5 Questions with Nick Bhasin
Nick Bhasin is a writer and editor based in Sydney, but originally from the US. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, Junkee and McSweeney’s and he has occasionally appeared on ABC Melbourne radio as a cultural attaché.
He won the US music game show Name That Tune and his satirical parenting blog Daddy’s Little Miracle was selected to join the New York Times’ parenting section’s blogroll. Nick has worked as an editor for Junkee, 10 Daily, SBS, Foxtel Magazine and OK! Magazine. He has a tremendous speaking voice.
No.1
You’re an accomplished writer, editor and podcaster whose presence is well-known on TV and radio, having worked at SBS, ABC and Network 10 amongst others. How did I Look Forward to Hearing From You come about?
First of all, thank you for the compliment. I’m not sure how well-known I am, but I’ll take it.
I Look Forward To Hearing From You is a story I’ve been wanting to tell for a long time, based on my own experiences trying to be a screenwriter in LA after my mother died suddenly in 2002. I went through a very tough time and spun out of control in a variety of ways.
I initially thought I’d turn the story into a memoir, but I wasn’t confident that I could make the actual story as dramatic and entertaining as I thought it needed to be, so I fictionalised and heavily exaggerated everything, while keeping things grounded and emotionally authentic to what I went through at the time.
As it turns out, writing a novel takes a long time, especially if you’re working full-time. But during the first COVID-19 lockdown, the [web]site I was working for closed down so it felt like a good time to take a break and finish the book.
But if you’re not going to have a job, a novel requires money acquired in some other way. So I auditioned for the game show Name That Tune, was invited to compete, and won a bunch of money. I used that money to keep things in the black and finish the book.
No.2
You’re also known for Daddy’s Little Miracle, your satirical parenting blog active in the mid-2010s, which was selected to join the New York Times’ parenting blogroll. Did you find that your experiences doing that kind of humour writing came in handy while writing I Look Forward to Hearing From You?
I would love to meet anyone to whom I am known for Daddy’s Little Miracle. For that would be a true fan indeed.
I love satirical humour writing and while my style was too wild and weird to attract a parenting audience, it came in very handy for this book. I wanted to satirise Hollywood, and the delusion that comes with trying to succeed there. I especially wanted to target the TV writers’ rooms of that time [the early 2000s], many of which are now infamous for being toxic workplaces. A wide spectrum of terrible behaviour was excused.
It's up to the reader if I’ve pulled it off—obviously—but I also wanted to satirise the kind of book I was apparently writing: the ‘sad person falling apart’ novel. I knew that on some level, I was writing an ‘oh woe is me’ story; I needed to be self-aware and have a sense of humour about it. The cover of my book is a spoof of the covers of those kinds of books: they usually involve a forlorn white woman draped over furniture. I wanted to do a brown man version.
No.3
What was the book writing process like? Did you have a fully fledged idea at the beginning that flowed pretty naturally once you began, or did it come in dribs and drabs that then resulted in something unexpected later on? What surprises and challenges did you encounter bringing your main protagonist and story to life?
By the time I decided that this was the book I was going to write, I had already had lots of notes and bits of writing from 2002, describing in detail what I was going through. I had all the material in a file, which I used to colour in the story, and which I mapped out quite extensively before I started writing. I had a pretty good idea of the shape of the story, of where I wanted it to start and end, though that changed [later]—I started a lot later and ended a lot earlier, which, I think, is a typical manoeuvre to pull when you overwrite, which I tend to do quite a bit.
Along the way, there were lots of surprises, especially with the extremity of the protagonist Hector’s behaviour. I was having him act out in some very over-the-top ways in scenarios that were very funny to me. There are still parts of the book that make me laugh, even though I’ve read them a million times. I always think that’s a good sign, if you can make yourself laugh with your own writing. It’s not from self-satisfaction—it’s in spite of the disdain you develop for something you work on over and over again.
The challenge became fine tuning and contextualising that extreme behaviour so it didn’t overwhelm the reality of the situation—the grief, the depression, the body dysmorphia, the overwhelming sadness. I knew Hector was going to be a difficult person to cheer for if I couldn’t make him funny and if I couldn’t make his pain relatable.
Thankfully, I completely pulled it off! See you at the Oscars!
No.4
What is your relationship to experimentation in writing? If you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to move through it?
I have never experienced writer’s block. Not because I am supernaturally gifted – though I am – but because I firmly subscribe to the idea that writing is re-writing and the first draft is always bad. So I sit down and let it fly. I pump out huge first drafts in the knowledge that most of it will be completely unusable – the very first draft of ILFTHFY was 1,000 pages; the first workable draft was 700. I give myself permission to write a lot of garbage so I can get to the good stuff. I also overwrite a lot so this method suits me. I also think it helps if you have an outline and notes, which I always do. As long as you have something, you can start writing. Now, I’m not sure how the “pantsers” do it, starting from absolutely nothing and just seeing where the muse takes them. That would be a disaster for me.
As I push through that first draft, I’m careful not to judge myself. I might think “good Lord this is terrible”, but I keep going. I might have to write “something good and delightful must happen here”, but I keep going.
It’s certainly not an efficient approach, but with this kind of thing efficiency isn’t always useful.
As for experimentation, I probably wouldn’t consider myself an “Experimental Writer”, but I do think any piece of work that’s trying to be unique and new is experimental in a way.
With ILFTHFY, I wanted to explore the sadness and anxiety and grief of an emotional crisis, but I wanted it to be as laugh out loud funny as possible. That felt new to me. Maybe I’m a big ignoramus, but I haven’t read a lot of books like that.
So to me, this was an experiment—could I make people sympathise with a character that was spinning out of control with grief in an uncomfortable way? As he alienates his friends and his family, could I bring people along and get them to hang on and reward them in the end? And, through all the darkness and intensity, could I get them to laugh?
No.5
Who or what inspired I Look Forward to Hearing From You?
My favourite book is A Confederacy of Dunces. Maybe that’s a cliché at this point for a person of my generation. I don’t know. I haven’t asked around. But it’s an extremely funny picaresque with so many classic lines. As with the sad person story, I wanted to write a brown version (my next novel will be called The Brown Version). I wanted to try to explore what society does with the brown person losing their mind in 2002.
And, of course, the book is inspired by my own experiences. Things I said and did while I was going through an extremely difficult time in my life, from which I did not think I would recover. Every day was a nightmare and I thought I was going to die. But once I saw that I would survive and that I would even eventually (sort of) thrive, I wanted to write about it so that other people who’ve gone through similarly tough times would know that things can still be okay.
Find out more
It’s 2002. Britney and Justin are done. Low-rise jeans tyrannise the pants-wearing public. And Hector Singh, a 27-year-old eccentric, moderately talented yet extremely confident aspiring TV writer, is hell bent on 'making it' in LA. He's Puerto Rican and Indian but also post-race (or so he thinks) and he refuses to be intimidated by the Whites Only landscape of show business.
But when his mother dies suddenly, Hector's grief turns into depression, triggering dark thoughts and a binge-eating disorder. He lands a potentially career-launching job as a writers' assistant on a TV drama, but antidepressants make things much worse.
With a series of implosions that threaten to sink his work and relationships, Hector unravels. Spectacularly.
Can he navigate Hollywood racism, diet-culture oppression and overwhelming grief to survive this emotional crisis? Does he pull himself together in time to sell his TV show in a meeting with big producers? Will he catch an extremely fit Tom Cruise and give him a script?
A hilarious, satirical, madcap and moving roller-coaster ride through the world of Hollywood as seen through one person’s descent into despair.
Get it from Penguin Randon House here.