Ask the Author: J. Brandon Lowry
Answered Questions (6)
J. Brandon Lowry
My most recent book is a flash fiction collection, so there are tons of ideas mixed together in there. I kind of subscribe to Stephen King's philosophy on this one, that stories are found things. They just appear out of the ether, and the only control you have is to decide to make it a real thing or not.
J. Brandon Lowry
I read. Occasionally I'll find something really disarming and powerful, and it makes me remember why I fell in love with this in the first place. More often, though, I'll read something kind of awful and think, "I can do better than that. I WILL do better than that." Then I'm off to the races.
J. Brandon Lowry
A couple of things. I've got a novel in progress, at the moment I'm about halfway through the second draft. I'm also writing a serial novel, with the goal of publishing a new chapter every two weeks.
J. Brandon Lowry
Don't hold back.
J. Brandon Lowry
Interacting with readers, hands down. The whole point of this job is to create experiences for other people. Therefore, I want to know how I've succeeded, where I failed, not only so I can get better, but to know that I've done it at all.
J. Brandon Lowry
In my experience, writer's block stems from fear. Fear that what you're writing isn't any good, or that it won't be as good as what came before, or that you're fooling yourself that it was ever any good.
To overcome that, I force myself to write one sentence at a time. Just get that single sentence out, no matter how hard. And then DON'T DELETE IT. Don't edit. Don't do a damn thing, except force out another sentence. Then another. By the end, you'll have a paragraph. A shitty paragraph, but at least it exists. Then, when the fear has subsided, you can come back and laugh at yourself and fix it.
To overcome that, I force myself to write one sentence at a time. Just get that single sentence out, no matter how hard. And then DON'T DELETE IT. Don't edit. Don't do a damn thing, except force out another sentence. Then another. By the end, you'll have a paragraph. A shitty paragraph, but at least it exists. Then, when the fear has subsided, you can come back and laugh at yourself and fix it.
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