Ask the Author: Mark Leichliter
Answered Questions (3)
Mark Leichliter
Don't give in to what you think others want you to do, particularly if what they want you to do is NOT to write. Write the books and stories you want to write. If you work hard enough, follow your passion far enough, raise your standards high enough, you will produce work that others will want to read. You have to develop thick skin as a writer. Everywhere you turn, people are going to tell you "No." Your answer to "no" has to be to write more. The page will always be your ultimate teacher if you will learn to listen to it.
Mark Leichliter
My answer is pretty lame but honest. I push through. Writer's block is certainly real and worst when you're trying to start a new project. Avoidance comes to easily. Not writing is the easiest thing in the world. So mostly I push through by relying on old habits like writing at the same time every day, in the same place, using the same tools. When writing becomes ritualized, its easier to continuously produce work. Writing is a way of living and seeing, not just the physical act, so you have to treat it with enough sustained habit that you can write even when your brain feels empty.
Mark Leichliter
The pile keeps growing, and a few have been in it for a while. I'm currently reading WHAT THE DEAD KNOW by Laura Lippmann (an oldie but WoW what great elevated crime fiction), A DEAD MAN'S EYES by Lori Duffy Foster, and THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE by Julie Orringer. Next up: a Christmas request I haven't gotten to with SHUGGIE BAIN by Douglas Stuart; THE WAY OF IMAGINATION: ESSAYS, the new collection by the brilliant Scott Russell Sanders; and BEAL STREET DYNASTY by Preston Lauterbach. Meanwhile, there are other books I'm reading for research, as always.
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