Nate’s Notes 99: Literary Fiction Writer Josh Foster | Profound Melodramatic Disorder

Josh Foster makes me nostalgic for both the life I’ve lived and the life I haven’t lived, and the lessons he shared provide a glimpse into how he does it.

First, the reader is 30 minutes closer to death after having read your work. What are you going to do with that knowledge? Knowing that you have a contract with your audience to educate, move, and impress them, never waste those thirty minutes.

Second, know that whatever you do, you will make your reader feel something. But this is the point of writing. Make them laugh, make them cry, make them want to fall in love again, and make them cry again.

Third, only write what only you can write about. This is speaking to obsession, deep meditation, and fascination on a subject. Don’t write about the farm life if the farm life doesn’t matter to you. Don’t just write the stories you can tell. Write only stories that only you can tell.

At the end of the interview Josh said, “I want to make you see something and feel it so deeply that you just won’t ever forget it and that you’ll keep thinking about it.”

What a great summary of his simple lessons. When we create art, I hope we can do the same.

It’s a simple idea. Please take it seriously.

Josh Foster Bio:

Josh Foster is an award-winning independent writer, thinker, and farmer in Rigby, Idaho. He is the author of The Crown Package: A Personal Anthology (2022) and The Clean Package: A Pioneer Assemblage (2023).

Josh earned a PHD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston, a master’s degree in fiction and nonfiction from the University of Arizona, and an undergraduate degree in English from BYU Idaho. In between his master’s degree and PhD, Josh was selected as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, one of the most prestigious creative writing fellowships in the world. Josh also earned a minor in Spanish and studied at the University of Guadalajara.

In his almost two-decade writing and publishing career, Josh has served in key editorial positions with notable magazines such as Terrain.org, DIAGRAM, and Gulf Coast. Josh now co-operates the creative cooperative and press FOSTER LITERARY with his wife, the poet Georgia Pearle Foster.