Ray Abbott is the unusual writer. It's what he does for a living. No other day job. He just writes. And writes. And writes. "That's all I do. I have so much stuff that's unpublished. I've written 10 novels. I've published three. I just do it automatically. I don't really know what I would do besides write and I stay very steady at it."

He wrote "You Want me to Shoot You?" just because. He didn't do it to teach anything or because he thought it would be something an editor or market would like. "I could never sit down and write something deliberately. I just wanted to write it."

When he sat down with Father Dillon, he knew he would write something about the experience so he "took notes while there and roughed out a draft and worked on it a short while after. I knew there was something that was important." There was something about their relationship that nagged at him. "I used to have to deal with him almost on a daily basis. His flat responses could be very frustrating and depressing. If you came with something exciting, he would have no response to it."

Abbott says he really didn't know what the point of the story would be exactly. He insists he didn't see the eventual theme that Father Dillon's unemotional personality would be his undoing before he began. "I wasn't conscious of (any lesson) when I wrote it. Maybe after it was in page proofs. I think sometimes you think "Maybe its better than I thought it was!". I just try to get it down clearly. And then things happen."

For Abbott, things "happen" less than he might like. This writing life has not been easy. When he was 42, his novel "That Day in Gordon," was published for which he won the Whiting Award. He thought, "Something is going to happen with this." Since then, he laments, "Its been more difficult than I imagined," although he has published three books and many articles and essays.

He attributes the difficulty to two things: The often unacceptable fact that he is a "white man" writing about the Native American Indian and his unorthodox style of writing.

More than most, Ray seems a loner. He has "this cabin where I'll go to escape for a few days or at least overnight. There was a time when I tried to do something every day, but more recently, I've been a little haphazard about that. I usually have two or three projects going at once." He doesn't keep a journal but has the beginnings of several projects which he puts aside for a while until he feels like working on them again. "I don't have anybody read anything and I don't read anyone's stuff. I've never been in writing courses or writing clubs. I don't think its useful for me."

He appreciates the recent rise in popularity in the creative nonfiction genre. "A lot of the nonfiction area seems to really be blossoming these days and I find it more interesting than the fiction that comes out."

If asked to advise someone who wanted to become a writer he would "just tell them not to do it. But if they had to do it (as he does) I would tell them to keep it as an avocation, not get into it a lot. And it's very easy to get into. It's a hard life in many ways."

Karen Rosica