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| Interview for Australia's Prism Books
"Life can have a Storm Keeper!" An Interview with J. Henry Warren By: David Haines
In the United States recently, I had the pleasure and opportunity to interview Author J. Henry Warren at his home in southeastern Pennsylvania. He is the author of Storm Keeper, a paperback novel just released in the United States and about to be released in Australia. He was cordial and hospitable and asked me as many questions as I asked him. I found him an interesting man with a no-holds-bar attitude when talking about his pet concerns and his interesting past, as well as man who can philosophize about life, his writing future, and what time plans for his writing career. David Haines: What was the impetus to write a novel? J. Henry Warren: One Saturday morning in the spring of 1993 I visited my favorite little local used bookstore called Mainly Books in Buckingham, Pennsylvania. Now this is just a small store, but nonetheless a wonderfully quiet place for me to duck in and get lost for an hour. On this particular day I just happened to purchase the right number of used books to qualify for the "free book of the morning" club. In other words I was, because of my quantity purchase, eligible to select any used book I wanted from the basket alongside the clerks desk for free. I selected little used old copy of Writer’s Digest 1983 Writer’s Guide. DH: Why was that significant? Warren: Up to that time I had never written anything but business letters, advertising, and copy for catalogs. You know, boring stuff. I took the Writer’s Guide home that morning with a big sandwich from the convenience store next door and proceeded to devour both the book and my lunch. I suddenly realized that I was missing out on a lot of fun. DH: Fun? Warren: I was forty-five then, now I’m over fifty, and the realization I had wasted years writing the same old thing over and over for the same old reasons over and over again, pushed me over the edge toward change. Before lunch was finished that day, I went into another room and retrieved my laptop computer, opened a new file, and began to stare at a blank screen. I was searching in my mind for something to write. In business you’re never at a loss - well almost never - at a loss for words or products to sell and describe. I also realized suddenly that even though I had written copy for years, I had never had to formally write and punctuate dialogue and narrative. It was exhilarating. DH: Never? Warren: Well not in the format of a manuscript. I struggled with those first chapters, all of which eventually ended up in the wastebasket. DH: So how did you overcome that, shall we say, lack of knowledge or training? Warren: Earlier in my life I attended the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Economics and Finance and also Temple University. I obtained a number of degrees in marketing, finance and economics. I learned to write business... business letters, etc. I limited my reading during those years to business and trade journals. No novels or fiction, only solid factual, non-fiction business related reading. That base of knowledge wasn’t helpful in the fiction writing task. In my early years, fiction writing didn’t penetrate, nor did it appear relevant to my busy world of economic creation. DH: All that business writing and experience must count for something? Warren: Sure, I’ve learned to complete sentences and tell a story in a very short period of time. In advertising you sometimes only have seconds to tell the whole story. Attention, interest, desire and action… all in less than a three second scan on the freeway or in a print ad. I learned how to tell a story. But long plots, scenes and sequel construction had to be learned anew. I studied and read whole bunch during these past seven years. How to do it books, and other fictional authors who interest me. Writer’s Digest and books on Dialogue, plotting, character development all assisted in educating me in the world of fiction writing. DH: Who are some of your writing heroes? Warren: James Michener, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Irving, and John Grisham. DH: An interesting combination? Warren: I’ve always loved the way Michener told a story. He developed his complicated throughline with visualization in such a way that you felt you were there with the protagonist. His descriptions for me are wonderful. Vonnegut! What can I say. He cracks me up. I love his sarcastic humor. He has "a way" with words. Irving is a storyteller who keeps you moving, and John Grisham is a success story that is well worth studying. They’re all different, but wonderful. DH: Did you always want to write? Warren: Well, yes, but differently. During most of my early years I’d experienced business failure and success, all in the name of financial growth. This newfound freer form of expression, or writing, allowed me to escape from the chains of my mind. Fiction had all but been ignored in my training and in my conscientiousness. Storm Keeper started out as just an exercise to re-train my brain and as an escape from the real world I had created for myself. It gave me back freedom. Something I had lost from the Sixties. I soon wanted to enable my inter-desire to be creative without the constraints of time and money, and most importantly…deadlines. DH: But you still have deadlines. Don’t you? Warren: Sure, but they’re self-imposed at this point in my career. DH: So, what is Storm Keeper about, in twenty-five words or less? Ha! See, I read some of your short fictional pieces too: Warren: Storm Keeper is a collection of character types that I’ve known over a particularly nasty period of my life. It is a story about a fellow who lost all, and worked hard only to have it all taken back again by unscrupulous associates. It is a recordation of his triumph over adversity. Jake Townsend lives a fast and adventurous life, and his road is strewn with potholes, which he misses most times. Is that twenty-five? DH: Almost. I’ve read your Bio, is there a little of J. Henry Warren in this novel? Warren: Absolutely! I think I’m in every, well almost every, character. DH: Are you ever at a loss for words? Warren: Never! DH: Do you only write fiction? Warren: When I write for pleasure, yes. I get enough facts and absolutes to write about during my working day. DH: How do you balance your time? According to your Bio you are a very busy man, when do you get time to write while developing planetsurvey.com? Warren: Mostly very early in the morning or late at night. Once-in-a-while I’ll find myself awake at five AM, and then I’ll fire up the laptop. Sometimes my writing will have to wait until the day has gone, and I’m alone with my wife sleeping next to me. I often write in longhand when there is a break in the day’s action, but