John Romero is a senior creative writing student and former Marine. He served three tours of duty in active combat in Iraq. Romero is also the inaugural winner of the creative writing program’s Hillerman-McGarrity Creative Writing Scholarship. He was honored for his work in progress on a novel about a young Iraqi boy living through a war.
Romero sat down to talk with the Daily Lobo about the importance of his time overseas, why he loves fiction and the necessity of Red Bulls and cigars while writing.
Daily Lobo: You’re a little bit older for a college student. What’s it like being in a class filled with younger students?
John Romero: I think it’s great. Being older, it just gives you a different perspective on things. You have seen a lot more and done a lot more. When I am in these classes, it gives me a whole new perspective. I see that vibrant young kid come in. Being older and seeing that, it influences you, as well. It’s a great thing to have, to be more mature and experienced.
DL: Your latest work deals with your time as a Marine in Iraq. Is it ever difficult to relive that part of your life?
JR: It’s tough some days. Some days you will write for eight hours on casualties and war and for two weeks you won’t stop thinking about it. It stays lingering on your mind. It’s tough sometimes. Sometimes it’s easy. You can talk about, you know, these people got killed, or you had to do this, or you had to kill these people, and it doesn’t bother you, but sometimes it does. And sometimes you have to spend just two weeks relaxing, put the book aside. It’s just balance I guess, balancing your work versus the rest of your life.
DL: Outside of your writer life, what else do you do?
JR: I spend a lot of time in the mountains. I am an avid fisherman (and) hunter, and I just love being in the mountains.
DL: How does that add to your writing?
JR: It keeps me free. That’s the place that I release my stress so I can focus on my writing. It helps me maintain a well-balanced life.
DL: Do you draw most of your inspiration from your time overseas?
JR: Well not all of it, but that’s just such a big experience in my life, that’s what is coming out.
DL: Besides the themes, how else has being overseas affected your style of writing?
JR: It has definitely increased my awareness of setting and character. Meeting all these various people has taken my writing to a whole new level. It has allowed me to see deeper than just the visual points. I look deeper. It helps my writing in that aspect. Also, the setting, being in these different places and seeing the various different types and ways people live. It can be something as simple as seeing the sand in Iraq versus the sand here, and trying to describe the differences.
DL: What’s it like winning a prestigious award?
JR: It’s recognition. People see what you have done, and see the authenticity behind your work, and they acknowledge that. It’s a great thing to see that. That inspires you even more to write more. I found myself the next night at my computer writing. When they honor you like that, it shows you what you are doing is real, and people see and read it and you have an influence in some way. It inspires you to want to influence through your writing.
DL: So how much do you write then in the average day?
JR: I say I write 16 hours every two weeks.
DL: And what’s the process like?
JR: I am locked down in my house. The girlfriend gets kicked out. I get a 12-pack of Red Bull and a box of cigars, and I write. And that’s my environment, that’s where I feel comfortable writing. Break time goes from Red Bull to bathroom to smoke a cigar and then back to writing. Me, I flow, I can go. So my writing is in five-, six-, seven- and eight-hour spurts that I’ll write nonstop.
DL: Is that exhausting?™
JR: It’s not. It’s two days every two weeks. I don’t feel myself feeling burned out at all.
DL: So which days do you write?
JR: It’s just a spur of the moment thing. No one will be home and I’ll be watching SportsCenter or Discovery Channel, and then all of sudden something will just click. I’ll sit down just writing an essay, and it turns into my creative writing. That gets pushed aside and I start writing.
DL: So does the writing process stop when you’re away from home?
JR: Throughout the day I will get thoughts and just jot them down. That way when I get back and actually sit at my desktop I can always look back and say ‘OK that was a great idea. Let’s go from there.’
DL: Have you experimented with other genres of creative writing, such as nonfiction or poetry?
JR: A lot of the stories that I write are nonfiction tales. They are actual events of what went down, whether it was when in Iraq or when I was a kid. I dabble in that. I have also messed around with some poetry, and I mess around with playwriting. I like that stuff.
DL: So why fiction?
JR: A story can be huge, and depending on how well you can tell this story depends on the impact that it’ll have. And although it’s not true, it inspires imagination. It inspires creativity. Nonfiction, that’s the story and that’s it. It doesn’t let you elaborate on any of it. That’s what it was. With fiction, it’s not. You can go and blow things up. The things you could only imagine.
~Chris Quintana
