Speculative fiction writer D T Neal implores us to turn our Writer’s Eye on the world to find inspiration
D T Neal
Dave Neal is a senior production editor at the University of Chicago Press, as well as being a writer of horror, fantasy and science fictions stories. He won second place in the Aeon Award 2008 and has been published by Albedo One. Dave tells us how working with “odd, brilliant people who wear their quirkiness like cufflinks” provides him with a wealth of writing fuel.
What inspired you to become a writer?
I’ve always been a writer, really. There is a magic in stories that I’ve always relished.
I laughingly talk about the Writer’s Eye - invoking this unblinking third eye that sees all: good, bad, and ugly. Anybody with the Writer’s Eye is compelled to write. It just happens. You see, and you write what you see.
What was your first short story about?
I think I was seven when I wrote my very first story, typing it on an old manual typewriter: “The Battle for Mars” (1977), typed out on onionskin paper. And I’m sure that was simply a response to STAR WARS, but I remember diligently typing it out, laying out the characters and the ship designs, describing all of that, the world, everything. World creation was a big thing for me.
My first “real” short story was “Dorian’s Flowers,” written when I was a teenager. It was a science fiction story in a future where acid rain had killed off the plant life, except for dandelions, which had evolved to be resistant to the acid rain, and the flowers could (and would) grow anywhere, and were considered a pest.
The protagonist, Dorian, gathers up as many dandelion seeds as he can and climbs atop a tall building and launches them.
Do you face much rejection? How do you deal with it?
I face constant rejection, and it always pisses me off, although I don’t take it to heart. I think my writing is in some nether place between literary fiction and genre fiction, and editors have a tough time placing it.
I write some outright genre pieces, but I will always favor characterisation over the choo-choo train of plot, and maybe that’s hard for editors to accept.
But I deal with rejection by simply writing more and better.
How do you go about choosing publications to send your work to?
I try to see who has an imaginative spirit. I can tell pretty quickly, just perusing the stories, where the editors’ hearts are at.
How did you come to specialise in the speculative fiction genre?
For me, it’s simply fun.
I think so-called literary fiction is as much of a genre as outright genre fiction, with conventions, rituals, and taboos. It’s all simply there - we’re just not supposed to acknowledge that literary fiction is a genre these days.
With that in mind, I dive into speculative fiction because it affords opportunities to really stretch one’s wings and create.
Speculative fiction allows the writer a great, big magical canvas upon which to tackle serious human issues. It’s one thing to have yet another disagreeable, upper-middle class, middle-aged couple in a kitchen facing various life issues earnestly (or shallowly or apathetically), and it’s another to have one of them quietly waiting for the other to drink their coffee, because it was a magic potion they brewed that’ll turn them into a tree they can then plant in their backyard.
The potential for anything to happen in speculative fiction can lead to silly and lame things, but it also affords writers the opportunity to create wonderful things.
How did you come to be production editor at the University of Chicago Press?
I was unemployed at the time, had about six years of editorial experience at my back, rocked the editing test, and got through the door, thanks to the keen insight of my boss at the time, who recognised that I’d be a good fit there. I’m very grateful to her for giving me that opportunity.
How does your work influence your creative writing?
Hmmm. I’m surrounded by a lot of characters, for sure. Odd, brilliant people who wear their quirkiness like cufflinks. There are few places like the University of Chicago Press. I call it “The Asylum” - both in the sense of a loony bin and a place of refuge.
I suppose editing all day also affects my approach to my fiction, trying hard to edit the work as tightly as I can. I really try to make fiction editors’ work easier, if at all possible. My work is very clean.
What do you find to be the most challenging aspects of writing?
I don’t think of it as a challenge; I enjoy writing, every part of it. I suppose one difficulty is when you’re working on a piece, it’s basically nothing.
An unread story is like an unlit string of firecrackers — all potential energy, waiting for the spark that is the reader’s eye, their mind, their heart. Writing and reading is such an intimate, personal thing. I find that beautiful, being able to reach someone through fiction, or when people find themselves in something you wrote, even though you didn’t write that story with them in mind.
What do you enjoy most about the process?
There’s nothing like the first pass through a story. I love that sense of infinite possibility, of not knowing exactly how it’s all going to work out, writing just ahead of your fingers’ ability to type.
Whose writing do you admire?
Ralph Ellison nailed it in Invisible Man – there is amazing and beautiful prose in there, just breath-taking word-wizardry. He got it just right in one book. I suppose it’s retro, but I always liked Hemingway’s way with words. For all of his cult of machismo, he was an incredibly sensitive writer, and it turned up in his words.
I think Mark Twain’s writing first made me want to be a writer, however. The scope of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn really awed me as a teen.
Barry Hannah, Flannery O’Connor, and Stuart Dybek write evocative prose that inspires me to work harder - regarding Hannah and O’Connor, I have great respect for Southern writers.
Ray Bradbury wrote such beautiful fiction — you can just tell how much he loved words in his works, and that love is contagious and inspiring. For me, how a writer writes is often as important as what they write.
What inspires you?
Everything. I joke that one of the virtues of being a writer is that EVERYTHING is material - good and bad, it’s all material. That’s what I tell myself in dark times, and what I’m always aware of in happy times. Just turn the Writer’s Eye onto the world around you, and inspiration is there for the taking. You just have to take note, and try to do it justice in words.
Where do you carry out the majority of your writing?
In the computer room, at my desk. I used to write longhand in notebooks, got a laptop around 2002, and would write a lot while commuting, and in the morning (at my PC), before anybody was up. That’s the best time for me: the early morning, when it’s all dark and quiet, and my brain is sharp.
Although if I had my way, I could write for eight hours at a pop. I’ve done it before, I love the rush of that. I like sweating when I’m writing, because I know that I’m onto something good, making my brain work hard.
What has been the highlight of your writing career so far?
Winning second place in the Aeon Award in 2008 was fun. I really didn’t think I’d win anything, so I was pleased I got second, if not entirely satisfied. Onward and upward.
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Keep your eyes open, learn to really see the world around you, do right by your characters and be bold enough to let them breathe on the page, write as much as you can until you can find your voice, and to get through that first draft before you dare to revise anything. Revision is vital, but it’s such a different discipline from that initial draft.
And never stop. I like to say that the only failed writer is a writer who stops writing. Keep going until you’re dead, and hope that your work is appreciated. But don’t lack of appreciation stop you; just make beautiful things with words. The only cure for writing is more writing.
What are you working on now?
I recently finished work on “Säämäänthää,” a literary/horror/darkly comic novel that I think’ll knock people’s socks off when they finally see it. I tried to really capture the spirit of lycanthropy in fiction.
I’m finishing final revision on another book (a cock-eyed coming-of-age story), and am working on a slew of short stories, as well as a fantasy novel or two, if I’m feeling really industrious. I have a lot to do this year. My rule of thumb is to write more and talk about writing less.
For more on Dave, please visit http://allpartofthedance.blogspot.com/
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I suppose the difference between the Writer’s Eye and the eye of a journalist is that a fiction writer sees what’s there, what’s not there, what’s hidden, what could be there, what should be there, and what isn’t there, too (but maybe ought to be, because it’d be cool if it was).
I like your utilization of Ellison’s Invisible Man. The anxious powerlessness his protagonist feels no matter what avenue he treads upon, no matter what symbolic character who meets his acquaintance, and no matter what good deed he endeavors to accomplish that goes punished, he forges ahead only to meet failure until he goes unseen, unnoticed -\almost like Bobby Benton’s nom du guerre\ - until he fits in nowhere.