm in a sort of hypnologic state - when I'm lying in bed, just waking up, or when I'm running. (I try to do five miles a day, three days a week.) How do you get over writer's block? I don't believe in it. Sometimes, I don't feel like writing, which is another way of saying that at those times, I'm more interested in something else. But that isn't to say there's a "block." I'm just not that into when I'm not into it. What piece of advice would you give to someone thinking of becoming a writer? What is a good starting point for them? Do whatever you must to find work as a journalist. You'll learn how the world works when people aren't looking, and you'll learn how to write, as well.
To find out more about Jim Hougan and his work, check out Jim Hougan's website.
|
