Max Andrew Dubinsky, the writer and the name behind Make It MAD, free from the confines of retail shackles and chains, caught up with me to talk about childhood novels, drinking, God, and sharks at M Street Coffee in Los Angeles, California.

Why do you write?

It's in my veins. I've been writing for as long as I can remember. First grade: I wrote my first book in first grade.

First book? What was it called?

First book. The Turkey and the Pilgrim. It was a fully illustrated adventure with written narration. It was about a turkey. And a pilgrim. The pilgrim was trying to find a turkey for dinner. In the end, they have Thanksgiving dinner together.

And you illustrated it?

And colored it, wrote it, everything. I did a whole series of books like that. They weren't always about turkeys and pilgrims, but it's what I did for fun. I didn't play any sports or video games. I sat in my room and wrote books. I would take multiple sheets of computer paper and staple them together. I even wrote author and publisher information on the front copy. I did it all, man. I ran my own printing press! I’ll tell you what, though. It was a lot easier to write a book in first grade than it is now.

[laughs]

It's entirely more challenging now. I wrote my first real book in fifth grade. Escape from School. I wrote it by hand on over 200 sheets of notebook paper. It starred Bruce Willis and Christian Slater as themselves. [laughs] I was the action hero, and they happened to be at my school for whatever reason. Beautiful stuff. The school was taken over by terrorists, and I had to save the day. I clearly developed a hero complex pretty early on in my life. That was my first novel. The first book I wrote was in first grade, the first novel was written by hand in fifth grade. Then my second novel I wrote when I was 21.

That's a long time between novels.

Well, I struggled with being a writer in my home town. No one else was doing it. Everyone else was playing football and studying business, growing up with aspirations to be teachers. Me, I made creepy crawlers a lot, remember those? You bake those bugs made of goo in a plastic oven. I would sell those on the street. Literally. I sold them to kids in my classroom. Who would buy that crap? Clearly I was caught up in the underbelly of society there. So, yeah, it took me over nine years to write my second novel.

What was that experience like?

I was 21 and drunk for the entire duration I worked on that one. So that made that easy to write. [laughs] The lesson here? You have to be careless in the care of your creativity. In fifth grade I didn’t know what I was doing so I didn’t care. I was drunk while writing my second book so I didn’t care then either. In both instances I completed a novel. Now I'm a sober, disciple of Christ who can't write anything but this blog.

[laughs all around]

Who are your inspirations and influences as a writer?

My inspirations, not because I love their writing but because they weren't afraid to define a generation; they weren't afraid to step out of the box: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Salinger. They just took it to the next level. They didn't care. They wrote anything they wanted. Broke all the rules. I respect them as writers.

A lot of modern fiction is my influence. My writing style has developed from a lot of modern fiction that's out these days. Charlie Huston, Dennis Lehane, Kelly Braffet. Those are larger influences of mine. I would say as far as favorite authors go, everything Salinger has done. He just knew how to do it. He could propel an entire novel with just dialogue. I have a lot of respect for that.

You've recently been making moves to write for a living. What precipitated this, and what are some of the challenges you are facing as a result?

Working a regular job was never for me. I’ve been working since I was fourteen, and I never enjoyed any position I ever held. Every time I knew I was working a job that belonged to someone else. I spent 4 years in a meat packing plant. I managed a Starbucks in Beverly Hills, I helped open a restaurant in West Hollywood, I washed dishes, I worked in retail, I ran the front desks at hotels. My last job, managing that Starbucks, when I left there, I decided I would never work another 9 to 5 job again.

But at the same time, writing itself is a full time job. It's a very hard thing to try to have a job, and write at the same time. You have to go all in with one or the other.

Or never sleep.

Exactly, and I like to sleep. [laughs] And I played that game, it doesn't work.

One of the most stifling things to an artist and his ambitions are the traditional schools of thought about what makes a valid career. You are now writing as a career. What are your thoughts on this?

I think the validity of writing isn't recognized as a career, as a job, until after you have success. People don't see you selling your stuff to pay rent, the networking and rejection letters, the submissions. The hours of manuscripts, and throwing things away then writing them again. Nobody ever sees that part. All they see is the final product when it comes to writing. Sometimes I feel as though anyone unfamiliar with the writing process kind of thinks you just wish that stuff into existence.

What determines success as a writer?

