Art + Activism
Jay Bonansinga
Transcript of Interview
Haley Cieslak
4-6-2015
HALEY CIESLAK:
So, we first met in Mort [Castle]’s class and you talked a little bit about writing horror.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yes.
HALEY CIESLAK:
And I was wondering if that was something that you’d always been interested in –writing
horror?
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yes. Guilty.
HALEY CIESLAK:
Did it come with a lot of stigmas? Did you find that there was a market for it?
JAY BONANSINGA:
That’s an interesting question because it’s very looked down upon for many years as pulp –
as a lesser genre that pretty much geared towards pimply-faced teenage boys and hack
writers. The cliché, the stereotype, that it is over the top, you know, blah-blah-blah, I could
go on and on. We used to say that it was the “ghetto” of literature. This was many years ago.
But I started wanting to write horror when I was a kid and when you’re a kid you could not
care less about a) labels, b) literary critics, and c) what’s right and wrong. It’s about what your
heart latches on to. And I did that very early in my life. I’ve always loved it and I’m of an age
now, I’ve been doing it long enough, I’ve been writing horror for almost 30 years. If you
count my earliest attempts to get published –going back to my childhood –I’ve been writing
it forever. And it’s gone through cycles where it’s become very popular and cool and then it
goes back into the closet and then it comes back out again. We’re in a cycle now where
horror is very lucrative with The Walking Dead, of course, and many others. I started to get
published in the 80’s when it was also –that was another cycle where it was very valid and
worth “literary” consideration. I’ll never forget my first try publishing it, I joined an
association called The Horror Writers of America. And that shows you right there how
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seriously it was being taken by practitioners and the people who edited it –the professionals
in the field. So anyway, that’s a long answer to your question. Yeah, it is looked down upon
by many people but that has never bothered me one iota. I found a way to make a living
doing it.
HALEY CIESLAK:
Yeah you’re making money. That’s interesting because something I’m just realizing now
that I never really thought about before, in my writing, was does it sound like –is what I’m
writing already been written? And so I feel like that could be a really important part of
horror writing. “Has this been done before or can I spin it a different way?”
JAY BONANSINGA:
That’s really a good point –very astute. Horror like most genres –history and romance, and
war and westerns and I could go on and on, private eye, detective novels –all these genres
they involve sort of archetypes. It’s that, there are these archetypes, there are monsters, and
characters who are archetypal like the lonely detective doing one last job before he gets
burned out or the romantic, sexy vampire. These become archetypes. But an archetype isn’t
bad. A cliché and a trope –that’s bad. But you should be able to do exactly what you said, you
should be able to spin that a new way. That’s the secret of writing horror. It’s spinning
archetypes in a new way. There’s movie out now called What We Do in The Shadows. Have you
heard of that?
HALEY CIESLAK:
No.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Okay, that’s a vampire story that’s spun in a completely new direction. It’s a mockumentary
and a comedy sort of like ‘a day in the life.’
HALEY CIESLAK:
You know what? I think I have heard of it. It’s a comedy?
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JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah. It didn’t get a wide release. I know it played at the Music Box in Chicago but it’s
written and directed by –and stars –a writer/director who used to have a show on HBO
called Flight of the Concords.
HALEY CIESLAK:
Yeah Jermaine, right?
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah, and so anyway, they’re doing exactly what you suggested. You take an archetype and
spin it in a new way –but you know there’s a fine line –a real gray area between archetype
and cliché. That’s the thing. Anne Rice was probably one of the greatest practitioners or
creators of a new angle on an old archetype. She wrote Interview with the Vampire many years
ago. It was written like in the 70’s but that was something new. I remember when that came
out thinking ‘this has never been done before.’ It’s really cool, you know? 800 year old
vampires that are cool and interesting, romantic and funny and fucked up. So that ushered in
a whole new subgenre and a whole new industry that I think we’re still seeing. Like with the
movie I just mentioned and Twilight and stuff. It’s because of Anne Rice –True Blood on
television is Anne Rice. People just taking Anne Rice and improvising on it.
HALEY CIESLAK:
Do you run into any of those problems when you’re writing for The Walking Dead?
