Writers At Work
This is the third in Ravenshead's series of interviews with writers. David O'Sullivan is native Irish and has been in the Twin Cities for 20 years. He has appeared at Lakeshore Players and Na Fianna Irish Theatre and has had plays produced in Chicago, Rockford, and the Twin Cities. Details of his work can be seen on his web-site. This includes the short play "Mr Smottle Acquires a Smaller Hat" and the cyclical play "The Bridge Party". The challenging latter play has yet to be produced and anyone interested in doing this should contact David via his web-site.Budding playwrights will find David's "Re-write Checklist" very useful.
Ravenshead (RH) interviewed David O'Sullivan (DOS) in August 2006 and the interview is reproduced here:
An Interview with David O'Sullivan
RH: Can you tell us a bit about your background?
DOS: I was born in County Kerry, Ireland and after school went to sea for a few years. Then I came back to Dublin and qualified as an electronics engineer. I worked for a while for the government, writing training courses for training unemployed adults in electronics. Actually, I feel in some small way (along with my then colleagues) partly responsible for the Celtic Tiger phenomenon. After another few years in private industry going from one failing company to another, I came to the US. Now I pay the mortgage as a technical writer.
RH: When did you start writing?
DOS: I have been writing since as early as I can remember. My mother was a school teacher and instilled in me a love of expression and language. It is only in my later years that I have started to produce anything really worth reading because until now, I've had very little to say. If you were to ask me what advice I would give to younger writers, I would say, practice writing but stay quiet until you've got something worthwhile to talk about. Turn on any commercial TV station (at least in the US) and you'll see what I mean. Of course, there are some exceptions to this. There are brilliant young writers at work but with so many people busy in "creative writing" I think a lot of potential goes unnoticed.
RH: What makes you write?
DOS: I don't know. Maybe if I knew I could stop for a while and take a rest.
RH: Do you feel you have to write?
DOS: Most of the time, yes. I believe that all of us feel the need to communicate with the world outside our own heads on issues that are deeper or larger than daily conversation allows. Most of us can hold forth about many things but committing it to paper so that it comes off the paper into someone's head requires some genetic mutation or defect of character not present in the general population. This exercise of committing to paper (or stage, or screen, or microphone), called "writing," is not easy but it gets easier and better with practice (lots of practice).
RH: Do you think coming from a country with a writing tradition like Ireland's has influenced you?
DOS: Yes. Ireland has a tradition of story telling that has spilled over into story writing in places like North Kerry where I grew up. The playwrights John B. Keane and Bryan MacMahon lived within 100 yards of my home. MacMahon was my third grade teacher. Maurice Walsh (The Quiet Man) lived just outside the town. The late Eamon Kelly was a schoolteacher in the town and is recognized as one of Ireland's greatest storytellers. Story telling is infused into the place. Conversation consists of interwoven stories. The primary and secondary school systems nurture the tradition. I had a classical secondary education (Latin and Greek) that provided a better understanding of English, or so I was told. That coupled with learning and speaking the Irish language, which is so rich in metaphor and simile, gave me a desire to commit my thoughts to paper in ways that, when read or acted, reproduce the story in the reader's mind as they would have heard it live from a seasoned story teller. I don't believe there is a standard mode of expression or style called "Irish" even if some people would like to believe there is. If I see some Bejasus and Begorrah stuff, I know it was written by someone trying to illustrate Irishness in much the same way that playwrights of a bygone age used the stage Irishman (unfortunately still alive and kicking).
RH: Where do you get ideas from?
DOS: Everywhere. My own past. What people say in casual conversation. A piece of music. I like to test ideas in my head for quite a while before committing anything to paper. Most ideas are non-runners. Some pieces I've written should have been non-runners and would have been had I spend a little more mulling-time on them. At any one time, I may have three or four ideas brewing like that. Some years ago, I was crossing the street when a puff of wind blew the hat off a nearby pedestrian. For some reason I assumed that the man's head was shrinking. That idea popped to the front a few months back when I needed an idea for a short play. It took three weeks to write a 20-minute piece that worked very well in performance. The shrinking head idea was simmering in my skull (unconsciously) for about 10 years.
RH: Do you keep a note-book for good ideas like this?
DOS: Yes. Many notebooks, scraps of paper, Palm files, drawings. I keep losing them which is not such a disaster because most of the ideas are non-runners. The good ones stick in my memory and don't need to be written down. They become like songs in your head that will not go away. Most of the notes I jot down concern minor points related to a current project in my head. Stuff like "make sure A knows about C before D tells him" or "Can I remove character A and maintain the action?" I plan to use WriteItNow to get some control over these random scribbles.
RH: What's the easiest thing about writing? What's the hardest?