Writing. Just writing.

Selling?

Selling has nothing to do with the success of a writer. It's the simple task of writing. The writing itself is the success. It's sitting down at your computer and writing every single day.

Much of your work focuses on relationships, and within those, many are damaged and somewhat dysfunctional. Is it just more entertaining to write about things that are broken?

My life is damaged and dysfunctional. [laughs] A writer writes what he knows...If my life was all rainbows and rose gardens I'd write about those too. Unicorns and snap dragons.

Photo Matthew Desotell

Look, life is ugly. Life is broken. We live in a fallen world, and I think the best redemption comes out of that. I'm fascinated by the way we humans handle being broken, but I that’s where redemption lies: in being broken. That's why I write about it.

Let's talk about darkness for a bit. Typically, when one thinks about God, the concept of light is often the norm. In terms of Christianity, when it comes to artistic expression, the idea of darkness and God is virtually non existent. Yet, the opening pages of the Bible tells us that darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters... What is it about darkness that inspires many artists and fuels their work?

God's light shines brightest in the darkness. If all art was safe and full of light all the time, we wouldn't see the light. I think that's what compels me to write about redemption, to write about the ugly side of life. It's so much easier to identify the light in the dark. Otherwise, we blind ourselves by turning on all the lights around us, and we don't know where the real light is coming from anymore.

What about the connotation that many Christians hold that darkness is evil, if you are a Christian you can't write about darkness because that's not God.

Then what are you writing about? Our planet is an incredible place, but it's a fallen world. We're all sinners. It is in our nature: darkness. We have terrible thoughts, we act certain ways. I think to say anything else in your writing is just lying. But I believe the only thing we owe to anyone in this world is the truth. Let it wreck what it will wreck, and leave them to sort out the pieces.

I feel like Christians, writers, Christian as artists in general, limit themselves. They draw this box and they give themselves boundaries because they are afraid to see what would happen or what their Christian audience will think if they crossed the boundary.

The thing that I stand by and get criticism for, is that I am a Christian and I write about sex, and porn, and violence, and once and a while, I curse too for good measure.

Does that bother you?

I'm not after Christians. They’re saved. They know the truth. I’m after the people who want nothing to do with God. The most rewarding thing about what I am doing is the letters and fan mail, certain things that I get. I get emails every day from people telling me: I was reading your blog, and I can't believe you're a Christian, this is awesome. When someone tells me, Your blog was just what I was looking for to re-ignite, to get my faith back on track, that’s success. That’s all that matters. Make It MAD is just a road sign along the way to the truth.

Do you consider yourself a perfectionist?

No. I'm a writer, and I am never going to be perfect with what I write. You'll never be happy or satisfied with your work if it's got to be perfect. My writing is far from perfect and I am far from a perfect individual. But I do strive to be better.

Do you pray before you write?

I pray before I write my blog. I don't often pray before I write my fiction. When I write fiction it just kind of happens. I just sit down and start writing. One minute I'm doing one thing and the next minute I've got an idea, and I sit and I write. However, it’s a different story with my blog. I never want Make It Mad to be about me. And it's a hard, hard thing to do. The mentality I write with is that I am not the truth, but hopefully this will point you in the direction of the truth. I think the content on Make It MAD is better than any writing I've ever done. And Make It MAD is the only writing of mine that I've 100% surrendered over to God.

Do you get writer's block?

Before Max could answer, a woman walked over to our table and reached above us, removing a piece of artwork from the wall then proceeded right out the front door with it.

[There's some art thieves in here, someone should stop them...] [laughs] [This is awkward.] [laughs] [Nobody's doing anything...]

Do I get writer's block? Writer's block is just an excuse for alcoholics to drink.

What typically is the process you go thru in writing a fictional piece?

I sit at the keyboard and cut open a vein. Who said that? Poe, I think. Edgar Allen Poe. He said writing is easy. Just sit at the keyboard and cut open a vein. I tried that. I ended up in the hospital.

So my deal is: I don't think. I write, and I just spill. It's full of errors, terrible grammar, and incorrect punctuation, but I just let it flow. I think about a scene or a line of dialog or a character, just some some sort of scenario, and I put it on paper. Then I start building forward or backward from that.

Do you identify yourself as a Christian writer or a Christian who writes?

