Ask the Author: S. Chris Shirley
Answered Questions (4)
S. Chris Shirley
My best ideas hit me when I least expect it. They can come from a dinner conversation, a news article, or from just being keenly aware of what’s going on around me. For example, the inspiration for my debut novel, Playing by the Book, came while sitting in a church pew and listening to a sermon. You never know where inspiration will strike.
S. Chris Shirley
I just read what I’ve written the day before and soldier on. I also don’t put this great pressure on myself to write a certain number of words each day; rather, I focus on writing for a certain period of time (usually one to two hours). And if nothing really happens during that time, I don’t worry about it.
S. Chris Shirley
Write every day but don’t hide behind your keyboard—get out in the world and have wonderful experiences that will inform your writing. Make friends with other writers, read each other’s work, learn to critique graciously and encourage each other. Read great writing and learn from it. Make lists of everything that might come in useful later from random thoughts to great dialogue. And keep a list of people who’ve helped you along the way so you can include their names in your acknowledgements—I thanked 151 people in Playing by the Book.
S. Chris Shirley
I was originally inspired to write Playing by the Book after hearing a fundamentalist Southern pastor—whom I respect very much—say some very hurtful things against homosexuals from the pulpit. I wondered if there was any possible scenario that could bring this Preacher around on the topic, then thought that if he had a son that turned out to be gay, perhaps he might come around a bit. Or not. It was hard to say, but as I turned this scenario over in my mind, I realized that the more interesting story would be told from the point of view of this fictitious gay son and whether he could survive growing up in such a household.
But that was only half of my inspiration. You see, even as this preacher was saying that gay people would burn in hell, I had great empathy for him. He is a good and caring man and a pillar of his community. Of course, I knew that several of my New York friends—many of whom are atheist—would dismiss him as ignorant just as this preacher would dismiss them as plain wrong. I had lived long enough in both “worlds” to understand them and felt a bit trapped between the two. I realized that this may be a tension that other people felt and wanted to examine that as well.
So I set out to write a story that explored the original scenario of a gay preacher’s son, but decided that it had to be written in a way that straddled these two “worlds”: where red state meets blue state, fundamentalist Christian meets people of other faiths, and gay meets straight.
But that was only half of my inspiration. You see, even as this preacher was saying that gay people would burn in hell, I had great empathy for him. He is a good and caring man and a pillar of his community. Of course, I knew that several of my New York friends—many of whom are atheist—would dismiss him as ignorant just as this preacher would dismiss them as plain wrong. I had lived long enough in both “worlds” to understand them and felt a bit trapped between the two. I realized that this may be a tension that other people felt and wanted to examine that as well.
So I set out to write a story that explored the original scenario of a gay preacher’s son, but decided that it had to be written in a way that straddled these two “worlds”: where red state meets blue state, fundamentalist Christian meets people of other faiths, and gay meets straight.
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