An interview on writing

From Sell Writing Online: Author Interviews, these questions were originally asked of author Jane Wenham-Jones. In the spirit of the self-interview as introduced to blogging by Shawn Lea, here are my answers.

1. Writers are encouraged to write daily and find their voice. Do you feel you have more than one voice in your writing?

Yes. The voices I’m most comfortable writing are the ones least identifiable as my real-life voice. I also love, love, love writing characters who poke fun at my own sacred cows. I suppose it’s a form of not taking myself too seriously.

2. When did your passion for writing begin?

I wrote my first novel when I was eleven. I think the title was Whispers By Candlelight, and trust me, it’s not easy to admit that. I began by imitating whatever I was reading, but unlike the originals, my fiction was terrible. I grew as a writer first as an essayist. And I loved writing persuasive papers, because I was good at covering all angles of an argument and taking the power out of the opposing view.

Within my family, I was always treated like a writer, even when I didn’t write. One bit of advice I give: If you can’t say it, you can’t be it. So none of that, “I want to write…” or “I would write if…” or “It’s a hobby, but nothing will ever come of it…” You must think of yourself as a writer and say, “I am a writer.” And when people say, “Yeah, but what’s your real job?” then you answer, “My real job is writing. Anything else just pays the bills and keeps my parent/roommate/significant other/landlord/phone company off my back.”

3. What inspired you to keep writing while collecting rejection letters or struggling with writer’s block?

In a rash and stupid moment of anger, I once destroyed a manuscript, and that resulted in an eight-year silence. I overcame it by rewriting the novel and repeatedly submitting it. That’s a giant leap, to risk rejection. I can’t say that it gets any easier to submit and be rejected, but the more you do it, the more likely you are to keep trying. The fear of how it will feel to put your work out there and get turned down is worse than the actual experience. The best advice I ever followed was to be persistent, and it came from two published authors who said it directly to me. That had more power than reading it somewhere.

4. How do you come up with ideas for your writings and why do you feel you choose some over others?

When I’m writing collaboratively, we brainstorm ideas together. We see what gets us excited when we talk about it.

Often, I read something that I don’t recognize as significant at the time, but it stays with me. For example, I once read a magazine article about a group of people who worked together at a mall, and they ended up all living and socializing together. The mall was their village. Maybe a year or two later, when we were planning the fourth Timothy James Beck book and kicking around ideas, I brought that up and we just starting teeming with ways to use it. (SOMEONE LIKE YOU comes out in April.)

Anything that makes me laugh feeds my writing, because I think it’ll make someone else laugh, too. Most things that make me cry, I give willingly to my writing partners. If I’m that emotional about it, I’ll do a lousy job of writing it. Which is not to say that painful moments in my life haven’t found their way into my fiction. They have, but only long after the fact.

Almost nothing I write is autobiographical, though. I borrow conversations or moments from my life, but when I use them, they are vastly changed or happen to characters or in situations that are nothing like their origins. I don’t write from the news. The news is too depressing. In fact, I’ve come to understand that reading and watching the news is crippling to me when I’m writing. I eavesdrop and people-watch, and a single overheard sentence or a person I’ve seen can fire my imagination and turn into twenty pages of writing.

5. Are you a daily disciplined writer? Do you find it difficult to stick to your schedule? Do you have certain tricks you use so that you don’t stray from your writing?

I have periods of enormous self-discipline, then there are times that I can’t bear to write and will do anything to avoid it. Three things will get me back to the computer. (I always write on the computer. I can barely write a grocery list by hand anymore.) Going where there is natural beauty. Listening to any song that has a yearning quality (R.E.M. is my friend). Or looking at a favorite painting. I am also deadline driven, so it helps to have a publisher-mandated deadline or a cowriter who is depending on me. I have never missed a deadline and only rarely have held up the collaborative process. To me, that’s just sloppy, unprofessional, and wrong.*

*Note added to this: Sometimes, real-life events will interfere with your writing, and you may not make a deadline. This is understandable, and I would hope a publisher would automatically offer to extend or change a deadline in those circumstances. I know writers this has happened to, and that is not what I mean by being unprofessional.

