Q&A with Franz Nicolay
As seen in the world's greatest bar band, the Hold Steady. Also author of three incredible books I own. One of his solo albums is "Do the Struggle." So he gets it.
Some people find hyphenates suspicious. Where do you get off, ya fuckin’ author-musician??
People do tend to treat you like a dog on a bicycle—not that he does it well, but that he does it at all. But at this point I’ve been publishing writing for almost twenty years, and books for ten, so I guess I don’t feel like an imposter at this point.
What’s the worst advice you got about the business of writing?
To the extent that I got business advice, it was generally good. But people don’t tend to have expectations of making money from writing—the age of celebrity writers is even more distant that that of rich rock stars, and everyone understands that writers have jobs in academia, copy and screenwriting, etc etc or family money in a way that musicians tend to be circumspect about. I’d tell my younger self not to be so quick to publish, but I wouldn’t have listened.
As a creative person, what connections (or disconnections?) can you discern between your prose writing and music?
Since songwriting is (in my opinion, though I know there is a constituency out there for “lyrics don’t matter”) as much a literary form as a musical one, my notebook is undifferentiated—while some bits are obviously more likely to become lyrics (more rhythmic, more rhyming) and some prose, it’s all the same slush pile. (I’ve also been known to recycle a line here or there.) it’s just a matter of which project gets its claws in first.
What surprising thing have you learned about yourself in writing your books?
A common misconception among student writers is that you have to know exactly what you’re going to write when you sit down; whereas most writers understand that the writing process is the way you discover what you actually think about something—that process of articulating a thought is the process of clarifying that thought. So I’m learning my positions and opinions every time I’m writing about them.
Tell us about a great reader connection you’ve made?
I don’t have a specific story offhand—but the nice thing about books is that people are more likely to reach out by email or even handwritten post if they connect with it—maybe because the connection has already been through words. So that’s always a nice surprise.
Find more about Franz at his website or
.Please share (click the red button). And subscribe (for free) for more fun / useful stuff from Dead Virgins for America. Thanks!