David Bergen
David Bergen
David Bergenis a Canadian novelist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has published eight novels and one collection of short stories since 1993. His most recent novel, Leaving Tomorrow, was published in September 2014...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth14 January 1957
CountryCanada
book control guess happy leap marketing mean necessary push quieter somewhat style
It's somewhat of a contradiction, ... I guess the quieter the voice, the more necessary it is to push it. It's not going to leap out at you and scream. I also can't control how a book is marketed. To say the book marketing is aggressive, fine, I'm happy with that. Push the book. That doesn't mean that my personality or writing style changes.
counting empty proper remained shape ten took trying work
It took me ten years to write a proper story. I floundered about trying to shape something, counting on the 'feeling' I had as I wrote, only to discover upon rereading my work that the feeling had disappeared, and what remained was an empty shell.
book writing mean
It's somewhat of a contradiction, .. I guess the quieter the voice, the more necessary it is to push it. It's not going to leap out at you and scream. I also can't control how a book is marketed. To say the book marketing is aggressive, fine, I'm happy with that. Push the book. That doesn't mean that my personality or writing style changes.
journey lucky three
Way back in 1989, I got lucky with my first published story when it was selected for the Journey Prize anthology. Then I got lucky three more times. It is astounding to see how many writers published in the anthology have gone on to publish great story collections and novels. The anthology is a windfall for both writer and reader.
chance dive ignore moved sort voices
When I get moved to write a story, I don't question the story. I dive right in, and I try to ignore the voices that are chattering away at me: 'You can't do that', 'You shouldn't do that'. I just sort of leap and take a chance and go for it.
absolutely teacher
A mentor, a 'teacher,' is like an editor. I absolutely value my editor, who is my teacher.
thrown
As a writer, you write the book, you give it to your editor, it's copy edited, it's published, it's thrown out there, and then there's a response.
aware
As a writer, I'm always aware of the fact that there are so many books out there.
age born car children confuse dates god grow hope lives marries names suffers till wrote
One day, at my office, I wrote down some names and dates and notes, and I wrote a title, 'The Age of Despair,' and then some other 'Ages' - Innocence, God, Reason, Hope - and I wrote this as well: 'Woman, born in 1930, lives till the age of 80 or so, suffers depression, marries a car dealer, has children who grow up to confuse her.'
envision might sort unless
I think a construction project for me is like writing a novel. I can't do the project unless I can envision sort of the whole structure and see what the end result might be.
figured horses large reader
I was a big reader of Zane Grey as a young boy, and so horses and the West figured large in my imagination.
early feeling lifts morning outline perhaps reveals similar
For me, when I 'discover' a story, there is a feeling of buoyancy and clarity, perhaps similar to early morning out on a prairie highway, when darkness lifts and reveals the outline of farmhouses and copses of trees in the distance.
somehow
I always have a book that I use that somehow inspires my novels.
came certainly family religion shaped type
I think my writing was certainly shaped from having lived in a place like Niverville as well as by the family that I came from, the religion that I had, that type of thing.