JAY BONANSINGA:
Well, yeah. I mean, it’s always in the back of your mind when you’re writing. Especially in
this genre, if you’re writing horror. It’s always in the back of your mind. ‘Has this been done
a million times? Has this setting been done a million times? Has this scene been written a
million times?” I mean I try to write it very personally and that’s the secret to avoiding
retreading old stuff. You try to bring as much of your own life into it as you can. You know,
look at Stephen King. Look at how he’s spun archetype into a new direction. He’s basically
used his own life. He’s used small towns in Maine where he grew up and he wrote about his
schoolteachers and poor people who live in trailers in upstate Maine and blah-blah-blah.
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This is his own life. This is what he knew best. So I always rail against that old saying
teachers love, ‘write what you know’ but there is truth to it in horror –ironically. Horror is
certainly the farthest thing from reality that you could possible write –aside from hard
science fiction. But even in these genres, the best writers use their lives so they can form
them. And I do that in The Walking Dead. If I figure –okay, for example -I was put in charge,
so to speak, of this one really important character in The Walking Dead universe. Her name is
Lilly. She appears in the comic books for about two or three pages. But she does something
really important and sort of shocking and then she vanishes. I’ve been writing about her now
for almost about five years. Five books I’ve been with this person. I had to just create her
from the ground up, because in the comic books they disappear and then they fade away and
they’re written out of the story. We don’t even know her last name or who she was, what her
story was, so I created this woman that I kind of based on my wife. Like, my wife’s name is
Jilly-Jill-and I call her Jilly and she became almost like this sort of model for Lilly Caul in The
Walking Dead. It’s gone so far to work on this, I’ve been doing this for so long now that
now, at conventions, people will dress up like Lily Caul and they do cosplay dressed up like
her. And it’s like looking at doppelgangers of my wife. Isn’t that wild?
HALEY CIESLAK:
Yeah! So, for these characters they start off as someone else’s. Does it ever feel sort of like –
the word I want to use is fan-fictiony, but I don’t know if that’s insulting to use. But how
does it feel to work with characters that aren’t your own creation?
JAY BONANSINGA:
Oh! Okay, I think I know where you’re going with this. Like you’re sort of referring to the
process of, like, writing stories in someone else’s universe?
HALEY CIESLAK:
Yeah!
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah, okay. That’s, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. You’re right, there is sort of an
element of like super sophisticated fan-fiction. But you know what? That’s fine with me. If
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people agree with the super sophisticated part, I don’t mind the fan-fiction part. I am a fan
of The Walking Dead, totally. I would love the show whether I worked on it or not. I’m really
lucky that I work on it, not the show per se, but I work on the novels and now the video
games and I’m in the writer’s rooms and stuff. And yeah, you’re right –there is this fanfiction aspect to it. Like I said, that’s okay as long as the books have legs. They’re good
enough to where people will go “yeah, I didn’t expect this book to be as good as it is.” I’ve
had that reaction from many people. So, in fact, this is sort of crass of me to say, but the first
book that we published was called The Rise of the Governor and that one we spent the most
time working on, myself and Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead, and I think
the most collaborative book. It was the longest one, I guess it was because it was the
prototype. It was coming out first and I thought, Robert never mentioned it to me, but I
thought we really need to prove to people that this is more than fan-fiction. That it’s more
than -fan-fiction is one way to look at it, another way is to look at it like hack work. Crappy
writing –it’s quick and down and dirty, you get in and out. Which is the way tie-in novels are
often perceived and sometimes it’s true and sometimes it’s not. A tie-in –I don’t know if
you’ve ever heard that phrase –a tie-in novel. A tie-in and it’s called that because it ties in
with some major franchise like Star Wars. You know there’s even novels that are tie-ins for
video games. Resident Evil novels that are written –they’re just meant to cash-in on a
franchise that’s really big. And there’s nothing wrong with writing these kinds of things.
There’s nothing wrong with them. I’ve written them before. But The Walking Dead books we
wanted to prove they’re not just tie-ins. We wanted to make them really serious works and
the first one that came out, as I said The Rise of the Governor. And immediately it became huge
on the New York Times Bestseller list. I knew it was because The Walking Dead comic books
and the show –it came out one year after the show premiered-and people were talking about
it. But, the fifth novel came out last October and they have all done really well. You know,
knock wood. The second one came out –The Road to Woodbury which introduced Lilly Caul
and that placed higher on the New York Times Bestseller list. And, you know, the books
have just done really well. I look at that as an indication that, and maybe I’m just fooling
myself, as an indication that people are pleasantly surprised. The books are more literary, or
whatever, than some would expect. Does that make sense? I don’t know if that makes sense.
