Back to Featured Interviews >>

MEET JOHN H. RITTER
by Bonnie O'Brian

How did you get started writing?

John H. Ritter

When I broke into fiction writing—short fiction—my stories were about abused children; this was in the early nineties. But by the time I got a book published in 1998, that subject matter was the status quo. They called them 'problem books.' “What's the problem in this book? This is the one with the alcoholic parent. This is the one with the kid who does drugs. This one is pregnant.” Publishing CHOOSING UP SIDES saved me a lot of bother, because now I can just push all that “kid versus parent” or “destructive kid versus self” stuff off my desk. None of that is going to be on my agenda because it's all being well-covered by tons of writers—even today. But I constantly want to go into territory no one has worked before. So to put all my passions—the things I really care about—into my writing is pretty natural. I mean, why else would you write?

Did you have any other jobs before you became a writer?

Yes. I was a contractor for many years. My wife was a secretary, and we bought two little houses in San Diego dreaming about the day when she would be a teacher and I would be a writer, which took fifteen years to achieve. I tell students that if you go to Hollywood, all your waiters and all your bartenders are actors and actresses. That's a kind of job that allows them to be flexible enough that they can show up for a ten o'clock audition three days in a row, or whatever it takes to pursue their art, rather than just saying, “Someday I'm going to do this. Someday I'm going to . . . .”

Do you write your first draft by hand or on the computer?

I write my first draft by hand. I feel like, originally, I'm painting the words; I'm tapping into that part of my brain where imagery flows. Really, all I'm trying to do is take that movie in my mind and somehow write it in some sort of short hand, as fast as I can dream it. I don't care about the writing craft, the skills, I don't care about the similes or literary devices. All that's easy for me. I can do that on draft number five or seven, later on down the road, but what's difficult for me is getting a good story in place—carving a good story out of this lump of clay of an idea that I have.

What are some of the themes in your books?

The real passion in my life is this: Buying time! I discovered it when I was in college. I worked construction, and we worked so hard in the summer because this was the big season for this commercial contractor I worked for—their big season for out-of-town work, seven-days, fourteen-days-in-a row jobs, working twelve-hour days. And at the end of that summer, before I went off to college, I had enough in my bank account to pay for my next nine months of life. And then the next summer I did it all over again. And it occurred to me fairly early on that you could go through life like this. If you lived very simply, which I did since I also had the advantage of being a hippie—you could buy yourself time. My wife and I had a lot of roommates. In UNDER THE BASEBALL MOON, Andy's parents decided they were going to do the same thing—that they were going to overstretch themselves and buy a house and have a bunch of roommates. This house payment was going to be outrageous if it was just the two of them, but by sharing the home and renting out the rooms for five or six years, finally they got to the place where the payment was more manageable—and they could wind down. Then fifteen years later, it's like they were geniuses to have done that! My wife and I did it, and I think other young artists can too. And, that's why I wrote about it. Kids need to know. When I talk to young artists, one of the things I urge them to do is to, early on, make a decision to create a life that allows them a lot of time.

Do you ever have writer’s block?

Yes. My last two books were written after 9/11 and after we started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which just broke my heart. I was talking to Robert Lipsyte about this the other day, and I just said, “I can't write in anger. The book that would come out would not be a book anybody would want to read.” And so I just kind of had to live through it. I lost a year of creativity between OVER THE WALL and THE BOY WHO SAVED BASEBALL because of that huge depression. It just knocked me off my feet. And I needed something to buoy my spirits. And the solution ended up being just that—kind of a spiritual buoy. I wanted to write a book that was just packed full of joy and adventure and hope. Something that was uplifting, and I knew I didn't want it to have anything to do with a dysfunctional family, none of this crap! I wanted to have the driving force of the story to be a band of kids grouping together in order to pursue some common goal that just had to be accomplished. It was like this instant family had to form, and had to do something wonderful, something great out there, in spite of any petty little annoyances, which, of course, were inevitable between them. And maybe if just by metaphor, or by my storytelling, I could at least plant the seed of possibility into the minds of these kids, that striving for money, striving for status, striving for position and power or global oil is not the only reason to get up in the morning; in fact, getting up for that stuff is probably the wrong reason, then I would feel I’d done some good. I wanted to show a town and a family, who were content with a simple life, who did not declare development to be progress, did not declare economic one-upmanship to be progress. Rather, they saw it as being threatening and detrimental to what they valued. And what they valued was free time. In THE BOY WHO SAVED BASEBALL, Doc says to Tom, “Rich people can't afford to live like us. They don't have the time.” I wanted to put across that concept that there is something rich people running the rat race cannot buy. And it's very valuable. It’s time, it’s family, community, contentment. All the things they had in Dillontown, beyond what Tom thought about the baseball field being magical and so on, beyond that, they had a life that wasn't driving them crazy. They didn't have to jump on the freeway and join that commute every morning.

