The Write Stuff with... Bill Arnott

One of the things I have enjoyed most since setting up the blog is chatting to and getting to know more about authors. Last year I hosted a Q&A with Canadian author Bill Arnott which you can read here and today's it's my pleasure to welcome Bill back to the blog.

I knew I was a writer …

… around the time I signed my first book. The purchaser, someone I’d known for years, looked at me with excitement I’d never seen on them prior to the publication of my modest trade paperback – a book on personal development, what we labeled self-help in the day. It became a national bestseller. Fifteen years later people still buy copies and seem to enjoy them. Authors I admire say kind things about it. A number who gave glowing reviews actually read the book. From the proceeds I sent cheques to Make-a-Wish Foundation of Canada, granting wishes to children with life threatening illness. The whole experience was quite remarkable.

Author Interview: Bill Arnott

Today it's my pleasure to welcome Canadian author, poet and songwriter Bill Arnott to the blog to talk about his travel memoir Gone Viking.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your writing journey?
Like most writers I started writing when I was young – poetry, lyrics and fiction, all of it awful. As I grew up (somewhat) and went to university, writing became a means to an end – essays, reports and case studies. But a writerly lifeline persisted by penning brief, inspirational messages, reminders of the strength and capabilities we all possess. A buddy spotted my scribbles, scattered over a bulletin board on post-its and index cards. “That’s a book,” he said. Which I hadn’t considered. 

A dozen years later I bundled my little empowerments into an offset print paperback, called it Wonderful Magical Words, and self-published it. To my delight it was a Canadian bestseller. Sales raised money for Make-A-Wish Foundation, granting wishes to children with life-threatening illness. Everything about the project felt good. Except the writing. Ten years after the book I began to find my voice – that lovely process of aging and no longer caring about appearances that tends to result in authenticity.

Your travel memoir is called Gone Viking: A Travel Saga, how did the title come about? And where did the inspiration for your trek come from? 
I was working on a follow up to my travelogue Dromomania (2014) when I learned the word viking was originally a verb, meaning to voyage (more or less). I’d already trekked around Scandinavia and realized with a few more years of travel and research I could effectively replicate history’s most famous Viking voyages, drawing inspiration from both verb and noun. As I left to complete this odyssey, I felt I hadn’t gone to lunch or gone fishing, I’d literally gone viking.