Author Interview ~ T. Davis Bunn

T. Davis Bunn left the United States after completing his undergraduate studies at Wake Forest. He first took a Masters in international economics and finance in London, then began assignments that took him to more than thirty countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Since his first book, The Presence, was released in 1990, he has had more than nineteen national bestsellers. His books have sold in excess of four million copies in sixteen languages and have received three Christy Awards for excellence in fiction—the most awarded to any author. Davis and his wife Isabella split their time between Oxford, where Davis is Writer In Residence at the Baptist college, and Florida.



While I haven't read every book you've written, I do own 10 of them. I've loved every one and was thrilled when you agreed to this interview. Where did the inspiration for Heartland come from?

I began working on my first Hollywood project six years ago. The experiences have been amazing, both amazingly good and astonishingly difficult at times. I have been looking for over two years for a concept that might illustrate what it is like to be a Christian working inside the Hollywood system.


Is any part of the book factual?

Absolutely. The way the television program was put together, both on the sound stage and on location, is based on fact. As is the issue of going to digital filming.

But what I think you really mean is, can the environment inside the system really be that anti-Christian. There are two responses to this question.

First, the few movies that are coming out these days with stories that are in harmony with our faith and values all have come from outside the Hollywood system. This was true with Mel Gibson’s Passion and it is still true today.

Second, Movieguide Magazine, the faith-based focus group that oversees Hollywood, considered the book real enough in its perspective to give Heartland its highest rating.

You have a remarkable range of genres in which you write, from historical, to suspense and Intrigue…and now Fantasy. What is your favorite genre, and why?

First of all, I did not see Heartland as fantasy. I know that sounds wild, especially if you have already read the book. If you haven’t, I won’t go into why it is, yes, okay, pretty fantastical. But what I was looking for was a story that illustrated the absolute impossibility of working as an evangelical Christian inside the big studio structure—studios are the major film and television groups, like Paramount and Dreamworks and Touchstone, etc. We are all hoping and praying that this will change, and soon. And there are cracks in the barriers, thank goodness. But right now, we are too often seen as either not important, or as the enemy.

So to have a major television studio group work on a program that was really and truly faith-based was, well, a miracle. And to have this continue, it would have to be a miracle that made it work.

The question then was, how can I make the miracle a part of the story, and not have it seem like God is answering all the impossible questions, and undoing all the hostile barriers, but rather operating in that quiet and incredibly wise manner that is so often how we see His glory? Heartland was the answer.

Our readers would love to hear about your publishing journey. How long had you been writing before you got a contract? How did you find out and what went through your mind?

I wrote for nine years and finished seven books before my first was accepted for publication.

In my own case, the commitment and discipline required to find success as a novelist also helped me learn the discipline required to grow in faith. I came to faith as an adult—I was 28—and started writing two weeks later. I had never picked up a pen to write more than a business memo before that time. I feel God used my passion for writing as the instrument to help reshape me, and redraw me without so much of the world, and the self-centered life I had known up until then.

My first contract came two weeks after I was married. Isabella had begun working as my agent after my first agent, a dear friend, took early retirement because his wife was ill. She sold my first book. She received the contract. She told me it had come. It was a moment of sheer illumination.

Do you ever have self-doubts about your writing?

Oh my, yes. Then and now.

From the manner of these questions, I assume many of your readers are hoping to become authors. So let me add one point of self discovery here.

Many times early on, I found myself not just questioning the original point that troubled me about the text or the paragraph or the character. I began questioning EVERYTHING. I doubted all my abilities.

The best way to deal with doubt, I have discovered, is to accept with honesty that there probably is a real reason why you have this uncertainty. The worst way to deal with it is to question whether you can write at all.

Everyone has weaknesses. Use these moments of doubt to come to terms with what is probably a weakness, an issue that you need to focus upon and grow through.

Was there ever a time in your writing career you thought of quitting?

You mean, since yesterday?

Seriously, there are many moments when the fatigue or emotional stress or outside world or the commercial hiccups just overwhelm. But the next day, or the next week, the flame of passion resumes its constant flame. The call is still there. You just get up and go on. And then suddenly there is the moment when it all just happens. The work and the pain and the stress become steps along the process to where you are looking at a body of work, and a carefully honed ability to create life on a blank page, and entertain people you have never even met.

How cool is that?

You've written some series with your wife. How do you divide up the work?

Every partnership, be it writing or marriage or business, must develop singular guidelines as you go along. If I were to offer any advice here, it would be this: Do not begin writing with other people until you are certain you have firmly established your own true voice. When you know who you are on the page, then and only then can you enter into a writing relationship with another person, and know at the end of the day you will still retain your own voice, and grow as an individual artist, further along the line.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve heard?