HALEY CIESLAK:
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Yeah, yeah! It’s sort of the reverse of the book being made into a movie.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Right, and it’s the reverse, yeah you’re right. That’s well-said. It’s not the book coming out
first and getting to know the characters in the novel and then the movie coming out second.
A lot of people are let down –through no fault of the movie. It’s impossible to replicate the
experience of a book. But yeah, you’re right this is the show comes out and people are
digging it and then the book comes out and people have a chip on their shoulder about
them. I’m proud of The Walking Dead as books –as a standalone book.
HALEY CIESLAK:
How closely do you collaborate with Robert Kirkman and how many liberties do you take
on the characters and the plots of the books?
JAY BONANSINGA:
Well, I get asked this a lot and the first book, The Rise of the Governor, came out in 2012 or
2011, yeah 2011. That one we worked really closely together. We made an outline of 20, 25
pages and I would write like 50 pages of prose –turning it in to fiction and he would look at
that chunk of 50 pages. “Yeah, here, keep going!” You know, “I’m digging it. It’s cool, keep
writing.” I am happy to say that we didn’t keep doing that over the years because after a
while he was just like, “Jay, I don’t need to see it. Write the book.” And now, I signed a
contract last year for four more books. Robert Kirkman has just give me carte blanche.
“Here are the characters, get at it.” Well… as soon as that comes out of my mouth I’m
like… As long as they’re a character from the anthology, from the comic book, and they’re
still alive at that time. But I get to make up the story itself – it’s fantastic. It’s like the greatest
sandbox I’ve ever played in. I’m not ashamed of the fact that I do this. I am very serious
about this work and that I get to do this. It changed my life and I really like The Walking
Dead. It’s great work. It’s one of the most pivotal franchises of our age. There’s going to be a
spin-off show that starts this year and it’s going to be really good.
HALEY CIESLAK:
I just heard about that.
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JAY BONANSINGA:
So it’s very cool. Very cool.
HALEY CIESLAK:
Aside from The Walking Dead, do you have any personal projects that you’re working on?
JAY BONANSINGA:
I do as a matter of fact! I’m glad you asked that! I’ve been starting this social networking
conference for the new book I have coming out, ironically. My new book coming out is
called Lucid. L-U-C-I-D. Lucid as in lucid dreamers. And it’s the story of a –it’s sort of a YA
story. Sort of a young adult novel because it involves high school kids. It’s this story of this
girl –this lucid dreamer –who stumbles upon a doorway to another dimension in her dream.
It’s sort of like a teenage version of Inception and things go horribly awry when she goes
through the door. It’s probably the most researched novel I’ve ever written. I’ve done nonfiction but this is super researched-super, heavily researched. It’s real. The stuff in it is
mostly real except for the imagined stuff on the other side of that door. I’m really excited
about it. It’s being published by a small publisher called Permuted Press. I’m glad it’s a small
publisher and it’s coming out in a traditional trade paperback. And also a digital book. I’m so
excited that I can have my book, my own books come out. I work on them off and on while
I’m writing The Walking Dead. I’m really starting to promote that book. I’m planning on
doing signings and readings in the Chicago area within the next couple months.
HALEY CIESLAK:
That’s awesome. So how do you manage personal writing and then The Walking Dead books?
JAY BONANSINGA:
That’s a good question. That’s one of the, I mean, in all honestly if I couldn’t write my own
stuff, I had to only write The Walking Dead books in my contract, I’d be totally cool with that.
I don’t know if I would be totally cool with that for the rest of my life, but right now? The
Walking Dead and working on it is the most challenging and fun and lucrative thing I could
be doing. Just the motive that it takes me about six months to write a novel and I’m
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expected to write one book a year in my contract because they like to have the show and the
book released at the same time.
HALEY CIESLAK:
That’s got to be a tight schedule.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Well, you know, for other people it might be a tight schedule –it’s kind of luxurious for me.
