Antonio Dias Fiction
JDG: I wonder if you could say more about how you see this process of how smaller stories grow into a larger, coherent narrative? SB: I’m not sure it can be very simply defined. But to me it’s predominantly about inspiration, and a process of accumulation. This exchange comes from Jeppe Dyrendom Graugaard's interview with … Continue reading Inspiration and Accumulation
Jim Brosseau, host of Dateline Provincetown interviewed me about my writing. Dateline Provincetown: An Interview with Antonio Dias. We talk about writing Shoal Hope and I read a short excerpt and a poem, From Wood End…
Provincetown TV videotaped my reading of an excerpt from Shoal Hope at the Writer's Voice Café at Napi's in Provincetown. Writers Voice Cafe: Antonio Dias from Provincetown Community TV on Vimeo. The Dark Mountain 2 anthology.
More and More It's Fragments That Read True… That essay looks at how we find fragmentation and how this condition of our weorld leads us to recognize the fragment as an element of our art. One way to deal with fragments is to focus on a single shard and show how it has been torn … Continue reading Navigating fiction: Dealing with fragments…
Recent notes from my editor. He begins by quoting from the first chapter, No-one talks. Joe C puts no more thought into maneuvering between the moored craft than he would crossing from his table to his sink in his own kitchen. Sammy and Josey recline on the front of the massive heap of netting, smoking. … Continue reading The Narrator’s Place
Hiding in Utopias or generating the hell-on-earth of dystopia leave the responsibility of fiction as an opportunity not taken. To escape into wish-fulfillment or create blueprints for further horrors are not our only choices. It is possible to use fiction's powers not re-actively; but as a way to bring new possibilities into consciousness. Story is … Continue reading The Responsibility of Fiction?
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. Gustave Flaubert Acting is discovering who we are.
This new novel is beginning to come together. It is a departure from Shoal Hope and my previous work. It is an exploration of the intertwining mysteries of writing, action, and how we puzzle out what to do in face of a future we cannot predict. Here is a short excerpt: Snow fell. Like in … Continue reading Introducing November, a mystery…
We all know what fiction is. What it's for. Fiction is a story with an arc. We start here and bad shit happens and we end up there. Either the hero triumphs and it's a comedy or a drama, or the hero fails and its either comedy or tragedy. We want a novel to draw … Continue reading Writing Embodiment, When the point is not escape…
I've written about the role of disappointment in my own life and the way understanding this was the key to breaking free of anxiety. In a recent conversation on writing I was brought to the point of considering how an attitude with or without disappointment as a background condition would affect whether one's writing opened … Continue reading Write without disappointment
Have you ever wished, after a good long talk, you had thought to record it? There's a specific quality to the way we express ourselves in conversation, to the spacing and timing of what gets said, when, and how. In fiction it is always a wonder to read a conversation and have it ring true. … Continue reading A conversation on Fiction, or a fictional conversation…
This post, at The Living Notebook gave me the title and the impetus to write on this subject here. The line comes from Hemingway and TLN – I'm sorry, but the blog appears to be anonymous and I don't have the writer's name… – uses it to weave a connection between two approaches to writing. … Continue reading “Fishing in the swamp”
Carving Out Stories 