Interview with the Amomancer, Part IIII:

This is the fourth of five parts of an interview
I've conducted online with William F. DeVault
over the last several days.
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EJ:
Yes, three wishes.
WFDV:
Let's set a ground rule: No changing the past. When you change the past you change the present, and although not everything is perfect in the present, who knows what variant lines of reality I'd shift.
EJ:
Okay, good deal. Three wishes.
WFDV:
Wow. Hmmm..you had to do this to me, I over-intellectualize the issue and end up with thousands of options. I can't just wish for world peace, as the means by which is occurs is important. I can't ask for a best-seller, as it might be that something tragic happens in my life or someone I care about and the resultant publicity propels a book onto the best-seller list (besides, best-sellers are so rigged...a publisher decides in advance a book will be a set-seller and forces bookstores and distributors to pre-buy so many copies...remember, I used to hang with some best-selling authors in the AOL Writers Club)...let me think...this may take a moment...
EJ:
Take your time (tick tick tick tick)
WFDV:
Okay, wish #1: That I find the means to make up my past mistakes to anyone and everyone I have brought harm to.
EJ:
Okay, that's an interesting start.
WFDV:
(Channeling Wallace Shawn) Wait! I'm just getting started...
EJ:
Okay...wish #2:
WFDV:
Wish #2: That I find all the lost writings I've ever misplaced. For instance: I had a ton of uniques (pieces I hadn't written down anywhere else) on a site a few years about called cybervines...and one day they just closed shop. I lost dozens of untranscribed works, and they wouldn't respond to my emails. The recent return to me of several pieces by an old friend from ten years ago is the tip of the iceberg...I estimate somewhere between 700-1,000 lost works out there, floating around (or lost forever).
EJ:
And your third wish?
WFDV:
Ah, the Cyclops' dilemma now rears its one-eyed head. In mythology they traded their other eye for the power to know the time and means of their death. This, instead of giving them great freedom, made them a sorrowful race. So, I won't wish for too much knowledge. There's always the temptation to wish for the ability to know what others are thinking, but with my above-average hearing, I've already experienced how bitter that can be, sitting in one room while in the next a "friend" is bad-mouthing you. Imagine if you knew what everyone around you actually thought of you. Or if you knew what would happen tomorrow. Or what happened to old friends and lovers who have vanished from your life?
And, of course, as this is the last wish, I want to make sure it fills as many gaps as possible. There may not be another one.
EJ:
You're taking this way too seriously.
WFDV:
No, I'm embracing this as a philosophical and intellectual exercise.
EJ:
Precisely.
WFDV:
Okay, wish #3: To be reconciled with my daughter.
EJ:
A very personal set of wishes. Want to discuss #3?
WFDV:
Not really, I think readers really don't care that much about what goes on in my life, they want to know about the writings, which is as it should be. The artist or writer should never obscure the works.
EJ:
Let's talk about your writing procees for a bit.
WFDV:
I have a process? I didn't know. To me talking about my writing "process" is like talking about how people sweat or breathe or cry. It just is.
EJ:
But can't you understand how remarkable that is to people? You have done in a day what it might take another person a year to do, and you do it as a reflex. Is this by design or accident?
WFDV:
I don't fully have my arms around that yet. I know where my vocabularly comes from: a combination of bookwormishness caused by being the runt when I was a kid, an addiction to Marvel Comics and a speed-reading experiment done when I was in grade school (suddenly it sounds almost like a super-hero origin story). I tear through books at a manic pace...and when I hit new words, I look 'em up. Then I make sure to use them in a poem, which is usually a throw-away piece, but it helps me grasp the word.
The poetry aspect may be part of how my brain is wired, or it may be a learned response. Part of my life-long addiction to women in psychology programs I think is a part to want greater understanding of how I became what I am and how others became what they are.
I do know that I write in the preconscious, in almost all cases. I can compell myself to write, but it's like the difference between eating chocolate and eating subsistence food. The one you do readily, even with joy...the latter you do because you need to in the moment, but there is little joy to the process.
