An Interview with Daniel Chacón
Daniel Chacón is Chair of the Bilingual Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas, El Paso. He is author of six books of fiction, including Hotel Juárez: Stories, Rooms and Loops and the novel and the shadows took him. His newest collection is called Kafka in a Skirt: Stories from the Wall®. He has won the Southwest Book Award, the American Book Award, the Pen-Oakland Prize for Fiction, and the Hudson Prize. He is cohost of Words on a Wire, a radio show about books and ideas.
Do you find yourself enacting certain habits or rituals when beginning the writing process?
I write in the mornings, when it’s still dark, and I revise in the afternoons or early evenings.
But optimal writing time is in the mornings.
I get up before the rest of the family, sneak out of bed so I don’t wake my wife, make coffee, one of those old fashion stove-top coffeemakers, and then go upstairs to my office.
I light candles all around the room, and that’s the only light I have until the sun comes up and begins to brighten the room.
But it’s during that time, between candlelight and sunlight, that I write.
What steps do you take to craft a character and make them come to life?
I don’t create characters in my fiction, they come to me.
They visit me, and if I ignore them long enough, some of them go away. But others will never leave me alone, so I know I have to write them. Others might visit me once and I know I have to write them. It depends on their voice, how strong it is, and how much it attracts my imagination.
The only way to allow these characters to come to life, is to get out of their way. Allow them to live the portion of their lives that I am spending with them, that I am writing down for them.
Obviously, a character may at times try to assert more than he is worth, to take over the entire story, wanting to fight with form, but I enjoy these little battles, and have come to a point when I know the difference between an angel and a demon.
I invite both of them into my work, but it’s a good idea for the writer to have some willingness to resist.
How has the classroom influenced your writing? What have you learned from your students?
I am very fortunate in that I teach what I am working on. The novel I’m working on now is about a boy who loses his memory every two hours, and as I’m having fun watching the story emerge through various fragments of voices, I’m reading laic neuroscience.
I find the subject fascinating, because I think the study of the brain is much like the study of the universe, and that you can make parallels between the goal of neuroscience and the goal of physics, to understand everything there is to understand about reality, to find an elegant equation or theory that explains it all.
But while I’m working on this novel about a boy who forgets, I’m teaching graduate seminars on memory and the imagination.
I’m using various creative texts and articles and books on neuroscience to show the relationship between memory, intention, and worldview. They are fascinating seminars for writers, and I know the students get a lot from them, especially when it comes to understanding their own stories and poems.
And I get a lot from students. They are brilliant, and they teach me to see.
Of your published works, which one offered the most challenges, and why?
The challenge of a published work comes after it’s published, not before.
The biggest challenge for me was my first novel, and the shadows took him.
I had a lot of hope for this novel. I was sent on a book tour, hundreds of copies were sent out to reviewers, I got an awesome advance, but the book didn’t sell.
Because I didn’t do anything.
I took the advance, took a year off from the university where I taught, and went to Buenos Aires to write the next novel.
It was a great year creatively, I would even say spiritually and philosophically, as all I had to do was read and write and walk around the city.
But the challenge for a writer is to promote their book. Get it out there. Make sure people are reading it. But I did nothing. I didn’t know any better.
Fortunately, and the shadows took him is still in print, but I suspect there are very few people who have read it so far.
What responsibilities do you think writers, as artists, must acknowledge?
There are many levels of responsibility, just picking up a pen no matter who you are is a responsibility that should make you tremble.
But the more you gain a cultural voice, the more imperative there is to use it responsibly.
Especially today, writers are not only their books, they are voices on social media, on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, and they use these platforms to increase awareness. Some of them are very successful at social media, and even some more successful at social media than book sales.
This is a cultural voice that not everybody has.
A writer needs to be responsible for using it positively, and most writers do.
If you look at the social media of successful literary writers such as Jericho Brown and Natalie Scenters-Zapico, you see that they use their voice not only in regards to their own work, but even more so to promote excellent writing and social justice.
The bigger your voice, the more responsibility to use it for the good.
What writers and / or written works do you feel are essential reading, not only for aspiring writers, but for everyone?
I don’t believe there is essential reading as much as I believe that reading is essential.
I know many people who have told me and continue to insist that a single book changed their life. That is not true for me. I think a single book may have confirmed or reinforced what either was already happening or what’s going to happen in my life, perhaps a shift of consciousness.
I believe what you need to read will find its way to you.
I recommend reading, not reading what I have read and deemed important.
Although I may have been moved by particular books, they may be boring to others, or completely forgettable.
What is essential is reading.
Not only to read, but to look for books that speak to you on a fundamental level, whatever that is, spiritually, intellectually, creatively.
Make reading an act of love, and the essential books will find you.
What is one piece of knowledge you have learned throughout your years of writing that you feel is crucial?
Take care of your brain.
What major project(s) are you working on now, and what would you like to share about it?
I am working on several things right now, the novel I mentioned above, another collection of short fiction, a book of children’s stories, and a non-fiction book on the imagination.
I know this sounds like I may be fragmenting my writing energy, but this is where I am right now, and I love it.
We have a 17-month-old daughter, and we spend a lot of time with her, all day, so our work schedule has become the moments when we have time to work, like when the baby’s entertained or napping, or when one of us is watching her so the other can work.
But this rarely lasts more than three hours.
So I write when I can, which is usually early morning.
And I love the mornings because they don’t have form.
Anything can take shape.
So if one morning, I want to work on one thing, I will.
If the spirit of the morning leads me one way, I go.
Eventually I know that my energy will collapse into one of these four books, and I will get it done when it’s ready to be done.
I’m in no hurry.
I love spending time with my baby, and if the price of it is writing four books at a time, so be it.