mostly I create on the computer. It’s hard with farm work, keeping the house glued together, and balancing a full time marketing and production career. I find it relaxing though. DH: Did you always want to write? Warren: Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think that I would want to write professionally. My reading suffers from an eye condition called convergence insufficiency. Which in a few words means that your eyes don’t track together. For years I couldn’t understand why I hated to read. Even now I have a hard time following lines, even after some therapy and constant awareness. I’ll read one line of a sentence and then while going for the next line, end up two lines above. It makes fast comprehension near impossible and very frustrating. Once you get the hang of it though, it isn’t all that bad. It just means that whatever you read doesn’t make sense. So you get used to it. It works well for keeping up on politics. DH: That condition must prove difficult for a writer? Warren: No, not really. If I were a professional reader, then it would be a problem. I often write on the computer with my eyes closed to avoid losing my concentration. Then there’s never a problem. The words flow serially from my head into the computer by finger interface without allowing either eye to confuse word position. It’s very efficient. However editing is sometimes wearisome, but you get used to the condition and take a break and do a few exercises to get your eyes under control. DH: It sounds like a problem. Warren: Nope. It taught me to never believe what one reads. DH: Do you enjoy writing? Warren: Oh, Yes! I can ramble without rebuttal. DH: I see you were in the U.S. Navy… and like airplanes, fast cars, and boats. What influence have these life experiences had on your fiction writing? Warren: By all rights, I should have died two or three times by now. Not that I’m accident prone, but I’ve participated in a few hair-raising experiences. I lost an engine, my only engine, in a small airplane I was piloting on a Halloween Evening landing. It was a dark and moonless night…and we survived. I had a business associate with me, and elected, not that I had a choice, to attempt landing in darkness and into the unknown. We were lucky. The crash only destroyed the airplane. DH: And your writing…? Warren: My fiction writing streams onto the page from a mind dump of fantasy and imagination triggered by my actual experience and human situations. Kind of like reliving a dream that you can manipulate in consciousness. I don’t generally go out of my way to seek out adventure. It seems to find me. I grew up on the marshes and waterways of Southern New Jersey, and one can not spend everyday on the water without experiencing interesting life. The fact that I became a pilot and enjoy boating and auto racing certainly puts me in harms way, but I believe one should embrace life and enjoy all it has to offer. DH: How do you make yourself write? Warren: It’s difficult to find the time. I have a non-writing career, a wife and children and an old house on a farm that is forever falling into disrepair. I write early in the morning and late as possible into the night. But I try to write everyday, even if it’s only to edit previous chapters. DH: What other techniques do you use to make yourself a better writer? Warren: I don’t have any unusual techniques. Nothing that other writers aren’t faced with. I do what others do. Read. Read. And Read! I read authors I like to emulate. I read authors I enjoy. Many, I know, I will never reach their level of accomplishment with the written word. But it’s like playing tennis with someone better than yourself… you learn more from them than playing against someone less accomplished than yourself. DH: Do you work from an outline? Warren: No. I have a rough idea about where I’m going, or should I say the story and characters, but no… not yet. DH: How do you come up with your story ideas and characters? Warren: I start with a new page and start to write. I write until I get the first draft finished, which is probably about 150 pages long. Then I’ll put it aside while it gels. The story sort of builds itself. I have business and adventure interests and I give them as much leash as I can. The characters are usually a combination of people I’ve known, met, or read about. My work is fiction and the people are figments of my imagination. DH: What can a writer do to maintain interest in their novel? Warren: You create a sympathetic character. You make the reader identify with the hero or heroine. An ordinary person. Then you put this ordinary person in harms way. A horrible situation or deception, and make the plot and story move them quickly from point A to point Z with action and intrigue. DH: How much rewriting do you do? Warren: Too much. I’m an idea man. Not educated with a Fine Arts Degree with a creative writing major. Writing isn’t easy. The ideas and the scenes and sequels flow, but the words to effectively describe what I see are sometimes painful to place. DH: What advice can you give to beginning writers? Warren: Write! Write everyday. Read! Read everyday. Read and study every book on writing you can get your hands on. But most of all you need experiences. It’s difficult to write about something in which you have no knowledge. Reach out into life. Embrace it, the people, and the adventures that are everywhere. Have fun. Visualize. In the words of Mark Victor Hansen… "Visualizing is realizing." I personally believe that principle wholeheartedly. You want to write something that people will read. It needs to take them on a trip. A vacation. A voyage. Take them to a place so far away from their real life, that when they return, they feel better about themselves and those they care about. Let them feel they had an adventure. DH: What is your next work about? Warren: Of course it’s fiction. Right now I’m finishing a novel called Until Shore. It’s a story that centers around the City of Philadelphia and the New Jersey seashore, and includes, as usual, a business twist, but with love and tragedy. And lots of action. You don’t get caught in boring courtroom or offices for relentless dialogue that you would pay your lawyer large sums of money to keep you out of. Again, it has action, water, boats, and love. It’s actually been a lot of fun to write. I can’t wait for it to be in print. And then to start the next one.
I enjoyed my time spent with the author and wished him well. I’ve entered my name on the list at johnwaren.com for the next signed copy available of Until Shore. I feel confident that the read is well worth the wait - as was this interview. Warren is an author whose writing success and recognition are just around the corner. If you would like to read more about J. Henry Warren and his work, you can visit his web-site www.jhenrywarren.com. |