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For Brandon Schrand, writing is simple.
It’s a job that gets done and in his case, it is award-winning.
The UI Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program recently had his memoir, “The Enders Hotel,” chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.
His was among about 80 writers out of thousands that were chosen as part of the summer 2008 seasonal selection.
“I am so honored to have gotten what I’ve gotten,” Schrand said.
Schrand’s memoir was also awarded the 2007 River Teeth Prize for Literary Nonfiction, and the title piece from the memoir was named a Notable Essay in “Best American Essays 2007.”
The publishers of Schrand’s memoir nominated him for the Barnes and Noble award.
“I thought it was such a long shot that I completely forgot about it,” Schrand said.
When he did found he had won, Schrand said he was stunned and dazed.
“I was trying to process it. It was just so surreal,” Schrand said.
UI English professor Mary Blew taught Schrand in several classes and was the second reader on his thesis committee.
“The award is an important one for Brandon, particularly at this stage of his career, and of course it is a mark of pride for the English department,” Blew said.
Having grown up running a historic hotel in Soda Springs with his parents and grandparents, Schrand said he had the idea to write about his experiences when he was in high school, but as fiction rather than nonfiction.
He said he wanted a unity of vision and realized later it should be a memoir.
“My voice was stronger in nonfiction, it got rid of a false veil,” Schrand said.
He began writing “The Enders Hotel” as a master’s student at UI.
Blew said the book “describes Schrand’s boyhood in Soda Springs with a mix of idyllic freedom and heartbreak.”
It took Schrand two years to write the first 150 pages and soon after, he threw out the first 80 pages and re-wrote them.
He currently has boxes filled with revisions of his memoir.
“Talent is important, but perseverance is most important of all,” Blew said. “Brandon was an extremely hard-working, painstaking student, willing to revise and revise.”
The day after he graduated with his M.F.A degree in May of ‘06, Schrand said he got up and wrote the next 150 pages in a little over three months.
“I wrote every day. Once I knew what the story was about, it was a race to the end,” Schrand said.
Several revisions took place, Schrand said, because the voice in the beginning of the book was different from when he finished.
Kelly Blikre, a UI graduate student in the M.F.A program, shared classes with Schrand when he was a student.
“Brandon was in his last year of graduate school when I was in my first, but even then, he seemed more like a teacher than a student,” Blikre said.“It’s not just that he led class discussion — which he did, and brilliantly — it’s that his work was so ambitious, that he was so ambitious.”
Schrand took perfecting his memoir seriously.
“The voice had to be seamless,” Schrand said, taking between August and January to revise the memoir.
Schrand said he has never experienced writer’s block.
“Carpenters don’t have carpenter’s block,” Schrand said, approaching writing as a job.
He also denies there being any such thing as a muse, but that writing just needs to work.
“You need to get rid of the romantic notions of the business and keep writing daily,” Schrand said.
To other writers, Schrand said to read everything and tune their language.
“You’ve got to have the music of the language with words,” Schrand said.
Schrand is now in the running for the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, which has a $10,000 prize.
“You can’t think about those things. Crush hope and live frugally for surprise,” Schrand said.
Blikre said his determination to achieve excellence is clear.
“Brandon’s fresh, lyrical sentences are evidence of his commitment to craftsmanship; the power of the story itself, a result of his determination to get things right,” Blikre said.
Schrand said he will continue to write without too much pause.
“I will never live long enough to write all I want to write,” Schrand said.
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