Note: This is a preview of “The Write Place with J. Michael Straczynski”, my previously unpublished 8,700-word interview with J. Michael Straczynski. To read the full essay, please join my Patreon account at the $10 “Fresh copy!” level.
“The best part of it is knowing that it wasn’t due to personality, lord knows,” said J. Michael Straczynski of his writing success. “It was due to making black marks on a piece of paper. Over and over again. For thirty or forty years. Somewhere along the line, you learn something. That’s how you become a writer. You sit down at a keyboard, and ten years after, when you stand up again, you’re a writer.”
“They’re exquisitely arranged black marks,” I said. “They’re not just tossed out there.”
“One certainly hopes so,” said Straczynski.
This career-spanning interview from 2008 focuses on the craft of writing in general, but makes reference to the challenges of showrunning Babylon 5 (1993–8), the frustrations of Crusade (1999) and Jeremiah (2002–4), as well as Straczynski’s success with Changeling (2008) and the difficulties he faced in adapting World War Z (2013) and the unproduced They Marched Into Sunlight.
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JASON DAVIS
Freelance Writer