Author: Adam Daniel Mezei
ISBN: 0595380697
 
The following interview was conducted by: NORM GOLDMAN: Editor of Bookpleasures. CLICK TO VIEW Norm Goldman's Reviews
To read Norm's Review of We Are The New Auroras CLICK HERE
Today, Norm Goldman is pleased to have as out guest, Adam Daniel Mezei, author of We are the New Auroras.
Thank you Adam for participating in our interview.
Adam:
It’s a pleasure to be here.
Norm:
Adam, tell us something about yourself, when did your passion for writing begin and what keeps you going? Was there anyone who really influenced you to become a writer?
Adam:
I’ve been very fortunate to travel to many parts in the world over the past decade. Since graduating from university, I’ve been to over twenty countries. The ideas for my writing began percolating in my head from that very first trip abroad. It got me questioning the environment in which I was living, probing its underpinnings, deconstructing it. I became a very curious person – more curious than I’d ever been until that point – and I began reading madly, realizing that the bulk of the ideas I’d then had about the world just weren’t my own. I felt that my overall education until then was faulty and one-sided, and the method via which information was conveyed to me and my peers was incomplete and rote. Criminally-so, if I can say it like that. I wanted much more and I craved enrichment. In the year 2000 alone, I’d read more than 250 books and seen about an equal number of films. When 2000 was over, I was convinced I had plenty to say of my own accord. I wanted some kind of vehicle to make my ideas manifest. So I began writing seriously and full-time from that point onward. I sampled every form, every genre. I can safely say that 2000 was the year I began writing “for keeps." I still wasn’t sure where I fit into all of this, but what I was sure about was that this was what I really wanted to do with my life that writing was my niche and that it fit my personality to a “t."
In terms of the second part – influences – I prefer to spare your readers the cliched answer. I’ll eschew any stylistic comparisons to the likes of a Hemingway (whose material I adore), or Kerouac, or even dareisay Kafka. My worldview today is quite eclectic. I try to live outside of categories. Though I’ve been told my writing possesses shades of the existential, that I guess places me clearly into the late Primo Levi, Milan Kundera, or Josef Skvorecky camps, I instead like to think my writing – just like my personality – is a hybrid of many different experiences, many different places, and many different things. Not specific influences, per se.
Norm:
How do you come up with ideas for what you write? What methods do you use to flesh out your ideas to determine if it’s salable?
Adam:
I mostly consider myself to be an “observer." I enjoy café culture to the extent that over the years my private social life has come a distant second to my desire to sit back over a cup of coffee just to see how life plays out in front of me. For instance, just the other day I saw something so totally phenomenal on the street that one would be hard pressed to think it was real. Amidst a busy square here in my home town of Prague, two anarchist types – I say this strictly in terms of the way they looked and were dressed – were kicking back in the sun with their terrier dogs, reading novels! Big fat novels under the sun, while the rest of the well-to-do tourists were moving about them at breakneck speeds. It was nothing short of surreal. That’s a perfect example right there of where I’ll get an inspiration for a story.
But I read as much as I write, and sometimes that’s the way I’ll come across a great nugget which I think would work marvellously in longer form. I’ll then do some digging around to see if I’ve got enough for a more elaborate treatment, and I’ll typically launch into a story based on that. It depends. Sometimes I’ll even overhear things on the radio or a podcast
Interestingly enough, I’ve found that I get most of my good ideas while exercising. By now I’m convinced it’s got something to do with the electromagnetic pulses my nerves are sending to my brain when I’m sweating vigorously on some running machine, but don’t quote me on that one though. Hemingway was right when he said that a writer’s “got to feel tired at the end of the day."
Norm:
What was the first freelance piece you sold? How did the sale come about?
Adam:
Quite unremarkably, I’m afraid to admit. For a long time I discovered I had a leg up on the competition in countries where English wasn’t lingua franca. A good posting I’d once held abroad at the turn of the millennium involved me having total control of a website for which I did translations.and the overall copy. It was an adult site, truth be told. I had a large degree of independence on that assignment, and I was permitted to let my imagination, er...roam free. They trusted me enough to come up with some innovative attempts to market their product, and I got paid very handsomely for that gig. A lump sum for a set period – I think it was a three-month assignment. Then I moved onto the next. The next job I’d held in that same country wasn’t nearly as racy. Like I said, it wasn’t too literary, but at least it was a living.
