Who are you?
I am Julia Marie Davis, Author, Writer, Poet. I grew up near Boston, Massachusetts where I have lived for most of my life. After ten years in New York I’ve returned to my happiest place - Plymouth, Massachusetts.
What do you write?
I’m multi-genre. I write poetry, flash fiction, novellas, and novels. Some have described my writing as lyrical, visceral and from the heart. My first book is a novella, Catbird, a meditative narrative that delves into the complex emotions we feel in the wake of geopolitical turmoil. I wrote it at the start of the Ukraine invasion. I found myself witnessing and processing the unfolding tragedy of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with a sense of outrage and shock. Catbird is a raw and visceral exploration of the impact of war on both a personal and universal scale. At the heart of the story is the protagonist, a woman of Eastern European heritage whose identity fuses with the battleground. Through her eyes, the reader processes the harsh realities of war and profound sense of survivor's guilt that comes from witnessing suffering of others while residing in relative safety. Catbird unfolded in real-time as I grappled with my own emotions and perceptions of the world at that time.
I’ve been processing my world through my writing since I was about ten years old. I journaled from about age 14 to 24, which provided an outlet, a place to create, to craft poetry, to process and develop my voice.
In 2020 during the pandemic, I decided to complete my master’s in fine arts in Creative Writing at Fairfield University. This experience spurred me to finish projects and start new ones.
My writing often focuses on main characters who face great adversity, who possess strength and resilience they didn’t know they had. I do not use words that are derogatory to women or marginalized people. I do not give voice to characters who glorify violence. However, art presents itself to the writer in its own form. So, you never know what will come off the page when I sit down to write.
The main character of CATBIRD is unique for me in that the main character observes the situation as it unfolds. The work came to me each morning as I sat on my porch drinking my coffee. I would run upstairs to my office to write the few pages that began to fill my head like a dream. It felt like a meditation, a way to cope with the violence of the Ukraine invasion, seeing people who looked like me being destroyed. And destroying one another.
I love writing. After I write, I feel lightened, aired out, proud to walk through the world. Writing is a skill that I’ve honed, but it’s a gift. I am immensely grateful for it. In my life, writing has been a guiding light.
Where do you write?
I have an office in my home – it has a beautiful fireplace and a writing desk and lots of paper. I don’t always write in my office though. Sometimes I write in café, or in a small coffee shop, in my car, or at the beach. I use the computer to write first drafts; however when I edit, I use brightlycolored pens. I love stick-ems for edits and moving blocks of text.
When I travel, I bring with me the writing I am working on, printed out. Often in the same room with me where I sleep. Some of these books have taken decades to complete, and this helps me process them even if I haven’t touched them in months. I am always working the story and the characters out in my head while I go through my daily life.
When do you write?
Sometimes I wake up early, sit in a comfortable chair in the living room and write the first thing that comes to me. Or I grab a cup of tea or coffee – put on music, light a candle, working in the early mornings before anyone is awake. My mood has to be unfettered.
- Word count: I never set a word count. I think that would limit me. One day I might write a paragraph or a page or ten pages. Years ago, I would force myself to “write for 20 minutes” to stop the avoidance and writer’s block. I always wrote for much longer once I started.
- Goals: I set loose weekly or monthly deadlines. Stories are things that rattle around in your subconscious, come to you in moments of inspiration, moments of dreaming, liminal spaces between waking and sleep, consciousness and unconsciousness. I need to give the stories space to come out and shape themselves when they can.
- Setting: I write best first thing in the morning, or within a “setting” – lighting a candle, finding a moment of afternoon sunlight, the early morning hours, times when the house is empty. I play music loudly. I listen to books as I write or watch random things on YouTube. Sometimes I will watch a completely unrelated video about Neanderthals or the intelligence of elephants.
I have always set my own guidelines for my writing – work or personal.
Why do you write?
I write to feel free. It’s the only prescription for me.
I want to make a difference and that fuels me. I care about the climate, about social justice, about women’s rights and democracy. One of the first things I wrote down was what a year looked like, how the months would turn into seasons, and meld with the moods of my family members. I write poems to process my life, my heartbreaks, to find my voice and ultimately to uncover something about the world, about myself or my characters.
What motivates me is the idea of getting my work into the hands of people who need to hear it the most.
The poetry of Sylvia Plath, the density and flow of Virginia Woolf [inspire me]. The beat poets. Fitzgerald. James Baldwin and Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni. Writers who unveil pain in a way that is searingly honest and cracks open the raw truth.
How do you overcome writer's block?
Writer’s block comes from a deep place of fear. I encounter it daily and it is a ‘demon’ I believe, for all writers. I don’t do ‘daily pages’ because it’s become sort of too much of a cliché, although the concept is right one. Sit down, put your fingers to the keyboard, and just start to write anything. Start with something mundane, then let it go to wherever it takes you.
- Location: Getting out of the house to clear the mind - coffee shops, wine bars, dive bars, the car, sometimes! I love porches too.
- Music: Bach’s inventions, Classical, Rock. The music and the silence of being alone –- helps put me into the right frame of mind to write.
- Place: I wrote a lyric poem about climate change when visiting friends in Orleans, Massachusetts near Nauset light. I wrote a piece called Echoes of Ferlinghetti after I visited the City Lights bookstore.
Bonus: What do you enjoy doing when not writing?
The outdoors. I tend to the roses in my garden. I walk the beach, hike, paddleboard, cross country ski in the quiet New England woods. I relish the sunlight filtering through the trees in the morning or the afternoon light when I sit on my porch and observe the unfolding world around me.
My thanks to Julia Marie Davis for today's interview.