Tim Sandlin: Author Interview by Nannette Croce

Tim Sandlin has written eight novels and several screenplays too. His two most recent novels, Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty, about a Baby Boomer revolt in the year 2023, and Rowdy in Paris, about a modern day cowboy’s exploits in “The City of Lights,” demonstrate Sandlin’s ability to develop a wide range of characters in such detail that the reader really comes to know them.

Born in Oklahoma and now living in Wyoming, Sandlin has not limited himself to the typical “Western” novel, though, as I think you'll find, he's a Westerner through and through when it comes to his dry wit and straight shooter approach.

R&T: Rowdy in Paris is your eighth novel. Among them, do you have a favorite story or character?

Sandlin: That's like asking a parent if they have a favorite child. Even if you do you can't say it out loud for fear of driving the others into therapy. That said, the GroVont folks are more real to me than people I see every day. Maurey, Sam, Shannon, Lydia. Their lives continue even when I’m not writing about them. Every few years, I check in to see what they are up to, but the directions they veer off to are beyond my control.

R&T: You were born in Oklahoma and spent most of your life out West. The third person POV of Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty required you to get into the heads of not just native Oklahoman, Guy Fontaine, but a variety of California Baby Boomers from former Love Children to Berkeley activists. What was your inspiration for those characters and how did you come to know them?

Sandlin: I live with my characters for a year before I turn them loose in a story. Many of these particular people are sixty year projections of kids I went to college with. The premise was that when the hippies retire they will revert to their old ways, so I didn’t have to change them much. I just gave them arthritis and different drugs.

R&T: Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty takes place in the year 2023, about 14 years in the future. Except for a few touches like the proliferation of professional conservators, you didn’t include much “futurism.” How did you decide what to make different and what not to?

Sandlin: The professional conservators aren’t futuristic or even exaggerated. There are people who make a living by getting a court order to control the money of the elderly.

R&T: Wow, that’s a little scary. I didn’t know that.

Sandlin: [For the rest] I didn’t want this book to be about the future so much as about people in it, so I kept the details of 2023 to a minimum. Mostly, I invented the obvious stuff. I made communications tools that exist now but are not widespread into common objects. The book isn’t science fiction. Most of it could happen now, but I wanted the hippies fifteen years older than they are.

R&T: I’m curious about Rowdy in Paris. Was it a trip to “The City of Lights” that inspired the novel or did you get the idea and then set out to do research in Paris?

Sandlin: Both. I went to Paris around 1979 or 80 and I’ve been trying to find an excuse to go back ever since. The book was a tax write-off excuse to spend a few weeks where I wanted to be. I used pretty much everything I saw in Paris.

R&T: As Rowdy travels around Paris he is often greeted with “Clint Eastwood.” While most of the US population is concentrated on the east and west coasts, why do you think this “cowboy” image is seen around the world as so representative of Americans?

Sandlin: Whole books and dissertations have been written on that question. American cowboys are not just watered-down versions of the familiar to Europeans. They are mythic. Unknown. Cowboy music, as opposed to country music, is huge in France, Germany, and Switzerland, especially Switzerland. Europeans and Asians buy the myth, which not many in the American West do. Rowdy was something of a reaction against that myth.

R&T: You seem to really identify with the “cowboy.” Have you ever considered that life for yourself?

Sandlin: Cowboys aren’t Western rednecks. They spend a lot of time outdoors alone, so they think more than most folks.Cowboy is the only profession with its own poetry, dance, art, and music. You never hear about drywall hanger poetry or lawyer dance.

But I have no desire to be one. They have to get up too early. I’m not God’s gift to horses and the boots are uncomfortable.

R&T: Outside of Islamic nations, France is probably the culture most antithetical to the US, and Rowdy represents much of what is seen by others as the downside of American culture. He regularly resorts to violence to solve his problems. He prefers fast food to haute cuisine, and he plays by his own rules. Did you set out to write about this clash of cultures or did it simply evolve?

Sandlin: Most books written by Americans about France are obsessed by the food and the charm and the wonderfulness of the French countryside. I love France, but I wanted to write a book from the point of view of a guy who had no desire to go there and no preconceptions of how it would be when he got there. Rowdy is not intimidated by French food. I’ve never read of another American fictional character in Paris who can say that. Rowdy doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him. That is a cowboy attitude. Americans in Paris over-tip and over-apologize and over-fawn because they hate the Ugly American label. Rowdy would never apologize for asking for ketchup. Or ice.

R&T: Were there any particular challenges in Rowdy using characters who could have easily become cardboard cliches and developing them into real people with their own unique stories?

Sandlin: If the people are real to the writer, they tend to come across as real to the reader, no matter how bizarre they would be in life its own self. If I go into a restaurant, I first figure out what every character would order before I figure out what I would order. I know their choices better than I know mine.

