Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Heath Dollar. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Heath, thanks for joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Success as a writer requires dedication, determination, and the ability to take criticism and use it to improve one’s work. This means that a writer, quite simply, must write, and keep writing, until the work is done. When provided with criticism, a writer should treat his or her own work as a product rather than as an extension of the self. This makes it easier to be objective about one’s own material.

For thirty years I worked hard and tried my best to learn from the feedback that I was given, and this resulted in one of my short story collections receiving an award I would have never anticipated winning.

I am also of the opinion that successes build upon one another. Completing the first draft of a novel is a success. Gathering the courage to submit your first short story to a literary journal is a success. Getting your first story published is a success. And I believe it is important to celebrate these successes.

Heath, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was born and raised in Texas, and I first became serious about writing fiction not long after high school. Up until that point in my life, I had not been much of anywhere, and then one day I found myself reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and his words just hit me in the chest: “How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.” And those words simply changed my life.

So as soon as I finished college, I took a job in Yellowstone National Park. During my time in Yellowstone, I learned a great deal about the natural world, and I carried a notebook almost everywhere I went. My life revolved around Yellowstone for about five years, and then I took a teaching job in the Czech Republic, where I stayed for the next five years.

In Czechia, I lived in Rumburk, which is a small town on the German border about two hours north of Prague. Besides being an English teacher, I was also the frontman for a rock band. In those years, I learned to speak Czech, and I picked up some German as well. I also met my wife, Martina, in the Czech Republic, and we still speak Czech every day.

My stepfather back in Texas, who happened to be a fluent German speaker, was very supportive of my move to Europe, and he wished that he would have spent some time living abroad when he was young. My stepfather loved the Texas German culture, and he sang in a German-speaking choir in Fredericksburg, where he lived with my mother, and the two of them volunteered at Oktoberfest, and though my stepfather has passed away, my mother still volunteers at the festival every year.

And despite my family having lived in Texas for several generations, I never really wrote about my home state until my wife read a poem I had written about my grandfather giving me a chew of tobacco when I was five. Martina and I had recently established ourselves in Fort Worth, and she told me that Texas was where my heart was, and so I have written about Texas ever since.

Thus, both of my short story collections, Waylon County: Texas Stories and Old Country Fiddle, which won the Texas Institute of Letters’ 2021 Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction, are set in a fictional county in contemporary Texas. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, some of my characters are descended from Czech and German pioneers. These days, I am finishing up a novel set in North Texas, which I hope to see in print in the near future.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I realized that I wanted to become a fiction writer when I was about fourteen, and I started writing fiction seriously when I was about nineteen or twenty. It took years and years and reams and reams of paper before I finally saw my work in print. Never once did I ever consider giving up. I would work as hard as I could until I succeeded.

Part of that was my love for writing, but another part was the fact that I refused to abandon hope. If I received five rejection letters, I would send out five new submissions. If a story received an honorable mention, I would submit a new story to the same contest the following year to try to win the prize.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect for me is the process of creation. I am happiest when the words are flowing, when they seem to be channeling through my fingertips onto the keyboard. It is, of course, great to have your work acknowledged because it provides confidence that helps in the act of creation. However, tapping on the keys with a classic country album spinning on the turntable is what I love the most.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://heathdollar.com
• Instagram: @heathddollar
• Facebook: @heathdollarwriter
• Twitter: @heathddollar

Image Credits

Photos by Martina Milerova