“What works to drive me to write is probably so idiosyncratic that it might not be generally useful, but it’s been my way of finding the motivation and the passion to put pen to paper. Sure, I like the hot afternoon walks in the hills of Altadena with my dog
or even desperately trying to keep up with my marathon-training wife, but when I’m physically enduring, I’m not thinking of writing. I think of writing when I’m doing mindless yard work—raking and trimming trees and bushes. Or when I’m organizing my papers and books and endless stacks of comics; a task so stultifying that my imagination takes over and useful glimmers of where I might want to go with a project come to me. Sometimes while digging holes to plant or dragging fat bags of compost, buzzed by relentless flies, I get shards of dialogue. But by far what works best is when I recall a slight by a reviewer or editor—that’s when the fires burn bright. A condescending statement about my inability to write authentic Black dialogue, for instance, will come back to me from decades ago, while I was in a workshop in the MFA program at the University of California in Irvine, and I’ll be driven anew to start work on the memoir or explore an idea for a new novel or biography. Seemingly, what most motivates me to write is drudgery or the venal and vindictive. It’s gotten me this far, being a maladjusted but productive writer.”
—Jervey Tervalon, author of Monster’s Chef (Amistad, 2014)