Better than anyone else, you use baseball to focus on the important issues in life?

I know that as a writer, I feel like I can do anything. I mean technically, craft-wise, I can do anything I want at the moment. And so if I want to tie together a baseball story with a Vietnam anti-war story, I can do it. I take that as a challenge. I was always one of those overactive, high-achieving kids who was bored with the everyday. But if I got the feeling that a teacher didn't think I could do something, then I was on fire, and I went for it! So that's why not only have I never written the same book twice, I've never written anything close to the same book twice. I'm constantly looking for new territory. I want to pioneer, to go there first, before it gets overridden with writers.

What advice do you give someone who thinks they want to become a writer?

One thing I always try to do is give them a glimpse of what it takes to write a book. And I always start off by saying that if I could talk anyone out of becoming a writer, then I feel that I've done some good today! It's not so much that I want to talk them out of it, but that I want to make sure that they have a much firmer grounding as to what it takes to be a writer. So many people say, “Gee, I should sit down and write a book. Hey, John, how do you get an agent?” And that's what the general population thinks. But there is no “school to become a novelist” regardless of what these MFA Creative Writing programs say. I discourage people from going into MFA programs actually because I think they can kill a good writer. I would take my chances on the street, gaining life experiences, rather than sitting down in college and learning from a barely published professor. Now, that's not always the case. I know T. C. Boyle teaches a writing class at USC. I don't know what it's like, but he doesn't qualify as the bitter professor. But writing is still something for which there's no apprenticeship program. Every writer who comes along has to reinvent the wheel. And now, when I give writer's workshops to adults each year, when I'm talking to adults who want to become YA novelists, I try to shave off about five years of their road to becoming a published novelist with what I've learned along the way. Even then, it’s probably a ten year journey, or a ten-year apprenticeship, I usually call it. Sometimes, the apprenticeship happens in the public eye. That is, you get published too soon. I've seen that happen with writers. They have a great idea, the book is pretty well executed. Then, BAM! Success, of some degree. So they start working on book number two, and they don't have a clue. The idea's not there, they're not that strong as far as writing goes, they're just lost. So they stumble, and the sophomore jinx comes up, and that second book doesn't do very well, and by the third book, they're out of the game. So what I'm saying to students is that writing is a tough trade. Don't rush into it. In fact, learn your chops while getting some real life experience, because a writer not only has to write well, but is expected to tell us something, in story form, that we never knew before. So it’s much better if you don't learn your trade in the public eye. You've got to experience enough of life to be able to tell us a genuinely unique story with the necessary insight, compassion, and grace. And I think a writer should continually evolve with each book. That doesn't mean each book is going to be better than the one before; it can be, but your skill level should be getting better because of what you've learned. I hate to see a writer get to a certain plateau and level off, because then I believe you are undershooting your stars. There's no reason why you can't continue to be a better writer until the day you put down the pen. The writers I read and the ones I want to run with are the ones who do that. They are constantly experimenting with form or with style, with voice, and they're always getting their storytelling chops more finely honed and crafted.

How do you become a famous writer?

