What inspired this?
“Watching John Mayer play guitar next to B.B. King.”
In what way?
“My 12th and final novel, Arrival / Departure: Clark County, got written while listening to a lot of B.B. King. I saw him at Majestic Theatre a couple years before he died. He exuded such kindness, and that colored the way his music sounds to me.”
What do you listen to when you write these days?
“Nothing. I don’t. I don’t listen to anything but ambient noise. I don’t write at home. And I don’t write novels. I don’t write much at all anymore, truthfully. I write the weekly column, still, and I sometimes revise short fiction I wrote 10 years ago, but I don’t write enough to have a routine.”
What precluded you from linking to your writing, above?
“I don’t want to mix them together, I guess. None of my readers from boxing know about this blog. None of this site’s or my boxing readers know about my Medium page –”
Where the short fiction is?
“Yup.”
Go on.
“I like this self-interview approach. I began doing it semiannually with my column a few years ago. The first time I did it, I took it very seriously and did it very well. I considered how few words we actually use when we think – how many things, particularly prepositions and conjunctions and even conjugations, we put in for others’ benefit. I wrote that first self-interview with real fidelity to the idea of a mind interviewing itself.”
What about these days?
“No, now it’s just much easier to answer my own questions. To skip all the preamble. To skip the throat-clearing.”
What makes you think that?
“Years ago, when boxing was more popular and so was I, there were these radio interviews I would do with CBS affiliates, the week before or after a big Vegas prizefight. I noticed how much easier it was to talk about things than write about them. The audience is already there. When you write, you have to do much more convincing before you get to where you want to be.”
What is this about, then?
“Broadcasting a signal. Letting the network know there’s a node out there looking to connect. That’s an essential part of being an animate organism, methinks. Those are the rules. You have to make connections and commit energy to them to be viable. The nodes aren’t important. The degree of energy traveling across the connection is how the network measures its health.”
What about compulsion?
“It’s gone. It’s blessedly gone. I notice that now.”
What did you want to talk about as it pertains to writing, today?
“My layers process – borrowed from the 17th-century Dutch painters. I feel like this is the right place to put it. Just to have it.”
Tell me more.
“No, not today. Time’s up, I see; I promised myself I would keep these under 500 words to ensure I wrote them regularly.”
Not even a hint?
“I can use italics here and explore the process I was after, in a way I couldn’t do with the column or the fiction, back when I was using the process. It’ll happen one of these days.”
What would be the source of anxiety that spurred you to do it?
“I don’t know. And if none ever comes, and I never do do it, why, that’d be a victory and a half.”