On Writing Fiction by Tom Casey

Author Tom Casey feels strongly that ‘in these times, writers, poets, and artists are extremely important for gathering thoughtful readers together slowly as a front against willful ignorance and abject stupidity in the face of modern challenges’.

In Unsettled States, when certain characters think no one is watching, someone may be seeing everything (and it isn’t God).  Helpful to explore behavioral contradiction in universal themes, a writer of fiction (myself, in this case) might rather favor a cross-dressing Peeping Tom with a mother issue —  the mother herself, and her French-speaking parrot — an adulterous couple, and others. This Nabokovian semi-antic sort of story dynamic is what gives fiction edge and humor, and makes it fascinating to read and amusing to write. Unsettled States probes the human behavioral zones of reason and instinct, where conflict and contradiction widen the gap between how people define themselves to themselves, and what they do when they think no one is watching. To make this point, I created an antic assortment of relevant characters to act out that story, and you will meet them all. Unsettled States took fourteen years to conceive and write.

A Tom Casey Frequently Asked Question

Did you know that you were a writer early in life? 

I would say, yes, but the response from friends and family was not resoundingly affirmative. As a teenager, I mentioned the word “doctor” to my mother and was given a stethoscope instantly as encouragement to pursue medicine. Later, I said I’d like to fly airliners. My mother once took flying lessons and was somewhat sympathetic; my father suggested dentistry, and later urged me to have a “better look” at business. One night, I mentioned that perhaps I’d like to write novels. The parental response was immediate and stern — “That’s nothing but a pipe dream.”

But I was serious about life. I learned that we are who we are and will do what we must in spite of obstacles which are many — and tough beans if we don’t like it — that’s just the way it is. I became an airline pilot; I have flown across the oceans many times. And I have written and published three novels, and made one film. If searching was my personal theme, the quest was simple: I flew to pursue what body and soul needed, but I wrote for what the mind and spirit desire. Talent and tenacity notwithstanding, the pendulum for fiction as art continues to swing between insight and irrelevance. Writers choose their poison and define their ground. But for artful pursuits, facts and truth remain the guiding beacons. The audience for literature’s core values stays devoted. Though their numbers are diminished and it is hard to make a living at it, serious writers and artists will carry on.

Working a career at almost anything is precarious but purposeful and necessary: you will eat. To work solely as a writer or artist is worse than precarious, and you might not eat. But probably you will drink. I will tell you that writing fiction can be slow-going — you will learn patience. Story encapsulates contradiction — you will learn to speak with forked tongue…to yourself. Nobody is there. The novelist Robert Stone was my early mentor. He gave me this bit of wisdom: “Nobody cares whether you write a novel or not. But if you keep doing it, eventually you will write honestly. And honesty is the goal.” And for good or ill he was correct. Unsettled States explores contradictions in human behavioral zones between reason and instinct, where the gap widens between how people see themselves and what they do in secret.

As an airline pilot, over the years I adapted to the continuing evolution of technology and technique. As a writer, change has also come. I have watched (nervously) the process of market capitalism applied to the arts, undermining into mediocrity Hollywood filmmaking and popular music. As an American novelist, I see the same conditions threatening publishing. In addition, there seems a shift of reader taste in a direction away from existential subjects of social realism towards celebrity addiction memoirs or novels about graduate students writing (or not writing) term papers. A legitimate fear is that, as a modern corporate entity, publishing has lost artistic direction to economic fealty for the bottom line. Some fiction writers fear that using substandard selection criteria or commercial guessing brings inferior work into consideration, and that diminished quality is a beast that feeds itself and effects choices editors are making.

Is writing fiction a career?

Is it a hobby? What is writing fiction? Should I do it?

Writing every day eventually grabs you. Soon you will want to keep at it. Memory is vague. Permanence intrigues. History defines. Writing a journal or diary makes a permanent record of moods and events. It gives you greater insight into your days. What was hard at the beginning becomes necessary to do and difficult to stop. That is the moment when writing a novel seems plausible. Martin Amis called writing an illness. I call it an affliction. But — do people want to read what you write? Perhaps, perhaps not. Does it matter?

Writing a poem or a novel is deeply personal, and it is always autobiographical, but not directly so. Metaphor and allegory tell story in a different way. When you write anything, how you did it or why you did it or how much you were paid to do it does not matter. Only your faith in facts matters — and honesty, and truth in what you write. For better or worse, that will come through. Who are as a writer will offer the reader whatever you can. It might be flat, but it can be magical, depending on ability.

What is the ability to write? Some part of ability is native, like singing on key. And you can learn how to breath for it. But artistic expression is probably inborn and can’t be taught. Singing with soul, for example. (If Frank Sinatra tried to sing like Little Richard he’d be Pat Boone). Also, since it is an individual process, it might become difficult to discuss the impulse to write except with someone else who knows it. But whatever you write, your work will have larger or smaller significance to the world according to its perceived universality. And you will learn facts from the act of writing that you might otherwise not encounter. You will discover that insights gained from what you have done have been absorbed into yourself and are possible to share.

Question: What is Literature?

Answer: Literature and poetry are considered literary art. Art seeks to answer three questions. 1. Who am I? 2. Who are you 3. What is happening? Serious literary novelists exist in every genre. Ultimately, they write to understand and express life’s ambiguities, misdirection, and mortal embarrassments within a specialized framework. Their writing is sound. Their portrait of humankind seems real. Less serious fiction writers exist in the mix and bring insights youthful and less formed, and one has a sense that these writers work from the outside in, rather than from the inside out. Their work reflects a segment of the world legitimate to literary fiction, but risks banality.

Question: Why read?

Let’s talk about how metaphor, through artful manipulation, expands the living experience. Art can express contradiction and synthesize paradox. Art seeks essence while asserting infinite possibility. Do chimes of freedom flash? Bob Dylan says they do, and tells me how and why, and convinces me. Art holds truth as an ideal involved with mysteries, pleasures, fears, desires and dread. A writer’s mind is his world, what Thomas Wolfe called, ‘The insoluble prison of being.’ The writer has to be comfortable being there for long hours without distraction. Rewriting is the essence of writing well, and it takes time. These are insights important for a writer to absorb. And for a reader, too.

(c) Tom Casey

https://tomcaseynyc.com/novels/

Tom Casey will be appearing at the Spike Island Literary Festival on Friday 5th September 2025.

About Unsettled States by Tom Casey: