Ask the Author: David Donavel
Answered Questions (6)
David Donavel
I start the books with a character in a situation and see then I see what happens. Testimony started with a guy in his kitchen complaining that his daughter came home too late for the dinner they'd planned. Alice and Iris started with my remembering a guy I happened to see on Cape Cod. He was taking a walk by himself in the morning. The Bet started with an image of two guys having a conversation in a little park on the river that runs through my town.
David Donavel
That's the wrong question. I am never inspired beforehand. I often get excited by the work in progress, which is to say that I like what happens when the story gets going. But that's not what people mean my inspiration. Or at least I don't think it is. I guess I don't know what they mean. It seems vague, somehow related to breathing.
David Donavel
It's August. I'll start the next novel in September. Summers are too crazy at my house for writing. In just finished revising the latest work, Testimony, and posting in on Amazon as a Kindle book. Looking forward to starting a new one.
David Donavel
Write. The Goodreads computer wants me to elaborate on that, but there is little more to say. Write. If you seek fame and lots of money from your work, well, good luck. Some people find that, but most of us don't. As aspiring writer is not the same as one who aspires to publication or best-sellerdom. You get to make something from nothing. It's like being a god.
David Donavel
Writing regularly keeps a person out of trouble. I don't mean only that if one is at the desk, she's not in the bars. I mean also that it provides an individual with something that feels as if it's worth doing. This has nothing to do with publication. It has to do with getting lost in the project. In this way, writing is just like reading.
David Donavel
The best advice I ever received on writer's block is that you overcome it by lowering your standards. In bird by bird Annie Lamott's recipe for composition is five hundred words and a shitty first draft. It's the same answer. Put down the words that come to mind and before you know it, the block is gone.
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