#146: Online Writing, English Literature, Ernest Hemingway and Essayful with Dylan O'Sullivan
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Kia ora, ni hao and hello. Welcome to the Chiwi Journal podcast. I'm your host, Camille Leung. My guest today is Dylan O'Sullivan.

Dylan and I are colleagues at O'Shaughnessy Venture. He is also a guest lecturer at Write on Passage, columnist at a few major media outlets, and the creator behind the writing-focused brand, Essifo. In today's episode, Dylan and I talk about our experience majored in English Literature.

online writing, a few our favorite writers including Ernest Hemingway and Dylan's current writing project, Exitful. I hope you enjoyed our conversation.

Since we just finished our OSV monthly meeting, so shall we start with how did you join the OSV and how we become colleagues? Yeah, yes, it's kind of it's a weird circuitous route that we'll probably come back to it in the story as well. So basically, so I'm from Ireland, rural Ireland, so in the middle of nowhere, where it's kind of just fields and Guinness, etc. So my kind of

My contact to the world of creative people in general was kind of limited to Twitter and things like that. So one day I just saw a tweet from a person called Dave Perel. He's kind of a big writing guy. I think that's literally in his Twitter bio. It says the writing guy. I think that's his nickname. And it was like some 15 fellowships to a cohort he runs called Rite of Passage. And they were being funded by this guy called Jim O'Shaughnessy, who I'd never heard of.

So basically I kind of applied to that. It was meant to like, uh, the results are meant to come back on a Friday. I didn't hear anything. So I kind of just, oh, okay. Well, I guess like I kind of forgot about it. I didn't expect to get it anyway. And then on a Saturday it came through city. Okay. So you've been selected. So I think it's like, it's just normally quite expensive. It's like well outside my, uh, I don't have any money. So all things are outside my financial range at that point. So then it was like, um,

A month and a half kind of intense writing sponsored by Jim.

So then that was kind of rounding up and I'd just come out of doing a master's in new media. So I emailed from my supervisor that I was kind of had yet to reply. He's trying to get me to go down the PhD route. But then this kind of gave me a taste for writing online. And I kind of saw, OK, there's like a kind of saw the edge of a different world at that moment. OK, I kind of want to explore that. So I just sent Jim an email at the end of the cohort and I said, you know what?

is there ever an opportunity that I can kind of help you out with anything or come on board in any way? I'd love to do so. And then little did I know, he said, as a matter of fact, I'm starting a company in like two months. You probably already knew about it at that stage. It was like November time, something like that. So then I was kind of just waiting around for a couple of months, not sure what to expect. And then from January onwards, so I think what we're

seven months in now six months in yeah so then that's how uh i can't remember when we first met i assume it was one probably in those introductory calls uh for osb yeah probably i think that's the first time when i was in china i got a shitty wi-fi there and i think from your side yeah my side i was like i was staying with a friend in las palmas in spain so

But we were both doing calls all the time. So I didn't, it was his kind of apartment. So I had to do my calls. I got to be creative, but where I could do calls as I was like on the beach and kind of just running around trying to find quiet spots around the place.

Yeah, so that's kind of my weird, random, kind of serendipitous path to OSB. I see. That's good. Yeah, I also joined the rite of passage and also got a scholarship. Two cohorts before you. And what was it, a gym scholarship as well? No, it's like two years ago. Yeah, David, he did the scholarship, probably 10 people.

So I applied, then I got in. So it's a very interesting timing. And it also started my way of writing in English. Because before, I always write in Chinese. It's in my comfort zone, writing in my native language. But after I joined Rite of Passage, I started to write more in English. So I wonder, how did your love affair with reading and writing begin? Do you remember your very first...

first writing experience very first writing experience I don't I don't think I do I had a very weird uh childhood so my mother was she's like the best person ever but she's also a bit uh

Stalin-esque, quite authoritarian. She's like a dictator hippie type person. So I was homeschooled until the age of 11. So we were, me and my sister, at home all the time. TV was like, you know, 25 minutes a day and then you were done with like a

cook code on the tv so it was just kind of boring so then books were like allowed to read as much as we want so that's kind of it kind of begrudgingly that's kind of what got me into it and then it kind of became a habit without me even noticing it it was kind of my normal it's like you know a fish doesn't know it's wet i was like it was just everywhere around me she used to do weird things as well

Like she's super creative. So for example, if we didn't want to do the dishes, she would say, okay, you don't do dishes if you practice piano for 20 minutes. And I was like, okay, okay. So then it's like, I didn't want to do piano either. And I was like, okay, it's the best of a bad option. So then she used to do things like, okay, you write like a poem or write like a story or draw something. And then you don't have to do this chore and things like that. Or you get like an extra 20 minutes of TV tomorrow. So it was kind of this kind of point system. So I think that's kind of when it, it developed.