6. How much time do you devote to marketing your book/s and what kind of marketing do you recommend?

Not enough. I’m not aggressive enough. If I’m asked, I will talk about my books until I’m ordered to shut up, but I’m awful at initiating that conversation. I beg my friends or anyone who’s complimented the novels to mention them to or buy them as gifts for people who may enjoy them.

I don’t have the resources to do book tours or pay for advertising, so I depend on word of mouth. I enjoy booksignings, but they are rarely well-attended and conventional wisdom has it that they are not a cost-effective means of promotion.

I participate in readers’ groups. I happily promote other writers whose work I enjoy and have no shyness about asking other writers to read and recommend my work. I love meeting booksellers who are author-friendly, so I always introduce myself in bookstores and offer to sign their stock. I send review copies and reader copies to people. I’ve been interviewed in print and on the radio. I try to stay in touch with loyal readers or find new ones by my online journal and message boards. I believe in author web sites.

I always answer reader mail and suggest other titles (not only my own, but similar titles). I always keep copies of the novels in my car, because I never know when the opportunity will arise to pass one to someone who can promote it (or sometimes, just enjoy it but can’t afford it). I also believe in professional business cards and mail-outs announcing a new release (either a newsletter or a postcard). I design a bookmark for every new book and leave those and business cards on community bulletin boards or in appropriate business establishments.

7. How do you prepare for a writing idea for fiction? Do you outline the characters, setting, plot, etc. before you begin to write?

There’s the initial spark and the pages that come from it. They may not be the first chapter, but they will be in the novel somewhere. I outline only because I have to when I’m pitching a novel to an editor. The finished book sometimes bears only a passing resemblance to that outline. I do know my characters before I begin writing, but often even they begin to change. Some characters that I think are important turn out not to be, and others that were supposed to be minor turn into someone significant. It’s an organic process. I always know the ending before I begin, even if I don’t know how I’ll get there.

However, keep in mind that most of my published writing has been collaborative. I have writing partners who can and do go in an entirely different direction than I’d intended. And I like that. Or, even when I don’t like it, I like the challenge of writing against my original concept.

I was weak at setting for a long time, and now it’s one of the things I most enjoy. I like creating a place. We did that only minimally in the first three TJB books, but SOMEONE LIKE YOU has an entirely fictitious setting. That was so much fun that Tim and I did it again for a casino in Cochrane Lambert’s THREE FORTUNES IN ONE COOKIE. In my novel that will be out at the end of 2006, I created an entire town. I like not being limited to a real place. When you use real places, you either need to know them or you need to put significant time into researching them.

8. How many rewrites do you usually write before submitting to a publisher?

I constantly reread, rewrite, edit. Some pages stay almost the same, but I don’t send a “draft” to an editor. When I send it, it’s what I genuinely feel is a finished work, and it has been edited hundreds of times by then. Very little of what we’ve released has undergone much editing from our publishers. If you’re bad at self-editing or copy editing, find someone to do it before you submit it. I don’t believe in sending anything that’s sloppy, and I never think, “Oh, this isn’t working, the editor will fix it.” I am totally open to revising/adding/deleting something, but I think that’s part of my job first, before the editor sees it.

However, I won’t change content that I don’t think should be changed. The two editors I’ve worked with have both had the same attitude about that: I want you to be happy with it so I won’t force you to do it my way. My experiences with editors have been really positive.

9. Have you had any bad experiences in working with a publisher/agent or failed publication/payment of writings done? If so, how did you handle it?

That goes back to what I said above. I’ve worked with one agent and two editors who’ve been encouraging, positive, and honest. Even having work rejected hasn’t been too painful because they are respectful and professional. One of our publishers has undergone a major transition, and I haven’t worked with the new editor there. I have communicated with him, and once again, it’s been positive. I think I’m very fortunate in that regard. I’ve always received my advances and royalties as scheduled, and again, I know that’s sometimes not the case.

10. Who are your favorite authors, and why do they inspire you?

I never know how to answer this question, because I will inevitably fail to mention someone who has inspired me. I have great affection for writers who populate a created world and use it in a series of novels. I love storytellers whose work is character-driven. And most writers, even of serious works, have me at the first laugh.