Ask the Author: K.D. Lovgren
Answered Questions (7)
K.D. Lovgren
Listening to music, watching a film, reading great stuff. Living in the world and observing it. Travel. Being alive inspires me to write.
K.D. Lovgren
I have a novella coming out next month (March 2015) called Book of Light and Shadows. I wrote it a number of years ago and it represented a very specific time, a specific tone I was exploring. One of my all-time favorite novels is Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, and the haunting nature of that tale was a partial inspiration. Where did I get the idea? I can never point to a specific thing. These ideas don't come to me whole cloth. A scene comes to me, a conversation, an image, and I write that down. A story coalesces around that scene. The life of a professional athlete, the reasons two people marry each other, the contrast between the outer self to the inner being hidden from view: those ideas intrigued me while I wrote Book of Light and Shadows.
K.D. Lovgren
Ha. Something different than I've done before. It's about an assassin. It's quite dark and a bit twisted and so of course it's enormous fun to write. With any luck will be out by the end of the summer 2015.
K.D. Lovgren
Advice is a bit dangerous. What worked for me is finding a few books about writing that spoke to me and inspired me (this was when I was figuring out how to write a novel), like Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. She talked about how to get into a writing mode. That was very helpful. I learned to avoid conferences because I found them more discouraging than helpful. Reading the books I loved the most over and over was a kind of school in its own right. Stealing moments to write some dialogue or a scene when I was at work. Keeping the dream world alive--daydreaming about my stories, and writing them down instead of talking about them.
K.D. Lovgren
Oh, there are lots of good things. The very best...I would have to go with the sheer pleasure of delving into a story over a long period of time, getting to know the characters and and landscape, like another world that lives in my imagination and comes to life on the page.
K.D. Lovgren
I don't tend to think of less intense writing times as writer's block. Sometimes I'm in a bit of a creative hibernation that is as fruitful in the end as the most productive times. There is always something going on in the deeper layers of awareness whether it brings the story to the fingertips right then or not. The most useful tool I've found for getting my brain out of critical or editing mode and into creative mode is listening to music. The right music for whatever I'm writing. Somehow it keeps the busybody part of my mind occupied and allows the more intuitive storyteller the freedom to write. And when I need the busybody editor at hand I don't listen to music.
K.D. Lovgren
The most rewarding experience has always been the process of writing. When I'm writing the first draft of a novel and I get into that state where time loses meaning and the story fills up my senses--there's no feeling better than that. When Photographic, my first novel, came out it was a very satisfying moment, but I have to say when the writing is going well that feels better than anything. Another gratifying time was when a reader told me she read Photographic in one day. If a reader can get obsessed with one of my novels the way I enjoy being obsessed with my favorite writers' books, I feel I've done my job well.
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