Ask the Author: Trevor Dodge
Answered Questions (4)
Trevor Dodge
Ache. I write from places that are aching, about things I can't let go of or don't understand or refuse to accept. My teacher and friend Kathy Acker once told me she always wrote from a source of question or problem, and her creative process involved trying to find answers and explanations. Not solutions. Answers. There's a big difference between those things for me. I don't think really art solves problems, but it definitely provides answers.
I think music is probably a good example of what I'm trying to say here. Music doesn't solve problems. It won't heal your broken heart or get your shitty landlord to reverse that no-cause eviction. But music connects you more concretely to the way you're feeling and to the ways others are feeling, and to me that's more important than problem solving. It's more important because art connects us to fundamental processes of understanding, and that's how we ultimately move forward.
Look at our current social-political moment in the United States right now, where the ugly rituals of identity politics have tipped our society even further towards totalitarianism and corporate plutocracy. Art has no solution for this problem. Theodor Adorno told us this a while ago. By creating and sharing, though, we have a chance to understand. Not a guarantee, for sure. But a chance. If we try to ignore the ache, there is no chance.
This probably all makes it seem like getting “inspired” to write is a downer. It’s not. Ache isn’t just hurt. Ache is also joy. Also love. Also accomplishment. Also hope. Ache is your body and mind in sync telling you that you are alive. And being alive is not only worth understanding, it’s also worth celebrating. Almost all of human history has been lived already, but the dead tell no tales, and the machines haven’t displaced us yet. There is still a chance, is what I’m saying. How does Han Solo put it? “Never tell me the odds.” That’s what inspiration is to me. It’s about speaking from out of the void to those who can still hear. If you’re always calculating odds, you’re too focused on solving a problem that you can’t solve. The culture we live in implores us to remain silent in situations like that, because the culture we live in is inherently segregationist and suspicious of its own imagination. Art is action. Solution is reaction.
I think music is probably a good example of what I'm trying to say here. Music doesn't solve problems. It won't heal your broken heart or get your shitty landlord to reverse that no-cause eviction. But music connects you more concretely to the way you're feeling and to the ways others are feeling, and to me that's more important than problem solving. It's more important because art connects us to fundamental processes of understanding, and that's how we ultimately move forward.
Look at our current social-political moment in the United States right now, where the ugly rituals of identity politics have tipped our society even further towards totalitarianism and corporate plutocracy. Art has no solution for this problem. Theodor Adorno told us this a while ago. By creating and sharing, though, we have a chance to understand. Not a guarantee, for sure. But a chance. If we try to ignore the ache, there is no chance.
This probably all makes it seem like getting “inspired” to write is a downer. It’s not. Ache isn’t just hurt. Ache is also joy. Also love. Also accomplishment. Also hope. Ache is your body and mind in sync telling you that you are alive. And being alive is not only worth understanding, it’s also worth celebrating. Almost all of human history has been lived already, but the dead tell no tales, and the machines haven’t displaced us yet. There is still a chance, is what I’m saying. How does Han Solo put it? “Never tell me the odds.” That’s what inspiration is to me. It’s about speaking from out of the void to those who can still hear. If you’re always calculating odds, you’re too focused on solving a problem that you can’t solve. The culture we live in implores us to remain silent in situations like that, because the culture we live in is inherently segregationist and suspicious of its own imagination. Art is action. Solution is reaction.
Trevor Dodge
This question is slippery because I think it assumes a person can separate writing from being. I guess what I mean is I have a hangup with that phrase "being a writer," mostly because it just sounds and feels so, so redundant. Being *is* writing. Being is about attentiveness and presence and attempting and risk and thinking and caring and reaching and falling and hurting and wondering and speaking and sharing and retreating and radiating and so very much more. And all of those so very much more things are at stake when you're writing. I know this is a squishy, semantic answer, but if you've looked me up on purpose here and have even read something of mine and are reading this right now, this is an answer you're likely to expect and you're obviously game so here you go: to talk about writing as an identity that is discrete and separate from anything else is to not understand what writing actually is. Writing is a translative process, in which our chemical and tissued interiors are made exterior through a kind of blind faith that language can actually perform acts of translation. Some people call it magic or conjuring or invention, and those are all excellent ways to describe what writing is and what it feels like because when I think about what writing is, I almost always think of it as alchemy. Of taking something neurochemical in my brain and something felt in my body and trusting that the language I use to translate those things will be enough to transmit them to someone else. Which gets us to the actual heart of your question, I guess, because that's that "best thing" thing. Transmitting to someone else is what it's all about. But even that I have trouble with, ya know? Because "being a writer" isn't a "thing." Being a writer is simply a being being a being.
Trevor Dodge
My ex-wife W and I. The story we were trying to tell both ourselves and others in our couplehood (if that's even a word?) was quite truly the most surprising, interesting and complex weave of history, dream, and survival that I have ever known. I mean this quite seriously, too. I'm not being glib. As a species, I believe the closest partnerships human beings have with one another constantly present and re-present the fictions that are and aren't most important to us. My last two collection of short stories were primarily about these things, quite possibly even *only* about these things, and the recursive relationship between my creative and family life is one that is always giving me something new to write about.
Trevor Dodge
Well, I've lived in Oregon Territory for all but 9 months of my existence on this planet, so this question pretty much answers itself.
Seriously, though: first off, let's say that writer's block is something that is real. Because it is. For about 18 of the past 24 months, I've been largely incapacitated in my writing. It quite simply hasn't been happening at all, until about 6 months ago, when I had to don my editing hat and finalize the manuscript draft that ultimately became HE ALWAYS STILL TASTES LIKE DYNAMITE. Having a project deadline to turn in that draft dislodged a lot of things for me and my writing. And because I'd written all of the stories in the collection at least two years prior to having to finalize them into a collection, the editing process showed me my own interests and ideas in ways I simply couldn't have been able to capture if I was, say, starting out with an empty, blank page or screen.
In other words, I ended up dealing with writer's block by tossing aside my writer's hat and trading it for my editing one. Without the pressure to put down entirely new sentences and new paragraphs until something started to take shape, I found going back to previous work that I knew wasn't finished yet to be a way around that blockage. And soon enough, I was writing brand new stuff because things were flowing again.
Seriously, though: first off, let's say that writer's block is something that is real. Because it is. For about 18 of the past 24 months, I've been largely incapacitated in my writing. It quite simply hasn't been happening at all, until about 6 months ago, when I had to don my editing hat and finalize the manuscript draft that ultimately became HE ALWAYS STILL TASTES LIKE DYNAMITE. Having a project deadline to turn in that draft dislodged a lot of things for me and my writing. And because I'd written all of the stories in the collection at least two years prior to having to finalize them into a collection, the editing process showed me my own interests and ideas in ways I simply couldn't have been able to capture if I was, say, starting out with an empty, blank page or screen.
In other words, I ended up dealing with writer's block by tossing aside my writer's hat and trading it for my editing one. Without the pressure to put down entirely new sentences and new paragraphs until something started to take shape, I found going back to previous work that I knew wasn't finished yet to be a way around that blockage. And soon enough, I was writing brand new stuff because things were flowing again.
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