And then reading came along way before writing. I didn't really write anything outside of what I had to, like in school, probably until I was like maybe 19, 20.

maybe so I was a late bloomer I wasn't like sitting at home filling up notebooks like like a lot of people were. But you chose English literature as your major in university right like why you make this decision free time reading? Yeah because I kind of I love books not writing them per se but reading them so I kind of thought okay and then I wanted I wanted to go to college

just because it opens so many doors it kind of doesn't matter what you do so then i thought okay i'm already reading all the time so so what can i do in college that like won't affect my life in any way or add any extra work to my day-to-day and so then i went up and i did english lit in trinity college dublin which uh kind of left me a bit scared in academia in general kind of like you know probably high expectations in my mind and when i arrived it didn't exactly meet up so my um

My vagrancy got pretty bad pretty quick. Also, I don't know. It's like I kind of lived a dual life. Sport has always been my main thing and kind of going out and like quite a social person, which isn't like necessarily the stereotype for me.

kind of a writer I spent lots of time you know and things like that so I didn't really like the people I didn't really they were nice but like I didn't vibe at all with the people in my university course as well so all my friends were doing like business and doing like law and other things so it was like a convergence of different incentives that kind of led me just to not go

pretty soon. So how it used to work, it used to be like two semesters of 12 weeks used to be how it was worked out. So then on week one, they would tell you what all the 12 weeks were. And then at the end, you did an essay. So there's no, there's some written examples, but very few. So I used to go on week one and then I go, okay, which

Which thing am I going to do my essay on in week 12? So then I go, okay, week eight is what I'm going to do. So I would only attend like one or two weeks per semester in college. But then I saw that, but then I, what I did all the time, I was using the facility. So I was in the library kind of reading my own stuff, kind of basically do my own curriculum and

and kind of avoiding anything that I was being told to do. So I managed, I got the paper. It was kind of like, you know, quite quitting. Quite quitting, okay. It's like in the workforce, like when people just stop going to work and they keep getting paid for what. So I think I kind of quite graduated. So I kind of just, I snuck through and I got the paper, but like, yeah, I did less than the bare minimum, but somehow I managed to scrape through it.

I think pretty similar, yeah. I also majored in English literature because I just enjoy reading. But all the curricular my school design, I've already read.

read everything when I was young. So they're all like a repeating stuff. So I start to read other stuff. Like you, I always say, okay, what's this semester I need to do? Then I finish early, enjoy the rest of time partying in university. No, yeah, exactly. I also found that's kind of a nice experience. I've actually heard this interesting thing where English literature now is way better in foreign countries than English.

than English speaking ones because places like India, was it in China where you went and did your undergraduate? Yeah, I did undergraduate in China and in New Zealand as an exchange student. So I experienced two different English literature courses.

Oh, I'd imagine. It's very interesting. Pretty much, it's hard to imagine two opposite countries than New Zealand and New Zealand in a lot of ways. Yeah, because the theory is, and I've kind of heard this, people have kind of like sent me random DMs and stuff on Twitter in the past that the non-English speaking countries, they've kind of stuck to classics a little bit more because they assume the students haven't read them and then they're kind of

Isn't that like, you know, kind of anti-colonial, anti-canon sentiment in those countries? Because they were so far away from that kind of unfortunate side of history. But then in places like Ireland and England and America as well in a big way, there's this kind of sense that, you know, the canon is elitist and problematic is a good word that they like to use. So they prefer to go on like niche authors and it's a lot of kind of sociology, a lot of

political stuff. And I said, like, I went there and I thought it would be like, you know, 95% Faulkner and 5% Foucault. And then it was the opposite. Okay, so it was kind of all secondary reading stuff like that. So that's why I really didn't vibe with the curriculum. But then I hear it again, that in a lot of different countries, that's not the case.

So you actually probably, if you want to get an English degree, don't go somewhere where they don't speak English as their main language. It's kind of a bizarre turn of events. True. Yeah. In China, I started all Shakespeare, even Churchill, Winston Churchill, those all the classic speeches. We did zero Shakespeare for four years. How's that even possible? Okay. That's so interesting. Because you did one in Paris, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. In Paris, I was in the Sorbonne. That was the best of my four years was English in Paris.

which is kind of again it doesn't it doesn't make a whole great deal of sense but like that that university is like so i don't know how trinity managed to like get that exchange set up because that university is like beyond good so like everyone in there was like okay i kind of thought like okay i'm you know native speaker i kind of flow through this this would be easy and it was like jesus christ no it was like their level was like yeah i think

probably a lot of like you know English mom French dad type stuff but like yeah again that was that was better than any of my three years I hope my old professors don't listen to this that was yeah the best of the four okay cool

We all have childhood heroes and idols. So can you share who yours were? Are they majority of writers or not really? No, no, zero. So yeah, for me, software, again, I'm going to...

I don't even want to bring it up with you because it could derail the whole thing. That's alright. Yeah, die hard match to United fan since I was three. How come? Did your family influence? It's weird. So there's like me...

I live in the middle of nowhere. So it's like a 20-minute drive from even a shop. And then for some reason, some weird quirk in evolution, that it was three boys. There's only three houses, and there are three boys, and they're all my age, and we're all best friends. The three of us. So we could see each other's bedrooms from each other's windows, and then there's no one else.

