Getting 2 Know Daniel Griffin

What is your creative process?

Daniel Griffin: I’m currently working on a novel and find the writing process for a novel different than the process I’ve followed for short stories, but let me talk for a moment about the stories.  I’ll usually begin a new story in the morning, when I’ve got a good amount of time.  Sometimes that means getting up at five.  It’s important to me to complete a first draft in one sitting.  Coming back to a half finished story is almost impossible for me–the spark that started it is often gone.  I’ll make a big pot of coffee, maybe take some chocolate with me too.  I need a totally quiet place.  In fact, the fewer distractions the better. I often sit facing a wall and put in earplugs to limit distractions.

Before I begin I like to have a first line.  Nothing more, just a sentence or two that most likely have been turning over in my head for a while.  It’s not just any sentence, the lines need strength, need to have the kind of momentum and density that could launch an entire story.  I sit down with a spiral bound notebook and a few good pens and start writing.  I write with a deliberately empty mind and see where the story takes me.  As I write the story takes shape.  The first draft is an act of discovery, but I try not to let my mind get too far ahead of my pen, try and keep from predetermining where the story is headed.  I just write and let the story unfold.

After that I type up what I’ve written and then print it out and start to revise it by marking up the print outs–striking passages out, inserting sections, revising wording.  That’s the bulk of the work for me: rewriting.  Not every story I start works.  I figure I start two stories to finish one, finish two stories to polish one, polish two stories for each one I send to a magazine, send two stories for every one I get published….

What do you enjoy most about writing?

Daniel Griffin: There are a lot of things I enjoy about writing.  I’ve talked already about liking the process–the work of revising and rewriting, and the joy of discovery as I lay down a first draft.  There are other pleasures too.  I enjoy having a world to escape to, a place to inhabit that’s all my own.  I suppose it’s somewhat like having an invisible friend or a makebelieve world.  With a novel especially, I’m able to visit and revisit that other world day after day.  While the real work of writing is done with pen in hand, I do find myself day dreaming about my fictional worlds–turning over problems in my mind, or considering the characters and their situations while I lie in bed at night.  There’s real pleasure in having this other place close at hand, and the knowledge that there are endless possible fictional worlds I can inhabit in the future.  As a human being you can only do and see and experience so much in one lifetime, but by writing fiction you can live in so many worlds, past present and future and inhabit so many characters both like and unlike yourself.

Read an INTERVIEW with Daniel Griffin.

Read more about Daniel Griffin’s collection of short stories Stopping for Strangers

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