Meet Danny Shot

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Danny Shot. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Danny below.

Hi Danny, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

I haven’t overcome my imposter syndrome. To a certain extent, I’ve aged out of it, but when I look at other poets and writers I’ll often say to myself “wow, so and so is much more talented than me, or so and so’s work is more relevant than mine, or so and so is really making it, what about me?” But then I think of a sonnet by Shakespeare and realize that he too suffered from imposter syndrome. I figure if Willie Shakespeare can overcome debilitating doubt, so can I. Here’s his sonnet about that:

Sonnet 29:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am a poet and writer. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Along with my friend and fellow poet Eliot Katz we started an arts and literary magazine in 1981 when we were 24 years old. We started with funds that Allen Ginsberg gave us after he split the door at a reading we did together. Another writer who helped us artistically and financially was Charles Bukowski. I mention that because every August we have a Bukowski Birthday Bash at The Bitter End in NYC. Long Shot ran until 2004, which is a good run for a literary magazine. Since then I’ve been focusing more on my own writing, though I’ve helped a number of writers along the way, after all every poet loves a publisher.

This has been an exciting year for me as I have had, or will have two books published. Night Bird Flying, published by Roadside Press is a collection of prose pieces. I call them stories, though they fall somewhere between memoir and fiction. I think of myself as a genre fluid writer. In early November, a collection of my poems spanning the years 2018-2025, The Jersey Slide will be published by CavanKerry Press. I think of this as my Friends and Family year, as the stories revolve more so around my friends, and the poems around my family. Not totally, but they trend in that direction.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think that my three most important qualities are 1) open mindedness, 2) a cheerful disposition, and 3) being well read. It’s easy to get somewhat jaded, or begin to think you’ve seen it all, especially in the arts, but probably in other disciplines as well. I believe part of staying young, at least intellectually and creatively, is to be open about accepting new and different ways of expression. One of the many things I admired about the poet Allen Ginsberg, who actually might have seen it all, is that he listened to, and supported younger poets, musicians and artists. Sometimes when we’re confronted with the new, our first instinct is to reject it. Being aware of this possibility I make myself wait before passing judgment. For example, Taylor Swift’s work is not my choice of music, but I listen, and listen again, and I can see the value in it, lol though of course I prefer Bruce Springsteen, and for that matter Black Sabbath. I’m generally a cheerful person, though with what’s been going on in this country the past 9 months, my wits have been tested, I try to see the good side of things. For better or worse, I’ve always been Pollyanna-ish. I am well attuned to other people’s suffering, but I believe that my place in the world is being a positive, hopeful force. I pride myself on being well read. I’m the guy in the subway car looking up and reading the ads above our heads. Seriously, I think it’s near impossible to be a really good writer without reading what’s come before you, if for no other reason than to avoid cliche. As writers in the 21st Century we are part of a continuum that started centuries before our birth and hopefully will go on a long time after we are gone. That is why, at least one of the reasons why, it is so important to save our planet for all the future generations.

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

This is a really good question. Being 68 years old, I don’t have much more than a decade left. I think I’d like to keep doing what I’m doing. I want to keep on being productive, I want to stay close to my children, and I’d like to stay healthy. One thing I’d like to do more of is to see more of the world. I’ve traveled all across the United States, but there’s much of the world I have no real first hand knowledge of. You might laugh at this, but as I get older I plan to consciously speak less and listen more. I very much fear becoming one of those old guys who repeats himself ad nauseum. I figure better not say anything. I also plan on spending much of the next decade remaining politically engaged, making myself heard, protesting, fighting to save the soul of the United States as we once knew it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dannyshot.com/
• Instagram: dannyshot57
• Facebook: Danny Shot

Image Credits

John Dalton