Writer’s Block: Joni Murphy

All Lit Up: Tell us about Barbara. What can readers expect?

Joni Murphy: I have a bunch of “elevator pitches” but here’s one: a beautiful, observant movie star shadowed by middle age navigates a demonic cold war landscape. Guided only by her own fluid perceptions, she traces intimate-yet-taboo connections between perpetrators and victims, men and women, facts and fictions of the American empire.

Readers can expect a cinematic reading experience in the style of 1970s independent cinema in the sense that style, mood, and associative logic figure larger than driving plot. That’s not to say that things don’t occur. The actress travels, has romances, and works on films. Time does move, but the telling of the story is more central to Barbara than events. I am very proud of this book in part because it sidesteps expectations of a story about a woman recounting her life. There are no easy villains or heroes. She does not moralize about her own choices but rather recounts them. That feels like a victory to me. Still I think readers can expect a book that’s beautiful and smooth. It’s the ideal book for taking on a trip. If you’re a melancholic lady like me, this goes double.

All Lit Up: Why do you write?

Joni Murphy: I write in general because I have a deep internal need to think about and speak to the intense contradictions of life. It sounds really grandiose when I put it like that, but it’s how I feel. Writing allows me to smooth out disparate ideas, images, phrases I catch from life and place them in an order that feels extremely satisfying. When I feel something working on the page, I’m glad to be alive. It’s an internal magic that can be shared. You’re able to give your thoughts to others in a portable, durable, inexpensive technology we call a book. I really connect writing with magic.

I write novels specifically because they are extremely flexible and because many people read them. In some alternate timeline I would have probably been a more academic writer. That would also be satisfying to me personally, but the audience would be a lot more specific and niche.  

All Lit Up: What books have you read lately that you can’t stop thinking about?

Joni Murphy:

• Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin by Jake Byrne
• Wave of Blood by Ariana Reines
• The Silentiary by Antonio Di Benedetto
• Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning

All Lit Up: How has your perspective on writing changed over time?

Joni Murphy: I don’t remember what I wanted when I started writing (it’s been a while) but I have realized that when I allowed myself to work to the best of my ability, to not hold myself back, my experience of writing shifted. 

Also, being kind to oneself and figuring out how to sustain over years has shifted my experience. I, like many people, got through school by pushing myself to exhaustion. I would work right up til deadlines and put myself into adrenaline-fuelled situations. There is definitely some utility to putting on the pressure sometimes, it unavoidably happens. But I have found that self compassion and steady rhythm yields better results in the long term. 

All Lit Up: What inspired the idea for your latest book?

Joni Murphy: I wrote this book because my father and grandfather both worked for the Military Industrial complex, to use the famous phrase. My father and my aunt and uncles were all born and raised in Los Alamos (birthplace of the Atomic bomb) and my grandfather spent his entire career there. Through this family connection, I came to feel, not in an abstract way, but intimately, how militarism, the Cold War and its passionate anti-communist aims is woven into the fabric of the modern American west. I saw how people devote their lives to the aims of the US empire, even when they themselves are vulnerable to the destructive fallout. 

All Lit Up: How do you overcome creative blocks when they arise?

Joni Murphy: When I’m feeling blocked I attend to other people’s artwork. I read, listen to music, watch films, go to museums, and attend performances. I copy down sections of other people’s work and then respond to it. I write letters that I will never send, but because I know the form of the letter is productive.

Creative response is the greatest method for getting out of your own way. I remind myself that writing is communication and thus, in community. I find ways to write to and for who I consider my group. A lot of people in this imaginary group are dead, but it does not stop me from addressing them. Finding one’s artistic world and speaking to them, even if it is made up of dead artists, helps keep things flowing.

No one is ever creating out of thin air. When I bring the exchange aspect of writing to the fore, I don’t feel blocked.

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Joni Murphy was born in New Mexico and lives in New York. Her debut novel, Double Teenage, was named one of The Globe and Mail‘s 100 Best Books of 2016. Her second novel, Talking Animals, was published in 2020.