Meet Will Viharo

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Will Viharo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Will , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I have a strong survival instinct and a therapeutic love for Art, Nature, and Life.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am a lifelong writer and creator of what I now designate as my own specialized genre, “existential pulp fiction.” Though intense literary ambition has been my dominant passion throughout many triumphs and tribulations spanning 61 years, I no longer consider this my sole identity or purpose, nor conventional success as the lost key to my personal fulfillment. I’ve come to regard my singular body of work as an ongoing yet comprehensive creative expression of who I am as a human being, reflecting my personality, tastes, and world view, informed and inspired by my own unique experiences as opposed to a formal education (I was on my own and supporting myself at age 16), and my life itself as the true living art project, evolving over time, as I do.

This epiphany was first realized during the composition of my recently published epistolary memoir, “Graffiti in the Rubber Room: Writing For My Sanity,” which I consider to be my magnum opus and greatest achievement as an author, and one of my proudest accomplishments as a person, since I not only wrote it, I lived it. Money has never been my motivation as an artist, so I’ve never considered my couple of dozen or so books as commercial commodities, beyond the requisite publication and promotional process, which partly explains why after more than 40 years of dedication to my craft, I remain largely obscure to the general public. I’ve also never been competitive because I’ve never seen art as a sport, but a very personal spiritual journey unique to the traveler telling his or her own tales. I can’t say I lost a game I eventually decided not to play.

Lightning sometimes struck out of the blue despite my avowed independence, but no bottle could ever catch and hold it long enough to turn that random spark into a career wildfire. As a writer with faith in my talent and conviction in my calling, I felt both blessed and cursed.

For a long time I’ve struggled to reconcile this narcissistic sense I was somehow special with the conflicting reality of cosmic apathy, often sinking into debilitating despair, even though I am happily married to my best friend and enjoy good health, which in the brief scheme of mundane existence matter much more than book sales, a relatively petty pursuit. My closest brush with fame was when Christian Slater found and optioned my first published novel, a gonzo-pulp-noir called “Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me,” first published in 1995 by Wild Card Press then reissued in 2013 by Gutter Books with Christian himself depicted as my beleaguered private eye Vic Valentine on the cover. After penning several drafts himself he even solicited my help with the screenplay as one of many gracious gestures, including a first class round trip to Miami where we did location scouting, setting the action there instead of San Francisco for logistical reasons.. This was his passion project not only as the star but also the director, and his sincere enthusiasm was quite flattering, since this celebrity I long admired had become a mutual fan. We came very close to seeing our gorgeous storyboards by Matt Brown translated into magical moving images, but right on the brink of fulfilling seemingly inevitable destiny, fate abruptly twisted our paths in a different direction. This stunning disappointment spawned a decade of simmering depression, from which my spirit is only now fully recovered, largely due to the fact my survivalist response was to simply keep writing, as usual. The resulting work, which I consider to be my best, speaks for itself.

My work is very personal but also cinematic, philosophical and sometimes spiritual, dealing most often with the universal human condition of loneliness, yet with exploitative elements associated with noir and grindhouse movies. This is why I call it “existential pulp fiction.”

Right now I am typing these words with a spectacular view of the Space Needle from my home office in a newly purchased co-op condo in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of my beautiful city of choice, Seattle. This alone makes me feel like the real success I’ve always strived to be after overcoming many obstacles and surviving many challenges. For the first time in my surrealistic life, I feel like I have everything I want, even if I never attained the rarified status of a popular, bestselling author despite decades of relentless effort. My dreams have come true in unexpected ways, and not even belated widespread appreciation of my existing output could possibly improve upon my already stellar quality of life. I also feel like I’ve earned this success the hard, honest way, and therefore I appreciate it that much more.

My work in progress is a direct sequel to the very first novel I ever wrote, “Chumpy Walnut,” about a guy only a foot tall. I was 16 when I hand-wrote the first draft into a spiral notebook in 1979, 19 when I typed up the final revision in 1982, and 47 when I finally self-published it in 2010. The new book is entitled “The Romance of Chumpy Walnut” after a manuscript I wrote but then abandoned as hopeless in 1984 at age 21. I plan to complete this revamped sequel–which is more like a complete reboot, since both Chumpy and I have changed a lot in those four decades–in my dream home which I share with my dream wife Monica, a professor and college dean (not bad for a high school dropout from New Jersey like me), and our beloved cat Googie at my feet. When my memoir came out last year to promising praise only to take a sharp nose dive in terms of actual sales, I was devastated and vowed to never again write another book from a place of desperation, only fulfillment.

For once, the Universe called my bluff.

I now reside completely and comfortably in that mythical place of calm contentment as opposed to raw resignation, not because my memoir was a career-launching hit or a movie was finally made out of one of my novels, but via a circuitous path I boldly traveled at my own risk with no promise of a reward, unexpectedly arriving at a destination I never even dared to imagine, because it might just be another mirage. I’ve always described my books as notes in bottles, flung out from a remote desert island into a vast dark sea, in hopes that one or all might one day be discovered and my ship would finally come in. My ship did come in, more than once, but then backed out of port without me and left me stranded. As it turns out, my little island is the only paradise I ever really wanted, or needed, because it’s my sanctuary, not my prison.

It’s good to be home, especially when you realize you never really left, since home is indeed where the heart is. Cheers.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Perseverance with no expectation of a payoff, self-esteem without reliance on the opinions of others, learning by doing not dreaming. My only advice to anyone about anything is to stay true to yourself, trust your own instincts, and never give up.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

Me.

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