A Necessary Act ~ 2016
Mr. Wirt,
Thank you for
taking your time for my audience and myself,
Who are your
influences?
When I was in
seventh grade I read Misery by Stephen King and my mind was blown. I’d always
been a reader, but that made me think about REAL books—novels—and I wanted in.
More recently,
I read You by Caroline Kepnes. Wow…
THAT’S how you write a bad guy. You read stuff like that and realize you’ve
gotta keep your game up. I want to create a character that can creep a reader
out like that. If Scott Alston is half terrifying as Joe Goldberg was, I’ve
done my job well.
When did you
begin writing?
I always wrote
stories when I was a kid. In fact, my mother just sent me a giant box full of
junk from back then, and it was full of these one-page stories I had written. The Happiest Millionaire about a kid who
won every contest he entered. Scared
Stiff about kids whose friends got so scared they couldn’t move, and could
only be cured by a potion made of panda hair. My first published work was a
review of Airplane II: The Sequel in our elementary school’s Creative Courier.
I was in first grade.
At the
University of Iowa, I majored in journalism and was a sportswriter for the Daily Iowan. After graduation I went
into media relations for the Hawkeye Athletic Department. Writing fiction had
always been in the back of my mind, and I found myself cooking up ideas on long
bus rides to Michigan State with the field hockey team.
I ended up
meeting my wife, getting married and starting a family, so my days of Hawkeye
road trips came to an end. We moved to Omaha during my wife’s surgery
fellowship and I figured I could stay at home with our six-month-old daughter
and finally begin work on my first novel. Obviously, I didn’t know how
six-month-old babies worked, because writing was near impossible. But
eventually, the girl got older and writing time became a thing again. Right
when I started working on my book, we found out we had another girl on the way.
Knowing what I was getting into this time, I made it my mission to get something
down before kid #2 arrived. That summer I cranked out about 15,000 words. It
wasn’t long enough to be a novella, wasn’t short enough to be a short story,
and it wasn’t good. But it was the seed that A Necessary Act came from.
Our second
daughter forced another long break, but eventually I was able to start writing
again. Once preschool started, I could really get into it. Then one day it was
done.
How do you come
up with your stories, characters, character names, POV, etc.?
My original
15,000 word chunk wasn’t good, but I liked the idea “Can you stop a killer
before he starts?”. For a long time I tried to stretch it out into novel
length, but it just couldn’t be done. Then I realized that it could be a great
second act. If I wrote what came first, then what happened as a result… boom.
There’s a novel.
The setting of
A Necessary Act is Lake Mills, IA, the tiny town I grew up in. Originally, I
used a made-up town, but I realized that I was pulling from all my childhood
memories while building scenes, so I might as well just go with it. Anyone who
is from there is going to recognize all the landmarks anyway, so I might as
well embrace it. As for characters, I had to be a little more careful there.
None are based on real people, but sometimes I found myself picturing a certain
person as I was writing a character—the same way I do when I read. During the
editing process, I ended up changing some details so nobody would think they
were a character in my book. In fact, I ended up changing a fairly major characters
name at the last minute because they had inadvertently ended up a little too
similar to someone I grew up with. There are a couple character names thrown in
as shout-outs to some friends, and a few Easter Eggs for anyone that grew up in
Lake Mills, but 99% of readers will never notice.
If you could actually
meet one of your characters, who would it be?
Why?
I’d never want
to actually meet Scott Alston, but I think he’d be fascinating to observe. From
a distance.
Do you work
from an outline?
Not really.
Nothing written down anyway. I started writing with that question “Can you stop
a killer before he starts?” and went from there. As I progressed, I had a rough
idea of where I thought things were going, but I was letting the story lead me.
Then one day while writing the ending just came to me and it was like BOOM!!
That’s it. That’s the path. During re-writes, I actually wrote down more of a
formal outline, just to make sure I was taking the best route through the
story.
Tell me about
your favorite scene in your novel(s).
As un-spoilery
as I can be, there is a scene midway through the book where we get Scott’s POV.
I don’t put you into his head much at all during the book, because as Jaws showed us, the monster you don’t
see is scarier than the one you do. But we get a short glimpse, and it’s
creepy.
Can you tell us
a little about your writing philosophy?
Write because
it’s fun. If it’s work, it’s going to read like work. That said, sometimes you
have to power through it, especially if you are doing a first draft. Get it
down and fix it later. A novel is like a house. First you have to build it,
then you can worry about decorating it and making it pretty.
Have you ever
tried writing in any other genres?
A bit, but I’ve
found my passion is in the creepy thriller range. It’s what I like to read, and
it’s what I like to write. I’ve got half a YA novel sitting on a thumb drive
somewhere. It’s a great idea, but I don’t know if I’m the guy to write it.
Do you have any
interesting writing-related anecdotes to share?
I can’t work at
home because there are too many things that can pull me away from writing.
Whenever I hit a block, I start to think I’ve
got that load of laundry to do, I‘ll do that while I think about this, and
as soon as I step away from the desk, it’s over for the day. But if I’m sitting
in a coffee shop, there’s nowhere to go. I’ve just got to sit there and figure
it out. There are sometimes it doesn’t happen and I end up sitting in front of
a half-finished sentence for 90 minutes, but most of the time something will
come. But that only happens if I’m at the keyboard.
The only
downside of working in a coffee shop is the conversations at the next table.
I’m pretty good at tuning them out, but every now and then you catch something
that is so crazy you can’t help but listen. I lost a whole mornings worth of
writing one time because I couldn’t stop listening to the conversation at the
table next to me. It was just so crazypants, I started live Tweeting
highlights. Later, I find out that my city councilman follows me on Twitter,
and he had been sitting on the other side of that table listening to the same
crazy conversation. We had a good laugh about it.
Do you listen
to music as you write?
Always. I’m
quite possibly a bigger music nerd than I am a book nerd. Music is the best way
to block out the chaos around me and allow me to focus, but I can’t just throw
on anything. I’ve got different tastes for different activities. If I am
writing, I’ve got to be able to retreat into my own world so it has to be
something upbeat and loud. Early stuff from The Replacements, R.E.M. and Husker
Du is great for that. Instrumental stuff is fantastic too, because I won’t be
distracted by the lyrics. Rodrigo y Gabriela is a favorite. Lazerbeak’s Lavabangers album is perfect for
writing. Just an hour of tight hip-hop beats. If the coffee shop is quiet
enough, I’ll even listen to classical.
When I’m in
edit mode, I can listen to pretty much anything. The White Stripes, LCD
Soundsystem, The Long Winters, Doomtree and Lizzo are all in permanent heavy
rotation.
✒ ✒ ✒
On the behalf of my readers, I thank you Tony for taking your time with us.
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