Massive writerly meta self-thought chain blog post. Sure, why not?

Actually I’ve been meaning to start blogging about my writing process, and this seemed like a great opportunity to start. I was tagged by JS Kuiken, so go check out his post.

Oh, and I write literary/realist fiction, and dabble a bit in creative nonfiction and poetry.

What am I working on?

I just finished a major stylistic revision of a novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies, a story about a Sri Lankan American lesbian in a marriage of convenience. Well, mostly finished. I wrote a new ending, and am waiting to hear back from beta readers before revising it.

I’m also starting to think about the next novel project. I’ve been drafting, but so far I only have a vague idea of what it might be. What I know so far:

There are two chronological story lines, plus interconnected short pieces that tie into the overall arc.It involves heavy, gritty subjects like train accidents, 9/11, hate crimes, police reports, etc.Oh, and the main character dies. Twice.

I’m also starting to brainstorm about a series of blog posts about other parts of the writing process, and my personal journey writing my first novel. Follow my tumblr if you’re interested.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I’m super interested in intersectionality in my characters. In other words, how do our various and complex identities combine and contradict with each other to affect our individual human experience? How do our group allegiances and memberships affect our lives? What do our individual and group struggles reveal about the human condition?

I don’t give a shit about suburban ennui, but I do want to write into knowledge about race, class, and gender.

Why do I write what I do?

I believe in the power of stories to change the world, and I use fiction to try and tell some truths about our lives and struggles. In particular, I focus on voices not often heard in literary and realist fiction, voices often challenged and silenced in commercial publishing: the non-white, the non-male, the non-Christian, the queer, the immigrant. There’s power in these voices, there’s power in my characters, and there’s power in daring to write about them.

How does my writing process work?

I’m not what you’d call settled. In the past 5 years, I’ve been both single and not single, I’ve been in grad school, had a full time job, been unemployed, and had a job where I traveled 60-70 hrs a week. Routine isn’t exactly something I’ve enjoyed, so I’ve had to be very flexible with my writing schedule.

I write in spurts. I have periods (usually two to three months long) where I’m writing consistently, on a schedule with self-imposed deadlines, producing anywhere from 500-2000 words/day, 5 days/wk. Then I usually relax for a month, give myself time off the writing schedule and just write when the mood strikes me. No word quota, no deadline. Sometimes I write about my writing, thinking about future revisions, or structure/plot/characters/place/etc. Sometimes I do freewriting. Sometimes I don’t write at all, and use that time to travel for fun, hang out with friends, talk with beta readers, and binge-watch shows on Netflix. To me the downtime is as important as the crunchtime.

As far as the process of a specific piece of writing, it varies. For shorter pieces, I spend a lot of time drafting, and do a handful of revision drafts. For novel-length stuff, I draft fast and messy, and spend a lot of time revising. (For my novel, I spent a year writing the first draft, then three years revising it.) On each revision draft, I chose something to focus on: point of view, characters, structure, scenes, place, description, voice (roughly in that order). I will be writing more about my novel writing process on this blog and on my tumblr.

The Writers I’m Tagging

Jory Mickelson is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in Superstition Review, The Collagist, The Los Angeles Review, The Adirondack Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, and other journals. He was a 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry and is the 2014 Guest Poetry Editor for CODEX Journal.

Sassafras Lowrey is the editor of the two time American Library Association honored & Lambda Literary Finalist Kicked Out anthology , and Leather Ever After. Hir debut novel Roving Pack was honored by the American Library Association. Sassafras is the 2013 winner of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Berzon Emerging Writer Award. Ze lives and writes in Brooklyn with hir partner, two dogs of dramatically different sizes, two bossy cats, and a kitten.