Author Interview: Charley Daveler

I've been fortunate enough to digitally meet Charley Daveler, a writer currently residing in the great state of Wyoming.  Daveler's vast experience writing includes novels, plays, short stories, and comics spanning nearly a decade.  She's a busy woman, so you can imagine how happy it made me to spend some time with her.  Thanks, Charley, for taking the time to answer these questions.  And for more information about what she's working on, visit her website at www.charleydaveler.com.

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1. As a young writer, you already have extensive experience in several mediums including: plays, comics, short stories, and novels.  Of these different forms, which one do you naturally gravitate toward and hope to build your career around?

I’d say I prefer novel writing, but I think I’m much better at plays. I naturally think in dialogues, seeing both sides of what’s going on, and having arguments with myself all day. Dialogue comes quickly for me.

I’m a poor abstract thinker and see ambiance, attitudes, and moods much better than I do visuals. Because, in a play, you can be very frank when it comes to concrete details. “Exit stage right.” I hate telling the reader something straightforward (because as a reader I like to figure things out), and so my most common complaint is people getting confused because I either didn’t describe enough or the point of a description isn’t immediately obvious.

Short stories are incredibly difficult and comics are fun, but take a long time, and it’s hard for me to sense the flow. (I have a 92 word-per-minute typing speed, and so can have a better sense of pacing when typing out text rather than trying to write a comic script of three lines per page.)

2. You’ve submitted work to various publications, including print and digital.  Have you considered indie publishing direct through Amazon and Barnes and Noble?  Why or why not?

Yes and no.

A few years ago I received a grant to produce a literary journal. I compiled local authors together and printed a book through Create Space. It made back its money, and I’ve been doing issues ever since.

The response was surprisingly wonderful, but I did get a lot of snobby attitudes. People tried to diminish the work by saying, “Oh, it’s self-published?” Well, no because it’s other people’s stories, but still, having done a majority of the work myself, I was very sensitive to this attitude.

I’ve also been a producer of plays for a very long time, and created a great deal of projects in which I had to do the majority, if not all, the work. It can be wonderful to have complete control in something, but the truth is, I’m over it. I much prefer to have someone else have to hire the artists, do the graphic design, and have other people to give me their opinions and advice. When I’m stuck with my ideas it can feel stagnant, even incestuous at times. Yet, no matter how much background checking you do, when hiring people it’s always kind of a crap shoot. I’ve worked with people with excellent resumes who’ve proved terrible, people with no experience who’ve been wonderful, and everywhere in between. It’s often unpredictable, which is why people in the arts tend to rehire the same people over and over—a merely adequate person who you know will come through is worth more than a master who might screw you over.

Combine those two things and self-publishing is by far the more difficult route. You have to produce a work of higher quality and polishing than a traditionally published book to be taken seriously, do the same amount of work a whole team with a lot more money than you does, and still get less credit and opportunities. Having to make all the decisions—even if that means deciding who to hire to make decisions—and then experiencing people feel they can criticize those decisions just because you’re self-published adds immensely to the stress of producing a book.

I will say that I do see it as an option in the future, but it’s on the backburner.

3. Are the illustrations as important as the writing as it pertains to producing a comic book?  Do you illustrate your own work?  If not, how did you find an artist to collaborate with?

I strongly believe a great illustrator or actor can make up for bad writing, and bad ones can destroy great master scripts. Get the right facial features and body language and anything can become intriguing or convincing. You hire a great artist and it doesn’t matter as much how crappy the writer is.

I prefer to collaborate when I can—I love working with other people and hate making decisions by myself—but the reality is it’s extraordinarily difficult to find dependable people. Even if you get someone and directly offer them a well-paying job in the field they believe they want to be working in, some people will still screw you. Without a word. Just leave you hanging, won’t answer your emails or their phones. Then they’ll still call you up for the next project asking if you’ll hire them, and then you find yourself getting yelled at for not trusting that “It’s different this time.”

Personally, I’ve been sketching for as long as I’ve been writing, but I have revamped the comic three times because I wasn’t satisfied with my drawing abilities. If I could choose, I’d rather have another artist, (or even just one to do the coloring, which takes the most time in a process) but how I would find one is another question. I will say that I know the facial expressions I intend better than anyone, and it is extremely useful for me to be able to portray them as I see them though.

4. At the end of a particularly tough writing day, one in which you feel you’ve not accomplished as much as you like, what do you do to cheer yourself up?  What do you do to bounce back the following day?

You can tell I’m stressed because I’ll make a bowl of fudge. Sometimes I won’t even eat it, which would drive my mother nuts, but it was the making of it that was relaxing.

I try to cut myself some slack though… I have rules like, “If my daily limit wasn’t met by midnight, then it doesn’t count.” That allows me to go to bed instead of getting upset I didn’t finish. Also, I try to not have an all or nothing mentality and give myself credit for any writing I’ve done. The less I write, the more upset I become and the harder it is to write later. I find a forgiving attitude is important to encourage progress later.

