Ask the Author: Frances Koziar
Answered Questions (2)
Frances Koziar
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any fictional book world I'd actually want to live in, mostly because of how few rights most of them would give me. Being female alone sucks in most of them, much less factoring in the other kinds of privilege I lack. I might have to say the worlds I've created, just because I'd have more rights there than most, though if I could actually go live in some book universe, I'd probably write a book that was perfect for human rights so that I could choose that one -- a world where women are never sexually assaulted, where gender is largely meaningless, where disabilities are accommodated for, where there's no patriarchy, where no one is homeless, where most people have embraced being pan and polyamorous, where Western culture doesn't dominate...
And what I'd do? Explore of course! Live my life with hopefully less discrimination than this world, create a home, discover new things, feel wonder, all the things that make us choose to keep living.
And what I'd do? Explore of course! Live my life with hopefully less discrimination than this world, create a home, discover new things, feel wonder, all the things that make us choose to keep living.
Frances Koziar
1) Persist. It often takes ten years to really start getting stuff published, and rejections will become an unremarkable daily occurrence.
2) Write regularly. I like to have a goal of a certain number of hours per week, and never miss more than a day. If you don't have time, then spend just a little bit of time rather than putting it off indefinitely. In the style of Shawshank Redemption, if you do a little bit (5min?) every day it might take more than a decade to complete a novel, but that's a lot faster than never.
3) Try to be honest with yourself about your work (while being self-loving). Sometimes you get rejections on a story because you sent it to the wrong person, and sometimes you get rejected because your piece wasn't great and you need to either edit it or scrap it. Knowing when to commit to a piece because you know it's amazing and knowing when to give up on a story are both really important.
4) Don't do it if you don't love the writing itself. I believe being a writer is something you are, whether or not you are officially successful or published: it should not be something you aspire to be because of some romanticized notion of what "writer" means.
2) Write regularly. I like to have a goal of a certain number of hours per week, and never miss more than a day. If you don't have time, then spend just a little bit of time rather than putting it off indefinitely. In the style of Shawshank Redemption, if you do a little bit (5min?) every day it might take more than a decade to complete a novel, but that's a lot faster than never.
3) Try to be honest with yourself about your work (while being self-loving). Sometimes you get rejections on a story because you sent it to the wrong person, and sometimes you get rejected because your piece wasn't great and you need to either edit it or scrap it. Knowing when to commit to a piece because you know it's amazing and knowing when to give up on a story are both really important.
4) Don't do it if you don't love the writing itself. I believe being a writer is something you are, whether or not you are officially successful or published: it should not be something you aspire to be because of some romanticized notion of what "writer" means.
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