Questions with Rick Henry Christopher

Thank you Rick Henry Christopher for this idea:

1. What type of writer do you feel you are?

I’m a harlot. I’m anybody’s. That’s why I’m here. I’m an avid barn dancer; I love to dance but only when someone in a cowboy hat is calling the moves. In the freedom of the disco I will cling to the wall in the knowledge my moves are hopeless. Just give me the first foothold on the mountain, I will climb it, or have a go. With varying success. I have just attempted my first ever crime story, for example, which I would not have done without a little shove.

2. What type of writer do you not want to be?

Readerless. It shouldn’t matter, but I have to own it. I know we all say we write for our own enjoyment, but part of the enjoyment is having someone receive what we have written. There are exceptions, of course, those pieces of exorcism for example, but even when I kept a diary as an adolescent, there is a sense of a reader in mind, even if it is my future self. My future self, sadly, did not want to read that shit.

3. What do you like about yourself as a writer?

I’m unafraid. By which I mean that I am unafraid to try things out, to reveal parts of myself, and to produce rubbish. But also that I am unafraid of critique. I know it might dent my ego, but that battered bit of baggage has taken far worse, and will grow bigger for having the opportunity to improve myself.

4. What do you look for in other writers?

Beautiful prose. I have been known to tear up over a beautiful sentence. I love language. Sadly, I only have one at my disposal, which is a shame, but it is my shame that I have made no endeavours to change that. But also humanity. I want to feel connected to the reality of myself or the other. Sometimes that can be about articulating something that resonates with my experience, sometimes that can be about feeling that someone is trusting me to see them without wanting to turn away. Often, it is both. I think sometimes I don’t look enough for a cracking story, because that’s what turned me on to the written form in the first place, and I believe that what, why and how we story our world is fundamental and fascinating.

5. Where do you feel your opportunities are as a writer?

Oh I WISH I had opportunities as a writer.

6. What do you not like about yourself as a writer?

Ah, let’s not beat around the bush. I am just not quite as good as I would like to be. My partner, being excruciatingly honest (and thus eternally trustworthy), reminds me that the middle ground is a very big place. And its not like I have never read a well selling novel which occupies the same plateaux on which I am stranded, but then I read things that make me go “Ohhhh, THAT’S why I will never amount to anything in my life”.

6. Which writing genre or category do you feel is your best?

Pre-vocal I would have said fiction, with no further specificity. But after having quite a few different dances called, I think I may have been kidding myself. I think perhaps my strength might be more in non fiction reflective ramblings. Well, judge for yourself I suppose. But know I am writing this in a one room holiday lodging while my partner reads a bedtime story to my kids to try and settle them into bed. And I have a headache. So I can completely justify it if its crap, ok?

7. In which genre or category do you feel the most challenged?

Post-vocal I would probably say fiction, with no further specificity. I think I am not very good at plotting. It’s just occurring to me as I write this that this may well be a learnable skill. There are probably books, or workshops or something. It is possible I could improve my plotting!

8. When did you first start writing?

I would imagine when I first started reading. I don’t remember. But I stopped writing for pleasure at the point at which I had to start writing a lot for non-pleasure. My only formal publication is a distillation of my doctoral thesis in an academic journal, and I can assure you it is the full six degrees of separation from what I write here. Ok, maybe four degrees. My doctorate is not in Maths or Physics. I resumed writing again here, after many limp attempts, as a form of self-care. Some people like to get a massage, some prefer to stare in disgust at fragments of their own souls rendered in little black symbols.

9. Why do you write?

Oops, I appear to have already answered this question. Of course, I could edit it, move what I said up there, put it down here, it would be less trouble than continuing with this sentence. But I while I do like to write, I am not a good editor. I suppose perhaps that I need to connect with something more soul baring here, rather than just alluding to my naked soul.

I write because I like stories, and I like language. I enjoy playing with it. Tossing it about. It feels nice in my hands. I want it to feel like a gym ball, round, kind of firm, but slightly springy, the kind of thing you can rest your buttocks on and bob up and down and it will resist you just enough so that you can sink in and feel buoyed all at once. I know I have got it wrong when it feels like a beanbag or a basket ball. To be brutally honest, given that we are going for self reflection here, I probably also write because when I was a child, people said I was good at it, and I’m still chasing the dragon.

10. This last question is off-topic. If you could be part of any television sitcom family, which one would it be and why?

During lockdown, we watched Outnumbered with our kids. Rather than being diverting, this felt like some new innovation in immersive television. So not that then. I did not expect to find this question hard! Am I taking “family” too literally? Have I ever seen any sitcoms ever? Maybe I would be in Brooklyn 99 because I feel like they have fun, but on a bedrock of genuine care for one another.

And apparently there is an added question from Novel Allen.

Where are you when you write, or, where do you do your best writing?

In the past, I made an assumption that in order to write, I must be in a place of pristine sensory clarity. Then I started writing. I’m on holiday at the moment, four of us in one kitchen/living/bedroom. Its messy. There is a bar which pumps out hits of the nineties and noughties with an added dance beat every night until 7 about 75m away. I am interrupted for anything from twenty seconds to two hours at irregular but frequent intervals. And I write. It’s a similar picture at home, but there while I could go to my bedroom, I prefer to be available to the family. I’ve stopped waiting for the stars to align and got down to the work. I think my best poetry tends to happen when I am walking alone though.