Ask the Author: Penelope Wright
Answered Questions (6)
Penelope Wright
I try to just write anyway, fully aware that the words might not be good, but at least I'll have something to edit later! If I just sit there and don't write anything, not only do I have nothing - no writing - I have nothing to edit either. I'm literally at square zero. And a lot of the time, when I think I'm just creating literally *awful* paragraphs, I go back later and find that they are either way better than I thought they were, or that I at least have a little bit of something that I can work with on an edit.
Penelope Wright
I get to make up stories and solve problems, and maybe work through things that have been bugging me, and see it from all angles and make things work in a way that I wish they had in real life.
Penelope Wright
Write a lot, whether you feel like it or not. Read a lot in your genre, and also outside your genre. You become a better writer when you absorb a lot of great writing as a reader. Meet other writers. Online is a great way to do it, so is in person through writing groups (most regions have a writer's association) and also conferences. I met my first agent through a writer friend of mine, we would have never met if I hadn't made that friend at a conference who then introduced us.
Penelope Wright
A book about a time traveler from about 100 years in the future who was supposed to go back to 1986 but was accidentally sent to 2017, which is really unfortunate, because that's just a few short months before The Collapse, the cataclysmic event that killed nearly everyone on earth and gave rise to the society she currently lives in.
Penelope Wright
When I finish a book, I often think I'll never have another idea ever again, but after a few weeks something random will catch my eye & I'll start thinking about it and characters will start crystallizing in my mind. As far as the day to day process of writing, I try not to wait until I feel "inspired" because I might be waiting a long time. As long as I sit down and write every day, something good will eventually come of it. :)
Penelope Wright
I was wandering around Seattle and I stumbled across a Dota2 competition and it got me thinking about how muscle memory probably wouldn't be wiped out if your memory was completely scrubbed...like, you would still probably be able to type, and maybe play a musical instrument, and if you were really good at video games, you probably still would be, etc. It's a really random little kernel of an idea that wound up being the nugget that got me started on the time travel book I'm working on currently.
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