5. Tell me about your outlining process.  How much of a story do you know before you start writing?  How much freedom do you give your characters to change what you originally envisioned?

I constantly change and toy with my process, but usually I don’t know much before I start. I only am aware of a few things, but as I start working I begin to have more and more questions and the answers to those questions develop the story for me. When outlining, I don’t know what I don’t know, and it’s harder for me to be inspired and get organic ideas when I’m trying to expedite the plotline.

Please note I often have to do a lot of cutting and flushing out in the later drafts.

Sometimes I can get stuck on, “But this is the way it happened!” in the editing process, where I won’t want to put in a character who “wasn’t there,” or move them into a different location, or make a change that didn’t happen the way I originally envisioned it even if it makes just as sense and the scene benefits from the change.

6. How do you measure productivity?  Do you write a certain number of words per day?  Words per week?  Pages?  How diligently do you try to work ahead?

I aim for five pages a day. I like page count versus word count because the time it takes to achieve the same goal varies. (A page of dialogue is much quicker than a page of description.)

Because I’m the sort of person to feel like it’s never enough, I try to give myself credit when I meet my goal and not feel obligated to work ahead. The only time I do write extra is because I’m feeling inspired, or I know something’s coming up where I probably won’t get any writing done.

7. If you are at a dinner party and someone seems genuinely curious about you as a writer, which of your projects do you direct them to?  Which work offers a best first impression of you?

Stories of the Wyrd, my online serial, features the kinds of writing I want to be known for. The siblings Kaia and Rasmus have a good dynamic similar to that of Calvin and Hobbes, my favorite characters of all time. Kaia is highly intelligent with a great imagination and curiosity, but can be highly entitled and oblivious to the ridiculousness of the things she says. Rasmus is a better person, I would say—though I feel he is developing a philandering problem—who makes more of the moral decisions, but is willing to sit back and lets his sister make her mistakes, observing and making sarcastic commentary, but not trying to control her or protect her. (Until she really needs it.) They care about each other more than anything and save the other’s ass on multiple occasions, but they have a live and let live mentality I like.

The Wyrd is a secondary, magical realm that has ever shifting boundaries. They live in a sort of industrial age, where the closer you come to the coast (where the Wyrd appears less often) the more technological based humanity is, but the further out you go, the more feudal the villages seem. It has a sort of steam punk feeling when they’re in civilization, but an old folklore tone when they get closer to the outskirts. It features magic, creatures, and demons in the way that I typically envision them (in some of my stories, the rules are different than how I feel magic “really” is), allows me to have fantastical technological items aside fairy tales, and the medium of serial shorts gives me leave to explore the characters in many different ways.

Mostly, because the two main characters are siblings, not lovers, the romances they can have in the stories are much less “soul mates” or “will they won’t they,” but can be basically anything I want. You don’t know who they’re going to end up with, so this gives me more freedom when playing around with love stories.


8. Where do you write the bulk of your novels?  Any chance you’d send me a picture of your workspace?

I write mostly at my desk. However, I find that switching up the location of my writing can help me become reinspired, so I will go to Starbucks and I liked my jobs where I was in an office pretty much only there to answer phones because I get more done in a workplace than I do at home. I also have a long commute (in Wyoming, everywhere is far from everywhere) and will write by talking into a voice recorder.

9. Can you read a novel without thinking about how you would have written it differently?  Name a classic novel that you would have ended differently.  How would you have ended it?

I try very hard not to do that. Reading was something that naturally became corrupted for me when I started writing. You can’t help it. I don’t necessarily rewrite them, but I do dissect them: “Why do I feel this way?” It diminishes some of the enjoyment of reading and the ability to be immersed. My main goal when reading is entertainment, and if I commit to being entertained over analyzing, I’m a faster reader.

Because I don’t really like going meta and I believe in the books—i.e. this really happened—I often can’t rewrite the events. But two stand out in my mind.

Pride and Prejudice’s is a very long book and the ending feels told and rushed for me. I wanted more of a climax, I suppose. This is my modern day sensibilities, but there was just something unsatisfying about the way it ended. Not that I would change the events—I wanted Darcy and Elizabeth to get together—but I might add in something more dramatic right before they do.

Then there’s Harry Potter (spoiler): While I learned to accept the many deaths in the series, I have never gotten over the death of one character. George Weasley has ruined for me all of the books. I have never been able to reread them since I’d finished and it’s because it always makes me grieve for him. Every time I see Fred and George together, I am no longer amused, but devastated. I would probably keep the series the same, but I would not let Fred or George die.