DOS: The easiest thing is thinking about it and not doing it. The hardest thing is cutting unnecessary bits from the material that sound great but contribute nothing to the dramatic action. I save some of those for other stories (wherein they usually reside for a short time before again being removed). Another difficult thing is to move from planning into actual writing. I have a few pieces in the drawer that have been planned to death. I take them out from time to time and kill them off a little more.
RH: Which writers have influenced you?
DOS: Hemingway, and more recently Cormac McCarthy. Playwrights Brian Friel, Stoppard, and Chekhov. I find it more and more difficult to finish anything classified as a modern "bestseller". Most of it seems so trite. I took to audio books and, no surprise, the triteness is pervasive. Mostly I think there is a complete lack of interesting characters. There is plenty of twisting and turning plot but it is plot driven by (or driving) cardboard cut-out people that I couldn't care less about (and often dislike intensely).
RH: Have other peoples comments affected your writing?
DOS: They used to and quite a lot at times. Then I realized that, just as the proverbial camel is a result of too many designers working on the horse, too many "writers" can easily produce camel-like text - crossing the wasteland from nowhere, going nowhere and ugly as all hell. Now, I take all feedback with a pinch of salt (apologies for the jumbled up metaphors). Once in a while, I get a suggestion that turns a failing piece completely around to make it work. I think you have to welcome all feedback but you have to develop a strong filtering system so that you can catch the one gem in twenty that passes. Experienced professional feedbackers like editors and directors can cut to the core of a piece and their feedback can be priceless. Most of the best feedback I've had has come from actors who have to repeat what I write and very often say or do something that immediately illuminates new possibilities for the piece. Watching actors play with your words is probably the most intense feedback a playwright can get because it is almost always direct, unintentional, and has no sugar coating on it. Opinions in feedback are useless.
The Golden rule is do not give your half written piece to a friend with a request to "see what you think."
You stand the chance of losing a friend, or writing the piece they have always wanted to write (only badly because it's no longer yours), or giving up in shame. It's your work from start to finish. If you don't feel you own it, then set it down and forget about it. Satisfy yourself and you'll satisfy others. If you satisfy yourself but no one else, be content in the knowledge that you are one of a kind.
RH: How does writing for the stage differ from other writing?
DOS: This is a huge question. The longer I do it the more I realize that maybe writing for the stage is not really writing at all. It's more like crafting condensed conversation around events in the lives of your characters. All you have to work with is dialog and the dialog must come from people who are all individuals with their own desires and issues, thrown together for the duration of the play and all with different back stories and constantly changing subtexts. Play writing is supposed to be a collaborative process but the collaboration with actors and directors doesn't start until much heavy lifting is done by the writer. Because the audience can't turn back a page to check something, clarity is essential in a play script and having only dialog to work with makes that hard - especially when the dialog has to satisfy other constraints like covert character development and plot progression.
RH: Which piece of your writing are you most pleased about?
DOS: My play 'The Bridge Party' which has never been properly produced because I haven't marketed it (something I'm very bad at) and possibly also because of its complex stage set and a climactic scene where the main character is hung by the neck and reappears as the much-heralded villain. The first draft took three hours to perform but, with help from some very talented theater people, I was able to get it down to under two hours after some very painful amputations and extractions. Readers love the characterization and language and the darkness of it so maybe I'll pull it off the shelf and try to market it properly. It has the timeless theme of internal struggle. What pleases me most about it is that it is truly cyclical. The opening and closing few lines are identical and a brave enough (or perhaps crazy enough) producer could run it continuously, putting in replacement actors and audiences at strategic times. Even though it is cyclical, the characters actually grow and change, the dramatic question is answered, and the audience manages some good laughs despite the hanging.
Some years ago. I was at a conference in Seattle (for my day job) and was so annoyed about some of the things that went on that I wrote a satirical piece in one sitting and sent it unsolicited to a trade magazine. They printed it as a guest editorial (no pay) in the next edition with minor edits. I mention this only because it shows that when you have something to say and feel so strongly about it that you want to tell everyone (and you have some basic writing skills), it just flows out and the result is always worth reading. I wish I could get as mad about the content all my projects.
I also have a 500 page semi-autobiographical novel based on my life at sea which cannot be published until after I die.
RH: Any advice for other writers?
DOS: For beginners, stop thinking about it and just write. 80% will be garbage. After a while you'll start to recognize the good 20% and learn how to reproduce that 20% with your own voice. Non-beginners need no advice from me - they get enough already from others and themselves. Maybe they should take some of the advice. I know I should.
RH: Thank you for your comments and good advice. I hope 'The Bridge Party' gets produced soon.
DOS: I enjoyed the interview. Thanks.