So then we all love soccer. So interesting you mentioned soccer. I thought you should say football. So yeah, we say soccer because in Ireland we have our own football. Oh yeah, true, true, true. Yeah, so we have Gaelic football which I played when I grew up which is horrendous. Well, no, it's fun. Irish sports are quite violent.

so I kind of for the sake of my head I kind of stopped playing those around 20 maybe I think I was 21 I stopped so yeah so soccer between us so then the oldest of us he's like a 10 months older he supported Manchester United when he was he decided when he was four that he supported Manchester United so then I said okay when I was three I said okay that sounds like a good one and his dad is Wolves and my dad is Liverpool so like I don't know where the seed of that began um

So yeah, so heroes were Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs, all these like, you know, Eric Cantona, the classic soccer players. I don't think literary heroes came into the picture until I was maybe 15, 16. And even at that, I think went through the classic beat phase. So it was like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, people like this. They were the first, I think, maybe the first writers that I thought were cool.

I think maybe the comedians then I'm not sure if they if that came first maybe comedians came first actually so like people like Bill Hicks and Lenny Bruce are these kind of cool comedians from like the between the 60s and the 90s again I don't know where that came from either I've always had like a insatiable kind of appetite for what I wasn't allowed to

To watch or wasn't allowed to read. So my parents would often hide books that I wasn't like, I was too young to be reading or I would like, I would always want to watch the thing that I wasn't allowed to watch. I remember like South park when I was, I remember it's funny. I was like, I used to watch South park with my dad and,

until I was like five and then I wasn't allowed to watch it anymore because I was getting old enough to like understand what was happening so then all of a sudden I'm like it's like a reverse so I think yeah those kind of comedians and then those kind of beat poets and those were I think my first kind of

heroes that weren't wearing a Manchester United jersey. That's cool. Yeah. You know, there was a Chinese player who joined Man City. That's how Man City is getting so popular in China market. That's how I started to watch it. Okay. Is that a recent? No, no. 2002. Sun Jihai. Back then, Manchester City was so bad.

almost a wreck yeah we had a we had our fun in the derbies for a long time but that fun has kind of disappeared recently yeah after 20 years finally it's my city's time now I know I know and for the foreseeable future I'm afraid to say

It's looking good for you. Really? Mason Mounts are just joined, I think. Yeah, Man United are going to have some good young players. I think there's a player called Hoyland. He's a striker from Atlanta. He's a Norwegian, I think. He's like the quote-unquote the next Haaland is looking like. So I think we're putting in a bid for him. So I think we get a striker. Strange things could happen. You never know.

That's good. Okay, okay. Back to writing. Cliche question. Who's your favorite writer? It's too many, right? My favorite... Yeah, I think it's...

it changes and then you can have like you've loads of different ones for different reasons i've been reading a lot of hemingway yeah so on your ic4 yeah so i'm really really liking the kind of man he was as he's kind of inspiring in a way that nothing was ever for money

he's he's like openly competitive with writers like and like you know call them out publicly yeah i love that kind of like back and forth it's almost like boxing type thing which i really like openly very very hostile to critics which i kind of like that i think people are kind of scared to say things nowadays it's always like no maybe we'll do a movie together in 10 years so like it's kind of constant politicking and stuff but he didn't compromise ever on that um

Didn't like his writing at first because I thought it was boring and basic. Well, a bit boring and basic. But then I really come to know because you kind of realize when you kind of, it's the second and third reading, you realize there's a lot of stuff going on under the scenes. Like a lot of theories going on about kind of, he saw something as like, so some kind of combination of poetry and prose that could like transcend them both. So he was kind of going for this

uh type of like balance between what's said and what's not said and how the reader can kind of fill in these gaps i think it's really interesting uh but i don't think he's a good storyteller per se so that's why i think his short stories are really good because it's kind of like it's nice and concise but in his novels i don't think if he struggled to like really keep people hooked um for a long series so i don't think on that point he'd be a bit disqualifying

For someone I just love to read because I love to read them. I think generally non-fiction would be my genre of choice. But kind of non-fiction by people who really, really wrote. As opposed to, it's not like a science book. So people like Arthur Kossler. He wrote a lot. People like Camus. I love that.

people like Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. He did loads of cool nonfiction. You've probably read The Doors of Perception. Yeah, yeah. So that kind of very experimental nonfiction, I think, is definitely... If I wasn't reading towards a purpose, which unfortunately I generally am, because I have so much reading for things that I want to write about or things that I feel I need to read for a given reason, there isn't much things that I just pick up and just do...

you know, just for the joy of that 10 minutes of reading as opposed to nothing. Arthur Costler, I think he wrote a really famous book called Darkness at Noon, which is a novel, which I've embarrassingly never read, but he's written, he wrote loads of nonfiction books.

um like the act of creation is a book of his which is like on creativity uh and humor and science and how they're all kind of interrelated so again it's like covering bringing in so many cool sources and citations and things like that um so he has loads of obscure weird books that kind of touch on like you know mysticism and

psychedelics and science and stuff. It's really, really cool. Need to add to my reading list. Yeah, definitely start with The Act of Creation is a really cool one to start. I can link you after as well. He'd be up there. I think he's maybe who I've read the most of. I think I've read almost everything at this stage, which is like 20 non-fiction. I still haven't read his fiction. I don't have a reason to. I'm very like

because you know you probably experience this as well when you're kind of always trying to put out writing and you kind of have creative projects going on you're always kind of reading they take up so much of your reading time that you don't kind of have you're kind of reading uh straight ahead all the time you don't have kind of time to read horizontally sometimes for the sake of it yeah escape reading yeah yes yes exactly so yeah no he definitely i think he'd be i'm trying to wrap my brains now is there anyone else

