A little about myself
I started writing poems when I was about six. I started using an electric typewriter within a couple years, mostly just copying pages from books, not really writing much. I did continue to write in journals and do poetry, and stories through my teens, as well as a novel and half-a-dozen feature-length screenplays by the time I was twenty-two. As a youngster I had a good vocabulary but never could talk about grammar in technical terms. My spelling and mechanics were weak until my feet were held to the fire as a writer/editor for the college newspaper. I wasn’t focussed or interested enough to stick with reading long works, which is why I didn’t good grades in English classes throughout high school, even though I enjoyed reading and especially writing.
About my writing process
I don’t sit down to write during moods of pure inspiration, I mean, I have those moods but I’ve basically trained myself over the years to be able to sit down and start writing for as long as I need to, about pretty much any subject matter, whether it’s a subject I know anything about or not. I think my main motivation behind writing in general is not an urge to “express myself,” but rather a method of helping myself understand what it is I really believe and feel. To construct ideas that make sense, or reveal problems within other ideas I may have embraced a little too tightly. That applies to fiction writing, though I’m mainly talking about non-fiction. Poetry is, for me, more of an artistic thing in which I can be free to use language without the constraints of reference, narrative or what we’ve come to call “meaning.” That is, poetry can exist for its own sake. One of my poetry teachers, Don Revel, said fiction was “A nightmare from which I’m trying to awaken,” complaining that, in fiction, “Characters have to do things like go down halls and into and out of rooms and, you know, say things to each other.” That pretty much sums up my own feelings.
The importance of character development
I don’t think it’s possible to create characters that don’t have a part of the writer in them, but I know that’s the goal of many fiction writers — to achieve a kind of “negative capability,” or put oneself, completely, in the shoes of another. The problem I’ve faced when writing fiction, and one I never really faced writing screenplays is that I spend too much time worrying about a character’s personal details to actually enjoy the creative experience. You know, constantly doing what amounts to the secretarial busywork (no offense to secretaries) of fact-checking various dates or personal details you’ve created, and maybe even cross-checking all this crap for historical accuracy . . . and all of these little things are usually interruptions in the process, at least my own process. It gets more tiresome even than writing non-fiction because at least then you have a set of sources to draw from. When you’re making stuff up you always have the option of scrapping everything and starting over, or tweaking things ad nauseam and that can be burdensome. When I’m writing nonfiction, even if the subject matter is more-or-less boring, I can focus on just two things, the research and articulating my thoughts about my findings related to the research. Mysteries and Legends of Utah was fun for me to write because the research was interesting, and each chapter deals with a different real-life mystery. It’s not necessarily that I have a short attention span, but I’m someone who needs to have ten different projects going at once. I’m skipping between other articles I’m writing, even as I do this interview!
My biggest inspiration
My Dad was and is a big inspiration to me for a lot of things. Even though he’s not a writer — actually because he’s not a writer — I was inspired to write screenplays in high school. My old man is a huge movie buff, and he’d taken a screenwriting class. One night he came home and gave me a 100-plus-page manuscript and said he’d been working on it at the office. I was impressed, and I sort of took it as a challenge. If HE can write a screenplay, I should be able to do that, no problem!
Author-wise, early on I was inspired by Hunter S. Thompson and, strangely, it was my Dad who introduced me to the drug-addled weirdness that was “Gonzo Journalism.” I remember wondering even back then why my Dad, a straight-laced guy by all accounts, was “turning me on,” as it were, to this crazy stuff. But I loved it and still do. I find Thompson’s writing, especially the political coverage he did for Rolling Stone, to be such a vivid description of American culture during the sixties. I think it’s great stuff for people my age who grew up in the eighties, who are old enough to have been influenced by Vietnam-era culture, but not old enough to necessarily understand the circumstances. For many people my age the sixties is symbolized by two things; Vietnam and hippies. Aside from the inherent dangers of oversimplifying anything, the problem with ascribing exactly two features or components to something is that we have the tendency to make opposites out of binaries, even if the two things are not opposites. For example, “Vietnam” is not the opposite of “Hippy,” just as “soldier” is not the opposite of “peace-lover.” So, what I’m saying is, when you’re born pretty close to certain decade, you’re close enough to catch the tail end of the zeitgeist or whatever you wanna call it. And, one’s perception of the events of that period are colored by the cultural things, art, television, etc., but still there’s some kind of information black hole when you’re born just after an important decade. Maybe it’s cause the history books had yet to been written. Maybe the books aren’t right, anyway. Who knows?