I'll just say that the only time you are a pure writer is before your first book is published. Once that first book comes out, you become a promoter; you've got to go out on the road, introduce your work to the audience. There are two hundred to three hundred young adult novels published each year. And most publishers have a budget of zero for a first novel. They may publish one or two dozen debut novels and essentially what they're doing is throwing them against the wall to see which ones stick. Meaning, which ones get star reviews; which ones win awards, not the major awards, but just awards in general; which ones are on the ALA Young Adult Best Book list? Maybe then they'll take an advertisement out, or put that book in a group ad. In other words, you have to show them you have earning capacity before they want to put too much more than the initial investment into your career. Eventually, I did. In my case, THE BOY WHO SAVED BASEBALL was featured in a small article in People Magazine. No way could you buy that kind of publicity. And my life has never been the same since. That was unexpected; I had nothing to do with that. But by and large, to break in, what you really need to do is be just like a musical group who has to go out and play the dive bars. You have to start with small regional conferences and introduce your work to an audience with the hope that they start to buy your book. It's like selling CDs out of your van. You then hope that by word of mouth, other people will buy the book, and over a period of time, you start to gather a following and thereby build a career.

What is important to you about your school visits?

Everything I do in schools depends upon the audience: What is the age range, the size of the group, their background? Have they read my books; which ones? I've done assemblies where they haven't even heard of me, and assemblies where the entire school has read one particular novel. Of course, the questions are always so much better and the discussions so much deeper when they have read my books.

What is the most important idea you want to communicate to students?

When I go into schools and talk about writing and being a writer, I always ask the audience, “Who wants to be an artist of any sort? An actor maybe? Is anybody in drama? Does anybody sing in church? Do you play music? How many of you are athletes?” And I lump all of those categories together, athletics as well as all the fine arts, because all members of those groups are essentially fighting the same battle. For any one of them, it's going to take a miracle to make a living at it. So I want to talk in terms of practicality. That is, “How do you achieve a life that allows you to be an artist?” When I decided I was going to be a writer, the first thing I started to do was read biographies of writers. Not to find out their philosophies or secrets of writing, but I wanted to find out the answer to one question: How did you afford to be a writer? Where did you get the free time? Mark Twain married money; his father-in-law gave him a house. Jack Kerouac lived with his mom until he was 35. Both of those solutions are equal in my eyes, in the sense that they bought the authors time. They were able to find a way to give themselves time to experience life, to travel, and then to come back and write about it without having to punch a time clock, without having to worry about how much income they were bringing in. So, when I'm in schools, I'm trying to get students to start to think about what professions are available to an artist so you can pay your bills while you write. Those other possibilities are there; you marry somebody who has a more normal occupation, you marry a school teacher, and you have your summers to travel and you have an insurance program. (laughs) And then I separate writing out and I tell them it's the one art that you can arrive at in your thirties and forties and still be considered a young artist. We expect our novelists to tell us new and important things—things we haven't thought all the way through. Kids hate to hear that, because nowadays, because of HARRY POTTER, they've all got a book in them; they've got three on the computer! But if you stop to analyze what these kids are writing, it's all a retelling of ELDEST OR HARRY POTTER or INKHEART. Essentially, unless they've had a unique childhood, there's really not much that they are going to discover that hasn't already been discovered and written about by others for hundreds of years.

What book are you working on now?

Well, you know, when I come to a national conference, my editor, Michel Green, and I generally meet. Michael has a degree in psychology and he studied screenwriting, which to me are the perfect qualifications to be an editor. He's not bogged down in literature; he's not an English major! By being a psych major, he understands character motivation. By studying screenwriting, he understands story, which is a weakness in most writers. Most writers love to write, but they're not very good storytellers. And the good storytellers tend not to be such great writers—however, they are on the bestseller lists! Which speaks to the fact that we want stories. I don't care how high-minded we think we are, we really want stories. So now I'm working on a prequel to THE BOY WHO SAVED BASEBALL. I've gone back to the California Gold Rush days, but it really has to do with that moment in history when major league baseball made the ugly, and quiet, decision to become a white man’s sport. Billy the Kid is in the story, but he’s a good guy. He was loved by the Mexicans and spoke fluent Spanish in fact. So he's going to play baseball for a few weeks of his life, and he's going to come to Dillontown to do it. That's what I'm working on now.