Colin Dodds

Colin Dodds has written several books, including Ms. Never and Windfall. He grew up in Massachusetts and lived in California briefly, before finishing his education in New York City. Since then, he’s made his living as a journalist, editor, copywriter and video producer. His work has appeared in Gothamist, The Washington Post and more than three hundred other publications, and been praised by luminaries such as David Berman and Norman Mailer. Colin’s poetry collection Spokes of an Uneven Wheel was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2018. His short films have been selected by festivals around the world and he once built a twelve-foot-high pyramid out of PVC pipe, plywood and zip ties. Forget This Good Thing I Just Said, a first-of-its-kind literary and philosophical experience (the book form of which was named a finalist for the Big Other Book Prize for Nonfiction) is now available as an app for the iPhone. He lives in New York City, with his wife and children. 

Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?

Absolutely. I want to say they all do. Good movies, bad movies, they all have a lesson. Too many films these days are about the unnecessary purgatory created by drastically underestimating your audiences. That’s one lesson I feel like I keep being taught, every time I try to watch something.

I watched Jaws again the other night. And everything happens in such a tightly compressed time frame. Every scene does double or triple duty. Then there’s that long monologue about the USS Indianapolis that suddenly makes you think of the movie as being so long and leisurely that you could live there. The movie came out almost fifty years ago now. But I watched it with my daughter, and she couldn’t get enough. I had to talk her out of Jaws 2.

Do you listen to music while you write?

I do. I have a playlist or an album at first. And as I start to focus more intensely, I choose one song and put it on repeat. I was about 15 years old when CDs came out, and I’ve been doing it like that since then.

What period of history do you wish you knew more about?

America in the 1890s. Seems a bit like now. But I’d have to find a good book about it to know for sure.

Is your go to comfort food sweet or savory? Is it something you make yourself?

Savory - I love a good steak. And I can make one that’s up there with Peter Luger, if I do say so myself. But I’ve cut down drastically in the last year. Fried clams are another one. But I can’t make it myself. And it’s hard to find anywhere that does them well, at least south of New Haven.

Does food inspire your writing?

Sometimes. Like when I was really broke, and I’d write these long scenes with elaborate meals. There was one book where I caught myself doing it, and had to take a bunch of meals out of a subsequent  draft.

In What Smiled at Him, there’s a scene where a character smashes a box of leftovers from the Cheesecake Factory into the asphalt of the parking lot outside. I still get sad when I think about it. That might be the best thing I ever wrote about food.

But food matters. What we eat says a lot about who we are, where we think we belong, what we’re trying to talk ourselves into, and what we’re running from. I tend to think of it as more of a telling detail than as an inspiration, or a subject matter unto itself.

Not all books are for all readers… when you start a book and you just don’t like it, how long do you read until you bail?

I give up constantly. I churn through library books. I give up on the first line. I turn to the middle and give up there. I read halfway and give up. I give up with 20 pages remaining in a 500-page book.

I go in for joy and obsession and I bail when the author is wrapping things up or filling in the blanks or summarizing themselves or apologizing if they ruffled any feathers or tidying up loose ends or running out the clock or acknowledging valid counterpoints or telling us that the characters were sorry and never did that again, any of that crap. No forewords, afterwords, introductions, appendices or acknowledgements. Life is too short.

Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?

Chartres. It took 350 years to build, and no one knows who did it exactly. It’s a vast sprawling mystery. It’s giant and jammed with crazy details - every other detail on it is a mystery.

People ask what would happen if earth was visited by a superior intelligence. At Chartres, it did. I went. I spent the day circling around and in it, climbing up and down. It’s an open mystery. It’s a church, but it’s not like any other church I’ve ever been to. It demands a lot, and asks more questions than it answers.

Do you collect anything?

We have two kids in a two-bedroom apartment. So I do the opposite. I look for opportunities to throw things away. I collect exactly what I can’t bear the thought of losing.

What do you worry about?

I’m 45 years old, so I’m deep in the weeds of common worry – money, health, my kids, disgrace, Armageddon or things just getting gradually worse.

There’s nothing all too interesting about these worries, though. What’s interesting is what I do. What’s interesting is the rest of it.