R&T: You’ve written several screenplays as well a novels. Which do you prefer? Any thoughts on the recent writers’ strike?

Sandlin: I prefer novels because the writer owns the copyright in fiction and he doesn’t in screenwriting. That’s a big difference. Screenwriters spend two years working on a project, then they lose it and someone rewrites the story. Most novelists don’t work well with others or they wouldn’t become novelists in the first place. Screenwriting is art by committee. Social skills are much more important than characterization. Writing a good screenplay is very difficult, but at its best, it’s raising other people’s children for adoption.

You rarely meet an old novelist who is happy, but you never meet an old screenwriter who happy. On the other hand, screenwriting pays ten times the money for ten times less work. So, there is a trade-off.

Writer’s Strike: In my lowly opinion, the writers lost. The Evil Boss Men won.

R&T: These days many writers have dual careers. I’ve interviewed writers who are engineers, historians, and lawyers. You always worked at more menial jobs like ice cream truck driver and dishwasher, and you’ve said you think menial jobs are better for you as a writer. Why is that?

Sandlin: Most writers will jump at the excuse not to write, even though they live for it. Successful writers get sucked into magazine work, or teaching, or screenwriting. I found being in desperate straits for money is the best inspiration for prolific writing. I made a conscious decision at 25 that I would grow old as either a dishwasher or a novelist — nothing in between. The jury is still out on which way that will come down.

Also, it’s easier to daydream on a menial job than a prestigious one. A writer’s most prized treasure is his daydreaming time. Any job — or fame — that takes away from that is to be avoided like bubonic plague.

R&T: In another interview you said “...writing programs tend to put out good writers without much to say.” You graduated from and MFA program. Would you say you benefited from it and what would be your advice to someone considering and MFA in Creative Writing?

Sandlin: I benefited a lot from my years in a writing program. God, or the nice folks at UNCG [University of North Carolina at Greensboro], gave me two years to write, two years to be treated like a writer and to think of myself as a writer. Imagine that. I wasn’t a dishwasher pretending to be a writer. I was a writer. I wrote three novels in four semesters.

My advice to someone considering an MFA program: I gave advice to a guy who wanted to be a writer once. I told him to quit his good job with benefits and become a dishwasher and write. And the son of a bitch did it. To this day, his wife (who was pregnant at the time) won’t talk to me. So, I don’t give advice anymore. I can give a prediction. A real writer writes everyday, no excuses. If you don’t have a job, you don’t get days off. A real writer writes. That’s all it comes down to. The MFA program gave me a chance to do that and I took it.

R&T: With eight novels it would seem that you never have difficulty finding something to write about, but do you ever suffer from the proverbial writer’s block?

Sandlin: My first five published novels were all about me working out my problems. Write 100,000 words about something bothering you and it won’t bother you anymore. But then I ran out of problems. I never had writer’s block, as I understand it, but I did run out of anything I thought was important enough to say, and there’s nothing worse than a writer who keeps talking after he’s run out of things to say.

So, I wrote movies for seven years. I wrote 11 scripts for hire, countless drafts, countless takes and treatments. You don’t have to have anything to say to write movies for other people. You just have to write. By then, I had lots of new problems so I returned to novels.

R&T: What is the writing life to you? Could you ever imagine yourself doing anything else like bull riding for instance?

Sandlin: I get to feel the things a bull rider feels, and the things a tough guy feels, and a woman, and a cat — why would I limit myself to just one life? Writing is all I’m qualified to do, so that’s what I’ll do.

R&T: How difficult was it getting your first book published and what, if anything, did you learn from the experience?

Sandlin: My story is fairly typical. My first published book was the fourth one I wrote, and I didn’t sell it until I was nearly finished with number five. I wrote the first three and after each one, I would send out 120 or so query letters, but no one ever read any of my books. They still exist in files, unread and unwanted. Sex and Sunsets was rejected about 65 times before I found an agent and another 60 times after I signed with an agent. I wrote 12 drafts.

Let’s backtrack a moment.I published a poem in Highlights for Children when I was nine, and wrote every day (more or less) between then and now. My second publication, Sex and Sunsets, came out when I was 37.

What did I learn: 1) Don’t kill yourself because you can’t find readers. You might be jumping the gun. 2) It is more important to write than to call yourself writer.

R&T: Finally, I know it’s been a while, but do you have any advice for writers just starting out?

Sandlin: Read everything. Write a lot. Guard your daydreaming time with your life. Writing cannot be done casually. It’s not a hobby; it’s a calling. If you can possibly be happy without writing, I would advise you not to write. If you can’t be happy without writing, you’re the luckiest human alive, so don’t whine when it’s hard. The alternative is a meaningless existence.

For more books by Tim Sandlin, visit his website.

Nannette Croce is Co-Managing Editor of The Rose & Thorn and an official YOGer. Her work has appeared in various online and print publications including The Philadelphia Inquirer. For more information on her published work, visit her website.