Ask the Author: Matthew Gavin Frank
Answered Questions (5)
Matthew Gavin Frank
8 out of my 10 juvenile arrests were for trespassing. Like many who carry a childish sort of curiosity into adulthood, I am attracted to forbidden places. I still trespass. My latest book, FLIGHT OF THE DIAMOND SMUGGLERS, is a result of such behavior. When I heard that a portion of South Africa’s West Coast was owned by the De Beers conglomerate and had been officially closed off to the public for the better part of eighty years (the heyday of diamond exploration and mining in the area), plunging the local communities into a mysterious isolation, I became infatuated with the idea of visiting the place. Once there, I learned about the ways in which folks use trained carrier pigeons as avian accomplices in acts of "illicit" diamond smuggling and, well, just kinda tumbled down the rabbit hole from there...
Matthew Gavin Frank
Sometimes, when I’m struggling to write, I’ll turn to my Audubon bird books for inspiration. I love the bird descriptions. Reading through them almost always helps me to dislodge something. Today, it was the rare Eastern bronze-naped pigeon, member of a protected species, sporting a “golden hindcollar, amethyst nape, and dusky breast.” Yep. That’ll carry me through this paragraph.
Matthew Gavin Frank
I'm often asked how I balance my "writing life" and my "actual life." The answer is: I don’t! I’m chronically imbalanced in this way! I just try to keep moving forward. I used to think that there was something wrong with this, and I kept grappling toward some semblance of balance (whatever that means), until I read this article by another writer (though I can’t recall who it is), about how such imbalance can be a good thing; how it can be electric and inspirational, and how that it’s precisely this sort of off-kilter and anxious state that oftentimes yields urgent and exciting work. I really wish I could remember who wrote that article. I’m sure if I was better balanced, my memory would be better as well! And during the pandemic, I’ve learned to be gentler and more generous with myself and others, and not to fret too terribly over ephemeral and elusive and ever-malleable things like “balance.” I’m not always successful at such ventures, but I’m trying.
Matthew Gavin Frank
Attempting to situate my own personal experience or obsession within a larger socio-cultural and/or historical context, in order to discover or revise or uncover meaning in personal experience.
Matthew Gavin Frank
The muse often arrives during the writing process, and not beforehand. So, I tend to cure writer's block by sitting down and just writing...anything.
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