In most cases, it just explodes out of me...I think if I had been in an environment where I could've written everything down The Panther Cycles would have been twice or three times as large...I know of fragments of pieces that passed through my awareness when I was unable to transcibe them.
EJ:
You teach writing now, don't you?
WFDV:
Well, I've been mentoring for years, particularly through the mentoring program they used to have in the AOL Writers Club. I would love to have some new proteges, I always enjoy that. But yes, I teach writing skills at a local adult school...most of my students are teachers' aides looking to get a credit towards their paraprofessional certificate. They're bright and motivated, occasionally you get someone with some real spark, and I enjoy teaching.
EJ:
And how do they feel about having someone of you stature teaching them?
WFDV:
To be honest, I don't know if they actually grasp that. It's hard to explain to someone in Morgantown, West Virginia, what I mean to readers in Ireland, India, Australia and Los Angeles. How do you tell someone who has never seen New York except as a setting for a movie what it is like to stand on a stage in that city in front of people who paid money to see you tell them about your life? It's like Mel Brooks' old saying about the difference between comedy and tragedy: " If I get a paper cut, that's tragecy, if I fall down an open manhole and die, that's comedy."
The scale, I do not think, is there, to grasp.
EJ:
You and Morgantown seem to have a love/hate relationship.
WFDV:
I rant sometimes, but actually, it is more of a love/huh? relationship. I still love this town, but I feel sort of like Ewan McGregor in "Big Fish"...there really isn't a place for me here, not anymore. I'd like there to be, and I've made an earnest effort to fit it, but the attitudes are not a comfortable fit for me. Let me give you an example.
EJ:
Okay.
WFDV:
Last time I ever tell this story, but it reflects also on how I do a book. This Spring there was a local establishment I made my home. I'd go there to write and just to observe people. One day one of the servers there asked me about my work and asked me to write something about her. I complied, and gave it to her. A few days later another of the women in the place asked me to write a piece about her. The usual stuff, and so on...I ended up writing pieces about half a dozen of the women there, and even wrote a piece about the place itself...I figured they'd like me putting it in the book I was working on...
EJ:
The Morgantown Suite Poems, right?
WFDV:
Right. Well, one day I go in there, and one of the owners takes me aside and lectures me on the "stuff" I've been writing to the "girls"...he tells me it isn't proper for a man of "my ag"e to be writing that "sort of stuff" to "girls". Having kept copies of every piece, and reading through them later...there's nothing obscene, vulgar or sexual about any of them. And, all were, in one form or another solicited (I did ask one server who kept hovering if I had left her out and if she wanted included, and she said yes...) Anyway, I left the place that minute, haven't been back. And, I took all those works out of the book, which was just a few days away from final edits. So much for free ads.
EJ:
Don't you feel you over-reacted?
WFDV:
Nope. He over-reacted. I don't know who said what and what personal political thing went on in the background, but I was offended that a) he didn't ask my take and b) he stooped to personal attack. I was telling he story to a friend of mine and he said I had "pissed in the guy's Wheaties" which is some regional slang for treading on someone's toes. He had the right to ask me to stop, it was his establishment, and I would have honored that...hell, I've been a manager before. He could even have asked me to leave and not come back, if I was causing a disruption. But to insult me and refuse discourse, that violates intellectual boundaries I don't tolerate.
If you want to hate me, fine. But that's a statement of your character, not mine.
EJ:
I've heard you use that reference a lot, of people's actions and words being a statement of their character, not yours. Where does that come from?
WFDV:
Don Miguel Ruiz' book "The Four Agreements". That book really liberated me to stop taking what other people do, think and say so personally. I will often tell someone: "Yes, I did this and that. That's a statement of my character. I have apologized. That is also a statement of my character. What you choose to do with my apology is a statement of your character." And then I let it go. I think that's one of the reasons I found my second divorce so easy to take, I came to realize that, while I was not blameless, I wasn't responsible for all the dysfunction in the world. It's funny, I have been accused of being even more arrogant for taking that stance, but the truth of it is, I am less arrogant, now. I no longer feel everything is because of my actions, I no longer feel the universe revolves around my brain, my heart, my pen and my genitals.
EJ:
Let's talk about these three books you did this year and your plans for the future
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