If you want to write, says
Chris Lynch, the Printz Honor Award-winning author of several highly
acclaimed young adult novels, you have to learn to
be a watcher rather than watched, and you need to welcome silence rather than
chattering away all day.
This advice
is in keeping with his motto for life: “Shut up and write.”
Since setting out to become a writer, Lynch
has diligently followed his own advice, producing such award-winning titles as Inexcusable, a
National Book Award finalist and the recipient of six starred reviews, and Angry
Young Man, as well as Freewill, Gold Dust, Iceman, Gypsy Davy, and Shadowboxer (all ALA Best
Books for Young Adults).
He has spent his
professional life as a writer, he admits, “ doing what I had
spent my entire prior life fighting: I’m giving it up. I’m showing you, the
reader, mine, and at the same time I believe you are showing me yours. If we’re
in the book together, we are showing each other.”
Lynch holds nothing back as he explore
his characters’ bruises and soft spots, their scariest thoughts, funniest
jokes, and most perverse desires. And it’s this style of writing that draws him
such praise from reviewers and fans.
“I believe the system I dys- functioned
within is very much a part of many teenagers’ lives,” Lynch says. “My goal is
to do my part to dis- mantle this system by exposing it.”
Lynch, who grew up in Boston, now lives in
Scotland. He used to work at home when his children were younger, but leaves
the house to work now. “I have started writing in the library of the Scottish
Agricultural College, and the change of atmosphere has helped. I've been acting
more like I have a regular 9-5 (ish) job that I go to in the morning and leave
in the evening, with a trip to the gym in the middle. This has become something
of a structure for me, though it's still evolving.”
Without his laptop, he says, his writing life
would be entirely different. “It would be almost impossible to imagine a
laptop-free existence at this point. My professional life is a testament to the
progress of writing equipment, from pen to typewriter to clunky desktop to this
practically self-sufficient machine I'm working on now.”
Lynch says he’d feel inept if he had to make a
living in any of the old ways again. “It has gotten so serious,” he admits, “that,
while I would love to do some writing in longhand again, I cannot do it. Every
time I try now, it's a disaster because I have no respect for my handwriting.
It's like the sound of my voice on recordings --- I find it hideous, and cannot
work with it.”
Currently, Lynch is working on a four-book
middle grade series for Scholastic on the Vietnam War. (The first two books are
out--Vietnam #1-I Pledge Allegiance; Vietnam #2-Sharpshooter--and Vietnam
#3-Free-Fire Zone will be out in the Fall, with Vietnam #4-Casualties of War
closing things out next Spring.) His most recent YA novel, Kill Switch, has
just come out with Simon & Schuster.
When he’s not writing, Lynch teaches in the
low-residency MFA creative writing program at Lesley University in Cambridge,
MA, just across the river from his boyhood haunts, and mentors aspiring
writers. He was kind enough to
take a few minutes from his works-in-progress to share some thoughts on writing
with wordswimmer.
Wordswimmer: If writing is like
swimming…how do you get into the water each day?
Lynch: First thing, I studiously try to avoid all the other
marine life. This is of course a lot easier for me at this point in my life
than when my house was busier, but it still takes some maneuvering some days.
The thing is, I want to get started swimming in my own head right from the
get-go, and even the most routine interactions with other people pull me away
from that. It can mean getting up really early and taking the dog for a long
walk until I know I have a quiet house to come back to. It can mean hanging in
bed until the coast is clear (which is harder than it sounds). But starting
with no human contact can often mean the difference between a mighty focus and
some maddeningly diffused morning hours.
Wordswimmer: What keeps you
afloat...for short work? For longer work?
Lynch: I love the rhythm of a short story schedule and it
almost always means three days for me. Ramp up, full stride, pull it all together.
I don't plan it that way, but I sort of expect it, and this pacing really helps
me focus. To put it back into a swimming-related context I suppose it's like
the pacing triathletes appreciate. Only way, way, way less brutal.
For novels, I can be thrashing away unproductively for a
whole day, then hit on something that I know is good and right and it fits and
while it doesn't amount to a lot of words it gives me a kick. Then when I get
away from the keyboard for the day I wind up getting a stream of ideas over the
next few hours at the gym or out walking or whatever I'm at. Those ideas become
notes, which bridge to tomorrow's writing, which slingshots me into the next
section of the work. Those slingshot moments are the ones that sustain
long-form writing for me.
Wordswimmer: How do you keep
swimming through dry spells?
Lynch: Dry spells simply require you to keep hammering away.
There are so many times when I feel like I don't need to be at the desk
because stuff is percolating, and sometimes that's true and sometimes that's a
ruse I pull on myself. During those times I have to sit down and write through
the deadly dull dry bits until I hit that thing which does not happen
unless I am typing. Trying to write a thing leads me to the moments that I need
to really WRITE in order to progress. Writing leads to writing in a way nothing
else can. Then, see answer #2. (I also recognize that there are times one needs
to get away, but here I am just addressing something specific.)
Wordswimmer: What's the hardest
part of swimming?
Lynch: The hardest part of swimming is the ever-whispering
voice in the conch shell that suggests you can't really swim at all. Or that
you are going to suddenly forget how.
Wordswimmer: How do you overcome
obstacles, problems, when swimming alone?
Lynch: You overcome the obstacles by acknowledging that
ultimately you are always swimming alone. The mind is a pretty resourceful
thing when it has to rely only on itself.
Wordswimmer: What's the part of
swimming that you love the most?
Lynch: The part I love the most
is when I hit it--a phrase, sentence, paragraph, a characterization,
chapter, whatnot--and I know, my subconscious editor knows, instantly, that I
got it right, achieved the elusive it. And whatever happens to the piece
from there, wherever it goes, almost doesn't matter because I just got
the thing, the thing of all things, that makes writing so special,
so singular for every last one of us who does this at any level, in any
form. And yeah, just like first mastering that other form of swimming, at
that moment little me is inside, splashing madly and shouting, "Look at
me! Watch me, watch me!"
For more information about Lynch and his work,
visit:
Posts
2 comments:
So wonderful, Bruce! Thank you!!!!!!
Glad you enjoyed it, Sarah. Hope all's well with your writing!
Post a Comment