Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Justin Meckes. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Justin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Writers are motivated to write through reading. We’re inspired by a story, a book, or an author we admire and want to emulate. For me and many other writers, it was Aldous Huxley. I was introduced to Brave New World in high school but read several more of his works in college.
When it comes to producing my own works, I learned to write by sitting in the chair for an hour or more a day for about ten years. That’s not 10,000 hours, but it’s a good start for anyone hoping to publish. However, this level of dedication does not come without pitfalls. You’ll need to persevere and be willing to create for an audience of one if you want to be successful. The reason being that so few will read what you write during those first years. There are exceptions, of course. Haruki Murakami comes to mind, but struggle breeds story. So, I’d argue that it’s useful.

What’s not so useful is doubt and it can be a tremendous obstacle. But not one that can’t be overcome. While some writers turn to alcohol or drugs to lower its volume, substance abuse isn’t necessarily a prerequisite. For me, it’s been helpful to know I’m writing for the right reasons.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a writer and a filmmaker. The key to understanding my work is to realize that most of my films were stories first. There are no films without a story (except the experimental ones), so what I’m saying may be best demonstrated through a David Bowie interview I once watched on YouTube.

Bowie explained that early in his career, he was writing songs, but no one was singing them. So, eventually, he had to start doing it himself. I write novels but often feel as though the end product should be in some sort of visual form. In other words, my work feels incomplete as a book or novel. Because no one else has offered to adapt my work, I decided to do it.

Right now, I have two films on the festival circuit that are based on personal essays. I’ll finish the final draft of the book early this summer, just before I ramp up production for the third film in the series. There may be more than three films if the first few are successful enough.

As it is, “Paranoid” is doing fairly well. It’s a film about a man who fears he’s under surveillance and, as a result, takes drastic action to prevent a nervous breakdown. The second is a spoken word film, “The Anxieties of a Reluctant Japanophile.” Here is a recent film festival description: “Inspired by the work of Spalding Gray—an American actor, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and performance artist—this film is a monologue about anxiety, international travel, and Seven Years in Tibet.”

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In 2019, I was living in Chapel Hill and driving past a waist-high cairn on an almost daily basis. The stack of rocks was on the side of the highway about a mile from my apartment. After much internal debate, I made my first film in about ten years (The ten years I’d dedicated myself to writing.) The short made it into several festivals and launched the resurgence of my film career.

I’ve since made almost ten shorts. Some have been awarded, and some have been more niche, but this was a vital move for me. As I said in the previous question, I felt like my writing was incomplete without adaptation, and since no one else was interested in doing it, I had to.

One result has been that I am often seen as a filmmaker rather than a writer, but I know that without the intensive focus on novels and short stories, I would not be making films the way I am today.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I have to have something to say, whether on a political, spiritual, or some other matter. And I have to be able to say it in a way I feel hasn’t been said before. Or just loudly, so it can be heard over all the noise. This might not sound like such a lofty goal, but it’s the reason I haven’t worked on a novel in about a year.

I still write just about every day on other projects, but a novel was my initial goal, and it has, admittedly, gotten away from me. Although, I feel like this puts me in good company, as the jazz pianist Bill Evans thought he had “nothing new to say” just before recording Everybody Digs Bill Evans.

What I’ve been writing and how I frame new projects will, more often than not, involve my children. I tend to think about what I’ll be able to leave them when I’m gone. So, the personal essays are part of that. But I’m also working on a children’s book series about the animals in our neighborhood. With any luck, those stories will last at least a few generations—possibly more if you consider Tolkien, Dahl, and one of my personal favorites, Grahame—who wrote The Wind in the Willows—left behind work that started as bedtime stories.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.justinmeckes.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/justinmeckes
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/justinmeckes

Image Credits
Justin Meckes