Written Author Interview
Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do outside of writing. What is a day in the life like for you?
For better or worse, there’s no such thing as a typical day for me! That has been particularly over the past 19 months. Through that time, I have been on a full-time, open-ended road journey — a combination spiritual odyssey, writing trip and book tour. It’s a journey I have undertaken much the same way I write my books and screenplays, moment-to-moment and day-by-day. And because I have been traveling, no two days are ever alike!
What inspired your first novel? What was the thing that got you into writing in the first place?
I like to joke that my Muse tricked me into becoming a writer. Looking back, it certainly seems that way. Consider these sly musely machinations…
My first typewriter, a gift from my mother during my freshman year of high school, wasn’t one of the popular brands, like a Royal, an Underwood or a Smith-Corona. It was a little-known Hermes. Hermes, of course, was the Greek god of communication…and, thus, writers.
A few years later, I was asked by one of the most popular, charismatic students in my high school to take charge of publicity for the musical he was directing. Even though it meant I would have to write and make that writing public, I said yes…mostly because I wanted to be his friend.
From high school musical press releases, I graduated into college musical press releases, gaining enough renown in local theater circles that I found myself freelancing as a theater publicist. Suddenly, I was being paid to write!
From college, I went to work at a dynamic PR startup. It was still mostly press releases, but I was writing. Unfortunately, the startup wasn’t dynamic enough. Less than a year later, I was laid off.
It was my next PR job that accelerated my transformation into a full-time writer. Not only did I prepare press releases, I wrote news and feature articles, something I had never done before. And thanks to the media contacts I gained on the job, I began freelancing on the side, thrilled to see my byline in major metropolitan dailies and national magazines. After a few years of that, I converted my side gig into a full-time one. To my astonishment, I was supporting myself as a self-taught writer and editor.
My writer’s story could have ended there, but it didn’t…nor did my Muse’s behind-the-scenes plotting.
You see, I still refused to see myself as creative. A skilled artisan with words, perhaps. But certainly not creative.
That changed one Monday morning during a simple water-cooler conversation. I was working as an in-house freelance magazine editor in Toronto when one of the staffers corralled me.
“I’ve just taken this amazing creative writing workshop,” she gushed. “You’ve got to take it.”
In a moment as out-of-character as the one when I agreed to run publicity for my high school Hello, Dolly!, I said yes.
Nothing was ever the same for me after that workshop.
Thanks to the instructor — to both her workshops and her mentoring — I discovered that I was creative. I started to go deeper with my writing, to write from my heart instead from my head. And soon I was teaching my own writing workshops.
It was during one of those workshops that my first book was born: The MoonQuest. Little did I know then that I was birthing the first book of a fantasy series!
How do you come up with characters? Are they spontaneous or meticulously planned?
Nothing about my books, including the characters in my fiction, is meticulously planned! I never plan, plot or outline…anything. I simply start — sometimes with the germ of an idea, often without; sometimes with a title, sometimes without — and let the story and its characters carry me forward on the same journey of discovery my readers will be on once the books if finished and out in the world.
At the same time, I don’t call myself a “pantser,” because I don’t see it as writing “by the seat of my pants.” Rather, I liken my creative process to a car ride, but with the story and its characters (when it’s fiction) sitting in the driver’s seat. I’m in the passenger seat, simply taking in the scenery and experiences that unfold before me and around me.
What are some of your favorite genres to read? Are there any books you’d recommend to first time readers or people looking for something new?
Because I write fantasy, I rarely read it anymore. I don’t want to be influenced by other writers’ worlds. These days, I mostly read literary fiction and mysteries. In the end, what I’m always looking for is a compelling story populated by three-dimensional characters. That’s what I like to write, and that’s what I prefer to read.
What’s the most difficult thing about being a writer?
Probably that it’s generally such a solitary pursuit. I live alone, so being a writer can tend to be very hermit-like, except when I’m out in the world promoting my books. That’s one of the reasons I like to write in cafes. I like the buzz of humanity around me!
What is your process to completing a novel from outline to final product?
As I mentioned earlier, there is no outline. There is never an outline! Even back in high school when I was required to turn in an outline with my essays, I would write the essay first, then craft an outline to match.
My process is a simple one: I get in the metaphorical car I described a few answers back and let the story reveal itself to me. I write using the free flow technique I pioneered in my first book for writers, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write — and that I now teach in all my classes and books on writing. I call it “writing on the Muse Stream,” and it’s designed to not only bypass any potential blocks but to carry you beyond the limits of your conscious mind into the infinite realms of you unconscious imagination. Because that’s where all the good stuff is…where the most creative expressions live.
So that first draft is a journey of discover: of the story, of the characters, of their relationships, of the stakes. Early one, when I had a harder time trusting the process, those first drafts were chaotic word stews that needed a lot of editing through many subsequent drafts. Seven novels and more than 20 books later, I’m a lot more trusting of the process, and my first drafts and considerably cleaner. Still, they go through several drafts (the number varies from book to book) using the intuitive editing techniques I teach in my book The Heartful Art of Revision: An Intuitive Guide to Editing.
What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve written in your novel? Don’t worry, we don’t judge here.
I’m not sure how you define unhinged, but certainly the most challenging thing I’ve ever written were the scenes of violence and torture in The MoonQuest and its The Legend of Q’ntana sequel, The StarQuest.
They were so horrific that I kept trying to delete them from later drafts. Later, though, I came to realize how integral they were to those stories and, with some embarrassed reluctance, kept them in.
What’s one thing about being a writer that absolutely drives you up the wall?
Marketing! It’s not that I mind promoting my books. After all, I have a PR background. What drives me up the wall is when I put a lot of effort into marketing a title and that effort doesn’t appear to have a whole lot of impact.
What does being a successful writer look like for you? What type of life do you want to live as a writer?
I suppose the standard answer would be “a gazillion books sold and a long run on The New York Times Bestseller List.” And I sure wouldn’t turn either of those down! For me, though, true success an an author means that I’m writing the stories I feel deeply called to write, the stories that emerge from somewhere deep in my soul, and that those stories not only entertain their readers but touch them in profound and transformational ways. When that happens, and I’m gratified to say that readers tell me that it does, I know I have succeeded as an author and storyteller.
Describe your writing journey. If you had to write a story centered around it, do you think you could pull it off?
In a sense, The MoonQuest is a metaphor for my writing journey. On the surface, the book about a tyrannical regime where imagination has been devalued to the extent that storytelling has been banned and storytellers put to death….not that I wrote it with any political agenda. It was simply the story came to me on that “car ride” I keep talking about.
At a deeper, more personal level — and this is something I didn’t, couldn’t, see as I was writing it — it’s a story about my own creative blocks, about the resulting death of storytelling in my own life and about the journey that dissolved those blocks and freed me to be the storyteller I now know I was born to be.
Could I write that story and pull it off? I guess I already did!
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