Ask the Author: Kay Williams
Answered Questions (3)
Kay Williams
Write something every day. Find a writers' group you can join (or start one), 4-5 writers who will read up to ten pages of their works each time you meet. The feedback--what you're doing right as well as what is not working well--is invaluable for your own work. Learning to read others' works critically is also invaluable for your own work. The trick is to find the right people for your group, supportive of your work and others, but not afraid to tell you what could be better.
Kay Williams
When writer's block happens to me, usually it's because my subconscious is telling me the scene I'm working on is headed in the wrong direction.
I sit in front of the computer, though, and write something. I may have to throw it away. On the other hand, there may be a kernel in it I can use for another scene or even another story idea.
Another tactic that helps: I improvise a scene (speed writing) between two characters, from each character's point of view. .Since I was an actor for many years, I put myself in each character's head and ask: where is he or she coming from, what emotion is he or she feeling?
I sit in front of the computer, though, and write something. I may have to throw it away. On the other hand, there may be a kernel in it I can use for another scene or even another story idea.
Another tactic that helps: I improvise a scene (speed writing) between two characters, from each character's point of view. .Since I was an actor for many years, I put myself in each character's head and ask: where is he or she coming from, what emotion is he or she feeling?
Kay Williams
In 1991, I was at the Second Leningrad International Documentary Festival with film director Jack O'Connell. Crime was rampant, shelves were bare. Old Soviets were crying out for a return to Stalinism. Anything could happen here, I thought, in Leningrad at this desperate time. I returned home with the idea for The Matyroshka Murders (and lots of photographs and notes). My writing partner, Eileen Jo Wyman and I then drafted a plot that would start in Leningrad and jump across an ocean to New York City. .
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