Ask the Author: Bob Proehl
Answered Questions (5)
Bob Proehl
Yup! It's the first half of a longer story. I'm finishing up the second half, The Somebody People, and it'll be out next fall!
Bob Proehl
Thanks, Steve! You'll have to let me know what you think of it!
Bob Proehl
A Hundred Thousand Worlds is my big gooey love letter to comics. I've been a huge comic book geek since Superman died. It galls me to admit it, but I was a baseball card collector when I was a little kid, so I had this weird kid sense of speculator markets. And Superman #75 was supposed to be this huge collectors' item. So I made my dad drive me to go get a copy. But I ended up with a fourth print (not the black polybagged one), and the only thing you could do with it was read it. So I did, and I got to the end and it was basically "to be continued." (Grant Morrison makes the point that this is Superman's ultimate superpower, his ability to exist in a constant state of "to be continued"). My poor father had to drive me to the comic book store pretty much every week after that.
But all that's kindling. What sparked the story was my stepson. He was eight at the time, I was about thirty. We were still kind of figuring each other out. We were watching "Superman: The Movie". Which I love, but I couldn't stand the ending. It always felt too comic book-y. But as soon as Supes started flying backward around the earth, my stepson said "He's going to reverse time!" And I was fascinated by that overlap between kid-think and comic book-think. The way plausibility could become proof. The way a story that was good could be considered true. I wanted to put those two modes of thinking, those two modes of story-making, in proximity to one another.
But all that's kindling. What sparked the story was my stepson. He was eight at the time, I was about thirty. We were still kind of figuring each other out. We were watching "Superman: The Movie". Which I love, but I couldn't stand the ending. It always felt too comic book-y. But as soon as Supes started flying backward around the earth, my stepson said "He's going to reverse time!" And I was fascinated by that overlap between kid-think and comic book-think. The way plausibility could become proof. The way a story that was good could be considered true. I wanted to put those two modes of thinking, those two modes of story-making, in proximity to one another.
Bob Proehl
I'm working on a historical novel, because...I don't know exactly. It was the story I needed to work on right now. I wish it had been almost any other story, because doing historical work is fantastically difficult. But I love the project. It keeps on challenging me, every page of it.
It's set in Warsaw at the end of the 19th century. That part of Poland was part of the Russian empire at the time, and it had just become illegal to educate women past the level of high school. But this group of women formed an underground educational system called the Floating University, and they taught thousands of women, including a young Marie Curie (nee Sklodowska).
It feels like a big jump, but it hits on so many things that interest me. I think it continues from a lot of the stuff A Hundred Thousand Worlds focuses on regarding gender and identity. But it's also about language, and about punk (in a weird way), and about inventing yourself out of nothing.
It's set in Warsaw at the end of the 19th century. That part of Poland was part of the Russian empire at the time, and it had just become illegal to educate women past the level of high school. But this group of women formed an underground educational system called the Floating University, and they taught thousands of women, including a young Marie Curie (nee Sklodowska).
It feels like a big jump, but it hits on so many things that interest me. I think it continues from a lot of the stuff A Hundred Thousand Worlds focuses on regarding gender and identity. But it's also about language, and about punk (in a weird way), and about inventing yourself out of nothing.
Bob Proehl
This is one of those things where my answer is terrible and makes people angry. But it's this. I don't entirely believe in writer's block. I believe it's hard sometimes. But it's work. It's supposed to be work. So they way you get through it is, you do the work.
I think a lot of times what people think of as writer's block is a kind of perfectionism, and that's toxic. Especially in the first draft stage. You need to give yourself license to make mistakes. You need to be willing to write stuff you're likely to throw away later. But the best way to get through a "block" is to put words on a page. They don't have to be perfect words. But do the work. Find your way back to your best stuff by working. Get something on the page and fix it later.
I think a lot of times what people think of as writer's block is a kind of perfectionism, and that's toxic. Especially in the first draft stage. You need to give yourself license to make mistakes. You need to be willing to write stuff you're likely to throw away later. But the best way to get through a "block" is to put words on a page. They don't have to be perfect words. But do the work. Find your way back to your best stuff by working. Get something on the page and fix it later.
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Feb 03, 2020 02:53PM · flag