Member Spotlight: John Young

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I think it’s important on a personal level because it helps me discover and define what I think about the world. It’s important for the world because it’s a way for a writer to share those thoughts and ideas with readers across time and distance.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I believe in effort. I don’t expect to be visited by the muse on any given morning, but if I show up and try, actually allow myself to write, often to write poorly, the muse will once in awhile slip into the room and the writing will flow. But without effort, without showing up, there’s no writing.

What is your favorite time to write? I like to write in the early morning, but increasingly, I find some flow in the afternoons.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? John Updike once told me over coffee that he knew the end of a novel before he started and he wrote to the end, using it as a kind of guidepost.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? This one is hard. Personally, I have more time to write and still have plenty of energy and passion for it. Regarding the world at large, there are too few readers and too little interest in literature.

John Young’s Getting Huge is out now with Guernica World Editions.