An Interview with Peter Blauner

How did you get into writing? At what age did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I think I started writing seriously when I was about sixteen. The plain truth is that I stumbled into one of those much-derided "creative writing" classes in high school, taught by one Charles Stone, who gave me something beyond value: encouragement at just the right moment. To be more specific, he gave me a set of great coming-of-age short stories to read - including ones by Willa Cather and Philip Roth - and then told me to take a shot at doing the same thing in my own words. In other words, he gave me both structure and freedom. And I've never really looked back.

What was your first book or story that you completed? Did you ever get it published?

I wrote a number of short stories in high school, but the first one that had any real substance to it was an experimental piece I wrote in my freshman year at college. It was based on a true story about a schoolmate of mine, who was murdered in a drug deal gone bad (it was the 70s in New York - those things happened). And no, I never got it more widely published. It was a youthful effort and there was no point in going back to it. After that, I wrote several novels, both bad and very very bad, which never saw the light of day.

How did you finally get published? When were you able to write on a full time basis? Please explain your success story?

I realized early on that I would have a very hard time making a living as novelist coming right out of school. So I looked at the fiction writers I admired - including Hemingway, Graham Greene, and John Steinbeck - and I saw that they had at some point all been journalists. So that's the field I went into for a while, to pay the rent and pick up some life experience.

But after doing it for about five years, I began to think about writing fiction again. But I knew I didn't want to write a callow coming-of-age story. I wanted to write a realistic, socially-engaged novel. To do that, though, I decided that I needed to give my character a compelling profession, one that hadn't been written about much before.

So one day I did a story about a probation officer and I knew that was what I needed. Because the job requires the people who do it to be both sympathetic and punitive to the people they supervise, and that's a great character set-up.

So I took a leave of absence from my job at New York magazine and took a chance, signing up as a volunteer probation officer so I could write about the job from the inside. To cut a long story very short, the novel was completed two years later and I was fortunate enough to be able to get it published. It's called Slow Motion Riot and it was written straight from the gut. I've written more successful and more refined books since then, but I still hear more about that one from readers than anything else I've written.

How do you stay motivated to finish a novel? How do you stay focused?

The secret is I've done a number of jobs in my life and never enjoyed any of them half as much as writing. So I'm very aware that I'm lucky to have gotten as far as I have. So anytime the sledding gets rough, I remember that there's lots worse things I could be doing.

What is your writing schedule like? Do you write in the mornings, evenings, and for how long?

I try to get to work as close to waking consciousness as the obligations of family life will allow. Bills, meter readers, school meetings, etc, are not helpful to the creative process. The closer you are to having a blank page in your mind, the easier it is to fill the page in front of you. Clutter and daily distraction are the enemies. I write three pages every day, no matter what. Hemingway said that's a good number because it leaves you a good place to pick the next day. But he also said that if you're writing badly, three pages isn't too much damage to recover from.

How do you get your ideas? What is your method for remembering them?

I suppose I get most of my ideas from real life. Sometimes, it's a newspaper article. Sometimes, it's just a story I overheard years before that stays with me for some reason. The older I get, the more I have to make a point of writing them down or even emailing them to myself. The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards once said that when the songs come, "you have to be ready for them." And there's actually something to that. Get something down on paper as soon as possible is essential (for me, at least). The other thing I find about ideas: By the time the book is done, the point of origin bears little resemblance to the final product.

If you get writer’s block, how do you get over it?

Get out of my room. Try to have some contact with the real world. Have an experience worth writing about.

What are your thoughts on self publishing?

My thoughts on self-publishing are evolving. I used to think of it as just vanity publishing. But now with the proliferation of ebooks, I'm having a second-thought. One of the great things about writing is that it doesn't require an enormous financial commitment from somebody else to do it, like a movie or a television show or a Broadway production. If you really want to do it, no one stopping you. Of course, no one's necessarily reading you either. In theory, publishers act as the gatekeepers, calling attention to worthwhile books. But in reality, lot of worthwhile books don't get much shelf space in the bookstores, which would rather stock the obvious blockbusters. I've had the experience of having a novel get a terrific review in a major city newspaper, and then hearing from readers that there are literally no copies available locally. Obviously, the ebook circumvents those distribution problems. But now the issue is, if everybody can just offer their books as downloads, without having the publisher as the middleman, how do you get your book to stand out. The answer is, I don't know yet.

What piece of advice would you give to someone thinking of becoming a writer? What is a good starting point for them?

There's one crucial piece of advice for any writer: read. There is almost no way to have a full career as a writer without being reader. Yes, some people have very interesting life stories and that might sustain them through one book. But there is no way you can improve as a writer without reading people who are better than you. Though I once heard the Nobel-prize-winning Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz say that he learned more from the near-great than he did from the truly great, because genius leaves no fingerprints. Actually, he didn't say the second part, but I figure that's what he meant.

Also, doesn't it seem a little ungracious to expect someone else to read your precious words if you don't extend that same courtesy to other authors?

To find out more about Peter Blauner’s work, check out Peter Blauner’s website.