It takes me about a week to write 25 pages. It’s different for people who aren’t like myself
and aren’t lucky enough to be writing full time. You get up in the morning at a reasonable
hour, you start early, you start writing and you can write five good pages by lunch time. And
if you write five good pages a day, five days a week –you take weekends off –and by the
fourth month you’re going to have about 400 pages, about 100,000 words which is roughly
the length of a commercial book. So, technically, you can have a rough draft in four months
while leading a very normal, everyday life. I have two teenage boys and a family. My wife and
I do stuff together, we travel and I’m still able to get one book a year written in six months.
That’s how I’m able to write my own novels as well. Although this year it’s spent doing
video gamesHALEY CIESLAK:
Even better.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah it’s really cool.
HALEY CIESLAK:
So you’re writing scripts for the video games?
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah, well, kind of –more of –well, I’m not really allowed to talk about it, right now.
HALEY CIESLAK:
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Oh, hush-hush, I’m sorry.
JAY BONANSINGA:
But I mean, I can talk in general terms like I’m talking about it. You know, working on
video games for The Walking Dead. I’m mostly doing writing like coming up with story ideas
and doing treatments and stuff. It really depends on the type of game, there are so many
different kinds of games. But yeah, it’s really fascinating. It’s the future of interaction. I think
video games have taken over as the top grossing entertainment product. They have bigger
box office now than movies. The last Walking Dead video came out made 47 million dollars.
Yeah, it’s incredible.
HALEY CIESLAK:
Is that a different type of writing than you’re used to?
JAY BONANSINGA:
Um, a little bit, but not really. I’m a screenwriter as well as a novelist. That’s the degree I got
at Columbia. MFA in film. I’ve directed film and I’ve written film scripts. I’ve been working
on film for the last 20 years, as well as books. I did a film Stash. It’s a mockumentary about a
company –it came out in 2009 and that’s all stuff I’m really proud of. It was a small film,
mockumentary style and it was about a business called Discreet Removal and what they do is
they take a deposit and a map of your home and information about you and in the event of
your death they will come to your home and they will discreetly remove all your porn from
your hard drive and your computer. Any videos and whatever you have before your family
finds them.
HALEY CIESLAK:
That would be a very lucrative business, I feel.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah, I mean I got the idea many years ago. I was talking to a friend of mine but he was
talking about a third individual and he goes, “you would love this guy. He and I are so close
we’re practically brothers. We’re so close we’re like porn buddies.” And I was like, “did you
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just say what I thought you said? Did you say porn buddies?” “Yeah! Haven’t you ever heard
of that?” “No, I’ve never heard that expression.” “Oh yeah, you know, it’s the guy that
comes to your house after you die before your mom or your wife finds your porn.” And I’m
like, “oh, my God. I’ve got to do something with that.” I thought that’s the most ridiculous,
and human, and kind of sad, hilarious idea I’ve ever heard. It was really cool. I made the film
and wrote an adaptation of a story that was published and I got e-mails from people asking
me if this service was real. Is this an actual business? Is there someone who actually does this? And I
knew at that point that I should make a documentary, a fake documentary. That this was so
plausible that people were asking. I got great actors, I got Second City actors, I got this
woman who was a famous porno actress in the 70’s. And it really turned out great. I was
really surprised it turned out so well. I was really kind of amazed how well it turned out.
Yeah, so anyway. Writing for video games is very similar to writing screenplay. There are
differences but it is very similar. I think writing comics are closer to films than books. I think
that’s one reason why I may have latched on to this writing for The Walking Dead. Writing a
book so in detail, so quickly, and having so much fun. I am a film person and the fact that
you have a film background as well as novels. Some of these books are variations on the
comic books. Some of them are sort of taking the comic book and telling it from a different
point of view. You find out what one character was doing during this sequence that was
dramatized in the comic –figuring out where they were at the time. Some of the comic book
readers were getting very protective of the comics. I’m really lucky and I don’t make any
assumptions, you know –writing for video games, writing for books, writing for films,
writing for television –all the same to me. All exactly the same principle you’re using. You’re
telling a good story. My wife, Jilly, and I were just watching a show called Better Call Saul and
it’s by the makers of Breaking Bad and it’s on AMC and on this show Better Call Saul one of
the things about it that fascinates me, and I see it in The Walking Dead show too, it uses
principles from novels, from fiction. It’s so cool. I’ve told students that I’ve taught off-andon as an adjunct for a class for screenwriting and I’ll show them some novels. It’s all the
same thing. It’s all part of the same process, this huge discipline that I call Storytelling. A lot
of people turn up their nose at certain kinds of writing but, I don’t want to get on my
soapbox.
