In follow up to my recent review of their helpful and hilarious book, How Not To Write a Novel, Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman kindly took time to answer a few questions. I was looking forward to their responses, having already become a fan of their humor, as demonstrated by the many mis-examples provided in their manual for aspiring novelists. I briefly considered exploring my own mis-example of 'how not to conduct an interview' by asking them probing personal questions, digging up dirt on the secret lives of their pets, and ending with an embarrassing confession or two of my own; but alas, I decided to go with the traditional approach. Luckily, they managed to still spice up the interview with their own brand of wit.

Damian: In addition to writing this useful how-not-to guide for aspiring authors, you are both novelists as well. What inspired you to write How NOT To Write a Novel?

HM: I can't point to anything in particular inspired it. At the time, Sandy was teaching, I was editing, and we were both working on novels. We were both members of the Writer's Room, a shared office space for writers, and we were spending a lot of time in the kitchen, drinking coffee and making writer jokes. It occurred to me that a book like this could be done, and we were the ones to do it. Our sensibilities sort of pointed to it, and it was just a matter of time until one of us noticed.

In the proposal for the book, we acknowledge that anyone who had been in publishing long enough, and had been paying attention, could have written this book, because what's in it are things every editor knows. It just wouldn't have been as funny.

SN: For me, the thing that inspired me to write HNTWAN was Howard.

Damian: What was the collaboration process like, co-authoring a book together?

HM: To an observer, it would probably look like we're idling in cafes all day, laughing loudly and annoying people.

What's actually going on, though, is that we'll get together to work out the outline of something, and pick sections to do. Then we go off and write a first draft and email what we've written to each other. Sometimes something will be right the first time, and then we just sign off on it, and it's done.

Usually, though, we'll end up rewriting each other to some extent, and it goes back and forth, with Sandy taking out my material and putting hers back in, and vice versa, with everything changing a little each time, until we either reach a version we both like, or one of us wears the other one down.

Once we get within sight of a final version, we'll get together again and go over everything. That's usually when we do the funniest stuff.

SN: Yeah, an interesting thing about the process with this book was that when we originally wrote the proposal (one chapter plus table of contents) the main idea was the put together something that would sell.  Once we had money in our pockets, the main idea changed dramatically to "How can I make Howard laugh hard enough to snort Diet Coke out of his nose?" which then set the agenda for the next six months. At this point some of the more baroque humor appeared in the manuscript, and some of the few moments of unmixed joy appeared in our lives.