A Discussion with Mitch Rowland

“...the heart always wants to tell the truth.” A Discussion with Mitch Rowland

By: Christina Le Vey

Prologue
Mitch Rowland is a senior writing major at Grand Valley State University. He will graduate in the spring of 2009 and is excited to be nearing the finishing line of his academic career. “I know that the degree isn’t going to guarantee me a job, I just like the idea of finally being able to get out in the world and see what I can do with all that I’ve learned.”

Chapter 1: Ambitions
During their age of innocence children have hopes and dreams. Some dream of being firemen, doctors, or astronauts. Like most children, Mitch Rowland had dreams of what he wanted to be when he grew up. Did he always see his life stretched out before him in the form of his own fantasy novel? No. As a child he wanted to be a zoologist, but after realizing that being a zoologist meant having to do more than merely play with the animals, he changed his mind and decided that perhaps cartooning was the route for him. Like the zoologist dream, the cartooning dream also came to an end. During high school Mitch decided that his artistic skills were not as advanced as they should have been to be a cartoonist and he decided to take a subtle shift from cartooning into the world of graphic design. The journey to discover ones destiny is not always easy as he would experience when his design portfolio was rejected by Grand Valley. Not to be discouraged, Mitch decided to take his education to Muskegon Community College where he ended up taking creative writing courses alongside graphic design classes and wound up winning the LAND writing contest for his dialogue piece titled “A Conversation with God”. Thus begins Mitch’s destiny on the way to becoming a successful author.

Chapter 2: Early Signs
Mitch is currently working on a fantasy novel that he refers to as being his “primary series” but he has around five finished novels and an assortment of short stories tucked away in the files on his laptop. He has certainly ventured a long way with his writing, but looking back on his childhood there is certainly a pattern of storytelling. Whether he was just playing with his action figures, creating radio shows on his Talk Boy tape recorder, or writing for a friend’s comic strip, Mitch was always developing detailed stories. Back in second grade, he remembers helping his friend create a comic strip called “Joe and Mack” and that whenever it was his turn to contribute to the comic “it got to the point where there were more words than pictures.” He also recalls a series he created on his tape recorder, when he was ten years old, that was centered on a character named John, also known as, “Chipmunk man” because of his squeaky voice. Mitch explains how John had a small group of companions he could count on and an arch nemesis named Microphone Man. “Even though they were all different mediums, the radio shows, the comic strips, they all became stories.” He says.

Chapter 3: Inspiration
What inspires this up and coming fantasy author? “Books,” he says and quickly corrects himself, “books that I like, not books that I don’t like. A lot of people will tell you to read a book you don’t like so you know what not to do but that doesn’t help me.” Mitch goes on to explain how a good book, no matter the genre, can inspire him to write because it gets him into a storytelling mentality. Music can also be inspirational to Mitch because he can picture his book as a movie trailer playing in his mind. The most surprising source of inspiration that Mitch shared was that video games often get him in the writing mood. “My love for fantasy came from a video game, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, because it had a good story. I tend to like video games that have good stories over the mindless ones because there is actually an interest in it. Video games allow you to be more immersed in the story than a movie or a book because you’re controlling the character and certain things can change in the story based on what you do.” This just goes to show that creative inspiration can come from a variety of different sources.

Chapter 4: Favorites and Admirations
“Comedy is my favorite genre to write,” Mitch says, “with comedy all the rules change; it’s not held to the same scrutiny as drama. I like it because it doesn’t fall into that formulaic, clichéd story that we see so often. It seems like we are losing comedy among writers.”
As for writers that he admires, Mitch listed many fantasy authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Goodkind, and Douglas Adams but he says that above all authors he admires J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, the most. “Not only are her books amazing and have inspired a generation of children to read, but because she wrote that book while she was a single mother, in a coffee shop while her baby was asleep. I always use her as an example when I think that I don’t have time to write.” He also lists writers such as Dave Barry and screen writer, Joss Whedon, as writers that he enjoys.

Chapter 5: The Highs and Lows
Though he acknowledges that the main character is important, Mitch expresses the importance of having an interesting setting within a story. “I tend to define my characters more so by the world around them rather than their tortured background. I love to have interesting settings and I really love to have interesting side characters.” Unlike some writers, he doesn’t feel the need to do extensive research for his novels. “The extent of the research I’ll do is that I’ll take an archery class or a fencing class or I’ll go outside and look at a tree.” He says with a laugh. The hardest part about writing in his opinion comes in the form of editing and motivation. “I think it was Dave Barry who said that writing is actually 95% editing and 5% writing.” As far as motivation is concerned, “if you don’t have the motivation to do all the work that is associated with writing then you probably won’t get published.” Mitch feels that a natural gift for writing won’t take anyone very far if they don’t have the proper motivation and the discipline it takes to do the editing involved with writing.

Chapter 6: The Advice Column
Some of the best advice that Mitch has received came from writing professor, Chris Haven, of Grand Valley. “He said that writer’s block is a myth and that it is all in your head. The only way to get through it is to keep writing through it. You have to write through the garbage to get to the good stuff.” He also cites Stephen King’s book On Writing as being one great piece of advice, because it teaches writers how to simplify. “Never stop reading,” Mitch advises other young writers like himself, “and when you’re sick of reading, read some more.” He stresses the importance of reading for inspiration and writing for the experience. “It’s never going to get written if you don’t write it. Just getting it down builds the writing muscle and the more you write the more you’re exercising that muscle.”

Epilogue
It’s obvious that Mitch is passionate about writing and has set realistic, reachable goals for himself. “Even though graphic design would have been the more practical career, writing represents what I want out of life, which is a novel and whatever fame that comes with it. If you can write a great novel, you can become a legend.” We will one day pass shelves in bookstores across the country piled high with copies of fantasy novels written by Mitch Rowland and the inside cover will have a note from the author that reads: “Stories are from the heart, papers are from the head. I can fake things from the head, but the heart always wants to tell the truth.”

Visit Mitch's website Dynamic Fiction.

Also check out some of his graphic design talent at Topical Brainstorm.