I loved Ginsburg for a while. Like how that poem is read that all the time. It's kind of weird. Like I love the, cause I love Kerouac and I love those guys early. And I still think they're kind of, they get a lot of hate from,

because it's kind of seen as like they didn't really try and stuff like that but I read them when I was young and I thought they were intoxicating I think a book is best I think when you only kind of understand like 85 to 90% of what's going on there's kind of this weird part like oh my god what's you kind of don't understand um

Yeah, I'll stick with Costner. I can't think of anyone to knock him off. Yeah, in different stages, you have different favorite writers, for sure. I think Hemingway is...

most well-known American writers in China because his book is so easy to translate into other language because the language is so simple and clear a story is short yeah I've been doing research for the series I'm doing on him now it's like it was like a sensation in places like China and India and Russia they were like all this stuff like it's like

all the kids were like reading it again like 1939 and people people didn't understand like what's going on it was like they just kind of cut through everything yeah again it's because that's simplicity which is kind of it's a great starter book for any for like kids can access it on one level and enjoy it and then when you're older you can kind of get a different sense of it but it's still you can come back to it so it kind of transcends all yeah i read his book when i was in primary school and i was

I was so motivated by the old man and the sea story. Like, yes, never give up. Yeah, I know. You can be motivated for all kinds of reasons because it's like, I think, 27,000 words and won an Nobel Prize. So it's like, yeah, so you're not that far away. You're never that far away. That's like, what? You can get that done in two months. Which I think is also an inspiring thought. Later on, I kind of have this question, why Hemingway choose to commit suicide?

Because he has such a strong mind, like a never-give-up spirit. So what's your opinion on that? That's a good question. I think he was intensely lonely. I think he went through a few wives. I thought he never had a lack of girls around him. Yeah, I know. It was constantly transient. So there was very few lasting relationships, which is why he probably developed because he went to like a...

Italy in the war when he was 18 got blown up came back then he was like you know correspondent in Spain for so many years traveling around and then they obviously all his books in France then he came back to America for a while kind of lived in the limelight and then immediately kind of you know set off to Cuba and then Spain was there for a while kind of alone you know you're an English speaker I don't know how much English was spoken in Cuba back then especially

And then he died ultimately in some kind of Midwestern state in the US. So I think he just kind of literally he gave his all to writing at the expense of absolutely everything else. And then, you know, that kind of run out. He probably got like, you know,

he's probably like a 90 year old in writing years even though he committed to somebody's young because he just put like the hours he used to do per day religiously and things like that it's like um again it's a beautiful uh analogy here for you it's like uh wayne rooney like there's a reason because he started so hard so quick he was 16 england united

playing every week so then when he was like 26 27 he'd already had like the career of a normal 33 34 year old so then things just began i think you kind of you only have so much in the tank and then if that thing that you're pursuing is the only thing that you ever wanted to do and whether you dedicate your whole life to like hemingway i think you literally you wake up and you're like okay i can't do that anymore and because i've done that all the time i can't do anything else yeah you're kind of like you're completely uh you're at a loss

I see. Yeah, that's a very good interpretation. Because for me, I thought he probably can't bear the physical pain. I mean, because he got two airplane crashes and he got injured in the war when he was a war correspondent. Yeah, they probably played in as well. I think...

He was like, you know, the consummate macho man. So even if it wasn't the pain, which I'm sure it was that as well, but the idea that he was kind of like, you know, emasculated and he couldn't be the kind of action man that he was used to being, which is something he valued kind of, you know, he was like boxing late in life and all this stuff. He valued that above writing. He just kind of wanted to be seen as like a, as a quote. I think I referenced it in the last essay. It's like he was a,

He wasn't born a sportsman who tried to become a writer, but he was born a writer who then desperately tried to become a sportsman. He wanted to be seen as that all the time. So I think, yeah,

with the two plane crashes and things like that, I think it could have been, you know, or else he just like, you know, had a bad day. I don't know ultimately, but I think it's probably a convergence of some of those things. You know, they kind of, they stack up in a weird way. It's a very sad story. Because sometimes I just feel like, okay, even for people like Hemingway, he will commit suicide. Will I be strong enough to hold up my crazy mind? Yeah, I know it's the,

yeah instant thoughts but sometimes i feel like there's too many ideas in my mind if i don't write them down i will fail with myself i filled my potential do you ever have this thought you have a purpose i'm having it right now that's good yeah so what was your writing routine like i know you are writing essay for at the moment so can you share your writing process yeah absolutely so i kind of

Unfortunately, I work very well with deadlines, which is kind of it's not. So then I know that's basically become a crutch that I rely on. So writing for online publications for places like The Spectator and Ario and things like that, what I'll often do is I'll pitch and then it'll get accepted or whether it get rejected or it'll get accepted. Then if it gets accepted, there'll be a timeline.

