
At Storyfest 2023 I got to hear Jason Mott, author of the novel Hell of a Book, talk about his trajectory from working in a Verizon call center to a National Book Award.
“By the way, I did not choose that title,” he said. “It’s not who I am. My agent chose it.”
When he got up on stage to deliver a keynote, he told us he was going to read for a bit and then talk. “I promise I won’t read long,” he said. “From a very young age we are conditioned to fall asleep when people read to us.” I knew then that I was going to like the guy, and sure enough, for the next 45 minutes I was mesmerized by his stories, especially his good humor.
Jason’s a writer who lives in a little town called Bolton, in southern North Carolina. He has an undergrad degree in fiction and a masters in poetry. Somebody asked him about this, why he got an MFA in poetry but writes fiction.
“Fiction is my wife,” he said. “Poetry is my side-chick.”
Don’t ever get a masters in poetry to meet women. That’s the dumbest plan. But I think that, whatever your main genre is, you should spend a year or two really getting to know some other form of writing. I’ve been writing fiction since I was young. Poetry solved my long-windedness—it took me pages to say anything. After two years of doing 14-line sonnets, I learned to be terse.
After his MFA Jason set himself a deadline to write a book a year. Mid-spring he was brainstorming what to write about. He spent all summer banging out pages. He would revise and edit fall through winter. All this time he was querying agents. Everything he sent out promptly got rejected. Soon he had five or six manuscripts sitting around.
“I was not living the life that I had dreamed,” he said. One day at lunch, he was sitting in the car with a friend, looking up at the building in which they worked, taking calls about cell-phone problems from angry New Yorkers. Jason asked his friend: “At what point do you stop dreaming about the thing you want to be? At what point do you just accept that it’s not going to happen?”
“Shut up, moron,” his friend said. “Just keep sending the book out.”
Four days later Jason heard back from an agent. Now he has many published books and has a National Book Award.
Here’s some advice from Jason Mott:
Never chase the market. Just write what you want to write. Don’t think about how to find a home for it. That’s an agent’s job. Your job as a writer is to say the thing as best you can say it.
Writers block is not the inability to have ideas. Writers block is “I have a vision of this perfect thing in my head, but when I sit down to write it, it won’t come out the way I want it.” You’re afraid you’re going to write something badly, so you choose not to write at all. Write badly. Enjoy it.
Write how you want to write. Experiment. You start doing weird things and before long the weird things start to tie together.
Authors should have direct relationships with bookstores. Have indie bookstores champion and handsell your book, that’s the best way. Stay engaged. Champion their events. “I can’t make an indie bookstore love my book, but when they do, I find out about it.” (Bookmarks in Winston Salem, NC got behind Jason’s book in a big way.)
Find some good readers for your work. I’ve had four readers since college. I send them a manuscript and then, once they’ve read it, take them out to lunch. I take notes on what they thought worked, what didn’t. I take those notes back to my desk and make changes. It comes down to having people who give honest feedback on your work.
Be very very careful with memoir. You need to be extremely sure that whatever wound you’re writing about has healed. If the wound hasn’t healed, do not publish, anywhere. Never publish anything that you are not emotionally distanced from. On book tour you will be asked to talk about that over and over again. If you’re not ready, that is hell.
Be careful what you publish. Once it’s out there, you can’t get it back.
Writing is a catharsis. And it can be rejuvenating. Enjoy it.

If you’re anywhere near Columbia, South Carolina, All Good Books has signed copies of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.
I love the taking folks out to lunch idea. I am wondering- question for all- do you have folks read an electronic version or a paper version?
"Write badly. Enjoy it." - I needed this.
Thank you.