How did you become a writer?

I don’t consider myself a “writer.” Not only have I never had that burning drive to write just to write, I’ve never felt I had the skillset for it. But in 1975 I landed in Japan with an English teaching job in Sapporo, and the next thing I knew, I was training in Zen for three years at a 500-year-old monastery, then specializing in Japanese folk religions at Sophia Graduate School of International Studies, then writing ad copy at the world’s largest ad agency, and finally heading up my own creative boutique. When I returned to the US in 2005 as a single father, I had three books in my head, only one of which I knew was there. That one came out first, Gangsters, Geishas, Monks & Me, a memoir, and a story most up-and-coming writers would kill for (http://gangsters-geishas-monks-and-me.com). Number two, the current offering, Reality (can be OK, but mostly it) Bites, is a collection of “original aphorisms and other philosophical fragments with teeth,” and there’s a nerdy academic “life work” on the way. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

My major influences came in the area of content—ideas—not style. First, in college, Norman O. Brown, who rethought Freud in his ground-breaking first book Life Against Death (1959). Second, Zen (see above) in the late ‘70s. And third, during those same years, twentieth-century spiritual teacher and mystic George Gurdjieff. (Brown held that man and society are not only neurotic, if theoretically redeemable, but driven by conflicting instinctual forces to make history, while Gurdjieff taught that man lives in a state of “waking sleep” with no unified consciousness.) Stylistically, my mentors were the copywriters of the International Creative Division at Dentsu, Inc., the “ad agency” above, and in particular, its beleaguered head wordsmith, who was contractually prohibited from refusing my non-stop requests to, “Take a look at this.” It was there, then—mid ‘80s—and thanks to him, the long-suffering Sir Eric Epling, that I gained some degree of facility with short, punchy headlines and body copy.

When and where do you write?

Any time, anywhere. I know novelists who get up early, write for however many hours or however many words, then wrap it up, rinse and repeat the next day. If that works for them or you, great. But running my own shop in Japan’s legendary bubble economy, I cut my teeth on brutal client deadlines. These days, with more say over my time, I find I write better—think clearer—in the morning. This usually happens on my threadbare “writing couch,” surrounded by stacks of paper that double as carpet.

What are you working on now?

Well, you asked. I’m currently finishing up the first draft of “a psychoanalytical comparison of Japanese and American amae, archaism, anality and sex,” that nerdy academic tome-slash-life work from Q1. Or, as I call it, The Continuity of Culture. Not the catchiest work of the decade, but I’m hoping it will prove as revolutionary as I believe it is to a limited audience of Japan experts as the first book to show not just howJapan and America are different, but why. (My old drinking crowd will never believe it came from me.)

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

To me, serious writing means overcoming blocks, but more important than any strategy is building the confidence that you can and will get through it. (It took me decades.) That said, after years of trial and error, I’ve cobbled together several approaches for dealing with stingy Muses:

(A) Put the manuscript down, walk away. Give your mind a break, to reset, ferment. Revisit with fresh eyes.

(B) Plow through it, write on. Even if it’s the worst shit you’ve ever turned out, keep at it. Finally, sift through the carnage for usable material—as many times as it takes. 

(C) Read other people. See how they handle the kinds of situations that have you blocked. 

(D) Read your manuscript aloud up to the point of blockage. Many times, the mind will keep going once the mouth stops.

Note for Plans B and C: You never know when a point will tip, or a light will go on, and you’ll be “back.” Experience is not only cumulative, but dynamic and interactive. One insight can glom onto another, like molecules combining, and you’re in one-plus-one-equals-three territory again. Full disclosure, I’m a serial ignorer of my own advice, which led to Reality Bite (82): “All the great wisdom has been said before, but much of it bears repeating.”

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

“If it’s not on my desk tomorrow, you’re fired.” Having spoken Japanese the majority of my adult life and having run with way more advertisers than writers, I don’t think I ever got the “Listen up, kid,” kind of advice you’re talking about. For me, it was more learn-as-you-go, but nobody had to tell me not to miss deadlines. I did, however, give Gangsters to two editors simultaneously, which I learned a lot from and highly recommend if at all financially feasible.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Be curious, observe, experiment. One of a writer’s most valuable assets, even more so than lucky breaks, is consciously acquired experience. Not just in order to write, of course, but you’ll write better, too. Reality Bite (365), “The ability to see wonder in the commonplace rests on the understanding that nothing is common,” is a note to self to do just that.

Gordon Hutchison has two books out and one on the way, all with distressingly long titles that keep getting longer. Gangsters, Geishas, Monks & Me: A Memoir of Three Years in the Underbelly of Japan and Reality (can be OK, but mostly it) Bites: Original Aphorisms and Other Philosophical Fragments with Teeth are commercially available, with The Continuity of Culture: A Psychoanalytical Comparison of Japanese and American Amae, Archaism, Anality and Sex still looking for a publisher. Not exactly the kind of resume that careers—or even platforms—are made of. Good thing he’s not a writer.