The Writer’s Desk features the desks and writing practices of Gemini Ink faculty, visiting authors, teaching artists, volunteers, students, interns, staff, partners and more. Receive new posts in your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter at bit.ly/geminiinknewsletter.
Join Daniel Peña on Thursdays, Dec 7 & 8, 2024, 10am-2:30pm CST, via Zoom, for his workshop: Get Inside Your Character’s Head: Effective Storytelling Across Genres. This course is open to writers of all genres and skill level, 18+ and will cover how to write a strong protagonist and discuss fundamental shifts in a character’s psyche from the beginning of the story to the end.
Hi Daniel! We’re so excited for your workshop! Let’s discuss your writing habits. Describe your first writing desk. How is it different (or not) from your current writing desk?
My first writing desk was a broken laptop stand discarded from one of my old professors, the late and great Shay Youngblood. I don’t think she knew it was my writing desk. I was helping her move something heavy once while she was my professor and she was going to throw it out. I’d never had a desk before so I asked if I could have it and she said, “sure!” I was maybe 20 or 21. Maybe because of my ability to work without a desk these days I’m doing so much of my writing on-the-go! Usually right before pick-up near my son’s school. I do have a proper writing desk at home but I find myself working at this small table at Merit Coffee in Dallas, TX more often than not. As a general rule, I don’t like to be too comfortable while I’m creating. It can’t feel too formal or anything. It has to feel a little rigid and spartan–like I’m creating something from nothing. I draft everything by hand first. I love writing in my car, on my lap. Anywhere.
Has your preferred place to write changed over the years?
I’m most productive in megacities. Mexico City is my favorite city to write in. I find myself very productive in Berlin as well. Place is very important to me. Or maybe it’s not exactly place but the serendipity a big place provides–chance encounters with the bizarre, the absurd, the new, the old. There’s the energy too. And, of course, there’s the possibility that anything might happen. I happen upon metal bands busking in Mexico City all of the time and I always stop to see them.
Do you have any habits or routines that you follow before writing?
I like to read a lot before I write. I’ll carry a book with me that I love (or maybe one I even hate). I see writing as a conversation. Someone puts an idea or set of ideas out there and I think, “what can I add to this?” And that’s what I call inspiration. Sometimes, if I’m really sapped, I just love the language of a well written work too and that’s energizing.
What is your secret talent? Does it ever pop up in your writing?
I used to be a pilot and I’m licensed to fly any single-engine plane up to 12,000 pounds. I love writing about flight. My first novel BANG had a lot of flight in there and I feel like it’s an ordinary part of our everyday lives that not that many people write about. But it’s really a magical thing. St. Exupery does it the best.
What is the one piece of writing advice that you value most?
No one has to give you permission to write. If you write you’re a writer. Just like if you run you’re a runner. You also don’t have to do it everyday like a lot of people think. I think so much of the writing life is about sprints and pauses (to continue with the running metaphor). You just keep putting one foot in front of the other over many days and weeks and months and eventually you’ll get something.
What’s a book or movie that you can watch over and over again and not get tired of?
I love the cinematography in “Soy Cuba/I am Cuba” which is an old Soviet era film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov. I think it has one of the greatest songs of all time in it, “Loco Amor.”
Who are your heroes in real life? What do you admire most about them?
I genuinely love Tim Duncan. The Big Fundamental. I think he’s proof positive that if you master the fundamentals of craft, it can sometimes be more effective than flash and natural talent. Though he had plenty of both. As a very young writer, I thought of the Spurs constantly in this regard. Ginobili overcoming his shortcomings with the Eurostep. Tony Parker perfecting the floater. David Robinson having almost two careers by learning to play in different eras–all of that going back to fundamentals. Boxing out. Solid defense. I still think about the Spurs a lot in my writing and career. Of course G-Pop too for his radical belief in the systems he creates.
Daniel Peña is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer and Associate Professor at the University of North Texas, where he teaches in the PhD Program in Creative Writing. Peña worked as a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholar. A graduate of Cornell University and a former Picador Guest Professor in Leipzig, Germany, his writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, The Kenyon Review, Texas Monthly, NBC News, and The New York Times Magazines. He’s currently a regular contributor to The Guardian and The Ploughshare blog. His novel, Bang, is out now from Arte Publico Press. He lives in the beautiful Dallas-Fort Worth area.
