Inside the Mind - John Janovy Jr

As a professional biologist and faculty member, I wrote constantly--papers, grant proposals, etc. But the habit of writing every day probably started when my high school girl friend went away to a different university than I did, so I wrote to her every day. But my serious attempt to become a published book author started in the 1970s when the academic politics at my institution became so vicious, I decided to write the Great American Novel, make millions of dollars, and throw my office keys into the football stadium. That didn't happen, of course, but my first book was eventually published, to wide acclaim, and that settle it: I would write every day, and not just scientific papers.

My latest book, LIFE LESSONS FROM A PARASITE: WHAT TAPEWORMS, FLUKE, LICE, AND ROUNDWORMS CAN TEACH US ABOUT HUMANITY'S MOST DIFFICULT PROBLEMS, published by Sourcebooks (a terrific company!), is about infectivity, including infective ideas, memes, concepts, and of course political rhetoric that can act just like some parasite, infecting a person's brain and altering their behavior.

I also have a fiction series, THE GIDEON MARSHALL MYSTERIES. The main character, who gets dragged into all kinds of messes involving murder and extreme wealth, is an academic geologist who can determine where the dirt on a murder victim's clothing came from. He's modeled after my dad, who was a petroleum geologist, and my other characters are modeled after college profs, some of them in my workplace.

I'm usually up and at the computer by 4:30AM, but I also take "creativity hours" throughout the day. My general rule is that a page a day gets you a book a year.

The most rewarding part of being an indie author is knowing that your ideas and what you have to tell the world are out there for anyone to read, and will be there so long as there is a publishing industry.

Like all writers (I assume), I try to sell my projects to traditional publishers and have had an agent since the late 1970s. But in my personal opinion, my most important books have been independently published. One of them, my agent rejected, telling me it was "an evocative book about ideas, exactly the kind of thing the book buying public is increasingly uninterested in." I re-wrote the prologue and added that sentence. But in general, marketing is the biggest challenge, I believe, that an indie author faces.

I use Microsoft Word, period, along over the years, have evolved from handwriting to typewriters (both mechanical and electric) to computers to laptops, but always adapting and always with Word.

Do it every day. Never give up. Study people and how they talk. Figure out the end of your book first, because that ending guides everything you do to get to it. A book a day gets you a book a year. Develop a thick skin.

Shamelessly! Yes, shameless promotion using all social media platforms, but also figuring out things to say about your books on those media. If I get any opportunity to address an audience, and it's okay to say something about your book(s), I do it. I also generate YouTube pieces and link those in my social media posts.

I always have one or more projects that I'm working on. I currently have two serious projects: a memoir titled WINNING TICKETS that focuses on good fortune and how lucky events deliver that good fortune (like how I met my wife, for example!). The other is a person history of an academic program, a field school operating in the western prairies. That history actually addresses the subject of how ambitious dreams are achieved and how the logistical demands of those dreams are handled.