Interview Q&A with Rob Wilcher
@RobertWilcher
We offer our first and exclusive Q&A Interview with Rob Wilcher, a writer whose literary works have been featured on our Spillwords pages as well as being Author of the Month of December 2023.
- What does it mean to be selected as Author of The Month?
Heaps. It was a way of engaging with my community about my writing and Spilllwords and another chance to share the stories I create. Everyone was so supportive and it is a rare filiip to get recognition such as this.
- How have your friends and/or family influenced your writing?
A few years ago I shared a poem with a friend who told my wife I should do a writing course, so my wife gave it to me as a birthday present, and I have not looked back. I have a community of writers called The Moving Pen, and we encourage each other and critique each other’s work before our monthly publication.
- What inspires you to write?
The addiction I think. Whenever I relax a bit let down my guard a story starts creeping into my head and then I have to get it down. I’m a bit of a genre junkie – I’ll write anything from romance to sci-fi to trauma etc etc. Reading others’ works is always a good start – they inspire a different viewpoint and open possibilities. It’s about opening up the brain and seeking a truth in a story, whatever structure it lives in.
- What was your writing catalyst?
I’d always written – plays, short stories etc – but had never really thought I should do it, as the plethora of output in bookstores and online is overwhelming. I mean why would you? But cue the friend in question 2, who said I should and the wife who agreed and other friends, many of whom treat me as a writer, which sometimes feels a bit alien, but I take the compliment.
- Tell us a little bit about your writing process.
Just write. Write write write write. Sometimes I get a story in mind and lay it out. Sometimes I just start writing and the story emerges. In Uncle Frank I just started with the humour of the scrofulous unwanted uncle offending the middle class relatives at Christmas, merely by showing up with a rotting old potato he’d dug out of the compost, and it turned into an exploration of myth and how we perpetuate ideas like living memes. Then, once the first draft is done, cut it, slice it, take out lots of excess adjectives etc etc. Check to make sure the narrative path is clear and the underlying ideas comprehensible. Sometimes a savage cut is good – eg reducing a 2,000 word story to 1,500 words – as this show how much can be done with a few words. Submit it to friends and my Moving Pen colleagues and then, once it is all done, take a deep breath and commit it to the world.
- What would you say is most fulfilling about writing?
I often ask myself that. A number of aspects. Watching a story come out of me is often accompanied by a sense of wonderment: where did that come from? Then crafting it, making it a whole, giving it shape, investing characters with intent, detailing a scene, putting the reader there, in the place, next to the lovers or the corpse or the tree. Seeing it completed is good too, and then the ultimate reward when someone says they enjoyed it.
- Does the addition of imagery help to tell your story?
Loads. Imagery is imagination, the means by which a story insinuates itself into the mind of the reader and transports him/her to the heart of the story. Capture the reader’s imagination and you capture the reader.
- What is your favorite reading genre?
Don’t really have one. I read most stuff. Any piece that takes a genre and plays with it rather than follows the formula. A piece which compels me to read, regardless of its place in the panoply of writing. I tend to follow authors rather than genre. One of the shelves on my bookcase is reserved for stuff I reeeellly liked. Annie Proulx sits alongside Orwell, Bukowski, Joyce, Patrick White, Tim Winton (two Great Australian writers), etc etc.
- What human being has inspired you the most?
That game where you can invite anyone to dinner, past or present. I can never answer. It’s tempting to nominate a great figure – eg, Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha – or a great writer – Proulx, Kingsolver, Joyce so many, but I have never met any of them, so inspiration is at a distance. Closer to home, everyone has a story, whether it be grand, grandiose or commonplace. The most inspiring are my friends who hold a profound integrity in their lives, and live according to their best capability and circumstance.
- What message would you have for the Spillwords Press community that voted for you?
Thank you thank you thank you thank you!
- What would you like your legacy as a writer to be?
A body of work that someone (or preferably a large audience) reads and say that it was entertaining and thought provoking, and even assisted them in some way.
- Is there anything else you would like to add?
Gee, where do you start with this question? Maybe to say that I am awed by the quantity of people submitting to Spillwords. My little group, The Moving Pen is small, and I look to the enormity and wealth of creativity that Spillwords publishes and think, yep, we’re all addicts, all doin’ it, and ain’t it a wonder.
- Interview Q&A With Rob Wilcher - January 18, 2024
- Uncle Frank - December 16, 2023
- Blue - August 24, 2021
