Novelist Michael Zadoorian

This week’s Writer Wednesday features novelist Michael Zadoorian of Ferndale! Michael is the author of four novels, “The Narcissism of Small Differences,” “Beautiful Music,” “The Leisure Seeker” and “Second Hand,” as well as a story collection, “The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit.” A motion picture of “The Leisure Seeker” starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland was released by Sony Pictures Classics in 2018. He just finished his latest novel, “The Classicist,” which is heading to editors now. 

“The Narcissism of Small Differences” is our featured Book Club pick this June. Come meet Michael virtually on June 29 at 7 p.m. EST. Admission is free for Book Club members or get single tickets here.

What is your favorite part of the writing process?

For me, I think it’s when I’m far enough into a long project that I have some sense of where it’s going and where it’s going to end up. The worse thing is when I’m not really sure what to do next. I like writing short stories, but I find them difficult because I can only immerse myself in them for a limited time. I’ll be working on something for a few weeks, but then I finish and I have to have a new idea, which is always the most painful part for me. That’s why I’m happiest writing something long, like a novel, because I know what I’m going to work on every day when I sit down at my desk.

What does your writing workspace look like?

I have a small L-shaped room in a relatively small house in Ferndale. My wife and I call it the study, but I’m not exactly sure why. I guess because it’s definitely not a den. I’m surrounded by all my books and CDs and DVDs. My desk faces a window, but it looks over the side of my neighbor’s house, so I tend to keep the curtains drawn. My favorite part is what I have framing the window — postcard-sized photos of artists whose work I admire. I change them out now and then, but it’s a fairly eclectic mix. Right now the wall features Walker Percy, Miles Davis, Dawn Powell, Andy Warhol, Raymond Carver, Henry Gregor Felsen, Paul Bowles, Weegee, Groucho Marx, Nina Simone, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Flannery O’Connor, Lenny Bruce, Frank Lloyd Wright and Thelonious Monk, among others. I do find them inspiring and it reminds me that spending time making art, writing, music, photography, comedy, architecture or films is a worthwhile way to spend a life. 

How has writing about Detroit over the years influenced your own relationship to the city?

I think it’s mostly the other way around. Detroit is an enormous part of who I am as a person and a writer. I grew up in the city, got both my degrees at Wayne State University in Detroit, met my wife here, lived in the area all my life, so it’s deeply ingrained in me. I’m proud to be from around here. There’s a determination and spirit that people around here possess that you won’t find anywhere else. There’s something about being from a place like Detroit that inspires creativity. Part of that is from being a place that for a long time, felt abandoned by the rest of the country. Consequently, I think artists worry less about “making it” here. You just want to make something. 

I think there’s definitely a Detroit aesthetic. I see it in the writing, the music, the art, everywhere.  Living around here, you gain an appreciation for the imperfect, the forgotten, the abandoned, and it imbues your work. Artists from around here often find beauty in things that others may not find beautiful. It took me a while to realize that being from Detroit was something that as a writer, I needed to look upon as an advantage, a gift, really. I’ll be covering some of that on my Book Club talk on June 29.

What is your favorite non-writing hobby?

I’m kind of weirdly proud of the fact that in my Redford High School yearbook, my interests are listed as “Books, music and films.” And that many years later, those are still my interests. At heart, I guess I’m still an indoor kid.

What is your favorite piece of writing advice?

Just keep going. Don’t stop to rewrite until you reach the end. It may all just seem horrible and hacky and poorly written, and it very possibly may be all those things, but if you don’t get to the end, you have nothing. I know too many writers who fall into that trap. Someone will tell me, “I wrote the first chapter of my novel!” Three weeks later, I ask how the book is going. And they’ll tell me that they’re still polishing that first chapter. As far as I’m concerned, until you get to the end, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the writing is in that first chapter, you still have the first chapter of nothing. And for all you know, everything may change by the time you get to the end, which may change everything in that first chapter. Just keep going. 

Follow Michael on Instagram at @michaelzadoorian and Twitter at @zadoorian, and check out his website michaelzadoorian.com for all his books!