How did you become a writer?
I know it sounds like a cliché, but I became a writer when I moved to Paris. A friend of mine was an editor at GQ and they needed somebody on the ground in France to interview a French actor in his native tongue then write the piece in English. I fit the bill and the piece turned out OK, and afterwards, I became the guy they called for a restaurant review or a vacation piece or an interview or whatever GQ needed. I hadn’t gone to journalism school, nor did I have tons of experience, and perhaps that helped. My style of writing wasn’t very journalistic or neutral, which came over as refreshing I guess. I also wrote with a lot of humor. Later GQ launched in France, and the French GQ wanted someone who knew America well. Enter John. All of a sudden I was wearing two hats and writing in two languages for two major magazines. Nobody ever asked for my CV, and I never brought it up.
Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).
I have a one-page printed mash up of authors and their photographs scotch taped to my wall. It’s a motley bunch. There’s Bill Simmons, who used to write for ESPN and whose pieces always combined pop culture with sports and politics all in one funny swoop. Reading him was like listening to some punk record. You can write this way! I screamed. There’s also Frank Rich, a former theater critic, who used to write political opinion pieces for the New York Times. He had the same kind of flair, and again, here was a guy who could bob and weave through different topics always with humor, always with beats, but with loads of intelligence and heart. There’s P.G. Wodehouse, the British comedic novelist and father of all the Jeeves series. I love his rhythm and the sardonic tone and his ability to crank stuff out. There’s John Kennedy Toole, who wrote Confederacy of Dunces, which I think is the Beowulf of all comedic novels. There’s Richard Yates, whose honesty hit me like a howitzer and whose Revolutionary Road is one of my favorite books. There’s Kingsley Amis, who wrote Lucky Jim. There’s Fitzgerald, who I fell in love with after Tender is the Night. And of course there’s David Sedaris, whose book about France, Me Talk Pretty Someday, has always served as the standard to shoot for.
When and where do you write?
I write in bed in the morning after the kids are at school and before I take the dog out. I write with a pen. I think the physicality helps, and when it’s handwritten, you can’t backspace over something you might not like. I then later type what I write in the afternoon if I’m not too beaten down by my day. The time lapse helps me digest what I thought sucked in the morning, and by the time I see it there on the screen looking back at me, it’s still bad, but maybe salvageable. Maybe. I know this sounds silly, but I’ll also try and clean up the text visually. I’ll add line spaces and page numbers and margins. I might even bold something, just to give me the impression what I wrote is real. That way, I can’t throw it away.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on an expat book like I did for France, but with America as the subject country, seen through the eyes of an American, who hasn’t been there in twenty years. It’s kind of like a modern Rip van Winkle tale (someone who returns home and no longer understands anything) but this time Rip van Winkle is kind of Eurotrash.
Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?
Not really. I think writing for the press helps in that way because you have deadlines and shit needs to be turned out and you can’t just say, “Where is my muse?” or “Nothing inspires me.” You learn how to “chew glass,” (as I say) meaning you write when the last thing you want to do is write. Believe me. I procrastinate like the best of them, but I’ve never been late with a story and when I wrote my book, I treated each chapter like an article that needed to be finished by the end a month. I paced myself that way so it wouldn’t seem too daunting. “I just have to write twelve magazine pieces,” I told myself, “No problem. I’ve done this before.” My twelve-chapter book was finished in a year. Glass got chomped.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
I took a writing class once and the teacher wrote this on the board. “If you are a writer and you do not write, then you are not a writer.” It was logic stripped down to its bare essence, and it stuck with me. Another writer once told me to throw away my phone and get a dog or cat. I didn’t throw away the phone, but I do have a dog now, and he’s the best writing partner you can imagine. He’s there when you crank. He laughs at my jokes. He’s there to take walks with when you need a break. He doesn’t judge, well he does, but that’s when I’m looking at the phone.
What’s your advice to new writers?
I know it’s easier said than done, but try to find a profession that helps you write in some way. It could be for a medical manual or a click bait news aggregator. It could be just copy writing whatever. Writing is muscle work and you need to be doing it often, not just as a secret hobby at night on your own.
Magazine work not only helped me polish my craft, it helped me learn how to take criticism, how to write on deadline, how to accept cuts from editors that are idiots and how not to be too attached to stuff. This is important. You have to learn to live with the final product not being what you thought it was and to not take it too personally. Even though this piece/essay/review didn’t turn out perfectly, there will be more battles in your future and remember you just got paid and you’re getting better and you have lots of other ideas in the hamper. Soon you will be a battle tested machine, and your voice eventually will have a chance to shine.
John von Sothen is an American columnist living in Paris, where he covers entertainment and society issues for French Vanity Fair. He has written for both the American and French GQ, Esquire, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Libération, and The New York Observer. He is also a regular contributor to former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter’s new online magazine Airmail. Von Sothen often does voice-overs in English for French perfumes and luxury brands and occasionally performs stand-up comedy in French and English at The New York Comedy Night in the SoGymnase Comedy Club in Paris. He is a regular guest on the French radio station Europe 1 discussing all things U.S.-related. He lives in Paris with his wife, two children and their dog, Bogart. John is the author of Monsieur Mediocre: One American learns the High Art of Being Everyday French, named one of the best travel books in the New York Times‘s “Summer Reading” list.
For additional information and archives visit www.johnvonsothen.com.
