[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: How often does a professional writer write?
Chip Jacobs, Author/Journalist: Probably not that much. For me, my best, as somebody who used to be a reporter it’s hard to become. If you weren’t a reporter, you’re a recovering reporter. I mean, I have four digital subscriptions to newspapers so I can’t get it out of my blood.
You have to really focus and not be distracted. I’m trying to work on that, like only giving yourself a 5 minute break at 10:30, and then walking your dog at Noon. The internet makes it so much harder to focus. I’m kind of learning of myself. By 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon my attention span is just like popcorn, it’s just popping and going every place and it’s not focused at all. I use that time to go back and copy edit or try not to do fresh material because I’m just not as sharp.
Oh, I didn’t write 3,000 words a day?
It is partly knowing your own routine and being okay with yourself, not bashing yourself. Oh, I didn’t write 3,000 words a day? I kind of don’t believe in that but I think it’s making peace with who you are and what’s realistic.
Just remember all professional artists/professional writers are masters of procrastination. Part of it is fear, maybe even part of it is the creative process. I find for myself I get my best ideas when I let the front part…when I stop letting my neocortex be so busy and I let the back wheels of my brain work. I’ve gotten such good ideas just walking my dog and not thinking about it.
Some part of me I don’t even know is working on the problem of a plot issue or what would a character…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
Chip Jacobs is a bestselling author and journalist. His latest book is the Kafka-esque, true-crime caper The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles, which Kirkus Review praised as “engrossingly bizarre” and “entertaining.” Jacobs’ previous book was his debut novel, Arroyo, historical fiction set around construction of Pasadena’s mysterious Colorado Street Bridge in 1913. It was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, a CrimeReads most anticipated book, and a medalist at the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Before them were the biography Strange As It Seems: the Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler (an Indies Book of the Year finalist) and the environmental social histories The People’s Republic of Chemicals and the international bestselling Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles (the latter two with William J. Kelly). He has also contributed pieces to anthologies, among them the bestselling Los Angeles in the 1970s: Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine and Go Further: More Literary Appreciation of Power Pop. His prize-winning reporting has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Daily News, CNN, The New York Times, Bloomberg, L.A Weekly, among others.
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