Thanks to all who contributed questions for this year. All right, let's do this.
When you brush your teeth, where in your mouth do you start?
Bottom left, back.
The picture you have of yourself of where you’ll be in 5 years — will that converge with reality?
I sure, sure hope so. If not in five years, maybe in six. Or seven.
How many full manuscripts have you written? What is the status of each?
Hmm….eight. Six of them are either on my external hard drive or in a box in the closet in my home office and will probably stay there. The two most complete of the group, Following Infinity and The Ghost of Lake Emily, are on deck for submission. Following Infinity was on submission last year during a time when things in publishing seemed slow, and since it’s so quiet and introspective, it doesn’t really jump out and grab readers by the throat. The Ghost of Lake Emily, on the other hand, basically does just that. During that time I was (and still am) revising and editing Emily. Carrie and I talked about the two, and decided to adjust our strategy and put the bigger push behind Emily. As Carrie said, she usually doesn’t have two projects to consider when working with a debut author, and Emily has the potential “to make a bigger splash.” And if/when that turns out to be the publishing breakthrough, then we bring Infinity back out and hopefully demonstrate my range as a writer and get them both out there.
At what point in your life — professional, personal, and family — did you reach a point where you had to give up expressing your true opinions to keep the peace?
Professionally, I gave that up when I began working with people who might not share all of my ideas and I had to either protect or foster relationships with. Sometimes I can put my damned foot in my mouth all the way to the knee though, so clearly I haven’t mastered diplomacy. However I’ve also learned that if you carefully word what you want to express and present it in an openly respectful way, that will often earn you some breathing room.
In my family life, I probably gave that up when I reached the level of adulthood when people began to treat my opinions as adult, in the sense that I wasn’t given a pass on saying something because I wasn’t just a kid who sometimes spoke before the filter had a chance to do its job. And for the record, since this was the parameter established when I was asked the question, I’m considering “family” as my extended family.
Personally, I probably still don’t consider this enough. My problem is that I think audacity is one of the funniest things ever, like when a comedian makes a joke so over the top that half of the joke is in how far over the top they’re willing to go, because doing that is a way of acknowledging how no normal person would ever say or do anything so bold. Sometimes that can be justifiably misunderstood. I guess that’s more of an approach to expression than expression the content of an opinion, but that’s the best answer I’ve got.
Who would you want to be if you could be any person at any point in history?
I honestly think I’d rather witness specific moments than experience something from the perspective of another person. To answer the question, however, I think I would pick someone from a particular category instead of naming any one specific person: I’d like to know what it would feel like to have created a thing or an idea that was going to profoundly change the world for the better, and I’d like to be inside of the moment when that person would experience the full realization of what an impact their creation was going to have. Otherwise, I’d like to be my future self on the day I find out my first book has sold. Does future count as history if it hasn’t happened…yet?
If you could have any one superhero power, which one would you choose? How or what would you use it for?
The power to heal myself and other people. Not to the degree that anything I did would have a permanent impact and make myself or someone else immortal; I’d like to be able to heal injury, or fight back chronic illness, or help them resolve the issues that plague their thoughts so they could find and enjoy an inner peace.
Do you ever randomly count things?
The last time I can remember doing that was while I sat for a long time in a waiting room at the vet, and only to occupy my mind so the stress I was feeling wouldn't take me over.
If you could take a lesson to learn something new, what would it be?
Guitar.
When do you truly feel the most joy, and are you ever going to get a new puppy?
My most joyful moments can be divided into two categories: 1) When I’m creating something, like some new plan or strategy for school or a writing idea and, for whatever reason, I get so caught up in what I’m doing that I achieve flow state and can barely keep up with how fast the ideas are come. There’s nothing like that feeling. 2) When I receive some unexpected gesture of genuine acknowledgement. As I’ve mentioned earlier this month, I think perfunctory expressions of appreciation are largely meaningless. But if someone does or says something nice and it comes from an honest place? Even small gestures can mean so much. My problem is that between my introversion and my tendency to be harshly self-critical, I tend to think that most people forget I even exist unless I’m directly in their line of sight. When I get any reminder that isn’t true, it means a lot. (But notice that up there I worded my answer as “unexpected gestures” instead of “surprises.” Because the introvert in me thinks big dramatic surprises are some of the worst things I could ever experience, especially if they involve crowds of people. Again, this was addressed in an earlier post from this month.)