HALEY CIESLAK:
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So you talked a little bit about your writing schedule, could you speak a little about your
revision process? Or re-writing? Because that’s a huge part of writing that, I personally, hate.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah, and you know, most –you’re not alone. Most writers hate it as well. And I kind of go
back and forth. Probably one thing I’ve developed, skill, I guess you’d call, or point-of-view,
is that if you are getting notes from someone on what to revise, for whatever it is –short
story, novel, film screenplay –whatever it is, and you’re not getting paid and they are asking
to change things, that’s when revision is the hardest. Somebody is saying, “I don’t like your
book. I’m not interested in it. But maybe if you do this, I will be interested.” Those are the
hardest revisions to work on. You’re really sort of shaking a tail on dog –I don’t know,
mixed metaphors. That person may never see your book again. You just never know. It’s
very difficult to work on those kinds of revisions. But if you’re lucky enough to get paid and
they’re asking to make changes –I love it. The more feedback the better. A second chance.
It’s sort of like you’re getting some love which is the opposite of what most writers feel.
Most writers feel people don’t like them, like their writing, they’re bad writers because
they’re suggesting all these changes, these revisions. And they think they’re failures and “fuck
you, how could you say this about my brilliant writing?” But I think the opposite of that. “I
think this is how you might make it better.” It seems like a stretch maybe, for beginning
writers. Revisions are really –here’s the bigger issue –you have to fall in love with everything
about it to be really good at something. You have to fall in love with every aspect of the
process. An artist, a great artist stretches their own canvas and they love that part. They love
meeting with the gallery owner, setting up exhibits. I’m that way with writing. I love every
minute of it. I love right now. I love giving interviews. You get to the point where you love
doing the copy editing. Many beginning writers don’t understand there is several levels of
editing. There’s a creative editor at a publishing house, or even a website or magazine. There
are story editors. They may ask you to make changes to the story and that’s great. And then
after you lock the story, there’s a person known as a copy editor and they will help you get
every word correct: grammar, the punctuation, the word choice and I love that process!
Reading notes from them, if you’ve got a good copy editor. The things they catch! There was
three bullets left in the gun a hundred pages ago and now there’s four. And they’ll write little
notes, “are you sure there are four bullets left in this gun? There were three a hundred pages
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ago, so it should only have three bullets left.” And you marvel at it. It’s amazing, it’s brilliant.
So, anyway, I think that’s the trick –if you’re good at something it’s because you love doing
it. And I know one time they asked a great writer, Truman Capote, what his favorite part of
writing is. He thinks about it for a long time and then he says, “Being finished. That’s my
favorite part.” And there is an aspect of that. But if you don’t like the other stuff, you’re
going to have serious problems. You have to learn to love the whole process. The whole
process. And you can’t love one part more than another. Like people who do too much
research. I get asked a lot about what the biggest mistake is for young writers, and since you
are a young writer, this is sort of running in that direction. To me, the biggest mistake made
by beginning writers in a college level is they prepare too much. They outline, they research,
they write character sketches, they plan what type of paper they’re going to use, what
computer program. They’re just preparing for months to write a story. After a while, after
like, seven and a half months of preparation, they’re so bored and exhausted they never write
the story.
HALEY CIESLAK:
That’s incredibly true.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah and I’ve seen some students say “how do you know when you’ve done enough
research?” And my answer to that is: as soon as you get a little, teeny bit bored you should
be writing. Because at the end of the day, half of it is conjecture and imagination and made
up stuff. I’d say half. I would commit to that. I would stand by that. Half of it you make up
and the other half might be research that you’ve done but there’s nothing worse than a novel
that has pages and pages of just technical, background something that just shows off the
amount of research.
