In His Own Words: Writer P.H. Davies

Writing is not something I want to do; it is something I have to do. I have always been a creative person – I love art and music and cinema – but writing is where I feel most at home. It provides the best outlet for me in terms of the ideas I want to share about the world and also taps into an innate desire I have to tell stories that entertain other people. The habit of writing started around the age of sixteen, when I started to keep a regular diary of my day-to-day life.

This is important, because sixteen was the age when I felt I came into full consciousness as an adult with all the complexities, conflicting thoughts and doubts that adults have. It was the age when I left the comforts and certainties of childhood behind and became aware of the world around me. The need to keep a daily record has stayed with me my whole life and has become an incredible resource that I mine for stories.

My writing is not strictly autobiographical. When I write, I tend to take experiences from my life and transform them into fiction. A small incident that may have happened to me in the distant or recent past can become a greater narrative filled with fictional characters. From that grain of real life experience a whole series of coincidences and moments can grow into something completely apart from my own being.

I think this method of working is the result of being influenced by certain writers who do the same: Sylvia Plath, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Anne Sexton, Virginia Woolf. These are some of the giants on which shoulders I attempt to stand but I am also hugely inspired by contemporary writers too – Alan Hollinghurst, Ian McEwan, Toni Morrison, Donna Tartt. When I read work by these writers I have to get back to my desk and get better at my craft.

I am not held back by medium – I like to write in different ways. I write prose and this is where most of the transformation from life to fiction takes place. Characters who share some of my DNA take on lives of their own and do unexpected things. In my poetry, I take directly from experience and try to find something universal to say about it. On my blog, I write about the world around, critically engaging with it in a way that I hope connects with my readers.

I am not an experienced enough writer to be able to give lots of advice to other would-be writers. I have no bestseller under my wing, no awards on my mantel (yet). All I can say is write what you know and what you see on a daily basis; the result will be something believable and authentic. Stray too far from that and no one will believe you. Take the best that life has to offer, and through the alchemic process of writing, turn it into gold.

P.H. Davies

To read his blog and learn more about P.H. Davies, go to www.phdavies.co.uk