AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID M. DONACHIE
Question 1 :Please let me know something that you believe in OR few punchlines from your books?
I believe that anyone can be a writer, or an artist, if they just practice hard and long enough. Of course, that doesn’t make it easy, but it drives me mad when people say “Oh, I could never do anything like that.” They can, they just don’t know it, or believe it.
Question 2 :Are you happy about being an Author?
I am ecstatic. As a child, being an author was all I ever wanted. I couldn’t tell you why. I loved books from when I was little, and I dreamt of seeing my name on a book cover. The fact that it’s now happened, and more than once, is a miracle that never stops making me happy.
Question 3 :What’s your inspiration as an author?
I like to tell stories. My main hobby (other than writing, reading, and art) is tabletop roleplaying games, and they are all about telling stories, and what is writing if not a way to tell stories to more people than you could actually hope to get in a room together.
Question 4 :What are the best things or positive things about your stories ?
A lot of my stories are about loss, or loneliness, or death — heavy topics — but I always try to end them on a point of hope, an accommodation with the darkness, a person found, love blooming, new life. I love to take my characters to dark places and them lead them out again.
Question 5 :Which book or books have you published and which are in pipeline?
I currently have two fiction books out. The first is a short fiction anthology from 2018 called “The Night Alphabet”. That’s a book about dreams and nightmares, and stories woven from them. A lot of it was based on actual dreams that I, or people I know, had.
The second is a Mesolithic fantasy novel called “The Drowning Land”, which came out this January. The Drowning Land is set in Doggerland, the landscape that used to be at the bottom of where the North Sea is now. It’s a book heavily influenced by real science and archeology.
Question 6 :How to deal with a “Writer’s Block”?
I wish I knew, because it’s something I’ve often suffered, and I don’t have a good way out of it. Usually, I just move on to something else for a while. I’m a bit of a creative polymath, which is another way of saying that I can’t stick to one thing at a time. So I draw, or design games, or something else, until the urge to write comes back.
Question 7 :Any “Top tips” for writers starting out?
Same as my advice to someone wanting to be an artist, or a games designer, or any other creative thing — do it, but practice. Most people who claim to just have natural unpracticed talent are lying to you. Everyone needs to train. Everyone needs to learn craft, and that process never stops.
For writing, specifically, that means both reading, and writing. No one ever became a good writer without reading. Read the classics of your genre, read the classics of other genres, read world-famous authors who have never been near your genre. Absorb those stories and then use them to help write your own. Don’t be afraid to pastiche until you find your own voice.
And edit. Edit, edit, and edit again. Write your story, put it aside, then come back to it. Read it aloud. Read it on paper. Change everything that doesn’t feel right. Don’t force other people to read it before you’ve edited it to death — and then edit to death again based on their comments.
Question 8 :What are the problems that you have faced in your Author journey?
The hardest thing of all, I think, is to have people notice what you do.
This is a wonderful age for writing, a democratic one. The rise of self-publication has made it easy for people to get their works published. There are a thousand anthologies, and web magazines. But that very flood of publications means that it is harder than ever to have anyone actually notice what you’ve done. And of course at the same time the big traditional publishers have shut their doors, closed down their slush piles, and made themselves even more exclusive.
Question 9 :How did you approach the writing process? Do you have a set routine or does it vary?
I don’t have any sort of dedicated writing space, sadly. I just have to fit it in wherever I can. Large parts of The Drowning Land were written on an iPad during my lunch breaks, sitting out in the park near to my office. Other bits were written on my phone, or on my laptop while sitting on the living room floor.
But I’m definitely an evening writer. I’m a night owl anyway, but late at night is when I can really get into the zone, put on some music, and bang out the words on my laptop wherever I’ve happened to end up: on the sofa, on the floor, in bed.
Question 10 :For you , what makes a great story ?
I love a good setting, something evocative, beautiful to read about (even if it’s actually ugly), a fine bit of world building, but that doesn’t make a story. For a great story, things have to happen, people have to change. I want to read (and write) about people facing challenges. They don’t have to overcome them, but they have to strive. Over the years I’ve had many great ideas for a setting, or a situation, but most of them don’t turn into stories.
Question 11 :What Genre of Books do you create and Why you chose it ?
My fiction runs through a range of related genres: fantasy, fairytale, folklore, sf, horror, magical realism. I think of all of these as part of the same continuum, stories where the ordinary is twisted by contact with the abnormal, and then turned into a mirror for the real things we all experience.
Some of my favorite books toe this line between the real and the unreal: the children’s fantasy of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper, the work of Calvino, the mythic fiction of Robert Holdstock. I would like to write books as magical as the ones they write. I’ve got a long way to go.
Question 12 :Where can people contact you ?
I’m mostly active on Facebook, so that’s the best place to find me on Social Media. I’ve got twitter, and Goodreads too, of course, but I check them less often. I also put all my writing news on my own website, and mailing list.
Website — https://www.teuton.org/~stranger/writing
Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DavidMDonachieAuthor/
Amazon — https://amazon.com/author/dmdonachie
Goodreads — https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18004113.David_M_Donachie
Question 13:Any final parting advice?
There’s a lot to be said (and a lot is said) about writing to a market, hoping on trends, and the like. But people should also write what they love. Write the books you want to read, tell the stories you want to hear told.