HALEY CIESLAK:
I’ve found that, in a lot of my classes, that the teachers ask “when do you start writing?” and
everybody’s says, “oh I draw an outline and this and that” and I’m kind of like “well, I kind
of know what I’m going to have happen and then I just write.” It feels wrong to say that in
front of all my peers and my teachers. So, it’s interesting.
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JAY BONANSINGA:
No, you’re absolutely right! You’re absolute correct. It’s not a science. Writing a story, it’s
not a science. It’s an art, it’s a craft. There is a certain point that you need to just start
earnestly, with the best of intentions, and fly by the seat of your pants and just start. That’s
the exciting part. That’s another thing that people say, “what’s the scariest thing for a
writer?” It’s the blank page. It’s that white, white page staring at you. Oh my God! –But it’s
exactly the opposite for me. A blank white page, or, in today’s day and age, it’d be a blank
white screen with the cursor blinking at you. But, that blank screen is the most exciting thing
in the world! It’s like a racecar driver having a straightaway ahead of you and its beautiful
weather and you just want to drive. That’s what a blank page is like. A lot of it with writing,
and it’s probably true for a lot of the arts, a huge portion of it is faith that you have
something to say. Every artist –even if you’re a 17 year old kid with an electric guitar in a
garage –you’re going on faith that you have something to say in the world of rock ‘n’ roll.
And, yeah, 99 times out of 100 the kid with the electric guitar is going to be saying
something that’s already been said many, many times. The same three chords, playing
together umpteen billion, billion times. But the faith in yourself that you have something to
say is true of all artists and it’s super important for writers. You really have to tell yourself
the story. That’s probably the most effective way to do it. You have to be telling yourself the
story you can’t find. A product that’s missing on the shelf that you can’t find and you want
to buy. It’s a little bit like inventing a new product. You’re telling yourself a bedtime story.
You’re making yourself laugh and cry.
HALEY CIESLAK:
I think a lot of beginning writers write about –or worry about –writing for other people as
opposed to writing for themselves.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Totally.
HALEY CIESLAK:
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And while it’s important to recognize the business aspect, I think people are going to
respond to works that you respond to. If that makes sense?
JAY BONANSINGA:
It totally makes sense. Chances are, and I know this has been said before by several different
people, but there’s so much truth in it: if you are excited about something, chances are
there’s an audience besides you. If you really care about what you write or you are really,
really finding it hilarious, chances are there are other people out there who find it hilarious,
scary or interesting too. That’s something that you can’t really teach to anyone, you can just
sort of prepare them for that. Because everyone is different and everyone has different funny
bones and things that strike them as interesting and exciting. But if you don’t find it exciting,
that’s another thing sometimes people do, slogging through something they think will be
good but not care about it at all. That’s the kiss of death. If you don’t care about it, no one
else will. It’s really a complex dynamic when you become professional because you have to
have that passion where you are writing for yourself but, also, you have to be a business
person, and a professional and work well with others, play well with others. Get input from
others and make those changes lively and quickly, make them well, make the thing better and
that kind of contradicts the theory that you really have to be true to yourself. But, in a way, it
doesn’t contradict it because part of that process is you.
HALEY CIESLAK:
I feel like that dynamic really rubs artists the wrong way. Here at Columbia I see that a lot
where people don’t want to put on their marketing hats. They just want to be free spirits.
Well, that’s wonderful but think about targeting other free spirits too.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah, I remember when I went to Columbia, which was a long time ago. It was a much
smaller school, believe me. But I do recall at that time, I was working on staff at this place
called Million Dollar Round Table where I wrote insurance pages, pitches and
advertisements for insurance companies. It was a big association and they employed
copywriters, so I got a job there when I got out of undergraduate and I was 22 years old. I
remember vividly, I was going to night school –I was going to Columbia at night-and I
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remember that one of my fellow graduates was making fun of me because I was secretly
working on a script for an insurance agency. And I was like “why is he laughing? I’m
working. I’m getting paid to write!” And to me that’s the best trade and it may be why the
big picture, the cosmic picture, for me, in my life, was maybe why I was able to get The
Walking Dead job and be professional because I had worked these other jobs and I did it for
years! I wrote everything you could possibly write. I wrote corporate meetings scripts, I
wrote greeting cards, I wrote advertisements, I wrote circulars for newspapers. I wrote as
many thing as you could get paid to write. I remember I wrote short stories and some of
them sold for like two copies of the magazine they were published in. Some of them I got,
like, a penny a word but that was a very old school way of breaking in. Nowadays people can
break in through the internet and they start self-publishing and if they have any talent or are
cunning and smooth, they become a professional on their own through self-publishing.
