Why do you write?
There are bugs in my brain. As far back as I can remember, from the time I was eight years old or so, I was writing songs in my head and singing them to Children in the West Denver Housing Projects. What’s a poor boy gonna do? Writing and singing are like breathing to me. If I ever stopped, I would be forever stopped.
How do you write?
Characters, situations, certain madnesses invade the spaces between the particles of my living. I write it out when I can, on paper, cardboard, tablecloths, anything I can get my hands on. I’ve written haiku on bed sheets and chapters on the walls. My brother sent me an epic poem from prison written in pencil on a roll of toilet paper. I don’t like to write on toilet paper. It tears too easy.
Where do you write?
Everywhere, the toilet, the shower, worst of all in my truck while driving. It is near impossible to write and drive at the same time, yet I do it every day. Later, attempting to decipher what I have written is a nightmare. True Sleep is a nation I have rarely visited in my life. A lady asked me not long ago whether I was high on drugs or alcohol when I penned a particular piece she had read. “No,” I replied, “I was trying to sleep.” When I was young and naïve, I thought this was something very special, bordering on prophetic, that the voices waited until I relaxed to have their way with me. Now I know I’m just too damned weak to push them away. I’ve never mastered what comes natural to most folks, the art of simply lying down and going to sleep. The last doctor I saw concerning this problem suggested I go for walks in the park and watch the ducks. Now I don’t like ducks and I don’t like him either.
What is your writing routine?
The pen comes to my hand and I write it down. In my younger days, I tried to make sense of ideas as they were written, to get it right the first time. I know now that you never get it right. You can edit until your fingers bleed (and I do) but the deed is never done and complete. I proofread over and over and always use spell-check when I transfer work from paper to machine. My advice to youngsters when I visit classrooms is to date everything. This helps immensely when going back and arranging thoughts and creating finished work. It also provides a chronological backdrop to what you have written, something that might not matter to you when you’re young but becomes important and interesting later. I got upset concerning my failures when I was nineteen years old and burned everything I had written. At twenty-three I had this bright idea to date everything I wrote so I could go back and look over what I couldn’t go back and look over because I had burnt it.
How would you describe your writing style?
I’m not sure I have a style. Genre writing makes me crazy; what does it mean? Dialogue is important to me. I like to put myself in character and speak as I imagine they would speak. I’ve had mixed comments about my Cajun in The Warrior. Folks find his dialogue difficult and don’t understand it sometimes. I’ve had a few Cajun friends in my life and that pretty well describes how I feel during and after a conversation with them. When I first began to write haiku, I attempted to follow the disciplines related to that form. I finally gave up and just wrote them down as they came to me. If they don’t follow the five-seven-five syllable rule, I try to trim or add. If that doesn’t work, I let ‘em stand and call them epigrams or aphorisms. I’ve written over ten thousand of them. They’re in a collection I call Ten Thousand Whispers. I was in my thirties before I wrote a song that didn’t rhyme. It was a wonderful day in my life. I’m not sure I have a style. It’s possible that one has me.
Which writers have inspired you?
James Douglas Morrison, Friedrich Nietzsche, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ, Edgar Allan Poe, Elvis Presley, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Maya Angelou, Leonard Tolstoy, Hunter Thompson, Louis Lamour, Toni Morrison, Black Elk, Larry McMurtry, Herman Hesse, a vast plethora of emotional beggars. I am they are me.
What are your favourite books, and why?
I don’t have favorite books. I’ve been an avid reader all my life. I remember reading Black Beauty, Call of the Wild, Where the Red Fern Grows, etc. when I was a boy. How I dreaded the last few pages of those books. I didn’t want it to be over, my affair with the goings on in there. To me that’s the mark of a good book, an engaging read, the feeling of loss when it’s over. My GreatGrandmother was a Cherokee woman. Maybe it’s that blood in me; I’ve never read a book by or about Native Americans that didn’t teach me something. My wife, Karen, picks out the books I read now. I refuse to make the choices. With the exception of Watership Down, I have read every book I ever started, cover to cover. I don’t like talking animals. Those who humanize our fellow creatures aggravate me. There are better and more effective ways to draw analogies.
What are your writing ambitions?
My slogan is Live to Write/Write to Live. I aspire to finally be able to feed myself, to exist from the labors of my writing. I used to say I just wanted to be published, to be able to buy a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter, to provide a meal for my family with money earned from writing. I’ve accomplished that goal and have raised the bar. I would now like to be able to make a house payment from that fund; haven’t found a house small enough to meet the arrangement.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Accept the fact that you were born to write. If you suffer from that ailment they call writer’s block, don’t worry about it. If you’re really a writer, the muse will come back to haunt you. Learn to deal with rejection. A friend of mine, a womanizer of epic proportions, advised me to dance with every woman in the club. There’s one out there just for you and it only takes one dance. I don’t dance but have found his concept suitable to the danse of creativity. If you don’t have a line in the water, you ain’t gonna catch no fish. A few years ago a lady in a writing group on the internet posted her Rule of Four. Rather than allowing rejections to get her down, she had four pieces out there at all times. I adapted that to my Rule of Thirteen. I always have at least thirteen pieces out in the bushes. Sometimes that amounts to thirteen rejections and each one hurts in its own unique way. It’s okay to get pissed off; works for me. I am manic/possessive, obsessive/depressive, all those psycho-babble ‘ives’ at a sitting. There’s no getting even. You simply have to keep trying. Write and submit. Submit and write.
What are you working on currently?
Maree Agland with SkyDancer Creations has expressed interest in pitching The Warrior to those who make movies so I am involved in the arduous process of scripting a 312,000 word novel to 120 pages of script. She is based in Australia and has hooked me up with a script writer in Canada. When we’re through, she’ll offer the script to film makers in New Mexico and California. Hey, the internet is a wonderful thing. I’m a man who never has and never will ride on an airplane and I’m even able to do business with a very nice, talented lady from… uh.. Scotland. I am writing sequels to both my novels and working on a couple of others; also badgering my son to sit down with me in the studio and cut a couple of CD’s, work I did in my twenties. Always seeking a benefactor, a patron if you will. I’m also busy putting Ten Thousand Whispers in order and making the decisions about what goes in to create a couple of poetry compilations. Prayer Seeds, a Children’s book I am co-writing with Karen, is also nearing completion. Speaking of style, I’m enjoying that because I have to behave myself. In 2004 I edited the Arabic to English translation of Noise of Whisper, a collection of poetry by Bahrain poet, Hameed Al-Qaed. He is working with The Ministry of Bahrain to create a compilation of Bahrain Poets from 1940 to 2005 and has asked me to edit the work. I am most excited to begin this project because it demands the discipline of getting completely outside myself to appropriately appreciate and interpret the work of these gifted individuals. It is, in my opinion, the highest complement I have ever received related to the art that drives the wheels in my soul.
