Interviewed by Katie Cortese
Bill Konigsberg is an award-winning sports journalist who has written for television, newspapers, wire services, and the Internet. As a sports writer and editor for The Associated Press from 2005-08, he covered the New York Mets, and his weekly fantasy baseball column appeared across the country, from the New York Daily News to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In May of 2001, while working as an assistant editor at ESPN.com, he came out on the front page of the website in an article entitled “Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays.” That article won him a GLAAD Media Award the following year. Since then, he has spoken at venues across the country about what it is like to be one of the few openly gay people in sports media. His story was included as a chapter in the book Jocks 2: Coming Out To Play by Dan Woog. Out of the Pocket is Mr. Konigsberg’s his first novel.
Q: You had a career in sportswriting and journalism before you began working seriously on your fiction, right? To you, what are the main distinctions between those types of writing and what different muscles do you need to flex for each? Which type do you
prefer? Which comes easiest?
A: I think in many ways they are opposing muscles. In journalism, the world is already created for
me. What happened has already occurred. I then have to find the singular details in that truth and craft them in a way that (hopefully) they haven’t been used before. In fiction, I have to create that world. There’s an interesting battle that always takes place between making sure the world is believable, but also keeping it unique. That battle is never a part of journalism for me, and it’s one of the reasons I prefer fiction writing. I love the challenge of creating a world and not being reined in by facts. As for what’s easiest, I suppose it’s easier for me to use an already-established inventory and pick and choose rather than create the inventory from scratch. So journalism comes easier to me.
Q: Your first novel, Out of the Pocket, was published in September of 2008. What was the most difficult part about writing it? The most rewarding?
A: The most difficult thing and the most rewarding are related. Out of the Pocket was my first novel, the first one I wrote all the way through. That was extremely rewarding to me, to actually finish a project that at one point had seemed so harrowing and large. I don’t think I ever really believed I’d finish until I typed the final word. And finish it was also the most challenging. So many times, I’d hit a wall and my impulse was to walk away. This is too big for me, too hard for me to complete, I told myself. It took a lot of discipline to finish, and truly discipline had never been my strong suit. But once I got the first novel done, it’s become a lot easier. I’ve finished three projects now.
Q: Out of the Pocket has received some great press since its publication in 2008. Jeff Walsh in Oasis Journal said this in his review: “if you’re open and in the end zone whilst looking for memorable characters, universal themes, and an emotional read, Konigsberg has thrown you a perfect spiral.” How much attention have you paid to the critics’ comments, and have any of the responses surprised you in any way?
A: It has been extremely helpful to hear the critical reaction to the book. I think in the back of my mind, I’ve always felt that I wasn’t good enough. My style, which is crisp and not weighed down with excessive detail, is one I enjoy. But I think I always expected critics to say that it wasn’t “real writing” that I was doing. This is just a type of low self-esteem, I suppose. But hearing virtually nothing but positive comments has really helped me feel more confident that I’m doing something that people connect with. Of course, that validation is a double-edged sword: all it takes is a negative criticism to send me spiraling. I guess what I’m saying is that once you have a “core belief” about yourself (I’m not very good), it’s hard to change it from the outside. So I need to be very careful about how much I pay attention to critics. I’ve just gotten lucky on this book.
Q: Your recent novel has been labeled by some as “YA,” or Young Adult. Did you know you were writing a young adult novel when you began the process? Do you agree with the categorization? What makes the novel more accessible, or more marketable to that particular age group?
A: I think there is a real fine line between Adult and Young Adult fiction. I knew I was writing a YA novel because I took a class at Arizona State University about that genre, so I set off to write such a book. But as I’ve learned more about it, I realize that these genres are more about marketing than content. All YA means is that there’s a teen protagonist. Beyond that, YA books have the same amounts of sex, generally, the same everything [as adult books]. No author, or no good author, is writing down to teens. Teens don’t enjoy condescension, and they sniff it out real quick.
Q: What other projects do you have coming down the pike?
A: I sold my second novel, currently called Not Exactly Hank, to Dutton (my publisher for OOTP). That was originally coming out in the summer of 2010, but my editor left Dutton and my book was left to another editor who has different ideas about where it should go. So we’ll see what happens there. I have a third novel, and my first adult novel, called Father, Son and Holy Buddha. It’s a novel about a family of addicts and what happens to them during a harrowing week in their lives, after which nothing will ever be the same. That novel will soon be shopped to publishing houses by a different (adult literary) agent. My YA agent doesn’t represent such books.
Q: Are there any contemporary writers whose work makes you jealous? Why?
A: The two that come to mind are John Green, the YA novelist, and Toni Morrison. Green makes me jealous (green with envy?) because he writes with wit that is a level beyond that I seem to be able to do. I want to be that clever. And his plots are so intricate that I can’t imagine coming up with them on my own. As for Morrison, I am awed by her ability to mold words into art. I’ve never read an author who is more perfect in her use of prose.
Q: What advice do you have for writers currently struggling to get their first books published? What advice helped you when you were in that position?
A: First, go to conferences like the one held by San Diego State University, where agents and editors will sit down with you for five minute pitch sessions. I went to just one, and it resulted in getting an agent. Second: be flexible. Your agent and then hopefully an editor will tell you what your book is. Have boundaries about what you’re willing to do to make them happy, but don’t expect that the book you’ve written will survive intact. I wrote seven drafts of Out of the Pocket, based on agent and editor suggestions. In some ways, I’d suggest getting it extremely clean and exactly how you want it quickly, so that you can begin the journey of having the book metamorphose into what it will become.
Q: What kind of child were you?
A: Creative. Sweet. I loved to make up games and play them, by myself and with others. As a baby I didn’t cry in the morning, I sang softly until my mom came to get me. I was also very intense about the things I liked. When I was five I memorized the New York City subway map in its entirety, and any time we had a visitor I’d quiz them about how they got to us. This sort of intensity has served me well as a writer. You have to be completely hooked on what you’re doing if you’re going to put up with all the craziness involved in writing and publishing a book.
Q: What writerly habit would you most like to break?
A: I wish my computer had a macro that immediately erased phrases with “sort of” in them. It’s an affectation of character I use in first person and it gets old in a hurry. I sometimes fall back on the same rhythms when it comes to starting and ending chapters, where the sentence structure becomes like a formula. I would like to break habits like this which are really a function of laziness. If I’m really on my game, I should be able to create new rhythms and ways of communicating whenever I need them. Oh. And I would like to stop relying on climactic scenes that utilize screaming or crying as the climactic moment. These bodily explosions seem to come too easily to me as a writer and I’ll be better when I break those habits.
Q: What did you have for breakfast today?
A: Oatmeal with apricot jam in it to make it slightly sweet.
