Ask the Author: Dylan Evans
Answered Questions (4)
Dylan Evans
I started writing the book in October 2007, but only managed to write about 10,000 words before I put it to one side. Over the following years, my friends would occasionally ask me if I had written the book yet. And I would tell them that I had put it on the back burner for now, and that I would return to it in due course. But as time went on, I became less and less convinced that I would ever finish it, and the whole project faded away ever more indistinctly into the background of my new life.
It never went away completely though. At the back of my mind it continued to niggle at me, and I knew I would never really achieve peace of mind until I had finished the book. And then, in Spring 2013, more than five years after leaving the Experiment, I realized I felt ready. I dusted off the first draft, and went back to work. I finished writing the book in March 2014.
It never went away completely though. At the back of my mind it continued to niggle at me, and I knew I would never really achieve peace of mind until I had finished the book. And then, in Spring 2013, more than five years after leaving the Experiment, I realized I felt ready. I dusted off the first draft, and went back to work. I finished writing the book in March 2014.
Dylan Evans
The best thing about being a writer is the ability to live and work anywhere you choose. You don't have to go into a specific place of work every day. You could just live on a beach somewhere, if you wanted.
Dylan Evans
I haven't suffered from writer's block since 1993. When I did suffer from it back then, I went into psychoanalysis. Whether the treatment was responsible, or it was just a coincidence, my writer's block disappeared, and it has never come back since.
Dylan Evans
The Utopia Experiment was always meant to end with a book. So when I left the experiment in September 2007, I started writing about tumultuous events of the previous year, which I had spent with a bunch of volunteers in the Scottish Highlands, trying to simulate life after the collapse of civilization. I wanted to make some sense of what had happened, and organize the various notes I had into some kind of vaguely coherent narrative. But it was hard. Every time I tried to recall the passage of events, I would wince at the painful memories, and I only managed about ten thousand words before I finally gave up and put the whole thing to one side. It wasn't until Spring 2013, almost six years later, that I finally felt ready to write the book.
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