Posted: Tuesday March 2, 2010

Interview with Billy Bishop Goes to War author John Gray

1. What is your favourite career highlight as a writer? What would be your ideal career highlight for the future?

To be published/produced internationally. It does wonders for your Canadian sales.

Art is not a “career”, it’s a life journey. As to the future, I hope to have one.

2. Were you ever discouraged from becoming a writer? How did you move beyond that?

I am always discouraged. I got used to being discouraged a long time ago and just did it anyway.

3. What’s one commonly held belief about writing or a writer career that you’ve learned to be untrue?

That it is a “creative” process and not a receptive one.

4. You can select one person from history and ask them a question to which they must give a truthful reply. Whom would you select, and what question would you ask?

Oh, I don’t know. I’d like to have a couple of beers with Sam Beckett and get him to tell me a joke.

5. You can personally witness one event in history. What would you see?

Vimy Ridge.

6. What kind of discoveries do you make in your writing, if any, when you give a public reading?

That I can’t do accents worth a shit.

7. Do you have a pet peeve regarding a particular usage/misusage of the English language? What is it?

Overuse of the verb “to be”. 9 times out of 10 it falsifies the situation.

8. Aside from writing, what are your other talents? What is one talent you wish you had?

Music.
I wish I could dance.

9. Besides taking this survey, what do you enjoy most about publishing with Talonbooks?

You hold onto your backlist forever.

10. What do you love about Canadian literature?

The female poets.

11. What is one creative solution you use to overcome writer’s block?

Unless I have something to write, I avoid writing.