Interview with Tom Kreffer, author of Dear Dory

When did you decide to write Dear Dory?

Truthfully, I didn’t; it was a complete fluke. Doctors told my partner and me that it would be extremely unlikely for us to conceive naturally, owing to some fertility complications with my partner. We were on the waiting list for IVF when, out of nowhere, she fell pregnant. But I’d already made up my mind that unless we got lucky with IVF, we would never have children unless we adopted, so on the day we found out – let me tell you, the emotional response I felt was the most intense feeling I’ve ever experienced.

And a few hours after my partner took the pregnancy test, I began writing some notes in my journal about how I found out I was going to be a Dad, and what that felt like. I ended up doing this every day for about a week, at which point I decided I would keep up with the practice all through the pregnancy.

But then, after ten days, I realised I had 5,000 words, and that I was averaging about 500 words a day. I calculated that if I continued at that pace every day, right up to my partner’s due date, I’d have approximately 122,000 words, and that would be enough for a book. But I assumed it would be a personal book project for my family and me. I never envisioned publishing it.

In that case, when did you decide to publish it?

I think I was about eight weeks into the writing when I started to wonder if others would find what I had written valuable, or at least entertaining. I found the whole pregnancy journey to be nuts, and I underestimated how much of a big deal it is. Starting a family is something most people experience – I guess that fact must have created a false narrative in my mind of what pregnancy was like. I was unprepared for the massive identify shift that happens when you become a parent. And that shift begins as soon as you see those two lines on a pregnancy test – everything changes, and there is no looking back.

I researched pregnancy books for Dads and found that there wasn’t much out there, especially in the format I was writing in – daily journal entries. Although I’d adopted the journal format by fluke rather than design, I thought it worked well, and I felt that a book written in that style would be an interesting and different approach to describing pregnancy. And, adding in the fact that it’s told from the Dad’s perspective, I thought I had something unique that others would find valuable. I began thinking about this as a project that could engage and interest many people.

What do you hope readers will get out of Dear Dory?

I didn’t write Dear Dory as a guidebook. That said, I experienced many of the things that new soon-to-be parents go through: fear, anxiety, excitement, financial worries, the challenge of making working arrangements for when the baby arrives, deciding on the Dad’s role during labour. I wrote about it all, and I think people will find value in that. Readers will see how I worked through all of those challenges, learning important lessons along the way, and I hope that my experiences will be helpful to others.

Broadly speaking, men aren’t exactly renowned for being vocal about their emotions, so Mums in particular will, I hope, find these insights from a Dad’s point of view revealing in a way that is perhaps new to them.

If you’re a parent and you’ve already been through the journey of pregnancy, then you’ll probably be able to relate to my experiences in the book. A lot of my early readers were parents already and nearly all of them commented on how Dear Dory reminded them of their own experiences – in a good way.

Finally, I really hope people get a laugh out of reading Dear Dory. My experience was scary at times, but it had so many standout moments that made me laugh, and my partner’s behaviour as a pregnant woman was incredibly funny, which made the writing a lot more entertaining; I certainly don’t go easy on her. On the day she finished reading it, I was relieved to learn that she wouldn’t be leaving me.

So, even if you don’t learn a single thing about pregnancy or parenting – you should have fun. Dear Dory is a non-fiction book, but I would say that it also reads like good fiction, which is something that works in the book’s favour, I think.

What do you hope to get out of Dear Dory?

Initially, I just wanted to use my journal to help me work through the hundreds of questions about pregnancy and parenting that ran through my mind. It certainly did that. Now that it’s published, I just want readers to connect with it and enjoy it – and I want it to help people.

This is perhaps a bit ambitious: there are a few ‘pregnancy classics’ that soon-to-be mums are encouraged to read, such as What to Expect When You’re Expecting and The Unmumsy Mum. I’d love it if Dear Dory were to become one of those classics for parents. As I said, it’s ambitious, but why not? Aim high, right?

Tell me about your writing process.

All the entries were written to Dory, which was the name we temporarily assigned the baby. Having my unborn child to write to coaxed everything I was experiencing out on to the page in the most revealing way. I didn’t hold back – I couldn’t, even if I had wanted to. It’s an interesting way to write. If I had written it to myself, the book wouldn’t have been as good.

In terms of writing, the challenge was to produce something every day. I think I knew that not all of it would make the final cut, even though I’d never written a book before or worked with editors. So I wrote every day and ensured that 99 per cent of the content somehow related to pregnancy, to babies and to parenting.

I didn’t structure anything; every day I’d wake up and wonder what would happen for me to write about. It was quite liberating, in a way. That said, pregnancy defines the structure for you perfectly. You have the start, with the big incident that kicks the story off – in my case, the pregnancy test – followed by three acts, each one a trimester of the pregnancy, and then you have a big dramatic conclusion with the labour. So when I say I didn’t structure anything, I didn’t have to; it was naturally laid out in front of me.

Will you continue with the format now that the baby is here?

Definitely. Because these books are daily journal entries, I had to begin book two the day after I’d finished the first draft of Dear Dory. I was rewriting Dear Dory and getting it ready for publication while writing the sequel, which is hardly ideal when you have a newborn baby and a day job, but I recognised that the fluke of starting Dear Dory had created an opportunity for me and possibly the start of a writing career, so I threw all my chips in and got to work. In fact, I’ve nearly finished the first draft of book two and I’m committed to writing book three in the series. Who knows what will happen if they take off? I love the format, and I love the response to Dear Dory that I’ve had from readers – it’s motivating me to keep typing away.

Any other writing projects on the horizon?

I’ve got tons in the pipeline. Honestly, I spend just as much time on Evernote writing ideas and notes for other projects as I do on the Dad journals. I really want to tackle fiction. I have an idea for a big action-adventure sci-fi series that I want to write, and now that I’ve cut my teeth with Dear Dory, I feel ready for the challenge. It’s influenced by some of my favourite fiction writers, like Matthew Reilly, Michael Crichton and JK Rowling. The scale of this thing is huge.

I also wrote a children’s short story that I included in an early draft of Dear Dory, but I cut it because it didn’t fit structurally within the rest of the journal entries. But I got great feedback from my editors and from people who read earlier drafts, so it’s something I want to return to in future.

Maybe I can release it on my blog or write more stories and publish it as part of an anthology. It’s about a plate spinner named Clay who lives on the planet Salva (everything is based on items you’d find in a kitchen). The people of Salva have to spin plates to create elbow grease because it’s elbow grease that makes the planet go round. The story employs a lot of crazy but fun imagery to illustrate some serious life lessons, such as the importance of challenging assumptions and forging your path in life rather than following the crowd.

Then there are my film projects. I spent my 20s writing screenplays, and while they were mostly terrible there are a few ideas I’m really attached to that I think are good; they just need a polished script. One of them is about a man who clones his dead wife so he can find out who killed her. Pretty cool, right?

Now I just need to find a way to add a few more hours to the day while maintaining 110 per cent productivity and I can get round to some of them. And of course I still have to show up each day for the Dad gig, which, I might add, is my all-time favourite responsibility. I love it.

Sounds like you’re a very busy man. Where can people find you and say hello?

My website: www.tomkreffer.com Twitter:@TKreffer Instagram – @tom_kreffer Facebook – @OfficalTomKreffer

Anything else you want to say?

Only that I hope readers enjoy Dear Dory; please let me know what you think.

Also, it won’t be long before I’m back with book two, so if you do enjoy Dear Dory, there’s plenty more to come.