SIX MINUTES WITH TOMMY WALLACH:
Author Tommy Wallach joins LitPick for Six Minutes with an Author! Tommy’s debut novel, We All Looked Up came out in March and is a New York Times Bestseller. His second novel, Thanks for the Trouble will be coming out in 2016. Tommy is also a musician and has written “We All Looked Up: The Album” as a companion to the book.
How did you get started writing?
I started writing pretty seriously when I was quite young. I actually had my first big story published when I was still in high school. (You can read it over at McSweeeney's, if you wanna). I finished my first novel around the end of my freshman year in college. (It was a science-fiction comedy about sending all the ugly people on a certain planet away to another planet...not the greatest thing ever, I'll admit.) After that I just kept plugging away at more books. It was another ten years and six more books before WALU sold.
Who influenced you?
Lots of people. That first novel was most influenced by Douglas Adams. After that, I tried to write pretty serious literary fiction, and I'd say my biggest influence there was Martin Amis. Now I write YA, but because I never actually read YA before I started writing it, I can't point to many people as influencing me. Though I do think Philip Pullman is quite possibly the greatest writer of "children's" literature alive today (even if he hasn't done much in the field since the His Dark Materials trilogy).
Do you have a favorite book/character/subject/setting?
That's four different questions! Certainly no one favorite book, but many favorites. To pick one at random (aside from the Philip Pullman books), I'm a huge fan of The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. No favorite subject or character or setting, to be honest, though I really enjoyed writing about Seattle in WALU, because it's where I grew up. My second novel, Thanks for the Trouble, takes place in San Francisco, in a neighborhood called the Sunset where I lived for about a year. Also misty and rainy and kinda dark. So maybe I do have a favorite setting--or at least a favorite kind of setting.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to be an author?
It's boring, but it's the truth: write. Just write, write, write, all the time. And don't only write about your own experiences. Journaling is great, but it doesn't count as work unless you're planning to be a memoirist. If you want to write fiction, start writing fiction. Do 1000 words a day, and do it for a couple of years, then a couple more years after that. Don't worry about publication, though by all means try to get published. Just write things. All the things.
Where is your favorite place to write?
Coffee shops, hands down. I have a beautiful apartment with a lovely Restoration Hardware table in front of a window from which I can see the entire Manhattan skyline...and I can't get anything done there. I think there are just too many big distractions at home. At a coffee shop (such as the one I'm currently sitting in), there are a couple of idle conversations happening, and quiet music (I can't work if the music is too loud), but the distractions are momentary. Perfect for when your mind needs to wander to fix a wayward sentence.
What else would you like to tell us?
So many things! You should read my book, and if you like it, you should listen to the companion album I made that goes with it. I'm really proud of it. And I have another book coming out in April 2016 that I'm really excited about, so I hope folks will think about reading that one, too. What else? Be nice to people. Meditate. Drink coffee. That one's key.
Order a personalized/signed book from a great indie bookstore here: http://www.mcnallyjackson.com/product/we-all-looked-signed-personalized-author-tommy-wallach
Tommy, thank you very much for joining LitPick for six minutes! You’re the first author we’ve interviewed who has written a companion album for their book.