480 ratings | 29 reviews | avg rating:3.49

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Andrew Gillsmith

435 books | 1,537 friends

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Nicholas Whyte

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Carole P. Roman

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135 books | 24 friends

Anne

429 books | 177 friends

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376 books | 1,510 friends

Sheila Mulrooney

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J. Mulrooney

Goodreads Author

Born

Toronto, Canada

Genre

Fiction, Magic Realism, Christian

Member Since

November 2013

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/jmulrooney

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J. Mulrooney is a Canadian writer who was baptized by Father Breen and took piano lessons with Mr Pengelly. His earliest writing job was to print “I will not be disrespectful in class” fifty times on a sheet of paper. Since then, his plots have improved considerably.

Mr. Mulrooney is a finalist for the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. If he has not died he is probably still living in upstate New York.

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Popular Answered Questions

How do you deal with writer’s block?

J. Mulrooney Sit down with what you’ve written so far. Start at the beginning and read through. When you get to the second last page, open your notebook or word do…moreSit down with what you’ve written so far. Start at the beginning and read through. When you get to the second last page, open your notebook or word document. On the last page, get out your pen or put your hands on the keyboard. When you finish the last page, start writing.

The other thing I tell students is that you don’t have to write the thing consecutively. If you know that Martha and John are going to have a blowout over the dog, you can write that now, even if it won’t come for a few chapters. You may need to revise a bit more later, but sometimes writing out of order helps you focus on the big things and keeps the project moving.

A final tip - when you're writing something larger and know you're going to have stop, take five minutes and write a few lines about what you have to do next. You're in the moment of creation, and especially after a good session, you can see where you're going. But you don't always find your way back to that zone immediately, so giving the future you a little note about what the in-the-zone you saw coming can really help.
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What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

J. Mulrooney If you're writing a novel? 500 words a day. Every day. It's a lifestyle.

I don't really know what non-fiction writers do. If you're writing short piec…moreIf you're writing a novel? 500 words a day. Every day. It's a lifestyle.

I don't really know what non-fiction writers do. If you're writing short pieces, the answer is different as well, because you have to generate new ideas all the time. Truth to tell, I think writing a novel is easier than a book of stories. (less)

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Combine Editions
J. Mulrooney’s books

Average rating: 3.76 · 91 ratings · 21 reviews · 3 distinct works

	An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity 3.40 avg rating — 58 ratings — published 2016 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Day Immanuel Kant was Late: Philosophical Fables, Pious Tales, and Other Stories 4.30 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 2014 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sky Songs: Stories of Spirituality and Speculative Science by Steve Stanton (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Cherith Baldry (Goodreads Author) (Contributor), Colleen Drippe/ (Contributor) 4.60 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2002	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

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J. is Currently Reading

J. Mulrooney is currently reading

Autobiography of Red

by Anne Carson

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Jul 07, 2022 11:46AM

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The Roaring Girl

by Thomas Dekker

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Mar 03, 2021 01:29PM

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Soldiers of Salamis

by Javier Cercas

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Jan 16, 2021 06:58PM

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J. Mulrooney is now friends with Andrew Gillsmith
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Quotes by J. Mulrooney (?)

“And he told Stink about a saint he had tempted a thousand generations ago. Satan had mocked the Enemy’s ridiculous claim of omnipotence. “Does God have the power to make a rock so big that he cannot move it?” Satan asked. The saint looked at him. “Yes,” he said. “And then He would pick it up.”
― J. Mulrooney, The Day Immanuel Kant was Late: Philosophical Fables, Pious Tales, and Other Stories

tags: magical-realism

3 likes

“He is looking down into the toilet bowl. He sees a bright shiny red ball, about the size of his fist, covered with blood and bobbing jauntily in the yellowed water. It throbs in time
with Ernest’s pulse. It is his heart.”
― J. Mulrooney, The Day Immanuel Kant was Late: Philosophical Fables, Pious Tales, and Other Stories

tags: magical-realism

3 likes

“He had been naïve, he realized: in those days he still had the idea that people would avoid Hell if you let them. Now he knew better. People will find their own way to Hell even if you beat them with a stick to go the other way.”
― J. Mulrooney, An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity

2 likes

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J.’s Quotes

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

tags: faith, god, prayer

4556 likes

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

tags: inspirational, life, thoughtful

814 likes

“Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

tags: insanity, sanity

130 likes

“Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat-show, but the range of articulate human imagination as it extends from the height of imaginative heaven to the depth of imaginative hell.”
― Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

42 likes