Which is more difficult — writing a novel or teaching a freshman writing course?

Both are rewarding, but teaching a freshman writing course is definitely harder. Writing is hard to “teach” at any level because so much of the student’s success is out of the teacher’s hands. The keys to writing are perseverance, patience, hard work, and motivation. You can’t teach those things, but you can point the students in the right direction, give some helpful feedback on their writing, and offer some tips and information. Writing a novel is hard because it’s such a big project and there are so many ways it can go wrong. The research takes time, the drafts seem endless, and the work takes a huge amount of creative energy. On the other hand, it is deeply satisfying to create a world that other readers will enter. There is nothing else I would rather do.

How did your education prepare you to be a novelist?

I started college as a journalism major. Journalism helped me tremendously because it taught me to write quickly and not get bogged down with stifling perfectionism. Then I switched to become an English major and that helped because it opened up the classic works of literature and showed me the techniques that other writers have used to tell their stories. I never took a course in how to write a novel, so I have done it the hard way – by trial and error.

What was the title of your dissertation? How did you choose that topic?

My dissertation is titled, “A Critical Analysis of the Short Fiction of Thomas Wolfe.” When it came time for me to choose a dissertation topic, I had recently read some of Thomas Wolfe's novels, in particular Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River I was blown away by them, and I decided he was a writer I would enjoy studying for a long time. I finished my dissertation 12 years ago, and I am still researching and writing about Wolfe.

What is your favorite class to teach?

Probably my favorite course, which I get to teach only once every three or four years, is a significant authors course on William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. I love delving into those great books and seeing how students react to them. It is always inspiring for me to read classic novels, no matter how many times I have already read them. I also like the American Novel course for the same reasons.

What is the one thing you wish your English professor had taught you?

I wish I had been taught that in writing, it is better to make a little progress each day than to fret and procrastinate until all the ideas are clear in my head. Now when I am writing a novel, I work on it at least a little bit every day until it is finished. For me, it is better to write one paragraph or one page each day than to try to save it all up until I have more time or feel more like writing. When I make it a rule for myself to write every day, that keeps the book in my mind and makes it easier to keep the momentum going.

What is your favorite movie-based novel? Why?

I no longer go to movies based on novels I care about deeply. For instance, I have not seen the movies based on Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I love those books, and they had a big impact on me when I was younger. I have vivid mental pictures of the characters and events in those books, and I don’t like those pictures competing with the ones in a movie. Movies are so powerful to me that once I watch them, I can’t easily erase the images from my mind. If a book is not so important to me, then I don’t mind seeing a movie based on it. For instance, I am a fan of John Le Carre’s spy novels. I enjoyed The Tailor of Panama, but it was simply light entertainment. So I also watched the movie, which was even lighter entertainment.

What author are you currently most intrigued by?

I am doing research for a novel on World War II, and I have been reading the two-volume set of diaries by Victor Klemperer I Will Bear Witness. He was a Jewish professor in Nazi Germany who barely survived the Nazi era. He chronicled his everyday life for 12 years during that period, and I have been fascinated to read the details of what he endured.