Ask the Author: Brian Jay Jones
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Brian Jay Jones
It can vary. Sometimes, your topic finds YOU. I sort of "backed into" Washington Irving -- I was reading about the origins of Christmas traditions, where I learned that Irving had pretty much made most of them up, but swore with a straight face that they were all real. That was news to me, so I read all of Irving's Christmas stories -- and then everything else he had written -- and was amazed by his voice and attitude. I loved his stuff so much that I wanted to know more about him . . . and discovered there hadn't been a biography of him in more than eight decades. So, he became my subject.
With Jim Henson, that was another one that was sort of a happy accident. I had somehow ended up on his wikipedia page and went down to the very bottom of the article to see what books were being cited in the article. What I found was that while there were plenty of books about his work, there was no real biography. That was surprising to me -- I'm a Sesame Street/Muppet Show/Jim Henson kid, and couldn't believe there wasn't a biography even twenty years after his death. That was the start of a two year conversation with the Henson family about writing Jim's story, with access to their private archives.
Finally, with George Lucas, there was a moment when I was working on the Jim Henson biography and got to the section on Labyrinth -- a project Lucas produced for Henson. There was a photo I used in the book of the two of them together, and I thought -- for just a moment -- "Wow, Lucas would be a GREAT project to do next!" then got back to the book at hand. But the moment the Jim Henson biography was published (in late 2013), I was already working a proposal for a George Lucas biography (which I was saving on my computer under a file called PROJECT NEW HOPE).
With Jim Henson, that was another one that was sort of a happy accident. I had somehow ended up on his wikipedia page and went down to the very bottom of the article to see what books were being cited in the article. What I found was that while there were plenty of books about his work, there was no real biography. That was surprising to me -- I'm a Sesame Street/Muppet Show/Jim Henson kid, and couldn't believe there wasn't a biography even twenty years after his death. That was the start of a two year conversation with the Henson family about writing Jim's story, with access to their private archives.
Finally, with George Lucas, there was a moment when I was working on the Jim Henson biography and got to the section on Labyrinth -- a project Lucas produced for Henson. There was a photo I used in the book of the two of them together, and I thought -- for just a moment -- "Wow, Lucas would be a GREAT project to do next!" then got back to the book at hand. But the moment the Jim Henson biography was published (in late 2013), I was already working a proposal for a George Lucas biography (which I was saving on my computer under a file called PROJECT NEW HOPE).
Brian Jay Jones
Writer's block for a biographer is probably a bit different than it is for those who write fiction. We have to work with what really happened,so we're not usually stuck for plot points, or trying to figure out what to do to get our main character into our out of a particular jam. There are places where you might think, "Man, it would be really cool if there was a gun battle here," or "Wouldn't it be great if George Washington turned out to be a vampire? -- but unless that really happened, we as biographers can't do it. That restriction alone, I know, makes some of my fiction writing friends INSANE. But writing biography or non-fiction means you always generally sort of know what happens next -- so the place where you can get stuck is: how do I get from A to B? How do you use your various sources to tell your story?
Me, I look at it sort of like putting together a puzzle. I'm a pretty strict outliner -- I outline each particular chapter on a giant whiteboard in my office, so I know all the points I need to hit in a particular chapter. I generally know, then, what the picture looks like, but some of the puzzle pieces are mixed around, turned over, or haven't had the border pieces sorted out yet. When I'm blocked, I tend to read back through all the quotes I have from my sources, all my tidbits and notes, and look for a progression or theme -- bundling together everything that looks like the sky or a wall, turning over pieces again and again to see what they look like, and finding border pieces to hold it all together. There's usually a pattern in there somewhere that'll help you fit the pieces together, no matter how weird looking they might be. What looked like it was a bit of tree might turn out to really be someone's eye. Eventually, things become clearer and start to fit together.
Me, I look at it sort of like putting together a puzzle. I'm a pretty strict outliner -- I outline each particular chapter on a giant whiteboard in my office, so I know all the points I need to hit in a particular chapter. I generally know, then, what the picture looks like, but some of the puzzle pieces are mixed around, turned over, or haven't had the border pieces sorted out yet. When I'm blocked, I tend to read back through all the quotes I have from my sources, all my tidbits and notes, and look for a progression or theme -- bundling together everything that looks like the sky or a wall, turning over pieces again and again to see what they look like, and finding border pieces to hold it all together. There's usually a pattern in there somewhere that'll help you fit the pieces together, no matter how weird looking they might be. What looked like it was a bit of tree might turn out to really be someone's eye. Eventually, things become clearer and start to fit together.
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Apr 19, 2016 05:28AM · flag