And then once there's a timeline, I'll waste most of that not doing. Always reading too much beforehand. So it's kind of a form of procrastination that I can't avoid because I feel like it would kill me if I read something after that should have been in or contributed before. So like for my ambassador's thesis, it was like 10 months of reading and then like three weeks later.

of writing, which is like completely insane and the wrong way to do things. But as I know, I have to read absolutely everything before I actually get to writing. And then I had it in my thesis with like 11 minutes left on the 31st of August. So I got very lucky that I just managed to have it in. What's the title and the subject of your thesis? So my bachelor's thesis was on, do you know the Richard Dawkins book called The Selfish Dream?

Yes, the selfless gene. So I was in literature. So I did a thesis on how... So then this idea of memes as well, that's in it. So I did it on the hero meme. So then how heroism was... What were the psychological and evolutionary bases of that? The classic tall, strong, courageous, this kind of stuff. And then how the meme evolved through Hitler going through...

multiple stories and King Arthur that meme so like there's kind of a central archetype that like there was so many spin-offs even from the very first one it was called like La Quest it was like this old French book it was like the very first King Arthur and then all of a sudden that just kind of spread out almost like you know like genetics so then they were like having children with each other so that was what I was doing my BA on and then my MA was on Amazon's recommendation systems

and how that relates to behaviorism and human agency. It's more like a social science. Yeah, so my BA was in, or my MA was in new media and digital culture. So it was, I veered off kind of into media and tech in my MA from the literature basis. Oh, okay, okay. It was all like algorithms, big data, all that kind of thing. Yeah.

Yeah, I've forgotten where we were. Yeah, we were talking about your writing process. You're good at deadlines. Yeah, good at deadlines, good at procrastination. So I'm not very good at writing every day. So even though I know that's the way you should do it, I tend to operate... Steinbeck said, he used to go like, I write incredibly for a day and then the next... Or it's like I write for a day, then the next I don't.

So you write loads one day and then, so then you kind of feel good. And then the next day you're like, well, I wrote loads yesterday, so I don't really, you know, it's hard to motivate yourself today. And then the next day you feel guilty about not writing yesterday. So then there's this kind of like constant up and down peak of, again, guilt. Again, there's a huge sense of,

Shame that I'm not progressing forward and things like that. I'm leaving things on the table. I'm 27. Tomorrow I'll be 67. Why am I? These kind of ideas floating through. So not the healthiest relationship with a property, but it's kind of like going to the gym. I know always there's a feeling of needing to do it.

And a feeling of feeling bad if you don't do it. And not enjoying it really ever that much in the moment, except when things are going quite well. Again, well, no one enjoys the first 10 minutes. So it's kind of like if I can hit flow...

flow state happens sometimes that can come from, I've kind of diverted from my computer recently. So I've returned to free hand mostly now just because I've read a lot of research coming out now that it's like, and it's an impediment to writer's blocks kind of get in the hand moving. It can move quicker than your head sometimes. And you kind of, you get into a rhythm that is kind of hard for the computer. And it's also easy on paper to incorporate structure and,

where you can't really structure on a word processing. So you can't move things around laterally or even drawing arrows and stuff like that. It doesn't have that functionality. So when it's on paper, you can start drawing and actually know this is connected to that idea and you can kind of be messy. And even Camille Paglia said that she can't write unless she's able to literally strike through

If she sees a bad idea, it's not enough to erase because then you forget the bad idea that was there. She needs to see the bad ideas that are gone and things like that. So I've gone back into that only in the last couple of months. Yeah. And I find that that makes starting way easier when I can just kind of sit at a table and this is pen and paper. And because you can doodle, you don't need to like, you're not immediately into like, okay, what's the first word? Is this the right first word? So yeah, so then, yeah, so it goes through kind of periods of intense work.

writing. I tend to call myself out on Twitter a lot. So that's kind of giving myself artificial deadlines. So I would say, you know, essays coming this day, even though I haven't started yet. So then I know, oh, fuck. Yeah, so I have to have it done for that day. So that's kind of a way of keeping me honest. But no, in general, I'm quite bad. As in, I have like three pitches for articles accepted in like three different places.

they've been accepted for a while. The problem is that there's no, they're not time sensitive. So they'll publish them when I give them to them. So then I might need to, you know, artificially kick myself into starting at least one of those as well. Yeah. So yeah. Are you a regular writer? Is it a daily thing for you or is it kind of, does it go through kind of peaks? So my writing process, I like a K-pop journal too.

Yeah, I'll show you. I've never kept one in my life. It's something I always like. I bought so many to start doing that. Never, never did it. I think I have at least two journals per year since I was...

six seven so yeah i enjoy writing on freehand so like what you said is it's a good start you just do some doodling then later all the ideas just come through i prefer writing on paper than on computer but nowadays we need to type on computer yeah it adds to the work because you have to transcribe yeah that's the thing and then and you also don't have access to like notes and other quotes so you kind of

I'll often be like an ex with a quotation mark around it. I was like, okay, I think I know the quote I want to go there, but I can't remember it word for word. True. For my Chinese writing, I do weekly newsletter to my readers. So I write about 4,000 words per week. And for English one, I'm still...

