We recently connected with Eddie Brophy and have shared our conversation below.
Eddie, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
I was born in 87′, so I grew up in the golden age of art and creativity (until you break down the nefarious and sordid aspects) in the 90s. My big sisters and I were the product of two disenfranchised lower-middle class working parents. Essentially this is the nicest way to say that I was half raised by two parents who graduated high school with no college incentives and the fact that the television was a REALLY great babysitter. In 1992, my parents divorced after a pretty traumatic incident and my single working-class mom would sit behind her electric typewriter with the conviction of….”I’m going to write the next great American novel,” being five at the time? I pulled up my little tikes plastic table next to her at our kitchen table with a typewriter my dad found in the trash and would mimic her keystrokes. I can tell you the songs playing on our kitchen radio…Magic 106.7 (“Black Velvet,” “Would I Lie to You?,” “Nick of Time”) So….when did creativity manifest and what keeps it alive? At five years old I made it a conviction that if my mom couldn’t finish her story, I would finish mine.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I graduated high school in 2005. I tried community college, but eventually dropped out and pursued broadcasting school in 2006. Following graduation, I took on several internships at a few radio stations (Money Matters Radio, WFNX) before taking my final internship at WAAF before I was hired as a board operator and production assistant. I grew up in a musical family, I essentially started writing because a childhood friend encouraged me to learn and play bass guitar so we could form a band. He wanted to sing but didn’t have a lot of confidence in his lyric writing ability and knew that I was pretty famous for writing poems for crushes and thought I might be able to be a decent lyricist. Music and writing were constants in my life so when college felt daunting I thought…alright, let’s try radio. When radio eventually proved futile, alright…let’s try this writing thing again. So I went back to college in 2010 and subsequently published my first poems and eventually went on to earn my Bachelor and Master’s degrees in creative writing. I published my first novel in 2020 which earned me a few awards and also published several poems before publishing two chapbooks “Autumn’s Eulogy,” and “Neurotica for the Modern Doomscroller.” Professionally? In October I started working for my local public access television station as the government access coordinator. I have been obsessed with public access since I was a little boy in the 90s, it just seemed like the punk rock version of cable TV. An old friend from middle school happened to land a gig at the station where I live (I moved back here after my divorce) he has been there for 11 years and he always hoped I could get an in, and as luck had it…there was an opening….I submitted my resume and landed the gig.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
If you’re getting rejected? And you will. A LOT. Don’t get daunted by rejection or take it personally. If you’re getting rejected? It means you’re trying. I stopped writing when I was 19 because I could have wallpapered an entire room with all of my rejections (I am aging myself, when I started trying to write professionally…. submissions were primarily through snail mail). If you’re writing because you LOVE to write? You’re going to write regardless of whether or not someone wants to publish you, so don’t fear being rejected.
Don’t try to be something you’re not. I have a relatively advanced vocabulary and I earned my fair share of critics because of it. I wasn’t trying to use these “fifty-cent words” to seem smarter, I was the kid who was always afraid of becoming redundant so I would challenge myself to expand my vocabulary so that I wouldn’t become instantly stale. At the same time? I think I used my vocabulary as a crutch to make myself stand out. What is going to make you stand out is your unique voice not your intelligent words. “Louie, Louie,” and “My Sharona” are two of my favorite songs…and they’re somewhat unintelligible but they resonate. They resonate because they weren’t trying hard to impress…they were just trying to tell a story in a very unique way. As Bill Withers once said…”Most people don’t know, or don’t care who you are,” make them. Tell YOUR story, but don’t try too hard to refine it.
If something you are writing scares you? You’re on the right track. My best work is ahead of me. As a kid, I lacked experience and knowledge. So most of what I was creating came across as pretentious and hyperbolic. I’m now a single divorced dad living paycheck to paycheck at 36. I have two boys (4 and 7) the more I emphasize the humanity of what I lost, what I’m trying to get back, and constantly fighting with that kid who originally wanted to be a hopeless romantic and poet…the more honesty pours out of me.
Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?
When my parents realized that I was a SPED kid who had no discernable talents outside of my particular skill in writing? They just encouraged it. I sometimes resent HOW much my mom encouraged me to write, and believe me…its confusing. I’ve published a fictional book about growing up in our family that didn’t exactly make her feel like a great parent, and there have been poems she has really been upset about in regard to moments in time growing up with her. There was never this sense of….don’t you dare tell your stories. I think my mom especially was terrified for me. I’m the youngest of three and the only boy in my family. My mom STILL at 64 and I’m 36…still tries to protect me even when she’s the antagonist. I grew up hearing all the disparaging words because I was a boy/man who writes, I grew up with a lot of obstacles. Buck teeth. Leg braces. Learning Disability. Skinny as the day is long. I always had a pretty contentious and awful relationship with my dad. He grew up military and very John Wayne focused. He died in 2014. It’ll be a decade this September that we lost him. He didn’t get to see me publish any of my books. I knew he’d be proud though. Despite our relationship he used to tell my mom I was their Rudy. My mom? I remember slow dancing with her to Elton John and Moody Blues as a kid and she’d always remind me that I was destined to be bullied, picked on, and dismissed, because I wasn’t meant to do things the way they were supposed to be done.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @eddiebrophywriter
Image Credits
NORCAM
