Once upon a time, I ran a nonprofit art school in Taos, New Mexico. If this sounds like a cushy job, remember that small, underfunded nonprofits operate on a shoestring budget. Consequently, despite having a relatively cool title (curriculum goddess), I hauled so-called portable looms all over town (portable is, apparently, a relative concept), mopped floors, and once cleaned out a classroom fridge that had been unplugged during our down season and discovered the interesting fact that baby carrots left in a sealed, unopened bag will liquefy.
While inadvertent science experiments are arguably the best part of any job, what I enjoyed most about the school were the people I met, including writer Sean Murphy, the focus of this week’s Craft of Writing Q&A, and his wife, writer Tania Casselle, who will be featured in an upcoming Q&A.
Sean is the author of three novels, including The Time of New Weather, which won First Place for Best Novel in the 2009 National Press Women’s Communication Awards. His debut novel, The Hope Valley Hubcap King (Bantam/Dell, 2002/2004), won the Hemingway Award for a First Novel and was an American Booksellers Association BookSense 76 recommended book. He is also the author of the Pulitzer-nominated The Finished Man(Bantam/Dell 2004). His One Bird, One Stone (Hampton Roads, 2013) won a 2014 International Book Award.
A teacher of writing, meditation, creative writing, and literature at the University of New Mexico–Taos, he also leads writing and meditation workshops for a variety of organizations and conferences. He is cofounder and president of the nonprofit Sage Institute, which hosts an innovative Meditation Leader Training Program. See his website at www.murphyzen.com.
Q: Because everyone always wants to know this: Describe your writing environment. What are the must-haves and must-not-haves in your writing space?
A: Honestly I’m not that attached. I had a caretaking position on a 42-acre nature preserve for many years, and our very small house didn’t have a separate workspace for me, and the place was too beautiful to leave, so I wrote several of my books on a laptop on a milk crate before which I sat cross-legged on our living room floor. It worked fine. If you’re gonna write, just write. Beware—waiting for the perfect environment or time can become a trap.
Q: What are your work habits?
A: I’m a binge writer. I work best when I have strings of entire days to work in, or at least extended weekends, at least when I’m getting started on a project, or getting back into one that’s been on the back burner for awhile. Once I have a project in process, though, I can grab smaller bits of time to work on it and often will grab an hour or two in the evenings or mornings to do cleanup or editing. But my basic approach to beginning or really getting into a project is to clear some time so I can thoroughly settle into the world I’m creating on the page. That means saying no to many other things while I’m getting a project rolling—a skill I encourage all aspiring writers to develop.
Q: What role does inspiration play in your writing? What inspires you?
A: Inspiration is important. I’m inspired by nature, art, the work of other writers, music, travel, friends, teaching others, and especially by my Zen meditation practice. If my inspiration drops, I turn to one of these sources to renew it.
Q: What writers have influenced you and how? Or, put another way: Whose work do you love and what do you love about it?
A: Top of the list is Gabriel García Márquez for One Hundred Years of Solitude. My first novel, The Hope Valley Hubcap King, was conceived partly as a North American take on what Márquez did for South America, including some magic realist elements, but appropriate to the particular setting and culture of the US. In that novel I wanted to create a somewhat twisted view of America in a similar way to how Márquez created his Columbia-through-a-surrealistic-lens.
Next favorite is F. Scott Fitzgerald for The Great Gatsby, a novel that could hardly be more different in content, style, or length from One Hundred Years of Solitude. My second novel, The Finished Man, was partly inspired by the idea of where a Gatsby-esque tale might take place if it were to happen today—Hollywood, of course, or the near vicinity. Many Gatsby-esque touches made their way into that novel in homage to Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.
Q: What was a turning point for you as a writer?
A: After walking across the country in 1986 with the Great Peace March for nuclear disarmament, I tried to write a nonfiction book out of that experience and utterly failed. I went off for a solo camping trip to nurse my wounds and found the idea for The Hope Valley Hubcap King immediately beginning to surface in my brain. My subconscious mind, apparently, had a different agenda from my conscious mind’s sensible idea to write a saleable narrative about a real event. I sometimes think of the resulting novel as the dreamed version of the failed Peace March book. There’s not one scene from actual reality that made its way into Hubcap King, but the feel of what I experienced in walking across the continent is there through and through.
