Interview with Author Barry Napier

Balancing a career, fiction writing, marriage and parenting is not an easy task, but writer Barry Napier seems to have mastered the balancing act. His dark poems like Abandoned Bridges and books like Debris: Collected short fiction, and (more recently) The Final Study of Cooper M. Reid are inspired and popular and his fiction and poetry has appeared in over 20 online and print publications.

Last year I sat down with Barry to find out about his fiction writing and his recent move from full time freelancing to a (gasp) regular job.

YP: How in the world did you fit in the writing of 16 short stories and 3 poems while being a full time freelancer, a dad and a husband (also, please tell us you don't have any pets)?

BN: Yes, I do have pets...2 dogs and a cat.

As for the writing, I basically just took the time when I could get it. As my kids got older, I spent less and less time writing after "work hours" so I had to make full use of the lulls I had while freelancing. The stories in Debris were written over a span of about three and a half years, so some of them were written before my freelancing stint. I really do believe that giving in to my fiction side while in the middle of actual work made me a better worker. As a matter of fact, one of the stories in Debris, "Notes On How It All Ended" was written over a period of two days while taking breaks from a large project, just to release some frustration.

So to make a long story short, I will admit it...I sometimes worked on a few of these stories while I was supposed to be actually working. But for the most part, the majority of them were written over a year ago, but were touched up over a period of 2 months over the spring of 2009.

YP: You seem to write mostly suspense. Is it more difficult to write these stories because you have to create all the guidelines for the story's reality, or is it more difficult to write things that have less flexible parameters of reality?

BN: To me, it's much more difficult to write about what we know as reality. Of course, some of my writing is about the very nature of what reality actually is, so there's a very surreal line to play with there. Writing about the "real world" typically involves tons of research and most of the audience is already familiar with the subject matter.

To be totally honest, that's one of the things I like about suspense and horror; it allows you to play with the supernatural-something that there are no real parameters to. That sense of familiarity is stripped away. And that's really what horror is all about. You don't have your usual fallbacks of logic and reason to resort to when things get uneasy.

The one thing you have to be careful of there, though, is that once you have created these fictional parameters and start writing within them, you have to stay true to them. If you create your own little world with its own reality, you can't just change them for the convenience of the plot. In that regard, writing about the "real world" and an imagined one are one in the same.

YP: Recently you decided to stop freelancing and take a full time job as a writer. Can you tell us why?

BN: I spent a little over five months unemployed. It was stressful for my family and, quite honestly, demeaning to me not only as a male, but as a writer (the whole macho "head of the household" and all of that). I would pick up tiny gigs here and there...maybe enough to pay the electric and phone bills one week and then maybe enough to cover the price of daycare the next week.

I was fortunate enough to eventually find a client that paid fairly well and supplied me with 35-40 hour weeks on a consistent basis. Paychecks became a regular thing again. The people I was working with were awesome. But the work itself was at times borderline spammy (anyone who has written more than 2 sales letters probably know this feeling) and there was also the knowledge that this was still a freelance job...I was under no contract. I could get a call the very next day with the news of "Hey, we can't afford to pay you anymore. We're going to have to let you go." And then I would have been back at square one.

So out of fear, I would occasionally apply to writing jobs-any writing job: journalism, proposals, technical writing-I didn't care. And finally, I got a call for an interview. And then got called back for a follow-up interview. And then I got the job offer. The writing is more rewarding (it's writing proposals with specificity towards past performance, so it's sort of like telling a story) and the pay is...well, it's not freelancer pay...

Plus, you know...security is a great thing.

YP: Is there anything you miss about freelancing? Anything you were surprised to enjoy about full time work?

BN: I obviously miss the freedom of freelancing. I miss pulling up YouTube during slow moments. I miss getting down in the floor with my 7 month old son and acting goofy for 10-15 minutes at a time. I miss being able to pull up a short story in progress whenever I want. And I miss the sense of community in forums and places like Freelance Writerville. And God help me, I miss Twitter...

The thing that has surprised me about the new fulltime job is the fact that I forgot how great it can be to go to work and have other actual human beings to talk to. After only three days with the new job, I began to realize that I actually sort of did hate the telecommuting environment for working. This may simply be because I'm a chatterbox, though.