Q&A With Writer Tim J Myers
“How strange and beautiful that in choosing our words we’re to some degree choosing ourselves.”
1. Why do words matter?
First, Marissa, thanks so much for the opportunity to be part of your wonderful blog! I also really love your five-question format. The choose-your-own-question deal is not only writer-friendly but also taps into my deep and apparently inexorable love of buffet-style restaurants.
Why do words matter? This reminds me of those seemingly-simple scientific questions that actually go deep—like “Why is the sky blue?”, a query requiring centuries of human effort and intellectual growth to answer. The first and obvious response is that language is the most powerful form of communication, so our skill with it directly affects the quality of our lives, not to mention the overall “performance,” one might say, of the entire species. And that’s answer enough in its own right.
But of course there’s more to it. Especially since communication between human beings, crucial as it is, constitutes only one of the major powers granted by language. I love Whitehead’s assertion that “…the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind.” Words matter partly because a human being is a contained wilderness in which the self exists either blindly or knowingly—and language is one of the great paths through that wilderness. Thales said, “The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.” Where would we be in that endeavor without illumination, distinction, analysis, praise, metaphor, valuing, delineation, and a thousand other mental and emotional operations for which language provides tools? We see this in Exploratorium CEO Dennis Bartels’ reminder that “… the most powerful tool you have is a question.” (And of course it’s no accident that I’m quoting so much here; words allow that strange time-baffling magic too).
So before we even begin to truly communicate with others, we become who we are, in part, through the intermediary of language. How strange and beautiful that in choosing our words we’re to some degree choosing ourselves.
But I’m a writer, so of course I revel in the power words can grant me to connect with other people. I taught middle-school and high-school English for years, and now teach university writing and lit courses. I’ve seen in thousands of young lives exactly how necessary it is to gain control of your own language, and the critical difference it makes if you can or can’t do that.
Then there’s that astonishing realm of imagination and possibility we call “art,” in this case the language-based branch of the family (literature, oral storytelling, poetry, etc.). You don’t have to be an artist to be a fulfilled human being. But art, either in the making or the consuming, can fulfill human beings like little else can. And words are of course the very fabric of the literary arts.
Finally, our spiritual life also depends on language, far more than some people realize or want to admit.
But I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that word play is just so damn fun. Words matter for that reason too–
2. What are you working on right now?
I’m researching and planning what I call—ready for some heavy-handed marketing jargon?—a YA/adult crossover realist fantasy series. This of course involves, on top of all the usual fiction stuff, extensive world-building, which is laborious but exhilarating.
My story centers on three young people whose parents are murdered by a corrupt and power-mad government. The three siblings must then set off in search of a new life, with no real assurance that such a life even exists or that their journey will take them to any other human beings. Part of the challenge is that I want to interweave aspects of action-adventure with a more literary approach, including philosophical themes and a deep honesty about darker aspects of existence. And I want the otherwordly wonder of a classic fantasy too.
3. How have your goals as a writer changed over time?
My goals actually haven’t changed, and I find that unsettling, reassuring, and fascinating all at the same time.
For decades now I’ve said—almost always to myself—that I have two basic goals as an artist: To provide for my family and to do my art. Recently I revised the language: I want to live my love and live my art. And this hasn’t changed, not even a jot.
Of course the question can also apply to a writer’s specific goals. But again, I haven’t seen any significant change; I’ve always wanted to write a wide range of things, and I’m getting to different works as fast as I can. The unsettling part is that I need to do better sales-wise. I face a challenge many artists face, which is how to win some practical success while staying true to a deeper artistic vision. (The practical success, by the way, is necessary only as a means to more time for art). I have no Franzen-like problem with the existence of super-popular cash-register-ringing shallow works, and I’m in no position to tell people what they’re allowed to read. If Twilight becomes a magnet pulling money out of millions of pockets, who am I to bitch about it? For one thing, I’m a storyteller, so it’d be more than a bit hypocritical to share myths and folktales then condemn what can be seen as contemporary folklore. Don’t get me wrong; I feel very free to criticize such books or aspects of books, like the weird, suppressed sexual symbolism of the Twilight series. And I’m happy to claim that, for example, Ursula LeGuin is a better writer than Stephanie Meyer ever dreamed of being. But people are people and they seek out what appeals to them, and I’m definitely from the Daniel Fader Hooked on Books school in my conviction that the best way to promote literacy is to let people read what they want. I believe in taste, but not in a tyranny of taste.
