|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
After an illustrious career as a journalist, El Granada resident Steve Hawk, recently took on what he considers to be one of the most challenging jobs of his writing life thus far: fiction writer.
Hawk, who grew up in San Diego and is brother of that famous skateboarder Tony, published his first novel, “Nearshore,” on Aug. 18. The book, a “surf noir” tale, is about a surfer named Jamie Palmer, whose world collides with Stanford University academics who find a potential link between an act of nuclear terrorism and a Silicon Valley mega-corporation. The book juxtaposes “isolation versus community and family, Silicon Valley versus humanity, words versus action, and land versus sea,” as Hawk’s website describes it.
Although this is Hawk’s first novel, he’s no stranger to writing. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in San Diego. He worked for the Orange County Register, then spent eight years as editor of Surfer Magazine. For six years he served as executive editor of the Sierra Club magazine. For five years, he was editor of Stanford Business Magazine. He wrote the coffee-table book “Waves” about the aesthetics and physics of ocean waves.
Hawk, who has lived on the Coastside for almost three decades, also had a stint as a writer and consultant on the 2007 HBO series “John From Cincinnati” about a cursed family surfing dynasty. This experience sparked his interest in fiction.
Hawk wrote a chapter of “Nearshore” while taking a fiction writing class in Stanford’s Continuing Studies program. He credits the class with helping him finish the book.
Embarcadero Media recently spoke with Hawk about how he motivates himself to keep writing, his nearly 60 years of surfing, his distaste for outlines and more.
The following interview has been condensed for clarity and space.
Embarcadero Media: What was the inspiration for the novel?
Steve Hawk: I knew I wanted to do something that was very plot-driven, and I knew I wanted to do something that would combine these two very conflicting worlds that I was living in when I was working at the business school.
The business school required a lot of mental effort every day to take this complicated scholastic research and translate it to a general business audience. … Then I would drive home to the Coast and do the thing that I really love, which is to jump in the ocean.
Embarcadero Media: How long did it take you to write the book?
Hawk: About five years. … I was working at Stanford for part of that, so I had a full-time job, and then when I got old enough to retire from Stanford. … It was the first time in a long time that I hadn’t worked a nine-to-five job. I decided to kind of revolve my days around if the surf was good or not.
Embarcadero Media: What was the editing process like?
Hawk: It was great, actually, because I just really wanted it to be as good as I could make it and I wasn’t arrogant to think that it was perfect. I lucked into this very talented agent named Chad Luibl.
He did the first edit, and that was the heaviest lift I had. … It took me about five months to get the draft back after he gave me his notes, which were all very smart and really, really helped the book.
Embarcadero Media: What was the book signing event in El Granada like?
Hawk: That was a really exciting event. I had family come in from out of town. One of the things that made it exciting for me was that I made a conscious decision when I started the novel to tell all of my friends here in Half Moon Bay. When they asked me what I was working on, I’d say, “I’m writing a novel,” because I wanted to be held accountable by them.
Every writer goes through … this moment of existential depression. Like, ‘I’m no good at this. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should become an insurance salesman.’ I had all these people asking me weekly, ‘How’s it all going?’ I had some friends … that I would share chapters as I was going and get feedback. … The community very much helped me write the thing.
Embarcadero Media: Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?
Hawk: Even if you don’t know where it’s going, just keep writing. A lot of time I would have some idea of the business I wanted to get done with a particular scene. When I say business, I mean how it was going to fit into the plot, how it was going to enhance the character development and enrich the relationships.
A lot of the plot didn’t come to me until I was actually in the process of writing particular scenes. I’m no good at doing outlines.
You have to put your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard and just start writing.
Embarcadero Media: Where do you like to do your writing?
Hawk: I have an office downstairs in our house. It’s got all my all my favorite pictures on the wall. But I don’t have a set routine.
I try to carve out a few hours every day, but when they happen is often kind of dependent on the vagaries of the ocean.
“Nearshore,” Steve Hawk. Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Hardcover: $22, E-book: $13.99. stevehawkauthor.com.