Norm:
What challenges or obstacles did you encounter while writing your short stories? How did you overcome these challenges?
Adam:
On Auroras, I’d done something in writing that I’d never done before – I finished off an entire book within thirty days! It was after my last major film project, which didn’t end too spectacularly near the end of 2005. So I’d wanted to at least have something creatively tangible to walk away with at the end of that year something to make up for the shoddy performance on the set, considering all the long hours my team and crew had invested in trying to mount the movie.
With Auroras, I basically gave myself a deadline and said to myself, “meet it:"
Thirty stories. Thirty days. Write!
I worked on a “story ahead" basis. It basically meant that while I was writing and finishing off a given day’s story, I had one on the go for the next day so that the instant I sat down at the keyboard I could hit the ground running.
It was a marathon, let me tell you.
Needless to say, the feat was one I’m not sure I’ll repeat again soon – within that compressed of a time frame, I mean. Still, I’m pleased I was able to prove it to my craft that I’ve got the capacity to work under such a demanding time frame. It’s a skill I think most writers should harness.
Norm:
Have you been influenced by any particular authors?
Adam:
This is always a tough question for me to answer. I find I get inspired from different writers on different occasions depending what I’m writing. Knowing what I know about the life of a given author: from my own research, from direct personal involvements with that writer, or in reading an author’s (auto)biography (still the least dependable source of information, I assure you!).
For example, I’ve long admired Hemingway’s iron discipline. Hemingway was hardcore. He wrote no matter what he was doing in the world...chasing bulls, cavorting across Spain with his buddies, witnessing pitched battles in WWI’s theatre of combat, volunteering on the front lines with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, or just getting drunk on “roast suckling pig at Botin’s with a bottle of vino rioja." He always got up on time and did his business. Hands down.
Jerzy Kosinski is another of my idols, and someone I’ll go back to often in my thoughts when I find myself getting stuck over particular passages. Instead of trying to muscle it out, I’ll recall the sheer number of times Kosinski would put his prose through the meat grinder. Legend has it he’d drive his publishers to madness (certainly not an aspiration of mine, however) by changing the text of his novels right on the galley copies! That’s how fastidious Kosinski was. He had a certain economy to his material, too. Kosinski’s stuff always smacks you right in the solar plexus, and that’s a technique I’m a long way from mastering, try as I might.
A new author who I identify with quite strongly is Po Bronson. He writes with such an unassuming style – using relatively simple language to convey the profoundest of notions. Things like, why we aren’t satisfied with our station in life, or why we have difficulties with family members. There’s no weighty non-fiction to his lines. Po just tells it the way it is and I just that. He’s only published three books in his young career, but on he’s alredy made The New York Times bestseller list twice. It’s easy for me to see why.
The biggest drawback to being influenced (or not) by the so-called “greats" is that I find it clutters my writer’s radar. Before commencing a large project, I’ll keep myself the hell away from other material, rarely engaging in other reading. Getting stuck into other authors’ books really derails me. I find that I’m making all sorts of mental comparisons as I write, largely on a subconscious level.
Norm:
What do you think about literary criticism? Do you read criticism of your work?
Adam:
I try not to take it to heart if it’s lousy. Hey, I’m liable to get bad reviews like every other author on the planet. I don’t think there’s one author around who has achieved near-unanimous praise. Even Shakespeare had his detractors during Elizabethan times! I know it’s hard to believe, considering how often we unknowingly cite the Bard, freely quoting him on certain occasions, but it’s true.
Having said that, criticism should be paid attention to some degree. I don’t write for me alone.
Kosinski had a succinct and great way of summing up your question, Norm: “Praise is good for the artist. It’s what gets him writing more books!"
Norm:
What are the skills that you most admire in an author?
Adam:
Consistency is definitely number one. You can’t call yourself an “author" if you don’t write something every darn day. You’ve got to make time for this craft. It only blossoms in time, like fine wine. Besides, I’ve often found I have a ten to one (sometimes twenty to one) ratio of throwouts to keepers. There’s heaps of stuff I’ve never chosen to show the light of day. It dwarfs the stuff I’m generally satisfied with. Every author is similar. You can’t amass that sort of inventory if you’re not consistent.
