Ask the Author: Kim Wozencraft
Answered Questions (8)
Kim Wozencraft
Hi Jassie,
Thanks for your kind words and the great question. Personally, I don't know if there really is a completely fictional standpoint. If there is, I haven't found it yet. Every writer I've spoken with or heard at readings or interviews speaks of using personal experience to help them create story and character. I certainly do. Fiction gives you the freedom to take the story wherever it wants to go, and experience helps you bring it to life in a believable way.
I have a new novel coming out—"Neglect"— (Arcade Publishing, Spring 2021) that follows a young mother into the U.S. Army Reserves and from there into Afghanistan (and back home to a different kind of war zone).
I've never encountered military war, but my personal knowledge of the military and my first-hand experiences of violence and firearms were helpful in creating what I hope are visceral, realistic scenes for that fictional story.
Be well!
Kim
Thanks for your kind words and the great question. Personally, I don't know if there really is a completely fictional standpoint. If there is, I haven't found it yet. Every writer I've spoken with or heard at readings or interviews speaks of using personal experience to help them create story and character. I certainly do. Fiction gives you the freedom to take the story wherever it wants to go, and experience helps you bring it to life in a believable way.
I have a new novel coming out—"Neglect"— (Arcade Publishing, Spring 2021) that follows a young mother into the U.S. Army Reserves and from there into Afghanistan (and back home to a different kind of war zone).
I've never encountered military war, but my personal knowledge of the military and my first-hand experiences of violence and firearms were helpful in creating what I hope are visceral, realistic scenes for that fictional story.
Be well!
Kim
Kim Wozencraft
Hi Kyiakhalid-
There is a Kindle version in the works right now. We're just waiting on the cover. The book should be online in the next month or so.
Be well.
Kim
There is a Kindle version in the works right now. We're just waiting on the cover. The book should be online in the next month or so.
Be well.
Kim
Kim Wozencraft
As it does for many, the idea for the novel I'm working on right now came from several areas. First, I am constantly stunned and saddened by the violence that is perpetrated on women the world over every single day. We're constantly getting beaten up, assaulted, verbally abused, mistreated, and humiliated. And murdered. So there's that.
Secondly, I am extremely distrustful and often outraged at the injustices heaped on good people by government institutions, institutions that are supposed to help people but instead hit them with a cold wall of ineptitude and bureaucracy that does more damage than good.
But a good story comes down to its characters and the choices they make. I'm exploring the world of a woman who has to endure war (at home and abroad) and the traumatic aftermath of what she experiences in the military and upon coming home. It's pretty rough stuff, and takes a toll while I'm in there with her. The thing is, at the end of the day I get to come back to my little world in upstate New York, unlike the people who are, in real life, still scrambling to survive in a world full of gunfire and bombs.
Secondly, I am extremely distrustful and often outraged at the injustices heaped on good people by government institutions, institutions that are supposed to help people but instead hit them with a cold wall of ineptitude and bureaucracy that does more damage than good.
But a good story comes down to its characters and the choices they make. I'm exploring the world of a woman who has to endure war (at home and abroad) and the traumatic aftermath of what she experiences in the military and upon coming home. It's pretty rough stuff, and takes a toll while I'm in there with her. The thing is, at the end of the day I get to come back to my little world in upstate New York, unlike the people who are, in real life, still scrambling to survive in a world full of gunfire and bombs.
Kim Wozencraft
I do more research. Read. Watch films. Walk in the woods. And I try to remember that it will pass; change is inevitable.
Kim Wozencraft
What I enjoy most is the opportunity to indulge my curiosity and love of language.
Kim Wozencraft
The best advice I ever got was, "Apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." Though not an exact quotation, it's a slight variation on advice given by the feminist and labor advocate Mary Heaton Vorse.
Kim Wozencraft
I'm closing in on the first draft of a novel that I've been at for several years now. I've finished a television pilot with a partner and we're waiting for news on that. And I'm excited to be working on the film adaptation for a novel that recently hit the bookstores and is getting high praise from critics. I'm at the keyboard every day, weekends included.
Kim Wozencraft
I'm always inspired to write; it's what I love doing. The work of putting words on the page, though, that is the part that requires discipline and dedication. And then after the words are on the page, the real work begins: rewriting, moving words around, cutting words out, tossing out sentences and paragraphs and sometimes entire chapters. The search for the best way to create a realistic scene, good dialogue, conflict, and action is what I love. The ideas are always present; putting them on the page in just the right order is the challenge.
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