With My Eyes Closed: An Interview With J.A. Tyler

J. A. Tyler is the author of ten books: Inconceivable Wilson (Scrambler Books, 2009), A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed (Fugue State Press, 2011), In Love With a Ghost (Cow Heavy, 2011), No One Told Me I Would Disappear [with John Dermot Woods] (Jaded Ibis Press, 2011), A Shiny, Unused Heart (Black Coffee Press, 2011), Girl With Oars & Man Dying (Aqueous Books, 2011), I Am Not How This Is (Patasola Press, 2011), Wilson (Re)-Conceived (Scrambler Books, 2012), When We Hold Our Hands (Dark Sky Books, 2012), and The Zoo, A Going (Dzanc Books, 2013). He is also founding editor of Mud Luscious Press and a part of the editorial teams at Tarpaulin Sky, Red Fez, Monkeybicycle, and Dzanc Books. For more, visit: www.chokeonthesewords.com.

Hey J.A., thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview–it’s greatly appreciated.

Well, first off, what were some of your favorite childhood authors and books? Did they have any influence in your writing, whether it was earlier in your writing adventures or later on?

In my early-early I loved Roald Dahl and Dr. Suess. The way they spun words, creating landscapes, it fascinates me even now as I read them to my children. There is such surreal punch in their works and yet they are always grounded narratives, even in their imaginative space, because they are meant for young readers. My middle-adolescence was spent in admiration of Hemingway and Steinbeck – their realism, their direct language trimmed with poetry. And if this were a timeline, as I headed out of my youth Kurt Vonnegut and E. E. Cummings were my go-to authors, those who I read over and again – what a way they burned sentences into new.

What about now? Which authors and books and stories and poets do you admire now? How have they influenced your works, if they have at all? Are there any works that you must read more than once?

The electricity of my now is with indie authors and presses, and my list of top-ten (non-Mud Luscious Press) books looks something like this, in no particular order:

Zachary Schomburg’s Scary, No Scary
Shane Jones’ Light Boxes
James Chapman’s The Rat Veda
Urs Allemann’s Babyfucker
Johannes Göransson’s Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate
Shane Jones’s The Failure Six
Peter Markus’ We Make Mud
Norman Lock’s The Long Rowing Unto Morning
Matt Bell’s Wolf Parts
Mairead Byrne’s The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven

Does the image always come before the sentence, or as you write, can the sentence create the image before seeing the image? Can one write without seeing it first? I ask this because your sentences are just filled with such beautiful and poetic images and it made me wonder about what comes first–the image or the sentence, when writing? Or maybe it can happen at the same time?

Thanks for that about my imagery and sentences. I appreciate it. And in fact, in my writing process, I believe the words and images happen all at once. I want the images and their respective phrases to come full-throttle, without censure, without stop, so I type with my eyes closed. I turn music up until I cannot hear anything else. I sit in the same chair, at the same table, where my surroundings are virtually identical every day, all in the hopes that the images I see in my mind will come out as full and as accurate and as thick as possible.

What is A Man Of Glass & All The Ways We Failed about? What compelled you to tell this story? When and how did the idea start for this book? Did it start with just one line? Did you have a particular vision?

A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed is, at its core, about a failed relationship. It is also, secondarily, about failing to exist. The impetus for the story came when I began wondering what it would be like to be literally made of glass, and when I started writing the book, this man of glass who no one could see, who was invisible to the woman he found most important, I couldn’t stop thinking about the variety of materials that he would attempt to compose himself of or with in order to be visible again. He of course fails, but the book is really about that drive to exist.

Fugue State Press has put out a lot of great books–describe your experience with them? Was there a lot of back and forth editing going on? Do you edit as you write, or do you just get it all down on paper and then go back and make edits?

James Chapman, who not only runs Fugue State Press but is a brilliant writer himself, is a gem to work with. His edits of my work were sharp and precise, the kind of editorial-love that every book deserves. I edit quite a bit while I write. Typically, within the initial writing of each separate piece I’ve already combed through it 4-5 times for edits. Then it sits and I return again, a day or two later, just to shore up my own thoughts. When a full manuscript is done, I go back again and adjust it for weeks on end, as a whole. All of this is to say that by the time I submitted to Fugue State, I felt 90% good about it, but James made that last 10% feel good and right and satisfied, and it wouldn’t be the same book without him.

We’ve had glimpses of Variations Of A Brother War, and I think you’ve finished writing it as a whole–what’s going on here? What ideas were you tackling in this work?

I’m not deeply entrenched in Oulipo, but I do love boundaries in writing, the challenges that we can set up for ourselves. In Variations of a Brother War I wanted to write about two heroes, one in a classical vein and another with a modern bent, both of whom experienced their downfall via overwhelming love for an unobtainable woman. In addition to that, I limited myself to a triptych style, each of the three components written in exactly 100 words. It forced me to be incredibly demanding with language, and I believe that those pieces have had such a nice response from editors and readers alike because of this precision, what those obstacles did for me as a writer and to my sentence structure for the duration of the manuscript.

You make it look so easy–both in your stories and poems in journals as well is in your books and chapbooks–is there anything that you find difficult when writing? Describe your writing habits–what works best for you?

Your flattery is glorious, so thank you. I am glad that it looks easy and most times for me it really is. My greatest challenge is actually the break between projects. I get in a particular funk when a new book manuscript is finally complete – something about being done with a whole work, officially and forever, it is a devastating time, especially if I’ve yet to start the next venture. There is always that feeling of satisfaction, the glow of completion, but I find it often overwhelmingly bittersweet.

As for my habits, I work on a laptop, with my eyes closed and music so loud that everything else is drowned. And usually each book project has its own album. In Love With a Ghost was mostly written while listening to Ra Ra Riot’s The Rhumb Line, Variations of a Brother War was Freelance Whale’s Weathervanes, and A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed came best with Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight. I write the first draft without looking back at all, then I run through it 4-5 more times trimming and paring, cutting dead words, then I’ll let it sit until I am ready to revise one more time and head it out for consideration. I also break the rule about writing every day – I don’t write every day – instead, I write best when I am compelled, when I have to write down the next piece or my mind will explode. That is what works best for me.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer these questions–wishing you the best in life and writing and congratulations on the release of A Man Of Glass & All The Ways We Have Failed.

Shome Dasgupta

is the author of i am here And You Are Gone (Winner of the 2010 Outsider Writers Press Fiction Chapbook Contest) and Tentacles, Numbing (Black Coffee Press, 2013). His website can be found at www.shomedome.com.

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