Jon Chopan, December 2010
Friday, December 3rd, 2010
Jon Chopan is the author of Pulled From the River, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in the Summer of 2011. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary magazines including Glimmer Train, Post Road, Hobart, Hotel America, and Swink. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and teaches creative writing and composition at The Ohio State University at Newark. Jon’s essay, “Standards of Measurement,” can be found in issue 6.1 of Redivider. His work can be found online at Swink and Drunken Boat.
RDR: You teach writing at Ohio State Newark- what advice do you offer to new writers?
JC: I guess, because I think I am still a relatively new writer, that I try to talk to them about how we are working through it together, how being a writer, to me, is about finding your material, that thing you are meant to say, the people and places you are meant to write about. I encourage them to read, but not just anything, because, though reading is the key to becoming a good writer, I try to live by a saying my fifth grade gym teacher used before every class: “Good practice makes good players.” What I mean, more specifically, is that reading writers we love, and writers who do the kind of work we do and aspire to do, that, it seems to me, is the best way to get better at what we do. I also encourage my students to read poetry, because I think poets do magical things with image, language, space. My main goal is to show them my process and then try to help them find there own, because I realize that all writers have their own way of approaching writing, be it through different writing schedules, or editing habits, or aesthetics. Mostly I tell them to keep working, which is what I am always trying to tell myself.
RDR: How do you write nonfiction and keep yourself “safe” from the audience?
JC: If by safe you mean how do I protect myself then I guess the answer is that I don’t write anything I’m not ready to write about. I suspect those pieces don’t really work anyhow. So, I try to write essays that I’ve got the right amount of distance on, that I am emotionally ready to engage in. I don’t know that I have too much to hide. I mean, I haven’t done too many things that would get me in trouble.
That being said, as a rule, I try not to write about other people if I think what I’m going to write could hurt them professionally or legally. I can’t, because you can never gauge people’s response, try to worry too much about emotional responses. Though I wouldn’t want to offend anyone. I suppose this is where fiction has been helpful, because I can write about things I might not be able to write about in nonfiction or might not feel comfortable writing about is what I mean. Also, with the right amount of work, I can write about my friends and not worry about causing them any harm.
My general rule is to be honest but not to let that get in the way of crafting story and never ever ever say anything about someone that is a lie or that is a truth that they wouldn’t want told.
RDR: You write both fiction and nonfiction- which do you prefer and why?
JC: Of late I prefer fiction, but this may be a temporary thing. Maybe studying nonfiction in graduate school and charging headlong into that burned me out. In fiction, because I never studied it in an academic setting, or because it doesn’t feel, yet, like “my” genre, I feel a little more freedom there.
Also, before I went to an MFA program I got my BA and MA in history and then sort of stumbled into writing. So, for me, I have never really felt like a writer. I was a bit behind when I got to graduate school, in terms of reading, in terms of knowing the language or having produced a ton of material, and that made me feel, a lot of the time, like an outsider. Even now I feel like I haven’t read enough, written enough, don’t understand the workmanship of writing enough.
I guess the one thing I like better about fiction is that I can play more, that I am not pinned down by the facts. I suppose, for people who love nonfiction and love writing it that that challenge is a part of it, but to me I like having the opportunity to play with time, add events, change characters or combine them. My fiction is almost always sapped in my “real life,” the events and characters in it. In that way, regardless of which one I like more now, I think writing both has made me better at finding the story, at understanding the characters.
No matter what people think about nonfiction, and I know some people hate the idea, I think that that level of self-evaluation is an important thing, for human beings for sure, but also for writers. I think that the more we understand about ourselves and our own lives the better we understand our characters and their lives and stories.
RDR: When did you know writing would be your life?
JC: To be honest I don’t know that I knew until after my book was accepted and then I started working on my second project (which took me a long time to find) and then started to feel like this was something I could do more than once, or something that I couldn’t not do. Like I said before, I came late to writing, and maybe because of that I’ve never believed in my abilities or trusted that I could do it and be successful. I wish I could say that I would’ve kept writing even if I’d never published a word, and I’m sure I would have done some, but I think it makes it easier to stay focused and committed when you get some positive reinforcement. I’m pretty sure any honest writer will admit that it’s always easier to write (at least for a few days) when you get an acceptance from a magazine you love. Those form rejection letters, they can do a lot to crush your soul.
RDR: If you didn’t write, what would you be doing?
JC: That’s a tough one. I tend to think of my journey to writing as one part luck and one part chance or fate. So, I’m not sure I know. But, if I had to guess, I suppose I would have taught high school history or done manual labor back home. I usually go home and do some minor construction work in the summers, with my bestfriend, decks and small additions. I’m just a grunt really, not very skilled. But I think I would have been okay at that work, could have been happy doing it. Also, I love teaching and I did imagine once, when I first went to college, that I’d teach history. Some of my favorite teachers in high school and college where history professors. I think that explains my love for it, even though I wasn’t a very good historian. I’d be writing on a chalk board or swinging a hammer.
RDR: Who are the top three writers, dead or alive, you’d like to have coffee with?
JC:
1) Denis Johnson
2) Tim O’Brien
3) Albert Camus
