Writer and Journalist Andrew Wright
This week’s Writer Wednesday features DWR member Andrew Wright!
Andrew is a freelance journalist from Detroit. Through his work, he earned the Denis Diderot grant from the Château d'Orquevaux Artists & Writers Residency, where he spent a couple weeks in France eating, drinking and writing.
Andrew’s first experience with writing was stand-up comedy, and he still writes comedy sketches that get produced every so often. “My writing has opened up doors I never thought existed and introduced me to some very interesting, lovely people,” he says. Read more about him below!
What writing projects are you currently working on?
I wrote a novel at the end of last year that I will (hopefully) be beginning the third draft of here shortly. I’m currently finishing up the fourth draft of a philosophical work on suicide. My friend Mary and I wrote a pilot we are currently pitching to production companies. My writing partner Colleen and I are working on putting together an edited collection of essays on violence and restorative justice. My friends Paco, Tom and I are (very slowly) writing a sketch show.
What is your favorite part of the writing process?
That very brief, fragile moment after you have finished a draft and you’re fully satisfied with what you wrote and you don’t want to think about it and it’s in someone else’s hands, but before they have given you any feedback. As soon as that moment is over, it’s right back to work.
What does your writing workspace look like?
It depends on the project and draft. If it’s a new project or early on, I will write anywhere. I usually like to be posted up at a bar with a notebook at that point. Generally, people will leave you alone if you’re writing — they will absolutely bother you if you are reading in a bar — and, for some dumb reason, people will, every so often, buy you a drink because they think what you’re writing is important. If it’s later in the project, I’m usually in my poorly lit office with a stack of books on my desk hunched over an ergonomic keyboard, which is not enough to make up for the brutality I’m imposing on my posture.
When did you first discover your love for writing? Were there any key moments or influences that sparked your passion?
I think some time near the end of high school when I realized I could write something funnier than I could be in person, but the love affair was relatively short. It’s now more of a symptom than anything, but I’m getting the help I need.
What is your favorite non-writing hobby?
I drink a lot of water throughout the day, but during the NBA season basketball is pretty important to me.
What is your favorite piece of writing advice?
It’s probably somewhere between Kurt Vonnegut’s moral injunction to “pity the reader” and James Baldwin’s ethical imperative of the artist to maintain an impersonal responsibility to their work: “And yet people, millions of people whom you will never see, who don’t know you, never will know you, people who may try to kill you in the morning, live in a darkness which…you are responsible to those people to lighten, and it does not matter what happens to you.”
Follow Andrew on Instagram at @evilandywright, and read his work at linktr.ee/andrewwright.
— Interview by Olivia Han