Q: Writing is an exchange. What do you want your readers to bring to your work, and what do you want to bring to them?
A: I want them to bring intelligence and attention and most importantly, a sense of humor. One way to describe all my books—or my novels, at least—is that they’re “serious humor”—that is, humor that’s making a point. I hope to make my readers laugh and make them think.
Q: What is the most valuable advice you’ve received as a writer, and what advice would you offer a novice writer?
A: The author and writing teacher Natalie Goldberg often quotes her Zen teacher Katagiri Roshi’s three central tenets: Continue under all circumstances. Make positive effort for the good. Don’t get tossed away (meaning don’t get thrown off track).
Katagiri intended this as advice for Zen practice, but it applies equally well to writing and, in fact, to everything in life.
Q: What challenges do you face in your writing (or as a writer)?
A: The internet. Email. The postmodern world! It seems to get increasingly difficult to clear space for writing amid all the annoying details and distractions. When I was a young adult, in college and for some time afterward, when I came home from school or work, I was just home. I could write or read or walk in nature. I didn’t even have an answering machine for many years. Now there are voicemails and emails and the web and an increasing lack of privacy and deluge of information, advertising, and bureaucracy. Of course this is all the more reason to write semi-subversive books that call for a more sensible, mindful, and compassionate world.
Q: What’s your favorite of your own books, and why?
A: It’s hard not to love your firstborn most, which in my case is The Hope Valley Hubcap King, though I try not to play favorites—the others get jealous! However I think my most accessible novel, and a good place to start, is The Finished Man. My most visionary is perhaps The Time of New Weather. But then, it’s hard to beat One Bird, One Stone as a document of the first 50 or so years of Zen in America, which will go on to have historical importance, I hope, long after I’m gone—and it just may stand as my most fully realized book. So there you go. I don't play favorites after all—they all have their own particular favorite aspects for me.
Q: What are you reading right now, and what do you think of it?
A: My good buddy and fellow author John Nichols recently gave me a copy of Frank Conroy’s novel Body and Soul, saying, “You’ve got to read this.” In fact he gave a copy to all the five or so musicians who attend our regular jam sessions at Brodsky Books [in Taos] because he loved it so much. It’s an old-fashioned book in a way, very slow to unfold but a gorgeous account of a young pianist’s development. To those who love music I’d highly recommend it but those who prefer a good page-turner probably wouldn’t get on well with it.
Q: If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?
A: A monk, or a musician—so maybe a Thelonious Monk?
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve been a guitar player for 40 years and I love improvisational music, especially jazz. I’m more than halfway through writing my next novel, about what might happen if the world’s most elusive genius black jazz trumpeter from the bebop era showed up in a small nearly all-white mountain town in Colorado to get away from drugs. This was partly inspired by the story of Frank Morgan, one of the last great saxophonists of the Bebop era, who moved to Taos and lived here for ten or so years. I heard him play many times and got to know him a little. I even spoke with him a couple of times about helping him write his autobiography, which never came to pass—but he had an amazing story of recording his first album as a Charlie Parker protégé in the 1950s and then spending the next 30 years in and out (mostly in) prison on drug charges, finally cleaning up and recording his second album in the ’80s at the age of 49—after which he had a very successful career. This novel isn’t Frank’s story at all, but was partly inspired by getting to know him, thinking about his life, listening to his music, and in general loving music and jazz. The manuscript, working title Wilson’s Way, won the Dana Award in the novel a couple of years ago in partialmanuscript form, so I’m excited to finish it, hopefully in the coming year.
Q: What didn't I ask that I should have—and what’s the answer?
A: My wife, Tania Casselle, is my best reader, and I hope I’m hers. The mutual support of a partner who also writes has been essential—we both understand what the other is doing and give each other room to do it. And when it comes to feedback on one of my manuscripts, I have to admit she’s always right! Well, almost. Let’s give her 99%.