As for the puppy….
I honestly don’t know. I’ve been without Spencer now for about half as long as I had him, and I still have scars from losing him. When I look at the dogs in my family, it doesn’t seem fair to the dogs to have only one, when I see how they thrive when they have others in their pack to socialize with. I don’t know if I have room in my life now for a puppy, or a dog, or two dogs, especially when I have to spend most of my days at school. I might have another dog someday. But I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
Who are the three people you would most like to meet…living or dead?
#1 - Hands down, my agent Carrie. We’ve spent hours talking on the phone. We’ve exchanged dozens of emails, some directly about our work and some that had nothing to do with it. We’ll text back and forth and comment back and forth on Facebook and Twitter. But I’ve been working with her now for a little over two years, and we’ve never actually met, face to face. It almost happened once this past winter but didn’t come together. I’m sure someday it eventually will.
#2 - John Petrucci, the guitarist and main composer for Dream Theater. I’d just like the chance to thank him.
#3 - Freddie Mercury. I really wouldn’t care so much about meeting him, though. I’d just rather have the chance to see him perform.
What are the best and worst foods you have ever tasted?
Best foods: Bacon, when it’s baked instead of fried, and done right; smoked salmon and just about any other kind of seafood while in the Pacific Northwest; fresh pineapple while in Hawaii; the chicken and dumpling soup my mother makes. Worst foods: Some pasta salad at my sister’s first wedding that must’ve had some kind of vinegar-based dressing on it and tasted like a mouthful of spoiled poison. I was at the head table and felt socially obligated to eat all of it. It was all I could do to force it down.
What would life be like if politics did not exist?
Worse than they are now. There has to be some kind of system that society agrees to use to keep the chaos in check. Otherwise it would be like The Walking Dead without the zombies.
If elementary education still a good career for a guy?
It can be. As far as careers go, there are always going to be schools and kids that need to be taught, so once a person works their way into the system and can grab onto any kind of job security, that can be nice. But it’s such a stressful job, and so hard, and so completely unappreciated. I don’t know if I would recommend that someone go into teaching at any level if they thrive on pats on the back. If the internal motivation is there and they’re good with knowing they can make a significant difference in the lives of so many people, that’s different. It really depends on what the person wants out of what they’re doing. I won’t lie — there are absolutely benefits to being a male teacher in the elementary setting. But there can be drawbacks, too.
Which is your favorite constellation?
Probably the Big Dipper, even though it’s technically only a part of Ursa Major. But it’s easy to find.
Where would you like to visit if money were not an issue?
I don’t have any bucket list of destinations. Maybe different places in Europe, to take in the topography and bits of culture and history more than a couple of hundred years old?
If you could go back in time, what advice would you give to a younger version of yourself?
As it happens, this is very close to what will be an important theme in Manuscript #3, which I’m going to be busting my butt to work on this coming summer break. Knowing myself as I do now, I’d probably say, “Don’t beat yourself up for being this way. You aren’t shy, you aren’t afraid, you’re introverted. And you’re probably going to be happier with some aspects of your life if you start taking small steps to accommodate that RIGHT NOW. And don’t drive through Andover on the way home from Turtle Lake in July of 2015, because some woman reaching for her water bottle is going to rear-end you and cause $7,000 worth of damage to your car.”
Have you written about your memories of 2608 Oakes?
Some of them, because how could that entire story ever be adequately told? Click here to read that post from last year.
What were the early influences on your writing?
If we’re talking about when writing became something serious for me, Stephen King. The end.
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