|
Featured Book Interview - April 2006
Hard Inner Work
Hard Outer Work +
= Dream Fulfillment
Women’s fiction author Dayna Dunbar reveals how she got from “I want to write a book” to a multi-book contract.
Deanna: Welcome, Dayna, and congratulations on your multi-book sale. I understand you give a workshop called "How to got from 'I want to write a book' to a six-figure, multi-book contract." Can you give our site visitors a tip or two from your workshop?
Dayna: I’ll give one from the heart and one from the head. #1) Work on healing any mental and emotional blocks that keep you from pursuing your writing fully and from receiving the fulfillment of your dreams. #2) Use a talented freelance editor to work on your manuscript with you before submitting it to agents, and definitely try to get an agent as opposed to selling your work directly to publishers yourself.
Deanna: You've also written screenplays and were part of the production team for the 1996 film "Romeo and Juliet." How did the film business prepare you--or not--for the book business?
Dayna: It prepared me very well because the film business is much tougher! I had to work a lot harder to get my stuff read, to try to get an agent, to get meetings, so when I switched to the literary world, it seemed warm and fuzzy compared to what I was used to. I also developed, through handling rejection and healing my own insecurities, a confidence and know-how that were helpful.
Deanna: How did screenwriting help your novel writing skills ?
Dayna: I’ll be honest with you. When I decided to start writing, it was only because there was this painfully intense urge within me to do so not because I thought I would be good at it. This urge felt like a force bigger than me. On my own, I was way too insecure. That same force or muse or whatever you want to call it also told me very clearly to start by writing screenplays. At the time I didn’t know it, but this was to be my writing education. I wrote four screenplays in four years, and I learned the three-act structure, writing dialogue, character development and what works in storytelling. I did this not by taking classes or reading books but by doing the writing then working hard at getting people in the business to read my screenplays and give me feedback.
 Deanna: Fanny Flagg has said of your _The Saints and Sinners of Okay County_ that it's a "funny and poignant story of a woman struggling to liberate herself in small town America." Having lived in both L.A. and a small town in Oklahoma, where would you say it's easier for a woman to liberate herself, or is liberation equally hard in both settings? What could be some of the reasons for this?
Dayna: Liberation really depends on the woman’s attitude and willingness and courage in facing herself. My main character, Aletta Honor, is forced into looking at her unhealed past through circumstances in her own painful life, and with the qualities I mentioned above and the help of her friends, she finds freedom in a small town. Having said that, I do believe it can be easier to find liberation in cities through therapists, support groups of every kind, and often a more open-minded view of healing. However, it doesn’t matter what kind of support is available if a woman isn’t willing to do the hard work of taking responsibility for her own life.
Deanna: Your stories include characters who struggle with their psychic abilities. How have your studies in psychology and spirituality helped you to understand a psychic's unique inner conflicts? Are any of the psychic phenomena you fictionalize based on personal experience?
Dayna: I think my studies, my experience with my own intuition and my belief that the material world is a tiny fraction of reality have opened me to the existence of psychic phenomena. The reason I decided to write about a psychic is because of personal experience. A friend of my mother’s, one of the salt-of-the-earth, Christian women in Oklahoma that I grew up around, revealed that she’d always had psychic abilities. The combination of a Baptist and a psychic living in a small town in Oklahoma fascinated me. As I wrote, I realized that the psychic aspect really was a metaphor for that unique part of each of us that is also the very thing we tend to most hide and shame.
Deanna: Do you continue to write screenplays alongside novels? If so, how do you divide your time?
Dayna: I am focusing mainly on novels right now. I did co-write a screenplay last year, and it was fun. I kind of did it as a break from the novel writing and to get to work with someone else for a while when I was between novels.
Deanna: What can we look for next from the Dunbar pen?
 Dayna: I am excited about my new book THE WINGS THAT FLY US HOME coming out at the end of March. Currently, I am writing a novel that is still set in small town Oklahoma but with completely different characters and story. It’s about a lost, down-on-her-luck young woman named Jessie who witnesses a pretty teenage cheerleader, Cassie, get hit by a car when she is walking in the parking lot of the grocery store where Jessie works. Jessie helps to save Cassie’s life in a kind of miraculous way, and in doing so, begins to come back to life herself. Right now I am calling it ON THE DARK HIGHWAY, which is taken from Dickens quote in A Tale of Two Cities. In the story, Jessie escapes her dismal life by reading, and Dickens is her favorite author.
Deanna: Thanks so much for taking time to be interviewed, Dayna. I’m inspired to continue doing the hard inner work you referred to.
top |
