A Way with Words David Hair
Bangkok-based David Hair describes his writing day.
The alarm goes off at 5.30am, and if it’s a running day, then I’m up and away, jogging along broken pavements, weaving through drunk tourists and tired hookers on Sukhumvit Soi 3, evading the wild dogs around the railway by taking the elevated walkway that runs from Benjakitti Park to Wireless Rd. Then it’s down into the serene chaos of Lumphini Park – trees, lakes, monitor lizards and hundreds of walkers, joggers and t’ai chi exponents.
The sun rises, a glowing pastel disc, and the heat descends as I turn for home – an apartment in a 32-floor building. Dawn is the best time to run in Bangkok, to avoid the debilitating heat, but I still sweat rivers. Rehydrate! Shower!
If it’s not a running day, I have a cup of tea instead …
Then I work: from roughly 7am until about 5.30pm, when Kerry gets home. She’s with the New Zealand Government, and we’re halfway through a three-year posting in Thailand – and loving it. Expats are fun and interesting people, and we enjoy warm, exotic places.
Bangkok’s great and could easily be a massive distraction. But it’s not, because I have a bigger distraction: my writing utterly consumes me. I think about it all the time. All the time – while I’m running, eating, walking or supposed to be sleeping. Only people can pull me out of my inner world, which is why I’m grateful to have a tolerant wife and to have met lovely people here.
I plan extensively, leaving enough wiggle room for flashes of inspiration, and then I just go for it. I don’t try to craft beauty in the first draft – I vomit out words, deliberately overwriting, engaging every sense and angle. Until the scene is down on “paper”, it’s not real enough for me to appraise. The beautification comes later, the endless re-drafts that will compress the mess down into something readable, over and over until deadlines arrive and you have to let go.
So despite our exotic location, every day is mostly me alone, working obsessively. Music’s important, to mask background sounds and to provide the illusion of company. Social media I barely touch, and the internet is only for research.
People tell me I’m “living the dream”, and sure, I love working at home, with no boss and a job I love. But writing isn’t just a job – it’s a passion and a way of life. It never leaves you alone. You steal moments with it whenever you can, looking for that spark that will make the story great. Scenes play and replay in your head. Love battles fear, reason confronts ignorance, good tangles with evil. Notebooks get scrawled in at midnight, cryptic phrases to light up tomorrow’s scenes.
Then the alarm goes and it’s time for more.
David Hair is the author of many young-adult fantasy books. His history-based Kiwis at War 1916: Dig for Victory (Scholastic) is a finalist in the young adult fiction category at the 2017 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, which will be announced on August 14.
My writing utterly consumes me. I think about it all the time. All the time.