10. What one piece of advice would you offer a college student who has decided to devote his or her life to writing?

Okay. Because you said “college” student, I have very specific advice that pertains mainly to them: Your college professors are going to be the first people you experience who will compete with you even though they are meant to help you.

Colleges will often hire artists instead of teachers. The instructors you had prior usually decided to go straight into teaching. Public schools, which most of us American students experience, require more of an extensive academic resume than private colleges, and even the public universities can get around professionals not having degrees. In college, you are more likely to find writers who went out seeking to be a successful novelist, failed, and decided to teach to get a steady paycheck than you were to in high school.

Plus, everyone assumes high school students suck. There is definitely an empathetic disconnect between children and adults, making the issue of competition moot. Your high school writing teacher is so confident in you not being better than them—at least at this moment—they’re never going to act threatened.

But in college, you are now an adult working with people who might very well see themselves as failures. You will be exposed, probably for the first time, to an authority figure who actually wants you to fail.

Obviously not all professors are like that—I wouldn’t even say the majority—but there’s enough of them that if you are in college, I guarantee someone has either already said or will say that you are terrible and will never amount to anything.

Do not believe them. Watch them. The people who say this say this to everyone. Even their “golden” students… pay attention. It might look like they worship them, but there’s still ways they’re trying to demoralize them.

People who make it their “job” to tell others what they can and can’t do aren’t doing it because they’re experts. Every famous person has someone who went out of his way to demoralize them. Remember that statistically if you tell everyone they won’t succeed, you’re going to be correct 99% of the time. Most of your classmates won’t go on to be bestselling novelists. There’s little risk, and, more importantly, it makes them feel better about their crushed dreams. If they really knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t be so absolute in renouncing their students.

11. Who is the person you write for, the first person you wish to read your story the moment it’s finished?

That’s actually been a problem for me. When I write, I am trying to write the book I want to read, but can’t find. I know that my tastes are not that unique and there’s definitely a market, but I don’t know many people who are my target audience… mostly because I don’t know many people.

My sci-fi and fantasy readers tend to be males into the epic storylines (war, world domination, lots of people effected by huge problems), and not so much interpersonal relationships, and my romance readers tend to be into contemporary drama, not speculative or satirical worlds. I am, what I would call, the “Buffy” crowd, writing comedic characters in horrific and paranormal settings.

I do have people who could be in my audience, but they’re not always the best critics. Either they don’t like reading, they don’t have the time, they don’t have the experience (and write things like only like, “I love this!”), or, in a few cases, they’re Mormon.

This doesn’t mean I can’t get great feedback, it’s just I want to find someone who is the whole package. Good reader, good critic, and wants what I am going for.

My main reader is a good friend of mine who somewhat likes the kinds of books I’m writing (even though it’s not her favorite), who gives me a good dose of criticism, praise, doesn’t try to rewrite it for me, and focuses on big picture issues.

12. What is the one house chore you loathe doing?

There’s few things I mind doing if I don’t have to do it every day. And considering how well I keep my house, there’s not a lot I have to do that much. I would prefer not having to do the dishes, but if I have a dishwasher it’s not too bad. The amount of dishware I keep is directly related to how little I have to do the dishes.

13. What’s your favorite curse word?

Asshat. Or asshole. I’m not big on swearing, but “asshat” is the one word I’m not sure how to get around when teaching teenagers. There’s just not a PG way to label someone with the same amount of punch.

14. What one meal can you cook that should be showcased on a menu of a nice restaurant?

Singapore Sling. Some people might not consider it a meal, but I think if they had the option between that and being forced to eat anything I cooked, they’d be happy with a cocktail.

Seriously, I eat ramen noodles dry.

15. What is your cat’s name, and how often does he distract you from your writing?

His full name is Dimitri Bink, and he usually gets rambunctious at 11 a.m., 1 a.m., and when his food dish is empty, or if I’ve been gone all day. He’ll have his exceptions, but he schedules his hyperactivity.

16. Which work/author inspired you to progress from voracious reader to aspiring writer?

To be clear, I liked Eragon okay. I read it. I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t because of a passion for it that made me write; it was a competitive issue. I had decided that I was going to be the youngest author ever (unaware of how old the youngest author was) since third grade. It was in seventh where Eragon came out. The writer was a fifteen-year-old boy and I realized I had been slacking. I finished my first novel before I hit eighth.

17. What’s your favorite city in the world?  What’s the one city you most wish to visit?

To visit? Tokyo. I don’t think I’d want to live there… It would be hard to live in a country that doesn’t speak English as a writer whose books are most in English, and I hear that you’ll never really fit in. But I’ve always loved anime and was totally one of those nerds.

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Thanks, Charley, for visiting my blog!  I've enjoyed learning about you and look forward to exploring your serial Stories of the Wyrd.  And because I'm interested in seeing where other writers work, I've included a pic of your workspace, so fans can see where the bulk of your magic is created.