The author of the new memoir, Orangutan is not at a loss for drinking stories on this fine St. Patrick's Day. Or, as he told me -- what the Irish call, "Amateur Day". My interview below:
CB: One of the most painful elements of that last ten year binge was that I wasted so much writing time, my entire thirties really. I did manage to get one screenplay written but it was a mechanical process, I wasn't emotionally connected to it. Drunk; I couldn't write a sentence that made any sense. Hung-over; what I wrote wasn't worth reading.
JD: Do you still write every day?
CB: I do. I have a fifteen month old daughter now so I rise at 6 in the morning to take advantage of that quiet time.
JD: How did you organize the material for the book?
CB: I actually started out writing about the last six month bender and then I just kept jumping back further into my past from there. It wasn't until two years into the process, during the final edit, that I jumped all the way back to my first morning in America twenty years ago. The beginning scene of the book was the last thing I wrote.
JD: You spoke well of an editor who helped to tighten up one of your stories; he taught you about clarity. So did you kill any darlings while editing Orangutan?
CB: Two writers who helped me immensely were poet laureate Billy Collins who was my mentor for a few years I spent at Lehman College in my twenties, and my friend, Bronx poet Rick Pernod. Billy taught me the importance of the rewrite and Rick edited the first short story I managed to get published. My final draft for Orangutan was over 500 pages, so I wound up throwing away about 150 of that. There was an extra 30 pages of my Russian debacle that I cut with some trepidation, but it just didn't work for the book as a whole. Those are the tough decisions; which babies to murder.
JD: You've been compared to Augusten Burroughs and Charles Bukowski. Who are some of your favorite writers and what are you reading now?
CB: For the last few years I've been reading a lot of biographical stuff. I love looking into the messy details of people’s lives, especially writers; it helps me feel I'm not alone in my madness I suppose. Right now I'm reading Nora, by Brenda Maddox, an extraordinary book. If you want to know more about James Joyce, read about his wife, he really was a sick bastard in many ways. I love that about him.
JD: What are you working on now?
CB: I am in a writing frenzy of late. I think I'm trying to play catch up, trying to rid my head of noise that should have been teased out over the past twelve years. I just finished a screenplay called "A Bend In The River," and I have been working on the follow up to Orangutan, the book of my childhood growing up in Northern Ireland, "That's That". It is due in stores fall of 2011 courtesy of my new best friends over at Three Rivers Press. My life has become a constant struggle to find time.
Thanks, Colin. For more on the craft of writing please check out my site and my book, Bang the Keys.
And before we sign off, here's a question:
Has your...shall we say...social life ever interfered with your ability to put words on the page? Look forward to your comments.
