How I write
An old friend, Geoffrey Goodwin, once asked me about my writing process duing an interview for Bookslut.
I gave him an answer appropriate to the time (and novels in general) concerning long hot baths but the truth is I tend to write short fiction three decidedly different ways, should anyone actually care.
The first, my preferred way, is to have the story come to me almost whole, allow the first draft to mostly write itself. This usually happens very early in the morning, during the dark wee hours, but not exclusively. It is, I suppose, as close as I will ever come to giving birth. In the case of novels, I imagine the characters intact from the get-go, allow them to do what they do, until the story tells itself.
The second, is to have a singular first line pop into my head, then allow the story to flow from that. The first line may be later amended, or even deleted altogether, but it serves to spur the whole.
The third, and my least favorite, is to allow an idea to gel (often during a long hot bath,) usually over time, and to construct the tale word by word, sentence by sentence, character by character, scene by scene, idea by idea. I tend to abandon many of these before completion, but occasionally some of my best work has come through this laborious process. I’m told this is the usual way it’s done. How fucking left-brained tedious. Long way around the block.
In all cases, everything is rewritten many times, edited, polished, sometimes over the course of years, or even decades. In truth, I almost always do a quick rewrite to short fictions just prior to submitting them. One short story began as something like 1300 words, and grew to 2400 by the time it was accepted and published. Typical.
My inspirations often come from dreams, sometimes a single dream, sometimes multiple dreams, sometimes merely dream fragments. I once wrote an entire novel by utilizing elements from recent dreams over the course of several months. It was amazingly coherent. Still looking for a home for it. Another time, I actually composed half a short story in a dream, woke myself to transcribe and complete it. That one’s been published in an anthology. Even got several kind reviews. I use elements from my own life-experience whenever possible, usually skewing the details from the reality/memory to fit the tale I’m telling. There’s always been something surreal about my life, like it’s all been an unusually dense dream, so these real elements tend to be dream-like as well.
Writing is kind of like fishing, if one can go by the bumper sticker adage. A bad day writing (or fishing) is better than a good day at the office. (Still, good days at the office tend to be radically underrated.)
Cheers.
I gave him an answer appropriate to the time (and novels in general) concerning long hot baths but the truth is I tend to write short fiction three decidedly different ways, should anyone actually care.
The first, my preferred way, is to have the story come to me almost whole, allow the first draft to mostly write itself. This usually happens very early in the morning, during the dark wee hours, but not exclusively. It is, I suppose, as close as I will ever come to giving birth. In the case of novels, I imagine the characters intact from the get-go, allow them to do what they do, until the story tells itself.
The second, is to have a singular first line pop into my head, then allow the story to flow from that. The first line may be later amended, or even deleted altogether, but it serves to spur the whole.
The third, and my least favorite, is to allow an idea to gel (often during a long hot bath,) usually over time, and to construct the tale word by word, sentence by sentence, character by character, scene by scene, idea by idea. I tend to abandon many of these before completion, but occasionally some of my best work has come through this laborious process. I’m told this is the usual way it’s done. How fucking left-brained tedious. Long way around the block.
In all cases, everything is rewritten many times, edited, polished, sometimes over the course of years, or even decades. In truth, I almost always do a quick rewrite to short fictions just prior to submitting them. One short story began as something like 1300 words, and grew to 2400 by the time it was accepted and published. Typical.
My inspirations often come from dreams, sometimes a single dream, sometimes multiple dreams, sometimes merely dream fragments. I once wrote an entire novel by utilizing elements from recent dreams over the course of several months. It was amazingly coherent. Still looking for a home for it. Another time, I actually composed half a short story in a dream, woke myself to transcribe and complete it. That one’s been published in an anthology. Even got several kind reviews. I use elements from my own life-experience whenever possible, usually skewing the details from the reality/memory to fit the tale I’m telling. There’s always been something surreal about my life, like it’s all been an unusually dense dream, so these real elements tend to be dream-like as well.
Writing is kind of like fishing, if one can go by the bumper sticker adage. A bad day writing (or fishing) is better than a good day at the office. (Still, good days at the office tend to be radically underrated.)
Cheers.
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