Member Spotlight: David B Williams

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Writing is what makes me happy. I enjoy the entire process from research to writing to editing to the final tinkering. It wasn’t always this way; I hated taking English in high school and dropped out of my senior English class after two weeks; my student teacher was David Guterson. I also didn’t take any English classes in college. After college though I worked at an outdoor field school, helping to teach natural history to students from kids to elders. I realized that I liked teaching. I had also always been a reader and someone interested in words so decided to combine these passions and see if I could share stories through writing, which I found enjoyable and rewarding. To this day, I still see my writing as a way to teach, to take what I have learned from research, talking with scientists, and going out in the field, and craft books that address the human and natural history of the place I call home. Reading is essential to life. It helps us slow down, pay attention, and discover the world around us. And, the only way we can find something to read is for some of us to be writers.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Writing is my job so I have a pretty simple solution. Apply butt to chair and get to work. That might mean writing or editing or researching. There’s always something to work on with one of my books so I rarely have writer’s block. It helps that I am not someone who needs to find my muse or thinks I need to craft something brilliant (which is good because I rarely do) in order to write. Some days the word flow and some days they trickle but on all days I generally find something to keep me busy, to keep me thinking, and allow me to move forward on a project.

What is your favorite time to write? I am one of those wacky morning people who pops up at 5am, mostly awake and ready to go. I especially like that other people are usually not up then, which gives me the time, space, and quiet to write without interruption. Add a cup of coffee and my writing life doesn’t get any better.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? I said it earlier. Put butt to chair and write. I think I first heard this from the great writer Ivan Doig, who was a mentor and friend. Ivan was a way better wordsmith than I will ever be, who always had a pad of paper to record a turn of phrase, who was always writing, always editing. If someone like that thought that hard work was what was required to be a good writer, then I could do no worse than to try and emulate his work ethic.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I like to think that my work makes a difference, that I am writing about subjects of interest to many and in such a way that they find new connections to places they love. Yes, I could be attempting to do this via social media or videos or … but I still value the written word, particularly books and like to think that those who find my books, find inspiration to get outside, slow down, and pay attention. This what keeps me motivated and excited to be a writer.

David B. Williams’s In the Range of Fire and Ice: A Human and Natural History of Washington’s Cascades is out now with Mountaineer Books.