6 Important Writerly Questions with Matthew David Brozik
Here’s a little sit-down we did with Matthew David Brozik, seasoned humor writer and author and the guy behind the just-released Humorist Books title, The Vowels of the Earth. A hybrid of literary sci-fi, really silly word humor, and old-school academic farce, it’s the 1940s-set story of the nefarious and alien-influenced origin of…the letter H. It’s a trip.
1. Who are you? What are you doing here?
Funny, those are the same first two questions I asked a small boy I found in my home recently! Turns out, he was my son, and he lived there. But me? I’m Matthew David Brozik, lawyer-turned-copywriter, author, husband—and, yes, father, it would seem. I’ve written a handful of humorous novels, although “handful” is misleading because any one of them would be enough to fill your hand and then some. So let’s say “several” humorous novels. And I’m here answering questions to the “best” of my “ability.”
2. Since “Where do you get your ideas?” is a terrible question, what made you want to write this book?
Thank you for not asking me terrible questions. I genuinely appreciate that. As it happens, I didn’t want to write this book. As I recount in the afterword, the germ of this novel was a short humor piece in the form of an interview with the protagonist decades after the events that changed his life. Some time after I finished that piece, I jotted in my writing notebook—and I’m not kidding about this—“Really bad idea: THE GREAT VOWEL GRIFT as a novel.” (“The Great Vowel Grift” was the name of that original short piece. I jotted the aforementioned note on October 28, 2015. This fact will be important in a minute.)
3.How did you keepwriting this book?
Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t have kept writing it? That’s just mean. In October 2015, I was one year into a seven-year stint at a terrible job. I was bored beyond my capacity to convey in mere words. To say that I was not intellectually stimulated would be an understatement. So once I had decided to write a novel about a disgraced one-eyed academic who takes on the unlikely challenge of helping to invent a new letter of the Roman alphabet, how could I not keep going? Looking over the pages upon pages of notes I took as I wrote the first draft between late October and late March of 2015, I’m reminded of just how much fun I had writing Vowels.
4. Who is this book for, anyway?
These questions are getting borderline accusatory. I might have to invoke my rights against self-incrimination. A while back, I came to terms with the fact that I write for myself more than for anyone else. And then I realized that there’s nothing wrong with that. Plenty of authors write for other people—the masses, even; I write stories that I want to read. And I write them in the way I like stories to be told. And then, I hope that there will be readers who will also want to read my work. Handfuls of them, even.
Another answer might be: you. If you’re reading this interview, then chances are very good that you’ll enjoy this book, and that means that you’re the person I wrote it for. You and me.
5. Any darlings you had to kill?
Of course. There was a big one. Fortunately, it did no violence to the story to remove it.
One kind of humor I really enjoy might be described as “bait and switch,” and might also be described as “pointless.” At the same time, I hate writing backstory. So when I realized that the reader might want to know how Jeremiah, the protagonist of Vowels, and his fiancée first met and all that sappy jazz, and I really didn’t want to write any of it, I came up with what I thought was a very amusing bit: I described a very outlandish, dramatic, Hollywood plot… in such a way that the reader would (I hoped) think that I was describing the start of Jeremiah and Leah’s romance…only to reveal that it was the plot of the movie they saw on their first date. It didn’t quite work. It was shaggy dog story that was a little too shaggy. Or not shaggy enough. So I took it out back, tied it to a tree, and… uh, I sent it to a farm upstate.
6. What are you working on now?
A couple of months ago, I left another job that was making me dumber every day. While I was still there, though, I started another novel that I’d like to finish writing. It’s called AFTERWIFE—but I don’t want to give away the plot lest anyone steal it and write a better novel than I can.
Other than that, I’m looking for a job I won’t hate and a new literary agent. Also, I have a milestone birthday coming up (or just past, depending on when this goes live), so I need to shop for a very expensive car and reading glasses.
The Vowels of the Earth is available now.
