Interview with Dave
Rosi
Interview by
Alina Oswald
Dave Rosi is the pseudonym of a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in New York
City. He is on the faculty of a local medical school and has a private practice.
His novels One Good Deed and For Love, That's All have been Hard
Shell Word Factory best-sellers. Dispatches from a Found Notebook is his
third novel.
With two novels on the Hard Shell Word Factory
best-seller list and counting, one can only wonder what is your secret for
writing best-sellers and creating this kind of high quality work? In short: how
do you do it? And do you have any tips for the rest of us?
One of the most important things in writing a novel is sustaining a belief-- or
a delusion, depending on one's vantage point-- that the story is worth telling,
and worth reading. If you maintain faith in the value of your creative
enterprise, you won't have a choice but to bring it to fruition.
How important is it really to have a best-seller?
Please explain.
Writers, generally, write to be read. Therefore, it would seem the more readers
the better. But beyond that, I think the most satisfying thing about writing is
feeling that you've communicated something. It doesn't have to be what you
intended to communicate. In fact, if the reader discovers something not
consciously intended by the writer, all the better.
What inspires you to write, in general?
I'm interested in conflict-- moral, psychological, historical, interpersonal--
the list could go on. I want to explore these conflicts in the deepest way I
know how-- by way of dramatic story-telling.
What inspired Dispatches?
Witnessing the events of September 11, 2001 in lower Manhattan and their
aftermath. I wanted to put those events in a particular context.
In Dispatches from a Found Notebook, one of the
two main characters, Noah, ends up learning a lot from the other's (John's)
experiences. Do you learn from your characters? From the books you write?
I learn from both. Anytime you surrender to your imagination-- as you must when
writing fiction-- you're going to discover and think about things in your own
life. It is similar to having a dream, and then reflecting on it.
There is a parallel process going on when you read a story-- as happens with
Noah when he reads the notebook. He develops a relationship with John, the
notebook's writer, that activates his imagination and sheds light on his own
life.
How long did it take you to finish the final draft of
Dispatches?
The last re-write was done over a summer. The narrative is somewhat complicated
because it intertwines three points of view: Noah's-- reading and reflecting on
the notebook, John's-- playing out his life and writing the notebook, and
John's, again-- lying on his hospital bed, without the notebook. I wanted to
make the transitions among these narratives as seamless as possible.
What is your writing schedule and how do you stick to
it?
In the first draft I try to aim for about five hundred words a day. This gives
you about four to six months to produce a story. After that, I suppose there
could be around six or eight re-writes. Re-writing is generally much more
time-consuming, because you're more involved in organizational details rather
than the pure play of the imagination.
If you're truly interested in your story, it's not hard to stick to the work. In
fact, the greater difficulty may be in "un-sticking" to it.
When you don't teach, see patients or write, what do
you enjoy doing?
Right now I like walking and studying Italian-- generally not at the same time.
Are you working on a new story? If yes, what is it
about? Working title?
I'm working on an adventure story, which looks at the destructive power of
vanity. The title hasn't come yet.
As a writer, you seem to like adventure, suspense,
mystery. Yet you want to deal with themes that go beyond genre fiction. Is there
any contradiction there?
Not necessarily. As a writer, the first thing you want to do is draw the reader
in. Promising to entertain is not a bad way to accomplish this. But once you've
done this, there's nothing stopping you from challenging the reader, and
yourself, with the deeper possibilities in a story. In fact, entertainment and
exploration can get along very well.
Alina Oswald is a freelance writer living in NYC metro
area. Currently she's working on a nonfiction book based on the life of a visual
impaired photo artist. Contact her at
www.mediabistro.com/alinaoswald.