go with flow. I'm waiting for the muse to come to me that I can write. I don't know if I mentioned when I was visiting Blounte sisters' residence, I feel that I was possessed by them. I started writing non-stop. I quite enjoy that feeling when I write in English. You just can't stop, feel like you are not yourself anymore. There's some

someone or ideas using your body to express themselves. Absolutely. Ideally, that should be happening every time. I think that's what a lot of people... I don't know if you saw an essay the other day. I linked the thing of Bob Dylan saying... He was kind of like... I don't know who wrote those songs. I couldn't do that now. I think that has a lot to do with how you structure your writing as well, which is something I've... I did it for a long time

accidentally and now I do it on purpose again so I used to wake up all the time at like 6, 7 o'clock and if I had like a job or even if I didn't have a job or if I'd been drinking I used to make myself get up and then I just start reading and like checking notes again kind of this like fear of the future like okay I need to like you know get working so all the time

But I think when you're in that kind of very tired, but you're awake and this kind of Arthur Koster calls it like the marshy shore between your conscious and your subconscious. So you're kind of awake and you're kind of doing things, but you're not in total control. I think the critic in your mind is still asleep. So you're kind of you get into that flow state.

really, really quickly. There's a tweet by someone called Isabel. She's a pretty big Twitter person. I don't know who she is, but it's she asked her professor why he always got up at five o'clock to write in the morning. And he says the ego is quietest in the morning. Yeah. So kind of before his ego got up, he would get up just to kind of, again,

Just for that output stage. Because you probably have a problem with it as well. Because I think everyone does. Where it's like the writing and editing at the same time. So you're kind of being really meticulous about your words as they come out. Whereas like all the greats, they would like to write terrible stuff. And not edit themselves at all until they had like, you know, 10 pages of awful writing. And then edit that down to three pages of great writing.

But I kind of have a perfectionist brain, so I have trouble just turning off. I've had that 10 hours of staring at a screen because I can't get this one sentence right type thing. But I'm trying to fight that. So then I force myself to wake up early. Staying up really late is the other way around, because we're kind of drowsy. I found that that's a good way of just getting mass sleep.

onto the page. You know, some writers have a special trick to help them writing like Charles Bukowski, he would drink a lot and then start writing. Do you have any unique tricks? No, so I think the late and the earlier are my only quirks. I don't think I use any substances.

to get myself going. I guess sometimes I try not to vape, but then sometimes if I know I have a vape, that just makes sitting down easier because it's not just me and the computer. I can always take a break in that way.

no i i mean i never drink ever alone so i i'd never never have it in the house if i'm by myself but then so i'm gonna call a social drinker but then like as soon as there's like a something happening at the bar i'm there but so so i think it's a good it's a good way of like kind of making sure you're not alcoholic i think alcoholics really starts when you're at home doing it so i think um

I have quite an addictive personality, so I think it's probably not the best thing to start doing. So no, so I never drink when I write. Do you drink when you write or do you experiment in that way? No, I need to keep sober. If I drink, I couldn't recognize what I write down. Like, because I keep the journals and...

I found out some journal entries when I got so drunk I have no idea what I think I couldn't recognize my writing and there's just some weird drawing so it's not help at all no there's probably something again to kind of get your inhibitions down to like maybe having a sip of something I know like there's lots of comedians who like smoke weed and stuff like that but

That doesn't agree with me. I just kind of feel sick and sleepy whenever I smoke weed. So I don't think... Yeah, weed doesn't work on me either. No, no, I'm not built for it. Unless they come up with something interesting, I might try it. But as of now...

Just being slightly sleep deprived is my drug of choice. Okay. Yeah, for me, I like to visit writer's hometown. I need to put myself into that environment. Then I will be able to write. I don't know how my brain works like that way. Yeah, I have something similar.

I rarely live near where writers are. So like that, that's, I do kind of, I get very, very inspired. Like when I was in Paris going to, I did the great, like, you know, there's like that famous, I don't know what it's called. It's like a really famous great. Yeah. And Jim Morrison, like, you know, they're all buried there. And I think like T.S. Elliot and stuff used to like, he worked in the Sorbonne and things like that. So I got inspired that way. I am very like set and setting person.

in my writing so everything like I need there needs to be a vibe like the wrong cafe or anything I can't I can't get going I need to choose like the right table outside I write with music as well often but all kind of I have a playlist actually it's at a desk is that the one at desk yeah you share it in the slack yeah I spilled it it's good yeah I quite enjoy that

So yes, that's like 200 songs now. So I'll just stick that on shuffle again. It's just something that slightly lessens the blow of starting. So I know. And again, sometimes I'll feel like it's like a random nice song isn't enough. I'll think, oh no, I need, I need Interstellar now. I mean, I need the Interstellar soundtrack to get going, something like that. That's cool. Yeah. Cause for me, I, I like to play only one song repeatedly when writing songs.

