Pump Up Your Book Chats with John Banks

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John Banks was born in Asheville, NC. His storytelling is very much in the Southern tradition, with a special affinity for humorists such as Mark Twain and the Old Southwest school of writers. Though entirely imaginary, much of the material in Glorify Each Day must have come from his many years as a teacher in the public schools and community colleges of his native state and from the three years he spent as an a community college administrator.

Visit his website at www.819publishing.com or his Facebook Fan Page here.

Q: Thank you for this interview, John. Can you tell us why you wrote your book?

Well, Glorify Each Day is a work of imaginative fiction, and as such, I had three goals in mind as I wrote: I wanted to be creative and imaginative; I wanted to be original; and I wanted to be entertaining. There is a lot of creative and original stuff out there that isn’t particularly entertaining, and any visit to your local multiplex will give you many examples of how to be fairly entertaining without being the least bit creative or original. So I think accomplishing those three modest goals is an achievement I can be proud of.

First, I wanted to give my imagination free rein. I think a lot of fiction writers put themselves into boxes where they think they can only write about certain things, or they should only write about certain things, and I can say that from experience – when I first started writing, in college, whether it was from a lack of confidence or from a perceived lack of enough time spent in “the real world,” I severely limited myself in what I thought was suitable for me to write. But in Glorify, I write about all sorts of characters and experiences that would be impossible for me to actually experience, either because they are coming from a female perspective or because they involve a level of violence that I thankfully have never had to live through.

Secondly, I wanted to make sure I was writing something fairly original. I think there’s a big difference between being merely creative and being original. If you think that you have just come up with an original idea, then I dare you to Google it. Chances are, you’ll be surprised to discover that a whole lot of people have written or said or done something very similar, either recently or a long time ago. I came up with what I thought was a wonderful idea for a particular chapter in Glorify, but a quick Google search was all it took to show me how truly unoriginal my idea actually was.

And lastly, I wanted to make sure I was being entertaining. That’s a hard thing to quantify, of course, since different people are entertained by different things. But I think what it really comes down to is knowing how to be a good storyteller. Quite frankly, there are a lot of writers out there who don’t know diddly squat about how to tell a story. So, I guess the main reason I wrote Glorify Each Day was because I wanted to tell a good story.

Q: Which part of the book was the hardest to write?

I have to say, honestly, that I never really felt like I was having any insurmountable problems as I was writing it. That’s not to say that the book “wrote itself,” as the saying goes, because I put some serious thought into each scene, but the writing process for this book was, I think, exceptionally smooth. There is a running series of gags throughout where the two main characters exchange jokes with each other about famous historical characters. I knew I needed a certain number of these jokes to be able to sort of space them out evenly along the way, and at times when I said to myself, “I need another joke,” they weren’t necessarily forthcoming right away, so I had to mull things over for awhile.

Q: Does your book have an underlying message that readers should know about?

That’s a very interesting question because I find that readers come up with their own underlying messages when they read. Everyone gets something different out of a book, based on their own experiences and understanding, and I’ve always found that to be the fascinating thing about fiction. A work of fiction is a little like a psychological ink-blot test for each reader. And for that reason I’m reluctant to go on too long about my own thought processes because quite often a reader will get much more out of a scene than I put into it! But just in a very general sense, something that I guess any reader will pick up on, I wanted to convey a picture of the world as a very dark, violent place where people are very often not very nice to one another but yet the characters are still resilient and determined to find ways to make their lives meaningful.

Q: Do you have a writing tip you’d like to share?

From a technical standpoint, I think it’s important for a writer to make sure there is a good deal of variation in the structure of your writing, and that goes for the structure of everything you write, from phrases and sentences to paragraphs and chapters. I think every writer has a “default” style – a tendency to always write a certain way, in a certain rhythm or pattern. This is usually easy to pick up on when you read a first draft – there’s a sameness to things. So when I do a rewrite I tend to focus on how a lot of my sentences will fall into the same rhythmic patterns, or my paragraphs will be built up or unfold in similar ways. So I make sure I mix things up more – make sentences that are shorter than they were, or longer than usual. Go back and rearrange how some paragraphs are developed. I have a bad habit of starting every paragraph in medias res and then working backwards from there, which is good to do occasionally, but not in every paragraph! But that’s how my mind works, so you have to learn to keep a check on your own habitual tendencies.

