Author Interview- Andrew Peterson

Andrew Peterson is a natural-born storyteller, being a preacher’s kid (mostly) from the South. He wrote and produced the acclaimed epic song cycle Behold the Lamb of God: The True Tale of the Coming of the Christ (awarded the 2004 Best Album of the Year, World Christian Music’s Editors Choice), in part of which inspired his children’s book The Ballad of Matthew's Begats: An Unlikely Royal Family Tree.

A singer-songwriter and recording artist, he’s just released a new album, Resurrection Letters, Vol. II, having written and recorded seven others over the last ten years, including Slugs & Bugs & Lullabies (with Randall Goodgame), The Far Country, Love and Thunder, Clear to Venus, and Carried Along.

Andrew and his wife Jamie have two sons (Aedan and Jesse) and one daughter (Skye); they live in the Nashville, Tennessee, area on a wooded hill in a little house they call the Warren, where they’re generally safe from toothy cows. You can find Andrew online at his web site www.andrew-peterson.com or visit The Rabbit Room [www.rabbitroom.com], an online writer’s collective inspired by the Inklings (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and other friends), for more fun facts and delicious details.

Crow, time. What book or project do you have coming out?

On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness: The Wingfeather Saga, Book One

Why children’s novels instead of adult?

This particular series of novels is being written with my own children in mind. It was the joy of reading to my sons in their bunk bed that finally got me out of talking about writing a novel and into actually sitting down to do it. But there’s also the fact that I’m a sucker for a good adventure story, and most of the time those kinds of stories are called children’s novels. I haunt that section of the local bookstore. But that’s only because I have kids. Honest.

Tell us about your journey to publication. How long did it take before your novel was published?

This is where I got lucky. I’ve been in the music business for more than a decade, which means that I’ve spent a lot of time around creative people, many of whom are authors. Five years or so ago when I first started working seriously on this story I had several friends and acquaintances to whom I could turn for advice and encouragement. Later on, once the book was well underway, some of those people helped me to get the book in front of a couple of agents, and then a couple of publishers. I had to write a few proposals, but no actual query letters, thank goodness.

But even with a good music career, I wasn’t a shoe-in for a publishing deal. I think my publisher would’ve passed on the book if it looked to them like I was resting on my laurels, humble though they may be. I didn’t want readers to get the sense that I was mainly a songwriter who was toying with writing a novel. My love of words informs both jobs, and though there is some overlap, song writing and book writing are vastly different.

So when I got word that I was offered a publishing contract, I danced around the room. Seeing the contract envelope in the mailbox was gratifying to the extreme. Even more gratifying was opening a box a year later and fishing the finished product out of the packing peanuts while my wife and children looked on. I might have cried, but I’m not saying.

What mistakes have you made while seeking publication?

There were times when I worried more about getting published than writing my story. I bought all these books on novel writing, subscribed to writing magazines, the whole bit. Those things may be helpful to some people, and they may have been helpful to me in some ways that I can’t see. But after trying to ingest as much practical advice and as many writing formulas as I could, a successful novelist friend of mine told me that I should pile all those books up and set fire to them. Every minute I spent reading those books was a minute I could’ve been writing, and writing is the best teacher by far. The second-best teacher is reading--not books on writing (though there are some that are excellent), but simply great books, written by people who are much better at it than you. The corollary is true of songwriting, too.


What’s the best advice you’ve heard on writing/publication?

Anne Lamott said something like, “In order to get to the good final draft, you have to be willing to write a bad first draft.” Only she didn’t use the word “bad.” Her word was much stronger and smellier, and reminds me much more of my writing before it’s revised.

What is the worst piece of writing advice you’ve heard?

“Always write in a bear’s den while wearing a meat-suit.” This is a terrible idea.

What is something you wish you’d known earlier that might have saved you some time/frustration in the publishing business?

