Unlock the Hidden Secrets of Writing Success with J.A. Dauber—Are You Ready to Transform Your Words?

Who are you?

Depends on the time of day. In the mornings and evenings, I’m mostly the father of three kids ranging from 12 to 6, two boys and a girl; for a good chunk of the day, once they’re on the school bus, I’m a professor at Columbia who teaches on subjects ranging from the history of world literature to the comedies of Mel Brooks and writes books on American comics and, most recently, American horror; and, presently, I’m the author of a new middle-grade novel called PRESS 1 FOR 1 INVASION.

What do you write?

My writing really depends on the subject, audience, and venue: I suspect that the middle-graders who I hope will love the story of Matt, Marcela, and their encounters with the extraterrestrial probably wouldn’t enjoy some of my heavily footnoted pieces on allusion in late eighteenth-century Enlightenment literature! But ever since I was a kid, the kind of writing that appealed to me the most was about stories: adventure stories of all kinds, with a little fear, a little comedy, lots of twists and turns mixed in. Like a lot of others on this site, I’d tried to do it off and on since I was a kid; and then, for career-related reasons, moved more to the analysis of these kind of stories rather than writing them myself; and then, in recent years, tried to find a balance and do both. I’m hopeful that it seems to be working out!

Where do you write?

Since I live in a New York apartment with a family of five, I try to write in my office at the university whenever I can; but I’m not particularly fussy — I’ll write wherever I need to to get my writing done for the day (see the next question). I’m fairly old-school, so I just write in Microsoft Word; I do tend to prefer a particular font to draft in (Cambria, 12 point), weirdly enough.

When do you write?

My three main rules for writing fiction (my process for writing my non-fiction books is quite different)…