Places where you can just post your novel and start earning money. But very few of those
novels are worth reading because there’s no editorial standard. I don’t know if I’ve ever
really read one. I’d be curious to hear from a people who have read a lot of those books –
these self-published books -to see how many of them are good.
HALEY CIESLAK:
Yeah, with that stuff it’s even if the formatting rubs somebody the wrong way, you’re out.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Exactly. But, at the same time, there are no rules but there are exceptions all over the place.
Some girl in Iowa could be the next Faulkner. You just never know. That’s why I think in
the future we may not have traditional books anymore. People will stop reading paper
books. I’m afraid that I believe that’s true and eventually people are going to stop reading
paper books. You would have to be completely blind not to feel that way. Something like 8
out of 10 people read books digitally. And movies, I don’t know if people are going to be
going to theaters forever. I think sooner or later that will die away. But, you know, I’m not
worried too much because it’s all the same core art or craft. The craft is the same. The craft
will always be the same. It’ll just be on some future medium that we haven’t built yet. It’s
very similar to music. All these modes to listen to music now, are incredible. But music is
using the same 12 tones or whatever. Nothing will change in the fundamental of what the art
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is. It’s really cool and I’m an analog person. But I’m now really kind of celebrating the way
social networking brings more readers to books. I really believe it does.
HALEY CIESLAK:
I think you’re one of the minority, in that respect.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Yeah, I think you’re right. But a lot of people complain. You only have 135 characters and
no one spells out the word ‘you.’ It’s just a capital U. Or the word ‘are.’ But anyway.
HALEY CIESLAK:
So you’ve talked a lot about enjoying all parts of your job but are there any frustrating parts?
I mean there has to be, right?
JAY BONANSINGA:
I mean, yeah, of course. You know what jumps into my mind is getting a bad review. That’s
kind of agonizing. I think also that’s the dirty little secret of becoming a published writer.
Most of the great writers of our time have said they don’t read their reviews. But I did a lot.
My thing, and the truth is, we all read our reviews as long as they’re good. If you do stumble
upon a bad review it’s like acid in your veins. It’s like poison. Superman and Kryptonite. But
nothing has ever been so bad that it has made me want to stop. I guess I’m lucky. I’ve gotten
a lot of good reviews and those are magnificent. They make you feel like you’re doing the
right thing, you’re on the right track. It’s all worth it. But anyway, that’s my least favorite part
of it –of the job. And this is nothing against the average person, but nowadays the average
person could just go online and give a bad review and it’s justified but other times the person
doesn’t even know what they’re talking about. And, in the old days, the reviewers were
employees from professional publications so at least they’d have some credibility and they’d
know something about books. But it’s not the case anymore. You can go on Amazon and
give a half star review, lower a person’s star rating and other people look at it and go “that’s
not good” and it’s really sort of harmful to our culture as writers. It’s bringing down our
culture a little bit. Everybody has a –I remember, and I’m digressing a bit –but there was a
commercial maybe a year or two ago and I think it was for like Hewlett-Packard printer or
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program or something. But it was a class and it was a big college class, a big lecture hall and
the teacher was, pompous, ideal casting, just an asshole, arrogant, douchebag and he was
saying to the class in the commercial, “you know, it’s not easy to get published, it’s hard. It’s
difficult.” And this kid stands up in the back and goes, “Um, excuse me, Mr. Schumacher?
That’s not necessarily true anymore.” And the professor is like “wh-what?”
“Yeah with this new Hewlett-Packard 47 model you can self-publish your own book right at
your desktop.” And I’m thinking, okay this says it all. This says it all about our culture. There
are no standards anymore, anybody can do this. So what does that mean to readers? That
anyone can publish a book, so beware readers. Buyer beware. I’m rambling now.
HALEY CIESLAK:
No, it’s no problem, it’s great. One last questionJAY BONANSINGA:
-sorry another little ramble. One of my favorite Pixar movies was The Incredibles. Have you
ever seen that?
