Interview (Written): Nick Hornby (“Wild”)

A WGA interview with Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy) who adapted the Cheryl Strayed memoir Wild.

You’ve worked in such a broad range of mediums and genre. Do they require different muscles?

No, not really. Sadly, it all seems to end up with me sitting on my own in a room in front of a computer. In the end, writing is writing. You just have to sit there and do the work.

There are some writers who believe in the muse, while others believe that writing is simply labor — nothing precious or magical, just a matter of doing the job. What are your thoughts?

Well, there is inspiration before the typing starts. Those are the times where the juices really get flowing, where you have an idea, and then that idea collides with another idea, and suddenly you know that you’re going to have to do this thing and spend quite a lot of time doing it. But once you’re up and running, then, you know, I’m not saying it’s work like coalmining is work, but there’s certainly no point in waiting for the muse to strike then. The muse has already struck, and you’ve got to get on with it.

If writing is merely work, it still beats a lot of other kinds of work, right?

It’s funny, last week I was on a book tour in the UK, and one of the places that I read was a school in the center of Cambridge, where I used to teach kids. I was saying to the audience at the event, that in a 40-minute lesson, you could look at the clock after five minutes and think, Jesus Christ, there are 35-minutes left, and I have no idea how I’m going to get through them. To me, that’s hard work. I still think of those times. That was 30 years ago, but I still think of those times a lot. Sometimes these days, when I’m messing around on Facebook in my undies, I have to think to myself, God this is a very privileged life to be living.

For the rest of the interview, go here.