Weil returned to Virginia to write his first book, The New Valley (Grove, 2009), which was New York Times Editors Choice selection, honored with the “5 Under 35” Award from the National Book Foundation, and won the 2010 New Writers Award from the Great Lakes Colleges Association.  Weil’s short fiction has appeared in Granta, American Short Fiction, Narrative, and Glimmer Train, among other journals; he has written non-fiction for The New York Times, Granta Online, and Poets & Writers.

Weil is slated to read at Gemini Ink on Friday, Feb. 26 at 6:30pm and will also conduct the class, Uncharted Territory: Exploring Novellas on Saturday, Feb. 27.  In the class, participants will learn what is a novella and, what can it accomplish that’s different from what a short story or novel can accomplish.

Gemini Ink intern Angelia Potter interviews Weil about his writing process and what’s inspired him.

Angelia Potter: What was your process for writing The New Valley?
Josh Weil: Wow, that’s such a huge question: pretty much everything that goes into writing can be lumped into process. So this is a hard one to answer without taking up pages and pages to do it. But I do know this: I wrote the novellas in The New Valley exactly the same way I write anything. A lot of writing is about figuring out what works for you – whether to outline or not, how to treat a first draft, at what point you can keep pushing and at what point you’re just tapped out – and then trusting in that. Part of that trust is routine, and I tend to have a very defined one. I get up before light, make coffee, fill a thermos, stretch, clear my mind, sit down at the desk, try not to get up again – or at least not to pull out of the work – for four or five hours, take a nap, make some toast, sit back down again and try to write through until I’m worn out and my mind is getting sloppy. Of course, some days my mind doesn’t work right from the start. Those are the tough days. Those are the days I sit at the desk for 10 hours and bang my head and get up and pace and curse and stomp about. I’m trying to ease up on that, do less of the stomping. Because, in the end, the most infuriating thing about writing is also the most magical: no preparation, no understanding, no routine, can guarantee it; it comes a little differently every time, and all you can do is get yourself as ready as possible to receive it when it does.

AP: Are any of the novellas’ protagonists based on real life individuals?
JW: Not really. I mean, of course their concerns, their wounds and what’s in their hearts comes from me (I think that, in all good serious fiction the characters have to be wrestling with something that comes out of the author, but that doesn’t mean that the external elements, that the story elements, or even the specific people, are anything like the author). And there are elements of people I know that made their way into characters, or that sparked the idea for characters. Geoffrey Sarver, the protagonist of the final novella, is a combination of many different things (most of which I probably couldn’t put my finger on), but I first got the idea for him when I was out at a rural farm filling a hundred pound propane tank. The guy filling the tanks was a mentally slow man, middle aged, quiet, and sweet-natured, and all alone out there. I started to think about how lonely that must be. And the very beginnings of Geoffrey grew out of that.

AP: Was there anything in particular that inspired the writing of these novellas and how did you build a connection between them?
JW: As far as inspiration, I’d say this: they’re all about men who have lost a loved one, and who are struggling to make sense of the world in that person’s absence, and to learn to somehow move on. I’ve seen that in my life, and I’m sure these stories, at heart, come out of that.

AP: Why did you make the Virginia countryside the setting for these novellas?
JW: I was there. Simple as that. I started going back there, to a cabin that my father and brother and I built, about 15 years ago. That’s where I do my best writing; that’s where I duck away from the world. And where I duck into is simply the place that’s become the most important to me in my life. It’s where I feel my heart attached to the land. And so the first novella just came to me there, and was very much of that place. I can’t imagine it set anywhere else. Once I had that one there, I knew I wanted to write the others set there, too. They all just started to feel rooted in one spot.

AP: You illustrated the middle novella of The New Valley, have you illustrated any of your other works and is visual art another outlet that you pursue?
JW: “Stillman Wing” is the first piece of writing that I illustrated, but it felt natural to do so since visual art has been so important to me for so long. I used to think I’d be a painter – that’s where I thought I was going – and then I got bitten by the writing bug, and found I loved narrative, and so I shifted into filmmaking. Now, I miss the visual. I’d like to bring that into my work even more. The thing I’m working on right now will be illustrated, at least to some extent. I’m trying to find the right balance with it so that the illustrations are organic to the story and don’t get in the way of it.

AP: Maureen Howard, author of The Silver Screen, compares The New Valley to authors Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy. What do you think of such a comparison?
JW: I think she’s a writer who has earned comparisons to writers of that stature; I certainly don’t feel like I’m remotely in their league. But she was talking about some specifics of my writing, and comparing them to some things that McCarthy and O’Connor do, and I’d certainly say that I’m deeply influenced by both those authors, so she was perceptive in picking up on that and so kind to point it out where she felt she saw it.

AP: What are you working on now?
JW: Two things, actually: a novel and a short story collection, but I’m loathe to offer too many specifics until I know that one or the other is going to work. I’m at that place right now where it’s truth-telling time – the people I trust most are about to see the work – and so I’m going to keep quiet about it until they’ve whispered in my ear.