Author’s Website: www.edwardgauthier.com/

Jennings native and current resident of Lafayette, Edward G. Gauthier found his calling in the third grade. As the author flourished, he studied with literary pioneer Ernest J. Gaines and learned techniques from him. He also attended over 30 workshops to edit his craft and meet other writers. The successful author published his novel, “Director Guy” in 2018, and gave us insight on his upcoming novel. Gauthier said he writes 4-6 hours Monday through Friday and you can find him at Johnston Street Java or one of the libraries around Lafayette.

What motivated you to start a career as an author?

I wrote my first poem in Mrs. Shirley’s class in 3rd grade elementary school. I still have it, a five stanza poem entitled Mary’s Little Car, written on the old rough brown Big Chief big lined notebook paper that looked like it had wood chips in it. The kids laughed when I read it to the class and I realized that people seemed to like my words. That started it. I’ve filled journals, notebooks, spiral wire flip folders and all manner of paper bound folders, most of which I burned as I finished high school because I knew I needed to up my writing skills a lot.

Once at USL, (now UL) I published in the Southwestern Review, the English department’s bi-annual literary review. I began reading Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Karl Marx, D. T. Suzuki, Kurt Vonnegut, Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and too many others to list here. I helped edit a student run newspaper called Undercurrents, an anti-Vietnam war protest rag that we sold on campus and around Lafayette for 25 cents per copy. The UL library still has copies of that newspaper in the third story archives. I wrote for the paper and my writing just seemed to explode at that point. I’ve been writing poetry, short stories, flash fiction and novels ever since.

What inspired your first novel, “Director Guy”?

I was up late one night, my kids were about 9 and 12 years old and had just gone to bed, as had my wife. I just felt the urge to get something new and interesting down on my laptop. So, I started the page off with the directive, ‘Write Fast.’ Writing fast, faster than you can think a second thought, faster than you can judge it, is very helpful. It massages the flow of ideas. And I wrote about a boy who had an extra consciousness in his head, another personality that was independent of him. This is unusual. Usually, one human body has one personality. But Von had two, himself and another person, which he labeled Director Guy. Director Guy was nice, became an advisor to Von, told him how to handle certain embarrassing social circumstances, or how to talk with girls, which Von needed a lot of advice on. But, this form of the story didn’t adapt itself well to the novel form. It made a decent twenty page short story, so that was all I did with it at the time. About eight years later, after I’d retired from teaching, I reread the story and bang, ideas just started flowing about how I might change the structure and get a novel out of it.

What is the novel about?

Von is a Junior in high school in New Orleans, has his clique of friends and knows most of the kids in his junior class. Suddenly one night, when out with some of these friends and smoking a joint, another personality suddenly lands in his head. Neither he nor the intruding personality knows how this has happened. The new personality has no memories, doesn’t know who he was or what his life had been like, where he was from, what his parents or family looked like, nothing. But, a few of his instincts remain. He knows math, likes Shakespeare and is really great at science. Von and the personality decide on Director Guy as his moniker. Together, Von and DG have to compromise, to negotiate, to learn how to get along in one head. And to go on investigating how this all happened to both of them.

What was it like studying with Ernest J. Gaines? What did you learn from him?

Ernest Gaines set me on a journey that I’ll always be thankful for. I was somewhat scared to send my work off to publishers. He leaned toward me and tilted his head a bit. “Well Ed, it can’t be published if you don’t send it out.” It was obvious advice. And I should have already known that, but he delivered the kick in the pants to get me going.

Even more formidable, he read one of my short stories and actually wrote down in his critique, “Your descriptions of nature are at the top of your game. I wish I could write that well.” And he signed his name to that paper. Believe me, I kept that and consider it a treasure. It shook me to my roots. If he saw that I could write well, what the hell was I hesitating for?

He taught me that men and women write differently. And that they critique each other’s work differently. We had a lot of jostling and laughs in class over that. He was kind but demanding. Class started at 7 p.m. At 7, the door was locked, and don’t come knocking. See you next week.

One other thing he did for me. He taught me the workshop technique. I’ve now taken over thirty workshops with other noted writers. I’ve studied at University of Iowa’s Summer Writing Festival for four summers, work-shopped with Steve Almond in Fort Bragg, California, and been accepted into the Odyssey Writing Workshop taught by Jeanne Cavelos in Manchester, New Hampshire. Oh, I could go on and on about Ernest Gaines.

Do you have another novel in the works?

Yes. I’ve worked on it nearly nine years. This one is much more of a science fiction story including time travel, genetically formulated animals with multiple brains, autonomous intelligent levitating disks and mind control drugs. The plot is a challenge to me and I’ve basically rewritten the entire story four times. It’s work. But, this version I feel is finally up to my standards and I’ll put my name on it, finished, somewhere in 2021. If you go to my website, there’s a page with this new novel’s first chapter.