D.W. Gibson

How did you become a writer?

I have a file folder filled with rejection letters sent to me by editors and agents over the years. They aren’t really letters but boiler-plate sentences, usually beginning with “Thank you…” (Note: if you ever get a message from and editor or agent that begins with those two words you don’t need to read the rest because it’s not what you want to hear.) Many of the rejections aren’t even printed on full size pieces of paper; they’re mere slips, which, in a way, I admire because it saves paper. The file folder reminds me just how long I’ve been accumulating rejections: I go back as far as the days of paper. 

I still get rejections—any writer who tries to convince someone that rejections go away is not being honest. But those early days of paper, of mounting rejection, were the hardest. Each time I received one of those cold, stale sentences it depressed the hell out of me. But usually by nightfall I was on fire again, ready to stick it to the person who had sent the latest slip of paper, ready to prove them wrong. And that’s the thing about rejection. It can have two very different effects, depending on the recipient. The first possible effect is complete deflation, either with one defining blow or as slow seepage over time. The second possible effect of rejection is that it ends up fueling an inextinguishable fire. Those who are deflated – and, ultimately, defeated – are not writers. Those who are set ablaze by rejection can’t help themselves. So I guess that’s how I became a writer: when I came out of my mother’s womb as one of those people bound to catch fire. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

When I was a kid both of the ministers at my family’s church—Paul Thomas and Andy Wall—spent many hours over many years reading and responding to my work. As a teenager, I read mostly playwrights, a lot of Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard, August Wilson. It was all very dramatic, probably too dramatic, but I gained a deep appreciation for beautiful sentences, raw emotion and reading between the lines. James Kelman was the first serious writer to take me seriously as a writer. I took a workshop with him in college and he gave us all a list of a couple dozen writers we should read. I had never heard of most of them, there were very few white men and they didn’t all write in English—I am still grateful to him for that list. He introduced me to great voices like Tillie Olsen, Sam Selvon, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Lu Hsun. There are several writers I return to, again and again, for clarity: James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Carlos Eire, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, VS Naipaul and Vladimir Nabokov among them. 

When and where do you write? 

Before I became a father, I was very sanctimonious about where and when I could write: a minimum of two hours, please, uninterrupted, preferably late at night, probably with some Lee Morgan or Herbie Hancock in the background. These days, give me a cup of coffee, 10 minutes and laptop and I’ll make the most of it. I’ve learned to carry my work in my head better, let it maturate there, and I’ve learned to get into the text more immediately when I sit down because the clock is always ticking. 

I have a desk and work at it sometimes but I’m apt to move around in my family’s house. Sometimes I find it helpful to feel a certain newness to the spot where I’m working—it can be invigorating. It depends on how the work is going. If I get into a groove then I stay in the same spot for a few days, to keep the mojo going. It’s kind of a feel thing, like with slot machines. 

What are you working on now?

I just published a story about the Kumeyaay, a nation of indigenous Americans who have been living in their region of present-day California for 12,000 years. It’s a region that was cut in half 172 years ago when the Mexico-U.S. border was established. Now the federal government is building a wall through the Kumeyaay’s ancestral land, bulldozing burial grounds and lives in the process. 

Right now I’m working on a story about the “Explorer” program run by Border Patrol. It trains kids as young as 14 on what it’s like to be an agent. It’s an interesting lens through which to consider how we teach borders and talk about them as a society. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Look, I can always manage to get some kind of unreadable text down so I rarely come up empty but, yes, it’s safe to say that meaningful progress on any given text is never consistent and reliable. There are always bad detours and misguided love affairs with the wrong sentence. And some days all I can hear in my head is that song from Burt in Mary Poppins. If you can get past Dick Van Dyke’s cartoonish British accent the lyrics are haunting: “You’ve got to grind, grind, grind at that grindstone.” Some days I’m definitely grinding but it always—eventually—leads somewhere.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

I had the pleasure of sitting in on an interview with Edward Albee and he said, “There are two things that can destroy a writer: success and failure.” While there is something deeply unsettling and depressing about this it is also really clarifying. It crystalizes an important truth for me: the only acceptable rudder for a writer is doing good work. You have to be able to get satisfaction and fulfillment from doing good work – it’s the only thing that you can control, after all. 

I think one of the great divides in the land of advice-to-writers is whether or not one should strive to write every day. I subscribe to the idea that it needs to be a daily practice. Even if it means some grinding every now and then—there’s value in seeing and understanding how, exactly, bad writing is bad. Also, see earlier point about the only acceptable rudder for a writer: doing good work. If I don’t at least try to do good work then the end of the day is definitely very hollow. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Get out while you still can! 

And if you don’t like that advice: welcome to the club. I’m your ally and happy to help however I can.

D.W. Gibson is most recently the author of 14 MILES: Building the Border Wall. His previous books include the awarding-winning The Edge Becomes the Center and Not Working. He shared a National Magazine Award for his work on “This is the Story of One Block in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn” for New York magazine. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones and The Nation. He serves as director of Art Omi: Writers in Ghent, New York, and he co-founded Sangam House, a writers’ residency in India, along with Arshia Sattar.