Ask the Author: Thomas Benz
Answered Questions (9)
Thomas Benz
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Thomas Benz
The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty, Be Mine by Richard Ford, The Latinist by Mark Prins, The Liar's Asylum by Jacob Appel, Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin, Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.
Thomas Benz
How certain people in my life have vanished for a long time and the reappeared out of the blue. To a certain extent, it's been a reoccurring theme.
Thomas Benz
A story collection is necessarily comprised of a number of characters and ideas so it's hard to boil it down to just one. I won't really give anything away but the first story begins which a character who, over a period of a year, gets mistaken for someone else--not any one person, just someone else--several times. That did happen to me at one point, though not as many times as in the story. I found it interesting enough to imagine a series of scenarios that might come afterward.
Thomas Benz
I read writers I greatly admire and I keep my eyes and ears open to things that I find fascinating or funny and which seem like they might lend themselves to fiction.
Thomas Benz
I'm editing a novel titled "Harraway's Call."
Thomas Benz
Keep a journal which is at least as much outward observation as inward reflection. Record what fascinates you in as keenly as possible. Do that first without worrying about where any of it is leading. Then later start to look for patterns and connections which might start to form a narrative. But your writer's voice probably won't come until you practice converting experience into written language for a while.
Thomas Benz
I suppose for me it feels like I'm able to experience certain things in a richer way by paying attention to the details of a situation, the nuances of people and their interaction with one another. Also, there can be a real sense of joy in making things up and having stories come together in a meaningful way. By translating experience--both real and imagined--into words, one's life sometimes becomes more coherent.
Thomas Benz
The main thing for me is to get into a flow, a narrative voice which seems separate from the usual cognitive mind one needs to address a long to-do list of chores. So I'll sometimes go about it as if I were just making a long journal entry, not worrying about grammar much, using phrases where sentences would later be needed. I'll use a font that seems a bit playful to suggest that there isn't any pressure and write about something that is just interesting or amusing. It's like a kind of icebreaker at a party, a way to find a voice and get things going, but without the worry that you might sound dumb. Whatever I write will be very different by the time anyone sees it.
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