Turn off your cell phone. Honestly, if you want to get work done, youโve got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is youโre doing, it needs to stop while you write... A lot of the time (and this is fully goofy to admit), Iโll write with earplugs in - even if itโs dead silent at home.
Nathan EnglanderI would drink gallons of coffee a day. Even now, off caffeine, I talk faster than anyone you've ever met. I finally recognized that I'm naturally amped up. But when I quit I was worried that I would never write again. It was like anyone who's kicked a habit. I was in a blanket shivering, trying to kick the horse.
Nathan EnglanderI was thinking a lot about myself and my own super inextricably Jewish boy link with my mother. I felt like even a Jewish spy would have this relationship, so yes, I was very much exploring this relationship of boys and their mothers, and Jewish boys and their mothers. Exactly that, the ridiculous lengths that a doting mother will go for her son, and the ridiculous lengths that - I will pretend this is distanced from me - the ridiculous neediness of a grown man for a mother.
Nathan EnglanderThe more foreign to me, to my existence, to your core existence, the more foreign the foreign language, it's really moving to me to think, to get to experience my own story crossing those boundaries. To have that experience that I so cherished as a reader. I can't believe this. To me, it's really nice because that would be a thing where I'm like, "There may be lots of Jews in my work. I'm not writing stories for Jews. I'm telling stories about people, and Jews are people, too."
Nathan EnglanderTurn off your cell phone. Honestly, if you want to get work done, youโve got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is youโre doing, it needs to stop while you write... A lot of the time (and this is fully goofy to admit), Iโll write with earplugs in - even if itโs dead silent at home.
Nathan Englander