INTERVIEW WITH ZACHARY DILKS

Q: When did you start writing?

A: I started writing pretty early on in my childhood. I’ve always had a fairly healthy imagination and I suppose making up stories and exaggerations just came naturally to me. I remember writing a bunch of crappy songs in the fourth grade that I was sure were pure gold. The first time I ever wrote a poem was about some girl I had a crush on. I remember I read it to my mom and sister from the back seat of our car and my mom, very sincerely, told me it was good. So naturally I wrote two sequels to it and they were terrible. I dabbled with writing all of my life, but I never took it too seriously until about junior year in high school when I knew for sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life writing. Thanks, Holden Caulfield.

Q: Who are your biggest inspirations/your favorite writers?

A: My biggest inspirations are not necessarily who’s, but what’s. Sitting in nature and watching animals and plants and connecting the stars and talking to the moon and laughing about the contradictions in life; these are what typically give me inspiration to write. The natural world is my greatest motivator. I find if I try to take too much inspiration from a certain writer then I start to steal their style. My words may be garbage, but at least they’ll always be in my own dumpster. With that being said, my favorite writers are J.D. Salinger, Poe, Whitman, Tom Robbins especially, Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame, Lewis Carroll and a lot of others that might make this list too long. However, and I’m sure I’ll catch hell for this, I really don’t like Ernest Hemingway. His work bores me to no end. Also, although I enjoy his sarcasm immensely, I’m not that into Shakespeare either.

Q: What time of day do you do most of your writing?

A: Unlike a lot of writers, I don’t ever set out a time that’s dedicated to only writing. I’m a full-time father, husband and tool maker on top of poet and so many other things. At any given time, my attention is being pulled to a thousand different places. So really, I’m an in-between kind of writer. I’ll shoot for in between machine time, in between diaper changes, in between grocery shopping and family time. The easiest time for me to write is late into the night after everyone is asleep. I can sit and stare at the moon and give my thoughts my full attention. However, with that being said, I can never force a poem to come out. It either comes to me or it doesn’t and I never write anything that I wouldn’t want to read, so there are plenty of times that I have to shut down what I’ve started and walk away from what I think is inferior writing.

Q: Why do you write?

A: The why is an ever-evolving thing for me. Sure, it’s easy to say that I do it because I can’t not do it; because my every fiber compels me to do it, but that’s not the whole truth. The rest of it is because I truly feel like no matter how well I might mesh with a society or situation, I still always feel like a bit of an outsider. Like I was put here for the sole purpose of observation instead of interaction. I guess it’s me reaching out, hoping to be understood. Hoping to make that connection I was never able to. I’ve got a lot of pain and joy and anger and sadness and love inside of me that I know others have too. I just want to share those feelings and be open to others sharing theirs as well. Simply put, writing is the place where I feel fully and most unabashedly me.

Q: Do you have any favorite quotes from writers?

A: Ah, we literary types love a good quote, don’t we? I feel like there is this obsession with writers to have a meaningful quote on standby for any occasion. As if to say you’re not a real writer unless you can recite a word of wisdom by Twain or Poe or Chaucer. I used to be that guy. I used to quote Faust to anybody that would listen. You know, “Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici”. I’m just not that person anymore. My favorite quotes are really lowbrow movie lines that make me laugh. The one that sticks out right now is from Blazing Saddles when Bart, as the new sheriff, goes over to the Waco Kid in his cell and says “are we awake?”

Waco Kid says “that depends, are we black?”

Bart nods yes and the Waco Kid says “then we are awake, but we’re very confused”.

However, if you’re interested in a more serious quote, one that I’ve turned over in my mind many times is from, I’m fairly certain, Grendel by John Gardner. “Does not the lion wish to become a man”. To this very moment, that line still trips me up. I know it’s meant to be taken as the savage beast aching to be more than that, but I can’t help but think that the lion has a bit more sense than to want to become an even more savage human. If I were the lion, I’d eat the man, take a nap and move on. That’s elegance in its simplest form.

Q: What is one piece of advice you would give new/aspiring writers?

A: Stop trying to be the quintessential writer and just write. Don’t write for anybody but yourself. That’s the pit fall of most writers in the world. We get so hung up on whether or not a piece of work will be well received that we overlook the fact that it needs to be well delivered. If you aren’t putting any passion into what you’re doing then perhaps you shouldn’t be doing it; writers and otherwise.

Q: Do you have any collections, chapbooks, or other books available for people to purchase?

A: I have one chapbook of poetry called Wire My Scars Electric. It’s available on Amazon and the wonderful people behind Alien Buddha Press helped to make it come to fruition. It’s my first published collection of work and dedicated to my first daughter who sadly passed away too soon.

Q: Do you have any upcoming books or projects you’d like to talk about?

A: I’m in the middle of a couple of things, at the beginning of a lot of things and near the end of very few. I like that chaos though. I do have one project that I’m particularly excited about. It will be another collection of poetry and themed around nature and human interference. The tentative title is If The Lion Doesn’t Eat You, Something’s Wrong. I don’t have much to say about it other than I hope to get it to a rough draft by the end of this year and when and if I do, I really hope people will dig it. Other than that, I’m just trying to focus on being a better writer and a worse procrastinator.

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