Jonathan Daniel Gardner Member Member since 2025

Where do you prefer to do your creative work?

I write almost everything on a Victorian fainting couch. It's emerald green.

Who are your literary (or artistic) heroes?

Jeanette Winterson, Albert Camus, this chef I met at a surf hostel in Pichilemu, Denis Johnson, Bukowski

If you could only take one book on a ten-year voyage, what book would you choose?

Cloud Atlas. It's six books in one book. But it doesn't feel like six books shoved into one book. They're distinct, yet cohesive. Whatever, man. I like it.

Plus, if I'm trapped on a voyage for ten years I absolutely want the novel where a central idea is everything ends and somehow people keep going anyway.

How much of a typical day (or week) are you able to dedicate to your creative work?

Typical is key in this question. I don't have a daily writing routine. Sometimes I don't write for weeks. Then I'll become a conduit for creativity and give it the entire day, the whole night, and probably the entire next day too. When I'm writing, basically everything else becomes an inconvenience until I've exhausted the thread. Which, you know, has taken over a month before. I eat a lot of my partner's leftovers. That's what I'm trying to say.

What makes you procrastinate when you could be doing your creative work? What are your strategies for finding focus?

If I have to do revision I'll put it off. I am always on to the next idea so it doesn't disappear while I'm rewriting some thing I'm over.

My strategies for finding focus usually involve self-shaming and a c-word stimulant. I've got that thing that makes you feel guilty when you're not producing something real bad. It either contributes to my procrastination malaise, or gets me out of it.

Caffeine, dude. Come on.

How do you celebrate your successes, such as acceptances? How do you handle rejections and other setbacks?

I usually text everyone who isn't overtly sick of hearing about my minor successes in my vocation. I mean, I get it. It's not like the mailperson celebrates every time they put an envelope in the box.

I don't care about rejections. It just narrows the field for that story and wasn't their thing.

It bothers me more when the rejection includes feedback that presumes it's an unfinished draft that requires their notes about how I should develop the characters and maybe this style isn't a fit for you and it's a little too oblique to really be successful or how I should really outline and be sure I know what each character wants and you know, that kind of stuff. Rejections? No big deal. Unsolicited advice from someone who isn't trying to understand what I'm doing and just wants to make my story more comfortable for them to read? I mean, yeah, kind of a medium big deal.

Anyway, I usually seethe for a few minutes and then I shift marginally on my fainting couch and continue living my life.

How much time do you spend reading for pleasure or edification?

I don't read that much anymore. I'd rather be writing or drinking and talking with friends. It sucks because everyone I know has a recommendation for me to read, and I really do want to make them feel like their opinion is valued, but I'm not going to read that. I've had to just tell people right off that I am in a phase of not reading much. They still ask me if I read their suggestions every time I see them.

Yes, my prose has gotten more direct because my vocabulary is in free fall. It's totally just where my voice wanted to go, man.

Do you have a personal creative style? How would you describe it?

I'm probably an inelegant artist in every medium I try. I paint people as circles and lines, I play the guitar without any interest in showing off, and I write about people doing normal things badly and trying to be a person. I like to leave my hand in the work. The mistakes, the hesitations, the ugly and deeply human part that proves I was here.

Where do you find inspiration?

Regular life shit. I like the pressure of the ordinary. Doing the mundane in a way that feels like novelty. Human behavior that is too specific to invent gracefully. I love scale. Tiny things next to giant ideas. I can't seem to stop writing about competence and being useful. And process. And identity. Or the idea of being in a perpetual state of becoming.

Regular life shit, you know?

If you could choose to be born in any era, which one would you choose and why?

The one where we've cured aging. Fuck this getting old shit. Freeze me at thirty three years old. At that age I was becoming hipster jesus. I had the hair and beard. I had that lean, on-the-cross body. I was developing a god complex. I even built a coat rack once. Then like overnight the grey started overtaking my hair and beard and you just can't dye a beard without it being obvious and I have a rule that prohibits public displays of trying.

Anyway, I'm an optimist prone to long depressive episodes with an anxiety disorder thrown in for kicks. I want to live forever and hate myself while I do it. I'm guessing the era would be like, 2055?

What advice would you give to a young, budding writer (or artist) with less experience than yourself?

Don't ask permission to be an artist. No one knows your creative vision better than you. Work harder than you want to and do whatever it takes to become technically proficient enough to explore your ideas and grow by doing the thing.

For your first draft (or sketch), do you prefer analog or digital tools, or a mix?

I hate writing longhand. My hand gets tired really quickly. It's like a cramp or something. If I did it more it'd probably go away. My brain is faster than my ability to write that way.

It's amazing to me how many writers are sure to make it known they write their first draft entirely longhand on some very specific and obscure paper in a very esoteric way. Cool. I have eight mostly empty aspirational notebooks in my main tote. I text myself ideas if I'm not on my fainting couch, then put them into documents on my laptop. I write drafts with half my screen taken up by the draft document and the other half thesaurus.com.

Do you incorporate generative AI/LLMs into your creative process? If so, how?

This is like a tripwire with a grenade on it. I'm stepping big and then running away.

(No)

What is your favorite word and why?

Reductive. Because we're all better than that. So call it out and make them get it right.

What would you like your epitaph to say?

I was here. I made things. I loved people. I tried. Eventually this happened.

Are you an unreliable narrator?

Yeah. I'm not deceptive, though. I'm reliably perceptive and unreliably accurate.