Member Spotlight: Phillip John DePoy

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Human beings have always told stories, I’m just happy to tell the ones I know. The process of standing back and letting the stories happen, trying to get the ego out of the way, is one of the most important phenomena in which any human being can participate. It’s among the most vital spiritual experiences in life.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? My problem may be the opposite of writer’s block. I can’t wait to get to the keyboard every day because I have too many things trying to come out at the same time.

What is your favorite time to write? I’ve always written in the morning. I wake up around 7 AM and write until lunch. Then I reread and edit after lunch. I’ve done something like that since May of 1965.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers?I think I paraphrase Virginia Woolf in saying that the best advice I could give about writing is to take no advice at all. But I also appreciate a good Taoist idea: the more you try, the less it happens. Letting the words come out is always better, for me, than making them come out.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I love sitting down to write, I love writing, I love the process. The fact that it results in a book or a play or a poem or a song always surprises me. I’m even more surprised when something is published. And just for a second, I wonder where the check came from. Just watching the words is exciting. In any age.

Phillip DePoy’s Sammy Two Shoes is out now with‎ Severn House.