Interview With Starkey
By: Michael Stang
Tags: Storymaker, Jess Starkey, Outsider Art, Creative, Interview

Use with permission from the writer

An Outsider Writer

Although the curators here at Medium cringe when I say it: Put on your focal points, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for a deeper look into one of our own hidden treasures.

I was delighted when Starkey agreed with my nagging efforts to shed some light about himself. Here is a writer with talent served on a bed of life without all the fancy dress. Rarely does one come across one of his stories hung up on philosophical rules and regulations; ideological demands stifling character’s actions or speech.

Rather, what you get is the real low-down. Personalities who exist outside of the readers approval. They do what they want: touch themselves, swear like pirates, love each other, steal, hate, penetrate others. They are at their best when pleading the universal underbelly of humanity. There is an honesty about Starkey’s work, not having to rely on morals, yet he is funny, original (extremely creative). I am eager for his stuff to show up in the networks.

Speaking of honesty, I honestly did not know what to ask Starkey, so I sent him a bunch. Here is some of it.

…

Storymaker: Writers intuitively understand that creativity must come from somewhere. Would you give us an example of how you see yourself in that process?

Starkey: I don’t know enough about the process of writing to have a process. If I sit down to write something specific, it turns into something else. I’m at the mercy of whim.

Storymaker: If I may, I’m going to take a leap here and assume the grit of what shows up in your stories are personal life experiences. True, or am I trolling?

Starkey: Every character I write is a version of someone I’ve met. I’ve come across a lot of strange and colorful people (most of them speak in cliches). For some odd reason, mannerisms and nervous ticks and personal patterns stick in my head, so when I decide on a character, it’s like watching video clips or home movies of someone I already know.

Storymaker: A lot of your work is structured in a formal educated style, are you a Graduate Cum Laude we don’t know about?

Starkey: I don’t know anything about writing. In high school, my English teacher kicked me out of class for my junior year and refused to let me come back the following year. She had a list of grievances but growing marijuana in her potted plants was the last straw. She sent me and her curriculum to the office* and said, “Good luck, asshole.”

I had to teach myself about something I had no clue about. Anything I actually know about writing comes from the act of googling. All the stuff I know about quantum theory and nuclear physics comes from Google, also.

I wrote my first book not knowing how to write a book because someone told me I wouldn’t be able to do it. It’s complete shit a comma after every third word, but it’s a legitimate, novel-length book. I can’t give the motherfucker away with a five-dollar bill taped to the side, but it’s a book.

*When the other teachers saw what she had done, they followed her lead. I spent my senior year in the office with a stack of books in front of me. I educated myself with skateboard and motocross magazines. I also looked down the secretary’s cleavage a lot. She had a French name that I can’t remember. I think the principal was fucking her on the side.

Storymaker:

Mailman Charlie: Amboy trespassed by Deputy Absalom and his trusted medicine.

Under a Falling Sky: Nico, the ecofreak savior of the world.

The heresy of good intentions in The Cloud Chariot.

The horrid truth at the bottom of The Last Can of Beans.

Cowboy Joe, a homeless quadzillionaire in The Studebaker.

These are just a few from your prolific cache. Starkey, I know you get this from everybody in a high pitched plaintive cry, and it is the worse, redundant, whining question ever, but where, WHERE (said in a high pitched plaintive cry), does this come from?

Starkey: I’ve known my characters forever. I’ve always been an idiot and I’ve done a lot — an extreme amount — of idiotic shit in my life, so I have a lot of abnormal stuff rattling around in my head. I’m lucky I’m not in prison or dead. The people I grew up around were idiots, as well (a lot of them are in prison or dead). The people I ran into in my travels were also idiots. I have a lot of idiocy to draw from. I embrace idiocy.

Storymaker: Not exclusive to the halls of Medium, but the world of fiction, do you envision the genre to continue as a valid literary force, or are we in for a fight for our readers attention?

Starkey: Everything goes in cycles. Right now, I think Literary Fiction is dead. Sparkly vampires and dystopian worlds (conceived and romanticized by posh suburbanites who’ve never smelled the shit of a real dystopia) is what people want to read today. He said/She said “novels” that are dialog rich, fatuous, and vacant of thought — that makes for easy, struggle-free reading — that’s what’s selling now. YA shit that requires no effort to consume is considered heavy reading in the age of Tweets, retweets, and likes, and shares. It won’t be long before there will be a book of internet memes on the New York Times bestseller’s list.

Literary Fiction will come back when the dystopia everyone is longing for becomes real. There won’t be any internet in a collapsed world. We won’t have phones to look at on the shitter, so we’ll read paperbacks in the outhouse. Bards and Storytellers will be worth their weight in gold.

Storymaker: Any advice for the would-be writers out there struggling to find their voices; creatives who do not know it yet?

Starkey: Don’t read articles that tell you how to write, read people who know how to write. I reaped more from a handful of pages of Big Fish and Look Homeward, Angel than I ever harvested from How-tos on Medium.

Google: classic novels+20th century and read the samples. In school they made me read the Mockingbird and the Red Badge of Courage, but, other than that, I was completely ignorant and unread. I only read magazines. I didn’t start really reading until a few years ago when I started writing. I still haven’t read any of the classics all the way through but Google has a thirty or forty-page sample of everything ever written. That’s what is so wonderful about it; you get just enough to get inspired. I’ve heard the name James Joyce a thousand times in my life but never read a word he wrote until a couple of months ago. Knocked my socks off. I told myself: I want to learn to write like that. Thank you, Google.

Storymaker: Any advice for the rest of us?

Starkey: Get the Free version of Grammarly and always have the Hemingway app open in your browser.

But, the best advice I can think of is this: Make a folder on your computer for words, sentences, edits (never throw anything away), and ideas. Put every little thing in it that catches your eye or ear or pops into your head. It will be the best thing you ever did to advance your writing. I call mine “Gems of Idiocy.” Stuck in a story? Go to your gems folder and look for what you need to keep rolling. Writer’s block? Go to your gems folder for an idea. It will be in there and it could be anything. It will probably be nothing like what you think you need. My gems folder is 50,000 words. Pro Tip: Always put quotes from other writers in italics. Whenever you come back for a nugget, you’ll need to be able to separate yours from theirs. When you’re on a roll and you’re tapping into that secret place, you won’t recognize your own writing later on.

Also, I pray. Sometimes I pray for punctuation. Sometimes I pray for the plot.

Storymaker: I want to thank you, Starkey, for deciding to pick up the pen and write. Creatives out there come in all shapes and sizes. It is good for the rest of us to know there are writers that can still tell a story from the ground up. Your work is inspiring.

Michael Stang 2020