Scottish Writers > Des Dillon Author Profile

Des Dillon was our first featured author. He is a poet, novelist and screenwriter and the short piece that follows gives us an insight into his writing.

Author's view

Downloading Worlds - Des Dillon

"When I was young I had an imagination. Me and Gal used to lie on the grass watching the stars. Talking to mighty beings from other planets. I lived in that imagination till I was about twelve and a half. Puberty.

Round about then my Granny - the witch- started using this wee saying:-

The older I get

The more I recall

How little I knew

When I knew it all

I was thirteen when I knew it all. And I knew it all for a long time after that. Don't let anybody tell you the early teens are the best years of your life. They're not. Full of frustration and angst - disdain and a face paralysed in perpetual tutting position.

If I had to live them over? I'd read. Honest. I'd disappear into the world of a book. I'd fuse into that fantasybookworld every spare minute.

You see - too late as usual - I discovered that the only escape from reality is imagination. Drink and drugs put your head in another world temporarily. A book puts another world in your head - forever. I've downloaded a million places I can escape to when things aren't going too well.

I regret never having a book from the age of twelve till I was twenty. My pals Sholtz and Bonzo devoured two or three a week. They'd learned to escape into books in jail. This art of living inside a mesh of words was passed on to me. They turned me on to the Frog by James Herbert.

I took two months to read it. And - as a kind of test - Bonzo and Sholtz had me re-tell the story. I passed the test and moved on to Catcher in the Rye - Sholtz's suggestion. That book inspired my first novel Me and Ma Gal. I've read a zillion books since then.

If you read Me and Ma Gal and like it - read Itchycooblue - it's a direct sequel only Derrick and Gal are a year older. If you like that - and your maw will let you - read The Big Empty, Duck or Return of the Busy Babes. Or better still - write your own book. It's easy - all you're doing is telling a story - the same way you'd tell it to your best pal. If you haven't got a best pal - invent one. What with? Your imagination. "

When did you start writing?

Although I wrote wee poems at primary school I started writing seriously when I was eighteen. Mainly influenced by Meat Loaf, Bob Dylan and Fleetwood Mac. And I had read a lot of fairy tales and nursery rhymes when I was young. This was bolstered by a great story telling tradition that exists in Coatbridge - of which I was very competent. At that age I could hold my own in the pubs with the crack. I must say that my attempts at writing then - with a few exceptions - led to some really awful stuff. I did eventually go to Uni and study English Literature. This was a great help - especially coming to the realisation that it's OK to write in your own voice. It also gave me a great grounding in things like structure, form and tone.

Why did you start writing?

I don't know. What I do know is that I had always been good at art. Drawing - painting etc. I was also writing poems in primary. I think I have always had a creative mind and if it wasn't writing it would be painting or music I'd be creating. Research shows that creative people in the main have - for whatever reason - had to create an expansive inner world in their childhood. I can identify with that.

When did you write Me and Ma Gal?

I wrote it in 1987. I had already written a rather clumsy and pretentious novel in 1982-3. It has never been published. Since that had been rejected so many times I decided to write a wee happy book that ,would get me published. My thinking at the time was then I could get them to publish my first novel. Now - I'm glad they didn't.

When was it published?

Me and Ma Gal was published in 1995. This after being rejected from almost every literary magazine in Scotland. When it was published it was critically acclaimed - as you will see if you read the back cover.

Is it a true story?

It is based on the day when a man - dressed in black tried to drag me and Gal into the trees. Gal had found a knife earlier. It's not as if we carried knives or anything. And a knife in those days was seen more as a toy than a weapon. Gal pulled the knife out on the guy and we ran off in different directions. Most of the other stuff in the book is true but didn't happen on that same day.

Is Gal real?

He was the last time I spoke to him.

Do you still see him?

I see him a lot. My son Darrel runs about with his son Declan. They are now approaching the same age we were in the book. It's a bit weird. I think they'd be a better match for Strangler Joe than we were.

What does Gal think of the book?

Gal's got more fame out of the book than me. Everywhere he goes he gets asked if he's the guy that got the book wrote about him. He likes the book. In fact at the launch - I signed copies and Gal signed copies. There can't be many books where the author and one of the characters signed it.

It would make a great film - any plans?

Yes. I've been banging on the doors of Scottish Screen for five years now - but they won't let me in. I'll keep banging. I think it would make a great wee movie.

Who is your favourite author?

I don't have a favourite author as such but I do have favourite books. Huckleberry Finn. Great Expectations. The Butcher Boy. As I lay Dying. Under the Volcano. House With The Green Shutters. Catcher in the Rye. Of Mice and Men. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I could go on but I won't. As you can see most of those books are American. I think I ended up liking American writers better because there is less snobbery and pretence attached to the way people speak in America. And so less academic snobbery attached to the way people write. Every language and vernacular has as much right to be heard as the next. In fact - vernacular language use is much more metaphorical than more formal English. Hence the vernacular languages are more powerful. I read quite a bit of science for the layman type of stuff. Brief history of time etc. Cosmology -I'm right into that - as every poet should be. Poetry and science are concerned with the meaning of life.

Is there any advice you would give young writers?

The same Advice Edwin Morgan gave me - write stories the way you tell them

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