Photo courtesy of Danny Giancioppo
For Danny Giancioppo, a senior creative writing major with a double minor in journalism and RTVF, the most defining moments of his life were not thought through, but rather written. And as he saw the events on paper, he was able to understand people’s actions as well as his reactions, slowly shaping his worldview. Eventually, those stories that helped him sort through his thoughts allowed him to develop his authorial voice and characters, in hopes of offering others that same clarity. This is what makes him a writer.
In his words, “being a writer is being able to kind of do magic … It’s kind of being able to show someone that you have nothing up your sleeves and then just reach into seemingly nothing, just an invisible world, and it looks like you just disappeared. And then you pull something back and all of a sudden you have this story in this world that never existed and suddenly does.” It’s pulling from personal experiences and one’s imagination in order to create a shared experience. Giancioppo considers everyone to be a storyteller, seeing value in all experiences, but that doesn’t mean everyone is a writer or able to transfer the ideas into a skill.
His passion for this craft developed in the 30-minute journal sessions he was granted in grade school. He would pull out his composition notebook, in a school desk too tall for him to comfortably reach his feet to the ground, and while others used the moment of freedom to doodle, he would write. By eighth grade, writing became a part of him and he was able to transport all the way to the sun – that is, in his mind. “It was kind of about a demigod kid like Hercules who ends up fighting against Cronus, and throws him into the sun,” Giancioppo said, reflecting on the first story he was truly proud of. “And he throws him so hard that the sun spins around the world. And it was like, oh, that’s why there’s day and night, because this Greek hero threw Cronos into the sun and made it start revolving.” He explained that his stories tend to have a fantastical element, inspired by his favorite author, Stephen King.
Giancioppo even has a summer house in Maine, the same town that King lives in. After sharing his alarming knowledge of King’s movements, followed by laughter and reassurance that the town is very small, Giancioppo explained how the iconic author has shaped his love for writing. He is not only familiar with where King takes his morning walks but has read many of his novels and takes inspiration from his storytelling techniques.
“‘The Green Mile,’ although it has some fantastical elements, is kind of just the characters’ lives and he does a really great job of incorporating very human elements into his stories and always talking about this idea of growth,” Giancioppo said. “Even if the characters are all adults, there’s always this idea of growth and movement and memory and the evil in people, but also the best in people. And those kinds of things are the kinds of writing that I hope to emulate to some degree or other.”
Giancioppo has completed about three manuscripts to date. “At this point, now almost six coming on seven years later, I still have written like two or three different drafts of those books. And they were a way for me to express things in my life that I felt like I couldn’t really say in real life,” Giancioppo said. “I would take these problems or these issues or feelings or memories or thoughts, and I would sort of expand upon them, put them into this imaginary world that didn’t exist and pull something back out.”
In these stories, Giancioppo grapples with the authenticity of his friendships, as well as his own self-scrutiny. He wrote a superhero story of a boy, a character comparable to the combination of Tony Stark and Tom Holland’s Spiderman, who found himself not only confronted with a supernatural destiny, but with the question of whether he’s a good man. “At the core of it, it’s just about a kid who’s trying to figure out if he’s a good person,” Giancioppo explained. “I’m not really doing it in the first place for money; that would just kind of be a cool bonus,” he explained. “But telling the stories is, as cheesy as it sounds, more than enough reward in and of itself.”
Developing this mentality as a writer is crucial – writers must bare their souls on the page while also subjecting themselves to constant rejection. Giancioppo’s brave efforts, so far, have seldom been accompanied by external validation, forcing him to let his passion be enough. “I don’t think a lot of my self-worth is [placed] on my writing specifically because there hasn’t ever really been a moment where I didn’t know that this is what I’m supposed to do,” he said.
“I probably submitted like 10 short stories to probably like 30 different places, and I submitted a novel to a publishing agency. And I’m in the process right now of working with artists to submit a pitch package for a comic series. And like, who knows where any of those might go?” Giancioppo said. “All of them … have been rejections, but it’s never a thing where seeing those rejections or even having them stack up becomes a feeling of, ‘oh, I can’t do this or I’m not worth it.’ It’s more just a feeling like, all right, cool, I’m not ready yet, but I just need to keep going and keep trying because I know that I have something, because it wouldn’t feel as right as it does to write – and to consider myself a writer wouldn’t feel as right as it does – if there wasn’t something there.”
His clarity, despite the insecurity, is because he loves to write, with as much depth as that word can carry. And that love is what makes him who he is. For Giancioppo, writing is not a hobby or a career but his language, and he will never stop speaking.