Detachment is another. I’m reticent to befriend authors who are too attached to the stuff they write, or are afraid to expose it to critique. Here again, I think you can’t call yourself an “author" if you don’t have the confidence in your abilities to continuously produce material and build up your inventory. There’s that ratio thing cropping up again. You’re bound to not use tons of things you write. It’s the nature of the trade. Don’t get all touchy-feely and caught up about a particular passage or chapter. It’s what we writers do. We write.
Abnormality is one more. Allow me to explain: I recently read this great quote “Normal people have nothing to forget." Well you know that feeling when you pick up a piece of literature that you just can’t put down? It’s generally, I find, because you’ve discovered an author who has succeeded in offering you something you’ve been expecting, just that s/he’s delivered it up in a way you weren’t quite expecting. Authors who haven’t been through a fair bit, or experienced quite a bit, or got out there in the world and taken their lumps, really aren’t all that engaging in my experience. This is what I mean by abnormal.
One more thing. A mentor of mine once cautioned: Amateur writers seek praise. Professionals seek to earn a living.
Norm:
How much do you try to develop your writing skills and how do you go about it?
Adam:
I write daily.
Lately, I’ve been shuffling up my styles, seeing which works best. But I’ll generally assign myself a daily word quota. Lately I cap it at about 3000 words a day. That goes only for my “personal" writing – what screenwriters generally call the “stuff on spec." These are passion projects, things I conceive of independent of any paid assignments.
When that’s done, then there are my reviews, my magazine articles, or the stuff I redo for other people. That’s “work" work. This step often takes anywhere from half a day to an entire day, depending on the time of year.
Also, I find that reading lots of nonfiction helps, so I’ll generally substitute it instead of the newspaper, which I hardly ever read these days seeing as I’ve lost all hope for the media. If I can hammer through two books a week, then I’ve done well. It’s what I call my “second university degree" because I don’t have the time to go back to school and learn all the stuff I only wished I’d learned when I really was in school.
I also watch plenty of bad movies, if only to learn what not to do when writing a screenplay. I’ll read famous screenplays when I have the time, even for films I’ve already watched, if only to get an idea of how they’ve structured it. Another little trick I’ll sometimes pull is watching a scene in a film then transcribing it immediately in longhand. Dialogue, sluglines, everything. Then I’ll compare it to the actual screenplay just to see how close/far I’ve hit the mark. A neat exercise.
Norm:
Do you recommend writers find a niche or specialty?
Adam:
Not unless they want to have one. Personally, my tastes tilt towards things on the short side of the spectrum. I’m a writer who likes his stories to explode with a bang, leaving you astounded craving for more. It’s particularly why I’ve written three short story collections so far in my career. But if you’re a good crime novellist, like some of my colleagues are, or if you’re in to sci-fi, then by all means work your craft like you’d work a muscle group on your body. Isolate.
Norm:
How have you used the Internet to boost your writing career?
Adam:
Don’t tell anyone, but I’ll agree with one of my mentors and say that I think Amazon is THE biggest literary journal on earth. If it doesn’t supplant present print versions of the standard literary journal, then it will...eventually.
With the Internet, you’re in control as the writer. So I try to let my constituency keep abreast of my activities via things like my Amazon blog, or by taking interviews with popular sites like yours.
There’s also the issue of research. No longer does a writer have to go to libraries for all of his/her research needs! I can summon stacks of data for a given project right from my desk. Our generation is much luckier than in the past. We don’t even realize it. I’m amazed how more people aren’t writers. It’s shameful how we already take the Internet for granted.
All in all, the Internet is a major traffic booster for me. If I had to work as hard as the net does for my career, I probably wouldn’t have any energy left to write.
Norm:
How much real-life do you put into your fiction? Is there much “you" in there?
Adam:
People ask me that all the time. Someone recently asked me in terms of We Are the New Auroras whether or not I was the one who was suffering from “unfulfilled dreams." My answer to them was simple. I said, yes, once I was...but after finishing my book, no longer.
The “me" part of it is in how much I’ve personally invested into knowing a given subject. I’m what I like to call a “method writer." Like an actor might, I immerse myself in scenarios to know fully how something feels, tastes, smells, etc. I’ll go through many different incarnations, if I can say it like that. I haven’t liked all the different “me’s" that I’ve been over the years, but I’m happy for the experiences: what I did, when I did it. It’s paid off in spades by making my literature more persuasive, I find.
