Interview With Author Robert W. Norris
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I was born in 1951 and raised in a small logging town in Humboldt County, California. I became a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War and served time in a military prison for refusing my order to fight. In my twenties, I worked a lot of labor jobs, roamed across the States, went to Europe twice, and made one journey around the world. In 1983, I landed in Japan, where I eventually became a professor at a private university and retired as a professor emeritus. I’ve written three novels, a novella, a memoir, and over 20 research papers on teaching English as a second or foreign language. My wife and I live near Fukuoka, Japan.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“The Good Lord Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise: Pentimento Memories of Mom and Me.” It’s my life story and a tribute to my mother, who passed away in 2021. She and I always had a strong bond and kept up a lifelong correspondence. After she passed, I wanted to preserve her spirit and my memories of her. I had all these letters, e-mails, audio recordings of her family stories, a couple of videos, and all my earlier writing to use. It seemed natural to put it all together into a story that captured both our lives. The difficulty was in cutting out the excess.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I can’t say whether it’s unusual or not, but I still fill notebooks with handwritten ideas, chapter drafts, snippets of interesting conversation, potential themes, and descriptions of people and scenery. I’ll write most of my rough drafts on my computer, then print the pages out and edit everything with a pencil. I also read the script out loud while editing.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Hermann Hesse, Richard Yates, Howard Zinn, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Conrad, David James Duncan, Ernest Hemingway, Henry David Thoreau, Richard Wright, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Wolfe, Lillian Hellman, and Malcolm Lowry all had varying degrees of influence on me when I was younger and searching for my place in the world. Since I’ve come to Japan, Dazai Osamu, Sakaguchi Ango, Abe Kobo, and Oe Kenzaburo have also influenced the way I see the world.
What are you working on now?
I’m in the very early stages of making notes for a possible nonfiction book related to the study of Japanese kanji and how it affects my daily life.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
It’s a laborious process, but I’ve had the best success in trying to find people and groups that might be interested in my book, send them a personal message in which I explain what I think we have in common, and ask them to have a look at the book with an eye toward providing a review or endorsement. I’ve also had some success at sending excerpts to journals and websites that have some connection with the themes of my book.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I would say the best thing you can do is read as much as you can and study how the writers you admire describe people and places, how they set up a scene, and how they develop the arc of their stories. Also, try always to have a notebook and pen with you wherever you go. Some of the best ideas come when you least expect them. If you don’t capture them at the moment they occur, they’re lost forever.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
As far as writing is concerned, I’d like to quote Hemingway from his memoir “A Moveable Feast”: “I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”
What are you reading now?
Lately, I’ve been reading mostly memoirs by longtime expatriate residents of Japan. I also just finished rereading Henry Miller’s “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare,” about his traveling around the U.S. in 1940 and 1941 after ten years of expatriate life in Europe.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’ll keep writing random thoughts in a notebook until the next flash of inspiration hits.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Richard Yates’s “Revolutionary Road,” Jack Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums,” Hermann Hesse’s “Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game),” and David James Duncan’s “The Brothers K.”
Author Websites and Profiles
Robert W. Norris Amazon Profile
Robert W. Norris’s Social Media Links