Matthew J. C. Clark: Trust That You Have Something to Say

Matthew J. C. Clark lives and works as a carpenter in Bath, Maine. His essays have appeared in True Story, the Antioch Review, the Seneca Review, Ecotone, the Indiana Review, Fourth Genre, Wag’s Revue, and CutBank. Learn more at MatthewJCClark.com.

Matthew J. C. Clark

In this post, Matthew discusses how letting go of expectations led him to something more surprising and truthful in his debut literary nonfiction book, Bjarki, Not Bjarki, his advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Matthew J. C. Clark
Book title: Bjarki, Not Bjarki: On Floorboards, Love, and Irreconcilable Differences
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Release date: January 24, 2024
Genre/category: Literary Nonfiction
Elevator pitch: (String-heavy orchestration could be uplifting could be ominous) (Deep-voiced narrator) (Scent of popcorn) Two men, a forest of pines, the world’s widest floorboards, a crumbling marriage, a changing climate, an insurrection at the capital, a crab rangoon, a bag of wood shavings: How do we make sense of The World, especially when the floor beneath our feet is always expanding and contracting, cupping and gapping?

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

Bjarki, Not Bjarki started as a magazine style essay about a wood mill in central Maine that manufactures the widest, purest, most metaphorical pine floorboards around. As a carpenter, I was interested in these American Dream Boards and I wanted to profile the owner, Bjarki Thor Gunnarsson. However, Bjarki turned out not to be who I wanted him to be—whatever that means.

I remember composing descriptions so that he appeared to be some kind of romantic notion of a wood guru. But that just didn’t feel right. When I allowed myself to really write him as I saw him—not as I wanted to see him—it blew things wide open. Now I was free to write about my relationship with him, both as his friend and as his documentarian.

As I looked closely at how I wanted Bjarki to be somebody else, I saw that wanting everywhere. I wanted me to be someone different too, and The World, and my floor, and my marriage, etc. Suddenly, I was writing a book about so much more than a man who makes pine floorboards.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I started researching the magazine style essay in January of 2017 and The Book, Bjarki, Not Bjarki, was acquired by University of Iowa Press in November of 2022. And now it’s being published in January of 2024. Seven years! Is that a long time? It feels like a long time, and like no time at all. Once I let go of needing to know what The Book was about, The Book was free to become whatever it wanted, which is something much weirder, wilder, and I’d say more beautiful than anything I could have imagined.

So much of the process of writing and revising is an exercise in trust. After allowing myself to drop into this place of not-knowing, I started making all these decisions about form and content that I didn’t understand. Parentheses riddle the book. I address the reader directly. Bjarki is (briefly) transformed into an eggplant (an eggplant!). Then I curse out Henry David Thoreau. My therapist makes repeated cameos. If you had told me it would be a good idea to do those things before I did them, I would have without a thought dismissed you.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I have never published a book before, and though I know people who have, for some reason I only heard about their experience in broad outline. Much of the process is still a mystery to me, maybe a mystery to many of the people involved.

I would love to make a movie—maybe a Muppet movie—called The Muppets Publish a Book, in which, for whatever reason, probably some combination of AI and internet video-streaming, the whole publishing industry is shut down, and it is left to the Muppets to publish books and, in the process, explain the process to us. The movie should probably have a much more Muppet-y title. Like, how does an Editor decide what book to buy? What are the mechanics of her intuition? And, who decides how many copies to print? And what about fonts? Who decides fonts (and how?) (I love Bjarki, Not Bjarki’s font!)? Who designs fonts? How do you become a font designer? Is it too late for me to design fonts?!

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Ohmygod, yes. The whole process was a surprise. Sort of like Life. Like everything. Like coffee. Like, you know you’re going to have a cup of coffee in the morning, but you don’t know if you’re going to burn your tongue on that first sip, or spill the coffee, or forget to grind the beans and end up doing a pour over with whole beans rather grounds. (I found myself doing that the other morning.)

I think that during the early phases of writing Bjarki, Not Bjarki, I spent a lot of time trying to control and anticipate and not be surprised (This is what coffee tastes like, etc.), which led to much more predictable (boring) writing. Like, if I had described Bjarki (the main character) as I wanted him to be (insert romantic-notion-of-wood-guru here), I think I would have ended up writing a magazine style essay you’ve already read. Now, after letting Bjarki surprise me in real life and letting myself write without constraint, Bjarki has become a much more surprising, funny, messy, and therefore more believable (and lovable) part of the book. Love—that’s a big one. I was definitely surprised when I realized I’d set out to write about a man who makes floorboards and ended up writing a book about love.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I feel like I’m being a little long-winded here, and I’m not even chewing gum! (I can go on and on when I chew gum.) So, maybe just a few bullet points. I hope readers will:

Gain a greater understanding about how a tree standing in the forest is turned into your floor.Appreciate a little the miracle of this existence (trees, photosynthesis, spongiology).See the humanity in the people involved in that process (love those people (seriously.)).Glimpse how much of the world we experience is based on assumptions about that world, not The Actual World—whatever that is.Enjoy a few quiet reflective hours, perhaps napping intermittently on a couch by the wood stove.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

There is so much good advice out there already! And often, for whatever reason (Platitude!) (I don’t need advice!) (Please, that advice-giver wants to make a Muppet movie!), I failed to really heed that advice. But anyway, here’s a piece of advice that I think my younger self could have used: Don’t worry about knowing exactly what you want to say. Trust that what you want to say—even if you don’t know what it is—needs to be said, and eventually, inevitably, will be.

And trust that you do have something to say. Everyone has something to say. Just keep writing. Just keep writing. As you draft and revise, perhaps for what feels like an eternity (It is an eternity. (An eternity exists in every moment.)), whatever needs to be said, you will eventually say.

With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!