“Your only engine is yourself” : James Scott on Writing, Working, and Getting the First Book Out
James Scott earned his MFA at Emerson
College. His stories have been published in Ploughshares,
One Story, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. James is an instructor at
Grub Street in Boston, and he has received awards from the Sewanee Writers’
Conference, Yaddo, the Saint Botolph Club, and other organizations. His first
novel, The Kept, will be published by
Harper in January, 2014.
We talked with James about the writing life post-MFA and the demands and pleasures of publishing your first book.
Writer’s Job: How have you made a living since getting your MFA? Have you been able to work within writing-related fields?
James Scott: When I started Emerson's program, I'd already been working for a few years writing for magazines and websites. I continued a lot of that work through school. Before I finished my degree, I published some stories in lit mags, and started teaching at a writing center. Through the same center (the amazing Grub Street in Boston) I also consulted on people's stories and novels. Teaching and consults made up most of my income, but I taught ESL, I tutored…. Things were lean, though. I had to give up a lot of the stuff I'd gotten used to—going out to eat, movies, sporting events—in order to have more time to write. Then I sold my novel in the spring of 2012, and the advance gave us a bit of breathing room. I still have school loans, of course.
WJ: How did your MFA prepare you for the writing life post-MFA? What have you learned about writing since completing your MFA?
JS: As I said, I'd written for magazines and such before I ever went to school, so in that sense, I wouldn't say it did a whole lot. Studying fiction doesn't prepare one for much outside of writing fiction. But it was critical for my writing. I feel like I had a pretty good grasp of story and structure before I got to Emerson, but once there, I learned so much about sentence-level stuff and real, nuts-and-bolts craft. More than anything, though, it provided me with an insanely talented group of peers. While we were in school, we exchanged work in addition to whatever we were working on for workshop, and since we've been out, we may not exchange work quite as much, but we definitely keep each other motivated.
The biggest thing I've learned about writing since graduating is something I started to suspect as my time at Emerson wore on: you can't depend on workshop or deadlines or teachers to keep you writing. You have to want to do it all on your own. Because when you leave, the workshops are over, the deadlines are gone, and the teachers have moved on to other students. Your only engine is yourself and your own desire to keep writing.
WJ: How do you manage the artistic and professional demands of being a writer?
JS: They're completely different muscles. It's a weird thing, to go from working all on your own to being around people. This year, right up until AWP I had been locked in my office, working on the last big push for the novel, fifteen, sixteen hours a day, sleeping very little, and then I was thrust into a party. Going from the internal to the external is hard for me. People thought I was drunk. Before I was, I mean.
I've managed it pretty much the same way all along: I set aside an hour each morning and then during lunch. That time used to be filled with reading lit mags and submitting stories, and now it's mostly emails, though I do still submit stories. That's the part that's really a job. So you have to treat it like one.
WJ: What has been your greatest frustration as a professional writer?
JS: My only frustration is myself. Being mad at anything else is a waste of time. Like anyone, I complain and blow off steam, but I try to keep it to a minimum and see the humor in it. The truth is, a lot of doors are going to be closed to you early on, and maybe forever, but the only thing that's going to open them is the work, so keep your head down and write. MFA-era me was doing a pretty good job of that, I think. I started my book there, and even though it took a long time (8+ years), that's just how long it took. I was working really hard. I'd only be mad if I'd spent a lot of time not working on the manuscript.
WJ: With your first book forthcoming, are there any anxieties associated with publishing you hadn’t anticipated? Pleasures?
JS: I've been fortunate enough to have friends publish books of all shapes and sizes, and so I've watched and learned (I hope) from their experiences. Having a good agent, too, means that you have someone looking out for you and helping you make decisions. That said, I'm anxious by nature, so I had anticipated being pretty damn nervous, but I think the most anxiety-inducing aspect for me has been wanting everyone to be happy, from my editor to his boss to my agent to the sales people to the publicist to my wife to my mom to my friends to the dog. When I think of the faith they've placed in me, I just want them to be proud. Talk to me in a couple of months about anxiety, though, because I'll probably be a mess.
Oh, man, so much of it is pleasurable! Having someone want to publish you in the first place is amazing. I remember hearing the excitement in my agent's voice. Talking things over with an editor, having those breakthroughs where things snap into place or you say something and they go quiet because you got it right— that's the best. I'm sure everyone reading this has told someone "I'm a writer," and had that person respond, "Oh, have you published?" Finally being able to say you have a novel forthcoming is exciting. Seeing your cover, reading the jacket copy, all that stuff is fun. A lot of it is work I didn't know was coming, but it's the best kind of work.