Author, Boston Globe media writer, and Emerson College journalism professor, Johnny Diaz has carved out a niche in fiction based on his personal experiences as a professional, thirty-something, Cuban-American, gay man living in Boston ("one of the few but proud"). His books include Boston Boys Club, Miami Manhunt and BeanTown Cubans.
Just recently, Johnny Diaz was awarded an Outstanding Alumni award for the Literary Arts from Miami Dade College.
Somewhere within the whirlwind of receiving awards, publishing, reporting and teaching, Johnny Diaz recently found some time to answer a Q&A for Musings' readers.
Congratulations on all your success, Johnny, and welcome to Musings!
*****
Can you tell us a little bit about your writing routine?
1 Comments on Q&A with Author Johnny Diaz, last added: 5/12/2010
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By: nilki,
on 5/7/2010
Blog: musings (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Rafael Yglesias, QA, Advice from Authors, Add a tag
Blog: musings (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Rafael Yglesias, QA, Advice from Authors, Add a tag
Rafael Yglesias is a novelist and screenwriter. The son of novelists Jose Yglesias and Helen Yglesias, Rafael Yglesias has been writing since he dropped out of high school to finish his first novel Hide Fox, And All After (1972). By the age of 21, Yglesias had published 3 novels. Between 1976 and 1984, Yglesias stopped writing novels to focus on starting a family, writing screenplays instead for financial support.
He resumed writing novels in the mid '80s and published Hot Properties, Only Children, The Murderer Next Door, Fearless and Dr. Neruda's Cure For Evil.
He returned to screenwriting in 1992. His first screenplay to be produced was Fearless, an adaptation of his novel by the same name, starring Jeff Bridges. His scripts have been produced into motion pictures directed by Peter Weir, Roman Polanski, Billie August, the Hughes Brothers, and Walter Salles.
Shattered by the death of his father and the illness and death of his beloved wife, Yglesias again quit writing novels in 1996. His most recent novel (the first in thirteen years) A Happy Marriage (Scribner, 2009) took the top Fiction honor at this year's 30th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.
Read the wonderful praise for this novel here.
I'm deeply honored that Mr. Rafael Yglesias was so incredibly generous with his time to answer a few questions about his writing process for Musings.
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What is your major obstacle, or most difficult issue regarding writing?
These days it's feeling confident. And concentrating. I make a lot of mistakes, and have a tendency to rush, to want to be finished, a kind of anxiousness that I don't think serves me well. When I was a young writer I had all those problems and also I needed to avoid being evicted. The money pressure wasn't helpful.
How do you attempt to overcome this?
I don't know what to do about the confidence. I try to ignore the fluctuations in mood that I experience about my work, to regard it as noise. I've been writing for forty years; it's too late to change professions. I try to limit how much I write to a couple of pages a day so I don't go too fast. And I try to force myself to read and rework passages that I've had trouble focusing on.
Literary fiction and screenwriting are two very different mediums. <
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I love it when you have Q&A with authors! Great post!