We recently connected with John Young and have shared our conversation below.

John, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Learning the craft of writing and storytelling, is a life-long pursuit. At least for literary fiction, which is what I do. Every story in literary fiction, whether it’s a novel or a short piece, is a new adventure.

That said, you do get better with experience and practice. And reading is important, especially reading like a writer. How does an author introduce a new character? How do they set up a scene, how much description did it take to feel real? If it was too much, what could go? What makes one piece of dialogue work and another not?

Classes and writing groups can accelerate the learning process too. I studied English and writing at Indiana University and later got an MFA in creative writing at Emerson College in Boston. In those situations you get feedback on your stories, but you also see mistakes and successes of classmates to help you recognize what works and what doesn’t. There are also a lot of books on writing, and even the bad ones usually have a few helpful ideas.

Another thing is that there are a lot of ways to write. One of my grad school professors outlined every detail in his novels—he showed me a 75-page outline for one novel. Then he sits down to write the book. He sees it as two distinct activities, like an architect and a carpenter. Another writer friend, starts with an image or a character and works his way through with no idea of the end until he gets there. Me? I write a six or eight page outline, and I always know the ending as well as the arc of the story before I start—that’s a tip John Updike gave me over coffee one day, but that’s another story.

I’ve been writing for a long time now, and I still have moments where I’m unsure. Then I go back to an important adage: Allow yourself to write a lousy first draft to keep moving forward. Then edit later.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a kid, I didn’t like school, but I loved learning. I was lucky to have two wonderful sisters, nine and ten years older, who would tell me about all kinds of things. Even in first and second grades, they took me to the high school and explained the dissected frogs in biology. They walked in the woods with me explaining how trees were made of cells, about micro-organisms in the water, and even how atoms and molecules function. They told me stories from history, and read Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield to me when I was in second grade. They fueled my curiosity.

I grew up in the countryside on the outer edge of Indianapolis. When I wandered the woods and fields with my dog, I made up up stories in my head, incorporating bits of history or science from my sisters. Is it any wonder that when I was eight years old, I told my mother I wanted to be a clown or a scientist when I grew up?

I spent most of my career in the Boston area as a copywriter and creative director in advertising, and my curiosity pushed me toward technology, history, and healthcare. So there was plenty of clowning around and science in my life.

Curiosity served me well again when the internet came became the web. I helped create websites and other digital marketing for: IBM, Mobil Oil, P&G, General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline, Harvard University and a raft of interesting small organizations.

Later, my wife, two kids and I ended up in Cincinnati where I was partner and helped lead the creative department in the city’s largest ad agency. After we sold the company, I turned my attention back to my long-term goal of writing fiction. And it’s gone pretty well.

I published my first novel When the Coin is in the Air in 2019 with the literary publisher Golden Antelope Press. It’s a coming of age story about a young man’s search for a sense of self-worth in conflict with an abusive father and an overly competitive older brother. I followed that with Fire in the Field & Other Stories in 2021, also from Golden Antelope. And in 2023, I published a novel: Getting Huge from Guernica Editions. It’s a semi-comic tale of a seven-foot tall minister who becomes obsessed with growing the world’s largest pumpkin. But it’s really about a man who’s problems are getting huge after working with the wrong people in the wrong place for too long and struggling with goals that don’t match his values.

I’m still like a curious kid. Just about everything interests me on some level. And that comes in pretty handy for a writer. I carry around all these fragments of information. There’s always research to do, even if it’s only enough to make something feel believable on the page. Or I get to call an expert to confirm or expand my knowledge which is always fun.

With Getting Huge, several ministers have asked if I was a minister because I really captured their pressures. Other people ask how many giant pumpkins I’ve grown. I loved learning enough to make it feel real to readers, and I can bore you at a party with data about how unhappy most ministers are, or share secrets of growing a giant pumpkin (the main one is water, lots of water).

Today, I’m at work on another novel and I hope to finish it by early summer. Then begins the process of sending it to agents and publishers.

To me, a love of learning and an omnivorous curiosity are central to a writer’s life, and to a full and interesting life no matter what you do.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

What I love most is the freedom to tell the story inside me—stories I would want to read. For years, I used my writing and creativity for advertising or marketing. I liked it. I was good at it—won a lot of awards.

Now, I pursue art, and I decide what the story is. I figure out how characters face problems, what they say or do. Am I trying to make a point? Sure. But I’m trying to make it by showing characters in action, not by lecturing at you. And I’m trying to reach people on an emotional level. When I get a card or email from a reader who says they were touched my my work, that makes my day.

I also keep giving myself new challenges. In the novel I’m writing now, the protagonist is a woman, and the story is told in third person, mixing in a second character’s point of view. Those new challenges are fun. And this novel comes out of an idea I’ve carried around in my head for over 25 years. In some ways, you could say it’s my love song to Mother Nature and the environment.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The reality is, most artists get knocked down. My work has been rejected many, many times. But you have to bounce. Get up and send the work out to someone else. And you have to start writing the next thing.

The work won’t appeal to everyone. It’s not created for everyone. Sure I want to reach a large audience, and I deeply appreciate every reader. But ultimately, I have to tell the stories I have to tell.

I’ll confess that I didn’t fully devote myself to writing fiction until I had set aside enough money—to take care of my family, college funds and all that jazz—and I wish I’d started writing fiction sooner. I didn’t have a lot growing up, and that pushed me to take care of my family before I chased my writing dream.

Was that cowardly? I don’t know. It’s what I had to do.

Am I resilient because I never gave up the dream? Maybe.

And it doesn’t really matter. What I have is the time ahead to write. So I’m writing. And I hope people read it and enjoy it. I hope they find it meaningful.

Thank you for the interview. It was fun to remind myself why I arrive at my desk between six and seven every morning.

Contact Info:

• Website: johnyoungwriter.com
• Instagram: johnyoung_writer
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=599293345 and https://www.facebook.com/JohnYoungWriter/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-young-517853/

Image Credits
Cover designs: Nick Young Author photos: Michael Wilson