Ask the Author: Ron Yates
Answered Questions (10)
Ron Yates
The overarching mystery in my life is the intricate interweaving of God's grace throughout the dangerous misadventures of my youth, the tragedies and disappointments of adulthood, to the continued blessings and good health I currently enjoy. I cannot measure or understand God's continuous influence on the universe and everything in it, including me and you, but knowing there is a positive force that holds us and everything together is a mysterious comfort I can only appreciate through the perspective of passing time.
Ron Yates
Aunt Agatha has grown quiet in her chamber as you, her caretaker and only living relative, play Borderlands 3. She normally rings her bell when she needs something, but you have been steadily turning up the volume.
Ron Yates
The 1920s Spain of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises beckons. I'd be damaged by war and drink in the cafes with the expatriates and watch the bullfights, but that would make me sad so I'd drink more and get depressed and pick a fight. I'd slug a guy who needed it, but because he was drunk and weak my friends would turn on me. I'd go off by myself and try to seduce women but the women would toy with my emotions making me more depressed until I found a ruined bullfighter who'd lost his courage. We'd become friends and drink until sunrise, visiting his favorite haunts where the patrons whispered behind his back. His sister would like me but would ultimately reject me because I refused to learn a game she'd invented called helado derretido. She would scream for me to ¡Vete! Realizing I needed sleep and to be alone, I would leave her and her brother, dragging myself along the avenida until a boy and his grandfather, who pushed a cart, would offer me a crepe.
Ron Yates
Summer's over now, but I recently enjoyed Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout. I'm currently reading The Marble Army by Gisele Firmino. My immediate list includes The Shaman of Turtle Valley by Clifford Garstang and Olive Again by Strout.
Ron Yates
By various means of self-flagellation, I banish laziness and fear so that I can begin to work on sentences. One word leads to another.
Ron Yates
The best thing about being a writer is the satisfaction that comes from attempting something that you have no idea how to do and achieving a small measure of success, the result of which is a kind of dream in someone else's mind.
Ron Yates
Several key principles: Revising is writing and vice versa. Characters and their various motivations should drive the plot. Learn to read like a writer. Use as few words as possible. If it sounds like writing, revise until it doesn't. Don't spell everything out. Respect the intelligence of your readers. Write so that each sentence has integrity. Give your characters life so they become complex humans, not stock figures. Have fun.
Ron Yates
In addition to Make It Right: A Novella and Eight Stories, I have a novel coming out in October of 2019 titled Ben Stempton's Boy. Having two books released in the same year necessitates devoting much of my time to promotion and working with editors. I finished a new short story a few months back that's currently looking for a home among literary journals, and I continue to revise older pieces. I'm not sure what my next project will be, but I'm entertaining ideas that may lead me into new settings and different, more diverse characters.
Ron Yates
Writers shouldn't wait for inspiration but should simply write, every day if possible, because that's what they've been called to do. I am, though, more motivated on some days than others. Forces and factors behind moods of elevated creativity include music; a good movie; a beautifully written scene by another, perhaps unknown, author; a scented breeze; a smile from a stranger; or anything encountered in the daily routine that is unusually funny or sad.
Ron Yates
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