http://www.sunysb.edu/writrhet/communitytext/mcbrideinterview.html

Excerpts from James McBride Interview With Bill Zimmerman    August 25, 2001   Staller Auditorium, SUNY Stony Brook

 

BZ: It's book of direct quotes. Did you tape these conversations?

JM: I recorded a lot, I wrote long hand. About 80 % is exactly what she said. The other 20% is me editing and fixing and changing. I mean, the first line of the book was "I'm dead" I didn't go to my mom and say " Tell me about your life" and she said "I'm dead." First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work. I did a lot of switching around, a lot of switching events. I tried to keep it true to her voice…because she speaks like a lot of people speak who don't have a college education…she speaks very direct….if you talk to a plumber, carpenter, cop, they have a direct way of talking about things that's colorful, effective and to the point. That's how she talks.

BZ: It took 14 years to write this book?

JM: Most of the 14 years was research As a writer you have to fill up on your material fill up fill up fill up until you're up to here [gestures to neck] then you purge so what I did was…like those old Civil War guns where you have to pack the muzzle before you fire, so I spent 14 years…. packing, packing packing. There's no such things as writers block. Reason people stall in their writing is lack of material. If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue …the hard part was researching her life, and I had to work. I was a journalist for 8 years, then I was a musician. I wrote a lot of this while I was on the road playing for the jazz singer Little Jimmy Scott…The actual writing took two years. There was a six months period where I really busted a lot of it out, but two years.

Writing really for me is rewriting is constantly rewriting, till you shave the fat off it, till you have the nub of the story …I read books that are good and books that are bad.. ..the books that are good have no fat in the writing the writer isn't trying to take two pages to describe a leaf and show you how cool they are how good they write…Toni Morrison can do that or William Faulkner can do that but the rest of us have to take the subway token out and just work our way up town the old fashioned way…Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning

Student: What was the process of writing the book like?

JM: …I wrote the whole book in my mother's voice and tried to sell this. Riverhead said "You have to include yourself." That's when I inserted my chapters into the chapters that existed already.…I was happy to trot my mother out there, but my life…also, when you're writing a book you're fighting gravity, MTV, Time magazine, a lot of books…I wanted to create a book that people would read…I'm a Spiderman reader…it's the same concept…you're dealing with a conflict. Many great pieces of writing are driven by conflict. That's the motive that powers the engine…conflict is why you're here in the first place.

Student: What did your brothers and sisters think of the book?

JM: My brothers and sisters like the book now. When it first came out some of them were shocked. They had to deal with being public people. They're all proud of the book now. One brother hasn't read it. It was painful some of the stuff we went through….Ironically enough, he was the one who supported me when I was writing the book….he lent me thousands of dollars….he's read parts of it.