By Cassandra Santiago
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One year after the release of his novel, the author of best-selling novel Descent is back in his hometown, Iowa City, for a reading Wednesday night. Tim Johnston committed to writing after publishing stories during his time in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts.
Since the release of his first novel, Never So Green in 2002, Johnston has won numerous awards including the O. Henry Prize, New Letters Award, and the 2015 Iowa Author Award. Currently, he teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Memphis while balancing a novel in the works.
When he’s not consumed by his writing, Johnston enjoys golfing, watching movies, eating nice dinners, and reading. In his words, he finds joy in doing “all the normal things that normal people do.”
Johnston spoke with The Daily Iowan about Descent, his latest novel he spent more than six years writing, and his writing process.
The Daily Iowan: What are some of your writer lifestyle habits?
Tim Johnston: I find it very difficult to teach and be a productive writer at the same time. I kind of need to have the whole day ahead of me to really get immersed into the writing world and the world of the characters.
DI: What did the process of writing Descent look like?
Johnston: It began with an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone when I was working on this house in Colorado … It was very isolated and I was in this house entirely by myself for weeks and months on end … I was actually, at the time, not even trying to write, I was trying to get this house finished off, but this family of four started bothering me in my brain. Before very long, I was not able to keep them out of my mind, so I stopped what I was doing and started writing.
I knew that something bad was going to happen to this family in the Rocky Mountains, and beyond that I had kind of a general idea what was going to happen by the end of the novel, but there was that entire vast, scary wilderness between the beginning and the end that I didn’t know much about. Once I had written sort of the catalyst event that gets the novel going, I jumped ahead two years in time to when the mystery of the missing daughter has not been solved in any way. The family is still just as in the dark as they ever were and that was the interesting time for me to pick up the story. I wanted it to be about people who were dealing with their daily lives with this cloud hanging over them constantly and endlessly.
DI: Has writer’s block been a part of your career at all. If so, how do handle it?
Johnston: I don’t believe in writer’s block; I believe in writer’s pause. I reached a point in the novel where I didn’t know where I was going, but I didn’t think of it as blocked … even though you’re not physically writing on a daily basis for a long period of time, at some level you’re still thinking about it. The novel is still turning its wheels quietly in the background.
DI: What do you love most about Descent?
Johnston: I love that it’s published and done and done fairly well. It’s been a great friend to me in that respect. I think that I love most that I took my time with it … I never rushed and I never did less than I thought was the best I could do. Love is not the word I would use, but I’m just quietly proud of its quality from sentence to sentence.
DI: Can you explain the significance of writing in your life? What does it do for you as a person?
Johnston: I’ve always been trying to get some image or story out of my head one way or another. When I was a kid, it was drawing. At some point the written word took over in that means of expression and it took over absolutely. It means that there’s some essential need in me to get out what’s in my head into a storytelling form, into images. It’s just sort of who I am. If I weren’t doing it … I would not know who I was. And I feel that as long as I’m working on it, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, it keeps me from feeling like my life is a total waste of time.
WORDS
Tim Johnston Reading
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque
Admission: Free