I identify myself as a writer who happens to be a Christian. Everything I write isn’t going to lead you to Christ. That’s a nice fantasy, but I think anyone who doesn’t believe in God is turned off by anything labeled as Christian, because no one wants to be saved anymore. We want to do the saving ourselves. However, I would absolutely identify Make It MAD as a Christian blog.

What makes it a Christian blog?

I'm trying to show people God's endless grace. No matter where you're at in life. God is in every blog that I write. Jesus and his love and sacrifice for us is in every blog that I write.

Do you feel like Christian writers, write for Christians?

I've struggled with this. On New Years Eve, someone had asked me, Do you think your blog is a Christian blog? At first I said no, and they replied, Your blog is a Christian blog. You talk about God, you talk about Jesus, you talk about his love. I couldn’t argue with that.

There's just an immediate stigma associated with Christianity. People are really put off, and this frustrates me because the very idea of Christianity was founded on Jesus who was love. And that's what he's about to his very core. That's what we talk about in this world today, love and equality, and all these great things. All things that Jesus started! That just really infuriates me. And my hope is that Make It MAD helps radically change the face of Christianity. So whether or not that associates me as a Christian writer, I don't care. That’s not what any of this is about.

If there was one thing you could fix about Christianity what would it be?

I've got enough to do. I've got a long list of things I need to do every single day. I don't need another list.

[laughs]

I remember the first time I ever told someone I was a Christian. I was on a date with a girl, it was my third date with her, and she mentioned Christianity. Called it crazy. So I told her I was a Christian. She looked at me, just stared and said, What? You? You're a Christian? How is that possible? You're...cool. How can a guy like you believe in a thing like that? My heart broke when she told me that. That's how you view it? That’s how far away we are from God as a society. I can't wait until that's reversed.

Redefined.

Redefined, and it's like, Oh, man! I should have known you were a Christian because you're so cool! I can't wait for that day. To me that's a movement, and that's what this generation of young kids in church and youth is being led to do: to change the face of Christianity. It is cool to believe in a Savior. I've never heard anything better than, I will never leave you or forsake you. All of these religious figures in history, none of them turned water into wine, none of them were walking on water, none of them offer complete and absolute forgiveness. All of them require good deeds, all of them require being good people, but how good is good enough? Jesus was the only one who said, I don't care who you are, I don't care what you've done, you're a sinner, but I've already forgiven you.

What advice do you have for the painter who is working at The Gap, the writer/barista at Starbucks, and the actor who's waiting tables?

If you're not living the life that you feel is intended for you, you have to take a risk. That risk looks different for everyone. It may mean quitting that job entirely, it may mean going to part time, but if your dream isn't to be in retail folding clothes, then you shouldn't be in retail folding clothes. You have to get uncomfortable. You've got to take the risk, it's about faith. You're not really living unless you're taking risks. Making mistakes is scary, making mistakes is very scary. What people don't remember is that there's so much room to make mistakes in life.

At the end of the day, the only failure I think anyone experiences is to not try. Not trying is not jumping, is not climbing up to the top and announcing, Okay, man, I finally made it up here. Am I gonna jump or not? I was so ready to jump when I worked at Starbucks. When I did, I didn’t know if I was going to land in crystal clear water, or shark-infested waters. Regardless, I still know how to swim.

So to that barista: Jump, take the risk. You can always get another job if things don't work out. You can always sleep on a friends couch. You can sell what you need to sell. People think losing their possessions means losing themselves. But owning your possessions is losing yourself.

You get one book, you're on a desert island, what book is it?

I get one book?

One book.

Am I alone on this island? Because if I'm not alone, it's Lord of the Flies.

[laughs all around]

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. One of the most heartbreaking books I ever read. I've read it three times now. There's nothing overly special about it. It's just a book of fiction, but l have never been so lost and caught up in two characters.

I say sharks you say:

[Max turns red, looks as visually uncomfortable as I've ever seen him]

Sorry, that was awesome! [still has no composure]

Recently, someone asked me, So what's wrong with sharks? I said, They're majestic and their beautiful creatures, but I do not favor drowning or being eaten. And last I checked sharks aren't known for their stimulating conversation. She asked, Why do you fear them? I fear sharks in the same way that I would fear spiders if I was caught in a giant web.

[laughs all around]

So you say sharks, I say, Swim faster!

Check Out

• Make It MAD
• MAD Across America