Ask the Author: Kristin Caraway
Answered Questions (6)
Kristin Caraway
You create your own world with your own characters. It's a place more than a craft where you can escape the world and its demands and pressures for an hour or two or three. It's a playground to me where you sit in a sandbox of words that are just waiting for you to manipulate and place in such a way that might touch the heart of someone else faraway that I may never meet. I love that connection. Writing transcends time, place, age...it takes us all on a journey together where we can experience some cathartic release and remember that while we have differences, there are so many more things that make us alike and draw us together in a similar struggle, pursuit, and triumph.
Kristin Caraway
Honestly, I do not suffer from writer's block because I have set times to write every day and I do not allow myself any excuses. I believe that if you lift mental pressure to be perfect, you tell yourself, "I am just going to write. I may not use a thing I create today. I may edit it all away. That's okay. Play with the words and the story, and see what comes." Discipline defeats writer's block. At least it does for me!
Kristin Caraway
Write. Everyday. Be very disciplined at it. Set aside the time, set a work count goal and do it. You may end up throwing it away later or changing it completely but write. It is the only way to get better and the cure to writer's block!
Kristin Caraway
I am currently working on a novel entitled Palooka. It is set in Chicago, 1926, and my main characters are a speakeasy manager and assassin for the Irish mob on the Northside and his mysterious singer. It is a love story of sorts.
Kristin Caraway
Honestly, it varies. Inspiration comes from many places. Stories my grandparents shared, visits to a museum, reading, poetry and documentaries. Sometimes even a song or music will inspire me.
Kristin Caraway
As a historical fiction author, my ideas come from time periods in history that I study and with which I become somewhat obsessed. When the Bird Sings came to me first back in 1998 when my husband and I visited an old monastery that had been converted into a wine store and underground tasting room in Beaune. The guide there was extremely nice and informative. He told us that the Resistance used to hide guns and Jewish families on their way to Switzerland to escape in the cellar where we tasted wine. You could just feel the history in that place. I became curious and began my research.
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