I still have tons of trouble writing in first person, however. I’m nowhere near close to writing a memoir. First, because I’m not old enough. Second, because I’m not confident enough to bare my soul that way. Auroras certainly does contain many heartfelt bits – especially within its first few pages – though I assure you those portions were written under extreme agony. Still, it’s a milestone I’m proud to have overcome. Let’s just say it’s still pretty treacherous territory.
Norm:
Can you tell our readers something about We are the New Auroras? How long did it take you to put together these short stories and is there any short story included in the collection that you would like to turn into a novel?
Adam:
I’ve long been attracted to the concept of the anti-hero. It’s a personality-type that our society doesn’t put much stock in. Statistics prove that most people in the world won’t “make it," in the pure Hollywood sense of the term and the lives these regular unsung joes appeals to me highly as a writer. The non-standout sorts, who don’t shine on the world stage, yet whose contribution is so vital to the functioning of it.
Robertson Davies, the famous Canadian novellist who I’d read in high school in Toronto, wrote a great book called Fifth Business. The idea comes from the theatre. It’s the role in the cast which is least visible to the cast yet the most influential to the story. Remove the “fifth business" from the play, and the plot cannot progress.
And this is basically the position of all characters appearing in Auroras. They’re appealing to everyone simply because they’re “no one" in particular.
As I’d mentioned above, I wrote it in thirty days. It was November, 2005. I’d say there are at least two stories I’d be very interested in fleshing out more fully. One is “The Day at the Trench." You can see just how much I’d wanted to go deeper with this one seeing as I’d taken two days out of the thirty to write two parts to it. It’s the story about a British mercenary who was employed by a corrupt African government to safeguard an open-pit diamond mine in West Africa. When the dust settles after a raid on the camp, Gord “Trench" O’Riordan finds himself in British-protected Gibraltar, a washed-up emotional wreck. The story deals with O’Riordan’s disaffect and the people who come to help him – namely Daniella Kiersz – who is also in Gibraltar at the same time with her own skeletons in the closet. They meet and begin to help each other.
The second one I’d take a crack at is “Navajo in the Snow." It explores a theme which I’ve long held to be sacrosanct in my writing: the pitting together of two disparate cultures in strange unheard of situations. This one’s about a gang of Navajo trackers who are employed by new-to-the-EU member state Poland to teach its own Polish soldiers how to track their extensive frontier with the Ukraine. The aim – and this is a true story that I’d heard – is to prevent contraband uranium and spent plutonium from finding its way from old Soviet controlled nuclear depots into the hands of terrorists based in Western Europe. It’s got thriller written all over it, though I feel the subject’s been explored in different ways in film. Rarely in books, though.
Norm:
Many writers want to be published, but not everyone is cut out for a writer's life. What are some signs that perhaps someone is not cut out to be a writer and should try to do something else for a living?
Adam:
If you have trouble sitting on your posterior for long stretches of time, then forgetaboutit writing’s not for you. It’s labour-intensive and time-consuming. Certainly not for the feint of heart. If you’re not prepared to devote substantial blocks of time to drafting material, or to spend even more time revising it, you’re not going to succeed in this line of business.
Also, writers write – a lot! They read – a lot! Like I said, you write and read more than you generally need, so if you’re worried about how that’s going to cut into your precious social life, then perhaps you should reconsider. Alone time is part of the process.
In general, there are plenty of sacrifices, and most of them revolve around what you might alternatively do socially. If you’re not prepared to make those, think twice about the industry.
Norm:
Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?
Adam:
Yes. What makes it all worth it for me.
For me, it’s the possibility, always around the corner, that I’d get that one single comment. The one I might someday receive from some review from some random reader whom I’ll have never met before, located in some faraway place in the world. It’d go like this:
“I’ve been waiting for a book like [insert title] for the past ten years. I read constantly, and I haven’t seen something like [insert title] in ages. And if there’s not another novel I’ll read in another ten years that’s exactly like [insert title], then I’ll be perfectly fine with that. This is why I read. To find gems like [insert title]."
I’ll stop when I read that somewhere. Until then, the fun surely continues.
Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.
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