Ask the Author: Greg Dinner
Answered Questions (6)
Greg Dinner
In terms of what working on, I've answered. In terms of 'Narcissus in Utero', I wanted to write about the duality of the spirit, and the personality. Plot came after theme, or just after theme. The characters to some degree existed in the first book. But I wanted to explore more deeply notions of the 'Dreamcatcher' and what that meant, explore again, and utilize more fully, Native American myth and folklore. Mostly I wanted to try to continue to work out the idea of who are we as a human being who travels sometimes unknowingly between light and darkness, the two sides of our personality. We live in the grey zone as I've said elsewhere. 'Narcissus' is about that grey zone. I like difficult fiction. I've said elsewhere I don't want to make it easy on readers; my ideal reader is someone who is an insomniac, as Joyce said, who reads through for days on end, and then starts again. I personally build architecture of story structure but also page structure, sentence structure, paragraphs and words. All of this is, to me, a part of the process of writing, but also reflected in story itself. Story, plot, do not exist in isolation of that architecture. So where did I get the idea? From within, banging on my imagination for release. I saw a certain world, a certain universe, saw what it mean for my characters, and thus wrote.
Greg Dinner
I used to discuss this with my screenwriting students. There is inspiration all around you. You write what you know but that doesn't necessarily mean a world you know, or know well. You write about what you care about, and about the themes that resonate in whatever world or milieu. You explore ideas and thus you explore yourself. I get much inspiration from true stories that sit in my thoughts and memory and then explode. From that I extrapolate fiction, taking in the the themes that I have spent a lifetime exploring, working over, and over, and over again.... and still not finding the answers to the question I ask.
Greg Dinner
Something very different from my first two books. I have now started writing work, after thinking it through for five years, researching and outlining for two. Based on a story told by an actress friend, I'm writing a story set in Warsaw in 1938-43, Warsaw 1968, Warsaw and New York, 2008. A story about identity, about loss and pain, about trauma and finding hope. Painful to write, and a joy simultaneously.
Greg Dinner
Rewrite. And remember words, sentences, paragraphs, pages are not static. They are dynamic. Now rewrite again.
Greg Dinner
Silence and living in the world of your imagination, although that can sometimes be horrific, terrifying, painful while illuminating. The best thing? Being there, in all its mystery.
Greg Dinner
I don't suffer writer's block but I have been known to procrastinate.
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