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How David Richards Discovered
How to Bloom Where Planted
By Samantha Skelton
From never being in one place for very long, to being planted in the same place for over a decade, David Richards has learned so much about life and writing through both the constants in his life, and the ever-changing.
With his new book Love Letters To The Virgin Mary, he reflects back on the years he didn’t yet implement a writing practice, understand his purpose, and discovering the power of journaling.
Love Letters follows a man who has lost everything and must re-build his life, with inspiration from a fictional character you’d never guess.
Where did you grow up? What was life like for you as a child?
I was born outside Washington, D.C. but my dad was in the marines, so we moved around a lot growing up. I didn’t realize that was unusual to live in so many places until I got older, so during those inconsistent years, something that provided consistency for me was comic books.
Comic books fed my imagination in the absence of friendships that could only grow for two or three years before we moved again.
Did you get bit with the writing bug as a kid?
I started getting really into creative writing in high school. I was published in a North Carolina state magazine and got national recognition.
I was a big fan of the classics, like Frankenstein, and I loved Stephen King. These stories spoke to the power of creativity because they impacted me on such a deep level.
Did you go on to make writing your career after that?
Not exactly, it’s been quite the journey. Growing up on military bases you don’t have a good sense of how the world works because everyone on base is focused on defense of the country.
I decided to join ROTC because I thought that was a good way to pay for college and thought maybe I would figure out how to become a writer after, but I didn’t have the best sense of how to go about it.
I ended up joining the marines which was very challenging. I applied myself physically and academically. Once I passed that threshold, I thought…I have to do this the rest of my life because it was so hard to get there.
For ten years, I traveled all over because of my chosen career, including to places like Somalia, and off the coast of Kuwait. Underneath though, I still had this calling within me. After ten years in that career, I started writing poetry again. That definitely raised eyebrows from fellow marines, but it felt right within myself.
In 2006, my writing led to my decision to get out of the military and see what life was like outside of that career. I instantly fell in love with Yoga and became a Yoga instructor a year later.
What drew you into yoga? That’s such a drastic life change!
The idea of living in the same place in ten years or more really drew me in. I’ve lived in North Carolina now for fifteen years and I regularly reflect on how I see people on a regular basis, which is not something I experienced for most of my life.
How did changing your environment reflect in your writing?
I really was influenced by Stephen King, but I was infantile in my approach to writing. I figured if I was working in corporate America, teaching yoga a few times a week, and then I could write. But I thought if I was going to sit down and write it would come out perfect and that I didn’t need a writing practice. I was wrong!
A few years after getting out of the military I started to work on a horror story, set in the town where I lived. Again, influenced by King, I wrote about 100 pages and then things petered out. It was just a struggle to produce anything, I was so frustrated.
Then, over a year later, I had another idea, where I tried the same approach, and again it fell apart. For 11 years I went on like this. Then in 2016 I read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. That book changed the direction of my life and I was blown away.
The idea that my life had a compass was so new to me but clicked instantly. I eventually wrote that my purpose in life was to help others find their purpose in life. And that’s what I did! I had the conviction.
I started writing on another idea for about four months, 200 pages, and that was all autobiographical. Then I realized…I have to help OTHERS find their purpose. That’s how I came to write my first book: Whiskey & Yoga.
Tell me about your latest book Love Letters To The Virgin Mary. How do you think writing this book was fulfilling to your purpose?
For me this book didn’t start out where it ended up. It was born out of the idea that who we are is more important than what we do, yet what we do is shaped by who we are.
The inspiration came because I was just fascinated by society’s obsession with social media.
Everyone has their phone in front of them. To what end are we doing this? If we’ve all become addicted to technology, where is that going to take us?
Initially, the purpose behind the book was…you had to define who you are and create a compelling vision of your future self to really do that. What you need to do to realize that will start to manifest in your life.
The book follows David, a man who is like Walter White in Breaking Bad. It’s about someone who has lost everything.
David’s been through multiple marriages, had careers that didn’t work out, and has never been able to reconcile why things didn’t turn out the way they had.
As he grapples with things, he ends up living with friends in the pandemic and he has this episode watching a Marvel movie where he looks up and he’s become Thor and relates to Chris Hemsworth.
The whole premise is, what happens when you wake up and realize you’re a god? It’s this idea of how do you reconcile this and how do you release the god inside of you?
Wow that’s fascinating! What’s a takeaway you want readers to have?
We are all gifted with a beautiful imagination and the question I would ask is how deep in the inferno are you willing to go to discover who you really are?
What’s your writing practice like now and are you working on anything else?
When I was working through Love Letters To The Virgin Mary, I had a really good vision of where this story was in 2020 and so I wrote an outline. But I realized I didn’t have all the pieces figured out. I started journaling to figure it out.
When you journal, it’s a conversation you have with yourself but over the course of working on this book I wrote over 1,000 pages of journal entries. It helped me refine my writing but also it helped this story to be as crisp and clear as I wanted it to be.
Writing became magical for me once I realized I had the power to create all new universes.
So now on a regular basis I can crack open my journal and it just comes out of me.
Where can people read more about you and get your latest book?
You can head to DavidRichardsAuthor.com.
I’m also on Instagram and the E-book is available for preorder on Amazon!
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