Fictionaut Five: T.J. Forrester

T. J. Forrester has been a fisherman, construction worker, and miner. He comes from a family of four and has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail. He prefers to sleep on the ground and is no longer scared of bears. His stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Emerson Review, Harpur Palate, The Literary Review, The MacGuffin, The Mississippi Review, Potomac Review, and Storyglossia.

He wrote Miracles, Inc. while living in Virginia. The attic room was small, chilly in the winter, but his landlord was very kind and fed him when he was without food. His second work, a novel-in-stories titled Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail, is forthcoming with Simon & Schuster in the spring of 2012.

He blogs at his personal website, http://tjforrester.com/

Q (Meg Pokrass): Have you had mentors? Do you mentor?

I had a mentor for a couple of months when I was first learning, a professor at a small college who had never published and was bitter about his lack of a writing career. Quickly, I learned our relationship was mostly about him and had little to do with my development. He had a mean professor fantasy and recalled with relish seeing a professor in his MFA program throw a story at a student, saying, “It wasn’t worth the time it took to read.” Yep, you guessed it. One of my stories came flying back at me, along with the same utterance. I never showed him another draft . . . of anything. We remained in contact, and I recall telling him about sending a manuscript to an agent and receiving a rejection. His wife, who stood alongside him, saw the pain in my eyes and reacted with empathy. My ex-mentor smiled. That’s the moment I realized how twisted up he was inside. Not only was he hoping I would fail, he delighted in my pain. Obviously, my failure made him feel better about his.

Do I mentor? I haven’t, but I’d like to give it a shot. I’d enjoy that type of relationship,would get a kick out of watching a writer mature.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired… suggestions for unblocking creativity?

Ah, yes, that nasty ole self-critic. He’s quite the bastard, isn’t he? Mine pops up when I haven’t been writing for awhile, and he manifests himself at the word and sentence level when I draft. Trying to silence him with logic doesn’t work (give yourself permission to fail, you jerk!) and neither does screaming and threatening to throw the laptop across the room. I wish I had a magic solution for this frame of mind, but that would be too easy. When I’m stuck, I read and read and read. I also write and write and write. Eventually the prick goes away and the words flow onto the page. Really, though, the best thing for me is to write every day. That’s the only thing that shuts him up.

On another note (a different kind of stuck), occasionally I’ll write to a stopping point in a novel with no future in sight. This is frustrating and I used to spend days trying to think of a way forward. Now, I look back into the manuscript and invariably discover I nudged a character in a way he didn’t want to go. The further along the manuscript, the firmer the characters, so the less this happens.

How well do you know your characters before you start writing them? How firm are your ideas on that?

Before I began Miracles, Inc., I knew my main character, Vernon Oliver, was a fake faith healer on death row. I didn’t know he had experienced the death of a sibling at a young age, nor did I immediately understand how that loss changed him. I didn’t even know why he was incarcerated. His girlfriend, the mysterious Rickie Terrell, didn’t exist when I began chapter 1, nor did Miriam MacKenzie, the powerful businesswoman who hatches the scheme to fraudulently separate millions from their paychecks.

This process works for me because I’m a maniacal reviser. The characters grow a little each draft until they are full-blown.

Re plot… how firm are your ideas (if they are) at the start?

When I began writing, I figured out my stories ahead of time but my process changed over the years. Now I develop the plot while drafting, so there is no tug of war between writing in the now and preconceived ideas. Approaching a manuscript from this angle creates lots of work — I probably throw away 300,000 words for every 50,000 words I keep — but I feel a fluidity that didn’t exist seven or eight years ago.

How has it been for you meeting people who have read your work and/ or hearing from them?

I prefer mountain trails to cities, so I’m not exactly a people person, and one of the most scary things about this publication was knowing the hypothetical reader was about to become real. What would I say when she asked a question? Could I answer her coherently? I needn’t have worried. Turns out honesty and vulnerability go a long when connecting with a reader face-to-face. After a number of interactions, I’ve discovered that I LOVE talking to readers. They bring fascinating viewpoints to the discussion and continually reinforce the idea that the symbiotic relationship between a novel and a reader is unique to that one reader.

What’s the best advice you ever got? What helped as a young writer?

On the craft end of the profession, I went through a series of epiphanies that improved my work. The first was to shut up and listen during a critique, and the last was not to settle for the easy description. In-between I learned things like writing is more than polishing words, that sometimes it’s best to throw away the first eighty pages of a novel and start again. (I did this twice with Miracles, Inc.) One of the most important things I learned is there is a huge difference between “how to” craft advice and what is published. That is, if you write literary fiction. Realizing this was one thing, breaking the ‘rules’ hold was another. Took me years, actually.

The main thing is having the passion and the desire to improve. That’s what writing is all about.

On the business end of the profession, I think it’s important for young writers to set long term goals. Where are you going to be five years from now? Ten? How will you get there? Some writers choose to go into MFA programs and some join online writing workshops like Zoetrope.com. (I joined in 2001 and workshopped all of my published stories on the site.) Some writers prefer face-to-face workshopping in local writer groups and others prefer to go it alone. Some prefer a one on one relationship with a mentor. The important thing is to remain focused on your goal.

Obsession. It goes a long way in the writing world.

What is next for you?

I’m waiting for an edit for Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail, a collection Simon & Schuster is publishing a year from now. Then I’m going on a hike on the Appalachian Trail. After that, it’s back to work on my novel-in-progress.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.