So I can get into the Zoom. It helped me to focus. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think I tried that. I think on YouTube, there's like an interstellar like on loop for like 60 minutes. Oh, okay. I've done that. It's too intense. Yeah. It depends on the one. So some of them are intense. That's true. Yeah. But I tried the white noise thing as well. Oh, okay. I don't like those. No, I just say it made it worse. It was like I actually starting writing worse because it was just kind of annoying. Yeah.

yeah what kind of a genre classical i like kind of modern classical like max richter and people like that yeah phil glass yeah phil i love phil glass yeah again that kind of genre the old old classical music doesn't quite do for me it feels a bit corny okay a bit like you know robin hood type thing i just think it doesn't do it for me at all um so yeah so that that genre really um

really gets me into gear normally. Yeah. So as a writer, are there specific genres you want to explore for your writing? Fiction is just out of my world, I think. It's just not, it's never going to happen. It's the optionality of it. It's just...

you know, there's like a, you know, this could go in a thousand directions, all every single sentence can go on. And then, you know, that compounds. So then there's like three sentences in, you could have gone in 300 different thousand different. I was like, I know I can't do that. Um, so what is in within my realm is, uh, plays, uh,

Scripts, screenplays, again, a lot of white space. You don't need to worry about the options too much because you're just kind of like giving the bare bones and letting a lot of that be implicit. So I have, I've been writing a comedy series

series oh wow that no i say been writing i started it and i made good progress about six years ago and then it's been stopped for about four years i plan on reigniting that at some point when i have time um so that's kind of been the only kind of in the fiction genre that i've experimented with for me it's pretty much always been

been non-fiction like essay for your current yeah things like that and done some culture stuff um uh like for the spectator i wrote about the banshees of indusheer and some stuff like that i kind of like it like analytical kind of writing and then bringing in all kinds of different

sources and quotes and stuff that's going to be a tapestry that's kind of what I really like to do I think non-fiction book kind of said before I'm 30 I want to get one out and I kind of made that vocal to myself I think it's going to be on the essay like on the form and then drawing on Montaigne who kind of invented it and going through different people essay structure and

openings and closings all that kind of stuff so like a book on writing focus on the essay that's kind of in my head right now that could change that could change tomorrow I haven't started it okay I can see myself going do a couple of books in non-fiction over the course of my life I think nice and have you done two fiction books now

One fiction and another one is more like a collection of my prose, poems, short stories. How did you find it? Was it tough writing the fiction book? No, not really. Because I got so many ideas. Every minute I have so many going on in my head. So I think there are probably hundreds of ideas waiting for me to write down. I got that notion page.

about all the ideas I need to write down about short stories. But do you not, does it not become difficult like Sophie's choice, like choosing between ideas? Is that not the difficult part? It's too many. That's why I find it's very hard to focus. Which one should I start? I want, if I pick this one, which means I will sacrifice the rest because I only have a limited time. So sometimes I feel struggle. The,

then okay okay I'm not deciding I'm just not writing any ideas I'll put them there because I feel like they're all like my babies I need to share my equal love yeah it's probably a happy medium where you're dumb enough not to have like only only like one good idea a month

but you're smart enough to actually execute it so then you're kind of constantly like you know I don't know like a Tarantino so like you only need one good hit for a movie spend five years doing that you release it it's a classic and then you go like that as opposed to kind of just trying to do like loads of things all the time which I struggle with that as well

Yeah, yeah, that's not fun. Okay. For example, if I die tomorrow, there's like so many story ideas will bury it with me. Sometimes I feel guilt or shame. I need to write down more. Reduce my social life. Yeah. Oh, yeah, me too. Especially with my parents as well, because they couldn't have set me up better to like pursue some kind of creative life just to kind of like they were...

this is their plan from the beginning like if i got like a corporate job they would literally change change their surnames and move country so i kind of feel like damn i have no excuse no excuse not to like at least you know repay that in some way so that that kind of which is a good it's good to have that kind of guilt and shame i think it's a it's a i heard a good phrase the other day what was it he's like are you are you driven or dragged

So it's all kind of inspiration that's driving me or you kind of, you feel like you're being dragged towards something. It's almost like against your will and you just need to do it. So I think I'm definitely dragged. It doesn't come from like, I want to like, you know, I don't have any aspirations of, I want to do this because I'll get this or I'll be that. It's like, I have to do that. So I don't become who I am right now, basically. Yeah.

Yeah, so many people say it's not you have ideas, ideas have you. So I feel like I need to fulfill this role. Otherwise, I will fail. No, absolutely. I think it's something really profound there. Based on your experience, do you have any advice or tips for people who want to be a writer? I heard something good once that if you want inspiration...

to go be a writer, especially today. Just go into a bookshop and then look at the bestsellers and then open it up and look how terrible it is. And then you realize the bar is not high. The bar is so, so, so low. There's so many bad writers out there making a great living who don't commit themselves to the craft. They are like basically, you know the phrase NPC? NPC, yeah. It's an insult on Twitter.

In a video game, you're the main character. And then there's these other characters. They're non-player characters. So the theory is in the real world, there's actually NPCs. They have no interior brain. They're just zombies basically walking around. Some of these people are writing books and they're getting published. And they've never had an original idea. And it's just awful. So the bar is so low. And again, even like as we said, Hemingway, 27,000 words.