I wish I had known that there is no magic formula. Sit down, write the story. Figure out your own way of doing it. Don’t ignore good advice, but don’t expect it to write your book for you. Also, don’t write in a place where you have internet access. It’s amazing the things you suddenly need to learn about on the web when you’re supposed to be writing.

How would you say having been part of music industry helped/hurt being in the publishing industry?

As I said before, it helped being in Nashville, a city full of artists and writers--not to mention publishing companies and agents. It prepared me to be patient, too. After this long in the music business I’ve seen plans come together and suddenly fall apart; I’ve seen sure things up and vanish like smoke; I’ve felt the frustration of seeing good work go largely unnoticed. All these things teach you to find joy and satisfaction in the work itself, not in its apparent success. Your song may be heard by a relatively small number of people, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth writing. Five years ago when I started writing this book I had no illusions (or delusions), no expectations. Just the thrill of creating a world from the ground up, and the hope that the story would bring someone joy, even if that someone was just me.

What are a few of your favorite novels?

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
The Book of the Dun Cow, by Walt Wangerin, Jr.
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry
Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger
Godric, by Frederick Buechner
Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry

Can you give us a view into a typical day of your writing life?

I used to write late, late at night after my wife and children were fast asleep. I’d stay up until three or four in the morning, relishing the solitude and the quiet. In a house full of small children, those are rare commodities. But I don’t think that’s the best way to do it anymore. These days I try to make it a 9 to 5 job so that when I close my computer at the end of the day I can really be present with my family. If I’ve worked hard all morning and afternoon I can feel like I’ve earned my supper and family time. Work is put away until the next morning. I still have a hard time writing at home, though, so I usually head to the local coffee shop (where there’s no internet access to distract me).

Of course, all that is thrown out the window when I’m working on music.

If you could choose to have one strength of another writer, what would it be and from whom?

Today I’d want Michael Chabon’s discipline. He said that writing is 5% talent, 5% luck, and 90% discipline. Discipline is the only one of the three that you have any control over, so cultivate it. He writes 3,000 words a day, no matter what. And that’s the main reason he’s so very good at what he does, I think. Me, I’m prone to distrac—look, a butterfly!

Do you have a dream for the future of your writing, something you would love to accomplish?

I want to finish the Wingfeather Saga and see it in a leatherbound omnibus on my bookshelf. I have lots of other ideas for books rattling around in my noggin, and I hope that I’m able to flesh them out. I don’t ever want to stop playing music and writing songs, but writing books scratches the same itch.

What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?

Pushing through a dry spell is hard work. The blank page is a most intimidating thing, moreso even than a toothy cow—oh, the horror! But my favorite part has been hearing kids in the neighbourhood talking among themselves about the Wingfeather Saga. I saw a kid with his nose in my book last month and I got an immediate lump in my throat. I recently visited a school where I read from the book and talked to the first through sixth graders about On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. After answering two hours’ worth of very serious questions about the nature of the Fangs of Dang, and Gnag the Nameless, and the dreaded horned hounds, I was more excited about my own book than ever before.

The headmaster of the school caught me just before I drove away and said, “A student had a question for you but didn’t have a chance to ask it.” “Oh, well certainly. What was it?” I asked. “If a toothy cow and a Fang of Dang were to fight,” the headmaster said very seriously, “who would win?”

That day at the school has been the highlight of this new part of my career.

How much marketing do you do? Any advice in this area?

I think it’s a good idea to have a website, as long as its well-conceived. Those new-fangled things are the wave of the future, I say. The wave of the future. But be careful because they can monopolize your time, too. I’m not sure that investing all the precious minutes of your day in a website would be a more effective use of your time than, say, honing your craft. Making excellent, beautiful art will have rewards that can’t be quantified the way book sales can. It may be fifty years from now that you see the real fruit of your labor, and if your work is good and meaningful, if it’s light-giving, then it won’t matter if you had a good internet-marketing campaign.

But that’s not to say that it’s wrong to be savvy about such things.