Ask the Author: Rebecca Kightlinger
Answered Questions (3)
Rebecca Kightlinger
I just keep wondering what happens next. Writing, for me, means querying my narrator and listening and watching for the response. It all plays out in some corner of my imagination where stories live, I guess. We must all have this--place--that we can access if we wish. I never knew it was there until one night, after my husband gave me my first typewriter, when I sat down to write a story. I didn't know how to start, so I closed my eyes and said, "Who has the story?" And an entire town showed up!
Each person wanted to tell me their part of what happened back in the 1930s. Every night, they showed up, and the story that came together was wonderful. I wasn't a good enough writer to turn it into a novel at the time--that's why I eventually studied creative writing. But, while I learned the elements of writing craft since then and have improved my skills, the incentive and the inspiration to write--wondering what happens next and trusting the narrators to show up and reveal it--hasn't changed one bit. It is still just as magical and just as reliable as it was with that first story.
Each person wanted to tell me their part of what happened back in the 1930s. Every night, they showed up, and the story that came together was wonderful. I wasn't a good enough writer to turn it into a novel at the time--that's why I eventually studied creative writing. But, while I learned the elements of writing craft since then and have improved my skills, the incentive and the inspiration to write--wondering what happens next and trusting the narrators to show up and reveal it--hasn't changed one bit. It is still just as magical and just as reliable as it was with that first story.
Rebecca Kightlinger
I think I have the opposite situation: keeping up! Every time I sit down to write, my narrator is waiting to reveal another moment in her life. I take it all down and then later put all it all together, delete extraneous details, query her for additional information, and turn summary narrative into scenes. There is never a lack of story!
Rebecca Kightlinger
I'm at work now on Book Two of The Bury Down Chronicles, which picks up where Book One leaves off.
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