The point, though, is that I tend to write the kind of work that I at least consider high quality, work that is “literary.” I’m happy to say I’ve gotten some national recognition—but I generally don’t sell much. And I’ve thought about this issue more as time has passed.
But the whole situation is actually subsumed in those two basic goals of mine. Since I want to provide for my family and do my art, the answer is obvious: I need to do all I can to balance the reality of the book-buying market with the art I want to make. The way I put that principle into practice is complicated. It means, for example, that I’ve published three books of literary poetry which I’m proud of but which haven’t sold well. My just-released Nectar of Story, for example, earned superb endorsements from poet Chase Twichell, poet and playwright Grace Cavalieri, Abenaki storyteller and writer Joseph Bruchac, and National Book Award finalist Ron Hansen. And yet I’m far from making the cover of People—go figure. It also means that the children’s books I’m writing these days are more “market-friendly” than those I’ve tended to write in the past. This actually works out, since I’ve long loved the shorter, funnier kind of picture book that’s popular now and thus am happy to write in that style. And I’m sure it’s obvious that the balance I’m seeking in my fantasy novel series reflects all this too.
In the end, though, a question keeps rising in my mind: What is life for, after all? We all have to face mortality, and that can bring a great liberation to an artist, I think. Since I’m going to die anyway, I might as well write things I truly value and can be proud of. What’s the point of living in a big house with a fat bank account if I’m just going to look at what I’ve written in the great light of my deathbed and be saddened and embarrassed by it?
My attempt to balance the call of art with the exigencies of daily life—well, that’s an old high wire act for me, and I keep at it.
4. How do images inform your writing?
I love this question, since an artist’s “sources of inspiration” or whatever we might call them are so mysterious. I’ve often found that I start a new work not so much out of any finished or even half-finished idea but simply because of some overmastering impulse. Sometimes, as many writers report, I suddenly imagine a character (or find myself, as you might say, looking at an already fully-existent human being in my head)—or some scene pops into my consciousness—or I’m entranced by a single image, involving characters or not—and sometimes it’s even less, an unspecified urge bubbling up, something like a half-forgotten dream I’m trying to call to mind, or a vague memory I can’t put my finger on. It doesn’t always happen this way; sometimes the inspiration is specific and detailed. But often enough you just feel your way forward, like a raccoon sniffing ripe fruit on the breeze from somewhere in the neighborhood.
This is a hugely pleasurable part about being an artist, at least to me—the animalistic process of simply following your nose, your desire, your fascination, your fear, even before it’s taken any definite form. Smells on the night air, and I’m a dog, all fired up but ignorant of where my tail-wagging butt is taking me.
5. Why do you write?
There are lots of specific reasons, of course. To express myself—to reach others—to try to work some change in the world—to deepen awareness—to explore my own thoughts and feelings—to shine a light on something that needs to come out of the dark—to make money—to open up new opportunities for myself and my family.
But I’ve found that ultimately—and I realize this metaphor is so traditional as to seem tiresome, even shallow, though for me it’s anything but: I write for the same reason mockingbirds sing.
I’m realistic about this, believe me. We know mockingbirds sing, at least in part, because they want sex and are protecting territory and are telling rivals to fuck off and all the rest. I’m human, so I’m an animal too; none of that is completely foreign to me. I’m not suggesting I write simply in order to get laid–that ain’t right. I mean that I have plenty of practical reasons for writing, things I can specify, self-centered motivations, manifestations of a normal drive for self-aggrandizement, psycho-biological satisfaction, etc.
But in the end, like the bird, I just get all pent up and the music presses against my interior and I can’t imagine life without the ecstatic release of it all. Well, jeeze—that’s obviously sexual! But so much more.
I guess I’d say I sing for the sake of singing.
About Tim J Myers
Tim J Myers is a writer, songwriter, storyteller, and senior lecturer at Santa Clara University. His children’s books (13 published and two in press) have won recognition from the New York Times, NPR, and the Smithsonian. He’s published over 130 poems, won a first prize in a poetry contest judged by John Updike, has two books of adult poetry out and a nonfiction book on fatherhood, and won a major prize in science fiction. He won the West Coast Songwriters Saratoga Chapter Song of the Year and the 2012 SCBWI Magazine Merit Award for Fiction. Find Tim on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TimJMyers1.