What is the highest praise you have received for a book?
It’s a private comment I don’t want to repeat, here, something one of my characters said about me in an autobiography he was writing in one of my stories. But I tell you what, I think he was making half that shit up. Forget character motivation, where’s the character credibility in modern fiction?
Current writing projects
I’ve been writing articles for www.timberhawk.com about my 2013 Michigan bowhunting season. Editor's note, from 2023: Ten years later, those posts have been removed, and the Timber Hawk website has been reduced to an ugly shell of its former self, bereft of all useful or entertaining content.
There’s a project I started about five years ago that was supposed to be a book that examined the confluence of politics, gun ownership, hunting/conservation, animal welfare, the environmental movement . . . I’m talking also about issues of food as they relate to environmental and heath concerns, as well as how animal welfare/ethics issues are informed by our religious and political views. As you can see it was spiraling out of control, and beyond the scope of anything I could reasonable manage, not to mention the proposal was rejected by over forty agents and publishers. But many of the essays I wrote for that project are very good and their subject matter has recently been grown in popularity, and some writers have capitalized. So what I’m saying is that it’s lame that I was telling these people my ideas were about to become “current,” and they said yeah right. And then it turns out I was right, and I think my book would have sold well in the mass market. But hey, the market isn’t going anywhere and I got that book right here on my computer. Or maybe suspended in a cloud somewhere. Everything’s for sale.
How writing has impacted my life, so far
I don’t think of it in terms of “impact,” because I never felt I wasn’t a writer even when I wasn’t actually working on stuff. To me, writing is just an inseparable element of language, and language is at lest one of the things that makes us sentient, emotional beings. So I think, as consciousness develops along with language acquisition, around age two, about where most people’s memory’s stretch back to, one is already equipped to made the decision as to whether or not one wants to express and/or formulate thoughts by writing them down rather than or in addition to more abstract forms of expression like painting, music or dance. Unlike abstract art forms, writing is not purely expression, because it’s not always used artistically, yet it’s not purely for communication, as we cannot readily decipher the syntax or semantics of poets like Susan Howe or Lynn Hejinian. And for some reason there’s no lack of joy in looking at them.
About interactive ebooks
Lately I’ve writing a lot about Apple’s iBooks Author eBook format, basically trying to get the word out there about this format, which really has more potential than most people realize. It’s basically an easy way to format your eBook even if you want to include multimedia elements like photos, movies or 3D images, all without HTML or other coding. As I experimented with the program I developed a few different potential business models for a startup that focused not just on eBook formatting, but specifically on iBooks Author. These eBooks work only on iPads or Apple desktops running Mavericks or later. They don’t work on iPhones, like non “enhanced,” iBooks files which includes those converted from an epub or some other non-interactive format. Confusing, at first, but the bottom line is that Apple’s iPad is the best-selling tablet in the world, it’s the best way to view many kinds of content, and iBooks Author is the cleanest, coolest way you can format that content, whether it’s a product catalog or a graphic novel. And Trans Eye Connect can help!
Michael E. O’Reilly was born in the Detroit, Michigan area. He went to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and earned his English degree at Oakland University, just north of Detroit. He was accepted into the University of Utah’s creative writing program in 2004, and he earned his Master’s with a focus in poetry, in 2006. That same year he started the Timber Hawk backpack company, which he owned and operated until 2011, when the company was sold.O’Reilly has also been involved with mobile app development and, most recently, interactive eBooks.
This interview was posted on eatsleepwrite.net, by Julie Brown, in 2014. The site is no longer active.
More of his writing can be found, here:
Paperback:
Mysteries and Legends of Utah, Globe Pequot Press, 2009
Poetry eBooks:
Augmentation
Shed
Trying to Fit in
Other eBooks:
Take Your Dad Fishing!
Animals Don’t Talk!
Type Faster!
Give Your Words a Try
You Gotta Try, Try, Again!
Multi-Touch Marketing With iBooks Author