When I was just starting off, I think maybe I was closing in on finishing my first manuscript, I was put in contact with two professional writers. One was a woman who wrote for ABC, a secret Christian—you’d think we were talking about the church in China, thankfully things have gotten a LOT better since those days—and the other was Arthur C. Clarke.

They both said the same thing. Writing is best learned by first drafting. Not rewriting and polishing and trying to improve on the first idea. Sometimes you have to give up on the first one, no matter how precious it may seem, in order to truly be successful at the craft. Remember: Your commitment is not to one manuscript. It is to the PROFESSION. The PROFESSION of writing, the long term view, the author who sees this as an ongoing passion.

What’s the worst piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

Write what you know.

What person alive today can truly know how life was in the seventeenth century? And yet millions of fans devour books, both romance and adventure, set in distant places and lands.

The critical issue is to strive to understand, to fathom the depths, but not, I repeat not, make the research your goal.

Your goal, first and foremost, is to entertain.

What do you wish you’d known early in your career that might have saved you some time and/or frustration in writing? In publishing?

I came to faith and began my writing career while living in Germany. I only had one contact with a writing seminar, and that was at a non-Christian event. Definitely, and utterly, non-Christian. The atmosphere was pretty awful. There was this tiny cluster of acolytes who were permitted to cluster about the big name draw, while everybody else commiserated over how tough the industry was.

What a total and utter self-destructive waste of time. I never went to another until I was invited to teach at a CHRISTIAN event.

Man, let me tell you. Night and day.

There are some great Christian writers’ workshops around the country. Go to one. Go to one. Go to one TODAY.

Choose one that lasts five days, and make sure they are big enough and powerful enough to draw in the top editors from major houses that publish the sort of books you want to write, and that you buy. These five-day biggies are doubly powerful. The teachers are there because they are known to be committed to genuinely helping. It is an act of service, to foster greatness in the next generation. And, these five day biggies bring in publishers and guarantee each participant a face to face individual contact. The publisher will have read the book. When they tell you why they won’t buy it, or why they will, you are seeing the publishing world through the eyes of the power who can offer a contract.

This makes such a huge difference. The odds of becoming published are cut by as much as four-fifths. The rule of thumb is, you go to one and you learn what needs redoing. You go back and you work a year. You go to the next and either you sell, or you hone. Year three, in either case, you go for the multiple book contract.

Can you give us a look into a typical day for you? Do you have a word or page goal you set for each day?

I’m a morning person. The closer I come to the climax, particularly in first drafting, the earlier I rise. In second draft time and at the beginning of a new project, I am at my desk by seven. In climax time, I’m there between four-thirty and five.

At the start of a book, I strive to complete one scene per day, usually three or four pages, around a thousand words. By the midpoint this has doubled, and it goes up from there.

As important as the ‘desk time’ is the ‘down time’. I have a list of things that will draw me completely away from the work, which for me is a crucial part of being able to hit the ground running the next day.

What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?

Let me change that around just a bit and speak to those of your group who are aspiring writers.

The favorite task of many early writers is to reread what has been done on the ‘good days’, when the words flow and the power is high. There are two problems to this. First, you compare every day to this high. And second, you often don’t find the same high there when you reread. Instead, you doubt. You pick. And the despair sets in. It really wasn’t so good, you were fooling yourself, and on and on and on.

Nix that here and now.

Your task, your challenge, is to FILL THE EMPTY PAGE. You learn through doing. Not through re-doing. Yes, okay, to make it commercial you must rewrite, and rewriting is a genuine professional aspiration.

But. And this is a very big but.

Writing, first drafting, requires one thing above all else: CONFIDENCE. You have a story that must be told. And you also have the ability.

Rewriting, on the other hand, requires one trait above all else: Doubt.

You question everything. You reconsider all decisions.

Do you see where this is headed? The two simply do not co-exist. Oil and water.

The key, the crux of the whole matter, is to FINISH YOUR MANUSCRIPT. You must learn to see this as the goal. Not the perfect word or the polished paragraph. A finished text. In my opinion, in the early days you would be far better served to wait and complete the manuscript before doing any rereading or rewriting at all. Sure, issues will come up and you make note of them. But don’t involve yourself in doing these changes now. Make notes at the top of that scene. Do this, change that, fix the person or the action. Then put it aside and move on.

You will discover something amazing. At the end, once the climax is done, the rewriting goes a thousand times smoother. A billion times. Why?

Because you have something to aim for.

One of the critical parts of a good rewrite is to make everything in the story keep careful aim at the climax. How can you do this until you know what the climax is?

A final admission from an author who has published more than forty books:

The climax often changes.

If you wait until it is written, and then rewrite, you have a target on which you can focus. It makes all the difference in the world.

I wish you every success.