Q: What do you do to get away from it all?

Physically, it’s nice to travel. I enjoy going almost anywhere I’ve never been before, or to a few favorite places like a quiet beach or to New York – which certainly isn’t quiet, but there’s always something to do and lots of good food. From a mental standpoint, if I can’t literally “get away,” I like to put on headphones and listen to music – the roots music of America – blues, jazz, soul and rock.

Q: Are you familiar with the social networks and do you actively participate?

Oh yeah. Facebook is great. And it’s a great way to get the word out. A few people in my circle of Facebook friends will comment on my book and that leads to one or two of their friends that I don’t know buying the book. And so on down the line. So in a short amount of time a lot of people know about your book. And even though you may not get a lot of immediate sales, just the fact that so many more people now know about your book – they know the title, who wrote it, what it’s about, so at some point in the future if they’re thinking about a book purchase, or they’re talking to someone about a book, your name might come up and you might sell another book.

Q: What is the most frustrating part of being an author?

Getting people to take the time to read my book. It’s great that there are so many more opportunities now to become a published author because of digital technology, but the downside to that is there are so many types of publications out there now competing for a reader’s attention. There are many people who, in the past, may have chosen a novel to read who are now satisfied by reading blogs or internet articles or participating in social media. Attention spans are shorter and I think there are probably fewer novels being read now. I don’t have the numbers available to prove that assertion, but it just seems to be a logical consequence of the digital revolution. And at the same time as people are being given so many more choices as to what type of media they want to read, you have this self-publishing explosion that is flooding the internet with self-published novels that I fear few people will ever read. Self-publishing is both a boon and a bane to novelists. In the past, the roadblock to getting read was set up by publishing houses that set limits on the number of books published each year; now, the roadblock has been moved a few miles down the road – there are no barriers now to being published, but getting your work recognized in a sea of self-publication is a huge challenge.

Q: What is the most rewarding?

It’s nice to have people say good things about your book, but the most rewarding thing about being an author is the creative rush you feel as you’re writing and then the pride you feel as you realize what you’ve accomplished. Regardless of what anyone else may say about your work, you know that you started with a blank sheet of paper and managed to construct a brand new world of your own imagining.

Q: How do you think book publishing has changed over the years?

Well, that’s a topic that’s hard to get away from nowadays, isn’t it? Everyone is writing about how e-books and POD are revolutionizing book publishing, and I don’t think I have anything original to add to the discussion. But I’ll just say that I do believe that what’s occurring in the industry is truly revolutionary and like any revolutionary change there is a lot of initial upheaval and chaos but when the dust settles you have to think that the results will be, on the whole, positive for the writer. It’s relatively easy to be self-published now, so folks who, ten years ago, would be frustrated by not being able to find a publisher can actually make their dream of publication come true. But, of course, that creates another problem which I touched on earlier – that of a market glutted with self-published works.

Q: If you had one wish, what would that be?

In terms of Glorify Each Day, I would love to see it made into a movie. As I was writing it I was aware of the cinematic nature of the scenes, of how well the story would translate into film. There are many interesting characters and each of them has a very interesting story to tell; there’s a compelling love story at the center of everything and lots of humor and lots of drama – everything a good movie needs.

Q: Your book has just been awarded a Pulitzer. Who would you thank?

I would have to thank whichever members of the committee were cool enough or crazy enough to vote for my novel – I’m very proud of it, but I doubt if it’s Pulitzer material.

Q: Thank you so much for this interview, John. Do you have any final words?

I would like to thank Pump Up Your Book for this interview and I would like to ask everyone who likes to read good stories to consider putting Glorify Each Day on your reading list.

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Question of the Day

How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

-- Sheila Roberts, Author of Winter at the Beach