HALEY CIESLAK:
[laughs] Yeah.
JAY BONANSINGA:
Oh my God! I thought it was a genius movie, first of all. But one of the most brilliant parts
of that movie was when the super villain at the end said “My plan isn’t working. My master,
evil plan. If you turn everyone into superheroes there will be no superheroes!” That’s what
self-publishing is. I think I got the right movie.
HALEY CIESLAK:
That sounds right. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that movie though. So, last question and
then I’ll let you go. What’s your purpose in writing? What would you like people to get from
your writing?
JAY BONANSINGA:
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Well, that’s a good question. Wow, you know. I’ll give you 2 –I’ll try to keep it brief but I’ll
give you two answers. Separate answers. One is more practical and technical. I think I’m
trying to do the same thing Robert Kirkman does. I think I was trying to do it and I think
maybe it’s why Robert Kirkman and I get along so well. I have been trying to do this for a
long time. Which is, I think up crazy over-the-top ideas, some of them really surreal and
hard-to-swallow for many people and then I try to make them so realistic by populating the
story with real humans that are having real human reactions to it. I think that’s the dynamic
in The Walking Dead too. I know, it’s a zombie story, and I know a lot of people are like
‘whatever’ but it’s going to be a zombie story where people act like humans and they have
fears, real fears, and real love, and real pain, and real families. They’re trying to protect their
children and what if you were in this world. How would you protect your child? And pretty
soon people are suspending their disbelief and at the end of the day, we, horror writers –it’s
our main purpose: to suspend their disbelief. At the end of the day, in my work and what The
Walking Dead does in its best form is to get people to buy what’s happening. To forget
they’re watching a TV show or reading a novel and buy it as reality because the people in it
are so realistic, they care about them somewhat. I have a book coming out later this year, it’s
one of my own, it’s called Self-Storage. It’s a horror novel –a straight horror novel. I would
call it a classic, traditional horror novel. But it’s about –it’s very simple –it’s about a man in
his 30’s and he’s a heroin addict who has a little boy, a child, 6 years old and he’s taking his
little boy on an errand one day and he takes him to a self-storage unit and accidentally locks
his little boy and he inside the storage unit. And it’s isolated and remote and the holidays so
no one is going to come for days and they get stuck in there. And the guy goes through
withdrawal. First off, I researched heroin addiction. I’ve had people who have read the
preview –and the book doesn’t come out until later this year –but I’ve had people read it and
come to me, cautiously and nervously and go “Jay, did you…? Use heroin?” And I’ve never
done it but I’m so proud that people thought I’d actually done heroin by reading this book.
That’s what I try to do. That’s the essence of what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make
someone believe, not only that this guy is real and he’s a heroin addict and he’s in this place
going through withdrawal but now you’re starting to ask yourself: what is real? Is this guy
imagining these monsters? Is it in his head? So that book really kind of answers your
question of what I try to do. And then the last part of it –I said there was two answers. I’m
going to tell you the last answer, and maybe this is a good way to end our conversation. If
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you really, really, really, really pushed me to be completely honest about why I write and it
was like three in the morning and really drunk, I might tell you the truth, which I’m about to
tell you. I think I write, and I won’t say all writers do this, I won’t even put anybody else out
there, I’m just talking about myself. I think I write to be loved and I think it’s the
fundamental reason why all artists do their art. Even the ones who are the most challenging,
avant-garde artists trying alienate their readers as much as possible, are doing it do be loved.
Maybe there’s a person in their life that they’re writing or creating art for and they want to
please that person. That person can be dead, by the way. That person could be imaginary.
But, I think I do this because I want my two sons and the people I leave behind, Jilly and my
two sons to know me through these books, to know who I was. You know what I mean?
There is something amazing about when I’m long gone, you can still look into these books
and be able to tell who I was. What kind of person I was, what I cared about, what I was
angry about, what I found funny. All these things. Any author after they’re gone, you can
really find out who they were and it’s a lovely thing. It’s a beautiful thing to feel that way
about your work. For better or for worse. Stuff that’s not that successful, it’s still a message
in a bottle left behind. I guess I’d love people listening or reading this interview to be
encouraged by that when writing.
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