After working for a marketing firm in Chicago and starting a family, NIU alumnus Michael Antman found the time to write his first novel, an idea he had 12 years ago while living in Japan.

“Writing fiction is very hard to begin with,” Antman said. “I tried three other times to complete a novel and I only got to page 80. In my mind, if you get past page 80 you are home free. To me that’s the turning point. In my previous attempts I was never able to get past page 80. I don’t think the concept was strong enough.”

An aspiring poet in his early 20s, Antman found himself dropping out of graduate school and selling bibles door-to-door in Texas.

Discouraged by the number of rejection slips, Antman decided to put writing aside.

Antman is a partner in a marketing and corporate branding firm in Chicago. It took him more than a decade to publish his first book.

“I wish I had started novel writing in my 20s, [but] the pressures of earning a living started to take over,” he said.

For those aspiring writers, Antman has some advice.

“One piece of advice would be to read everything that they can get their hands on,” Antman said, “[It is] impossible to become a successful writer unless you’re well read,”

Antman also advises to have patience, because it takes a long time to write a book and a longer time to publish it. He acknowledges the importance of knowing the right people.

“Get out there and introduce yourself to people,” Antman said. “Make contacts and connections.”

Antman does not think people suffer from writer’s block. It is possibly a lack of motivation or the lack of material to write about.

“I think writer’s block is completely bogus,” he said. “It’s non-existent. I think if you can’t write it’s because you really don’t have anything compelling to write about or you don’t have enough research. To me, whether it is fiction or nonfiction, if you don’t have the material to work with, it’s very tough to get started.”

Another reason people have writers block is old-fashion procrastination, Antman said. Writing, like anything else, is a craft that can be learned, he said.

For his first novel, Antman based it on his time in Japan. However, he decided to write about the experiences of a Japanese musician in New York.

“I didn’t necessarily want to write a book about my experiences because I think too many people do that,” he said. “So I decided that I wanted to try something a little different, take the flip side – imagine what it would be like for a Japanese person in this country instead.”

Antman’s first novel, “Cherry Whip,” is about a young Japanese musician that travels to New York and faces many hardships, as well as the growing pains of adjusting to a foreign land.

Some of Antman’s experiences in Japan were transposed to the main character Hiroshi, but other personality traits were loosely based on an eccentric Japanese acquaintance of the author.

“I wanted to see through the eyes of a different kind of character,” Antman said. “To me that is what fiction is all about, seeing through the eyes of someone completely different than you as opposed to writing a version of yourself.”