Ask the Author: Amanda Kespohl
Answered Questions (6)
Amanda Kespohl
It depends on what induced it. Sometimes, I'm blocked because I've hit a snag in the plot and I can't figure it out. If that's the case, I'll leave the work for a moment while I worry at the problem, free-writing in my journal or just walking around my neighborhood, thinking in circles. If I'm still stuck, I call my best friend, Sabrina, and natter at her until I come up with a solution.
There's another kind of blocked, a more drained kind of blocked. Like I had this bountiful crop of golden words, swaying in my mind like wheat, and I've harvested them all. The soil is bare, no seeds have been sewn, and there's nothing to be gleaned from that land until it's rested some. If that's how I'm feeling, I give myself time to relax. I read, I watch TV, I go out with friends, I walk my dog. After a while, the soil is rested, and new seeds start to sprout anew.
There's another kind of blocked, a more drained kind of blocked. Like I had this bountiful crop of golden words, swaying in my mind like wheat, and I've harvested them all. The soil is bare, no seeds have been sewn, and there's nothing to be gleaned from that land until it's rested some. If that's how I'm feeling, I give myself time to relax. I read, I watch TV, I go out with friends, I walk my dog. After a while, the soil is rested, and new seeds start to sprout anew.
Amanda Kespohl
I am never truly bored. Words are my favorite playthings, and they're always there when I need a distraction. I can stare at a tree in wintertime and amuse myself by trying to find the words to express how I feel about the way the sky seems to fill the bare branches. Which frequently leads to me patting my pockets and muttering, "That's pretty good actually, better right that down."
Amanda Kespohl
Don't give up. It's the hardest part of it all. We're all riddled with self-doubt, we writers, never completely sure that we're good enough. The constant rejection in this line of work just makes that negative voice get louder, saying, "See, I told you, no one cares what you have to say," or, "Maybe that one good story was all you ever had in you." It's easy to let that voice convince you to quit. But the surest way to lose at this game is to stop trying. If you keep going, keep writing, keep submitting, keep searching for your audience, you might just find that there are people out there who are dying to hear what you have to say.
Maybe even a lot of them.
Maybe even a lot of them.
Amanda Kespohl
I'm drifting between projects right now, which I do sometimes to keep me from getting bored. I've been going back and forth between a fantasy western about a unicorn-riding female gunslinger and a medieval fantasy detective novel.
Amanda Kespohl
I can't really seek out inspiration. It just happens. There is one story in particular that came to me in a song. One day, I was strolling around my neighborhood, listening to "Right Here, Right Now," by Fatboy Slim. That pulse-pounding beat made me imagine someone fleeing for their life. In my head, an image of hungry orange flames blossomed, licking at the character's heels. I thought to myself, "Man was not meant to outrun dragon fire."
A voice in my head replied, "Good thing I'm not a man."
Suddenly, I knew who was speaking and what I wanted to write about her.
A voice in my head replied, "Good thing I'm not a man."
Suddenly, I knew who was speaking and what I wanted to write about her.
Amanda Kespohl
I have a tendency to store up concepts in my head, like puzzle pieces I'm always collecting and constantly arranging and rearranging until they form a coherent picture. For "Jenny Redcape," the first piece was Red Riding Hood, which I had been meditating on at the time. But I didn't want to write about a naive little girl getting devoured. I wanted to write about a grown woman who punished the kind of predators who prey on young girls. Then I read a folklore tweet about redcaps, and that got me to thinking about how they soak their hats in the blood of their victims. Those things combined in my head to give me a story about a vengeance fairy on a mission to seek justice, with the blood magic in her red cape triggered by the blood of slain innocents.
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