Nobel Prize there's like a John Boyne who we kind of had an interaction with on Twitter a while ago the boy in the striped pajamas he did some edits but it was like three days or something like that and it kind of came out of nowhere so there's like it's not as if you have to like

It's not like sport where you're kind of only going to make it if you start when you're three and you're trained all the way up. Like no one randomly becomes a soccer player at 21 having never trained or been in the system. It's like incredibly rare. But writing, you could do it right now and it could just happen and you don't really know why. And you're kind of almost not responsible for it. But all you have to do is kind of sit there and wait and just not move.

things like Kafka said just like there's a quote I don't know the wording but it's like something like sit in silence and again the world will open up before you or something like that that's a bastardization of what he actually said it's like a nice quote but like all you have to do is sit in silence with a pen and paper and then like bore yourself into doing something and then not let yourself move

And then I think Hemingway said as well, that's literally it. Yeah, bleeding. Yeah, bleeding. And this is like the only reason, everybody could write the books that I write. What they pay me for is that I can sit at a desk for this amount of time. That's it. That's all. There's nothing special other than that. It's just time at desk. True. Funny enough, you mentioned Kafka. I was in Prague.

two weeks ago or last week I can't remember yeah when I was there yeah yeah I was there and I feel like if I were Kafka I probably could write Castle as well because when I was in that setting I feel like

You're going to write it about the castle because you can see it in front of you. Like that idea just waving at you. You need to write it. I don't know, probably his story already in my mind. So I feel like it's very familiar for me to write the similar story. That setting with like the black almost buildings plus, you know, Soviet control, like Russia. It all maps perfectly into the story. Yeah.

It's almost describing his reality. True. Yeah. I feel like if I were him, yeah, I'm going to write it down. Yeah. Just those places, just so inspiring. When you're there, you're going to write it down. Otherwise, you feel, I don't know, that feeling of you got that idea, you need to express it. What do you think about this theory that I have? I think that there are less good writers in hot countries than...

Spain is great Spain has some good ones but not enough for its population South America has some unbelievable ones as well but not enough

first population and you've got like small things like Germany you think like the philosophers there and like Ireland like not to toot our own horn but like we were like a tiny country and it's ridiculous like the sheer number that came out only because it's raining it's cold you're inside you can't socialize you can't a bit it's probably that's probably leveled out now because instead of you just go on the internet now yeah but the back then you had nothing to do yeah your neighbors were like you know 10 miles away in the rain

so you all you had to do kind of was write something down um yeah so and again living in spain now i feel it like this is kind of every day to friday it's hard to like you know sit at your desk and you can hear people drinking at like 1 p.m in the afternoon so you're like

it's very easy to get sucked in and then all of a sudden like yeah you're 70. True yeah when I was living in London I write a lot and especially during the Covid I wrote my first English novel because I had nothing to do. Yeah Covid will do it. Yeah so I finished that but since I moved to Lisbon I find yeah it's hard to write every time I see the sunny day yeah I'm just like want to go out I don't want to write

Yeah, that makes sense. Probably I need to move to some rural area. Like Russia also. Look at what all these masterpieces they got. It's super deep. Yeah, like Solzhenitsyn in the gulag, writing in his head. You know, this kind of stuff, yeah. So, because I know you move around a lot. How do you pick up your location? What's your criteria? My criteria is normally Spain. That's my main criteria. I love Spain. So...

so i'm living in the north now in guillen like i did a year in valencia okay for like for like eight years i did like a one month summer in spain wow uh working so like these big camps where it's like 50 spanish students and then 50 irish students go over to spain and we teach them english for like um for a month

So you live together and stuff like that. So it's crazy. So I worked with that for a long time. And then ever since, like Sevilla, Tarragona, Barcelona, Madrid, I kind of... So it's basically Ireland to Madrid. I kind of pop back and forth. But I think I might explore further a few. Well, in October, I'll go to...

New York for the first time so that that would be interesting yeah I think you're gonna love it yeah New York has different vibes yeah kind of like all the see I love comedy so I got it's like a big you know comedy scene so I hear about it all the time when I podcast and stuff something like that sounds incredible yeah I've already planned all my jazz club visiting New York yeah I'm very into jazz so yeah

I said, yeah, New York, that's the best place. Finally, what's the most rewarding part of being a writer? There is something, first of all, it's really good for you. It makes your thoughts, there's so many thoughts, half thoughts in your head that aren't actually your thoughts. And then if you were like trying to explain them, you wouldn't actually be able to. So they're kind of, so it kind of solidifies your thinking and it makes you smarter in a really good way. There's a quote that like painters like painting.

and writers like having written. So the process isn't always, isn't always the funnest, but kind of having something. And then if you can get to the stage where it's kind of feels remarkable to be paid directly for the ideas in your head, it's a really weird thing. There's no physical product. So like you can literally, you know, you sense that you're making money or making value just by thinking things up. And then that, like, you know, people can find something in that, like, you're not like, you know,

giving them like a phone or like a piece of tech or it's kind of just something really, really cool about that. I think it's just helped me to, um,

become less crazy since I can put my ideas on paper it feels like they are not annoyed me in my head no yeah that's really really true yeah loads of writers like that I can't think of the quotes but I remember hearing some kind of quote like that from loads of different people yeah I think the reason I moved to Portugal because that Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa he said something similar and every time I read his book Book of Disquiet

I feel like, oh my god, did I write about it? - It's been on my list for a long time. - Really? - Have I never read it? No, I must. - I think people either love it or find it ridiculous. - I think that's always the good books or the great books. - Yeah. - I think good books everyone likes, then great books, there's something polarizing about them. - If you ever come to visit Lisbon, I'll take you to Fernando Pessoa's museum. - Okay, yeah, nice, yeah, absolutely.

I'll try to organize a deadline around it. Nice. Okay. Thank you very much for your time and we'll see you around. Perfect. Thank you, Camille.