September 3, 2021

Salutations Readers!

I cannot believe it has already been a year since I started this little website and blog. A large part of the success of my website and blog is due to my friends, family, and readers that have subscribed and engaged and encouraged me along the way.

As both a celebration and a thank you, I decided to do a special one-year anniversary blog post Q&A, inviting anyone and everyone to send me their questions. I received many questions, and I have selected the top ones to answer here.

Happy Reading!

You read a lot of books each year. How do you find the time to read so many books, and do you having any special techniques to get through a book quickly without losing out on the story itself?

I was an English major in college, so I learned very quickly how to read many books in under a week. I would read on the train ride to campus, on my lunch breaks at work (while I worked. Shh! Don’t tell!), in between classes—whenever I had a spare moment. These skills stayed with me, and now I dedicate time in my day to reading. Usually, this is at night, an hour or so before I go to bed when there are no other obligations that could interrupt my time. Most of the books I read are for pleasure, so I am excited and engaged, two things that always lend to faster reading. I can’t say I do any sort of technique to read quickly (I don’t speed read, for example), but I do make sure to always have several books on hand to read. I participate in two book clubs, have my own TBR I am constantly plugging away at, and I definitely enjoy re-reading from my collection. So, at any given time, I have four-ish books on standby, ensuring that I always have something I am in the mood to read. Otherwise, if you want to read more, I suggest just starting with what you know you’ll enjoy and protecting a time slot carved out for the activity. Then just let the habit form.

After the excitement of starting a story has worn off, how do you keep yourself motivated to finish it, revise it, edit it, and publish it?

Several people asked this question, and I have one clear answer for you: Sheer willpower.

In actuality, this is where the professional side of being a writer comes in. It’s not all light bulb moments and creative highs. That happens, but most of the time, writing stories means getting deep into the technical nitty gritty. When that happens, I need to decide on one of two things: am I writing this story just for me, or do I want others to read it? If the answer is just for me, then I really only work on it when that excitement is there. It becomes a treat for myself. If at some point it becomes something I want to see published, great, but that’s not necessarily my goal.

If the answer from the get-go is I want others to read it, then, honestly, deadlines play a huge role in how I get myself motivated to finish. Sometimes I have months to turn the story into something worth publishing, and then I allow myself breaks in between editing stages. But sometimes I only have a week, or a few days, and then I buckle down and work on it whether I feel like it or not. Writers don’t sit around waiting for the muse to tell us what to do. We sometimes have to pull stories from our brain like teeth from a screaming child at the dentist. It ain’t always pretty and it ain’t always fun, but the end result is really no different from the stories that come like singing cherubs on rainbows, and most of the time teeth pulling is what gets the job done.

And I do this because I love the process of writing, and I want a professional career in it. I want to be published and win awards. For me, that’s a huge motivator.

Who has encouraged you to stick with writing (besides your friends and family)?

I have been extraordinarily lucky in that I have a whole host of people in my life who have encouraged me (and still do encourage me) to stick with writing. I think it probably all started in elementary school with my fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Ellner. She was a great help to me when I was starting to take myself seriously (as serious as an 11-year-old can). She also recently invited me to speak to her class about writing, which went a long way in validating my work, and to this day she has a pass I fully intend to honor allowing her to skip the line at my book signing. Her unwavering belief in my success has greatly helped me work toward making that success a reality.

Then in high school, pretty much all of my teachers were very supportive of my writing, including Mr. Noel Cilker who is now a very good friend of mine and an author himself. In college and after, I had Professors Eastwood, Taylor, and Moriarty who all helped me on my journey and gave me great feedback. And then there are my friends, both in person and online (shout-out to the Twitter #WritingCommunity!), who are always in my corner having my back. Special thanks to Corrine who has edited…I think all of my published works to date. She’s fantastic. And Lisa who spent way too much time in Panera writing with me.

A writing community is necessary for success in a writing career, and I am always on the lookout for new friends and fellow writers and readers. That community support is priceless, and I am so thankful that I have it in my life.

When did you first want to be a writer?

Another popular question! I am a very lucky individual in that I never had a crisis of career choice. Ever since I first realized those squiggles on pages were trying to tell me something, I knew I wanted to created my own squiggles to tell other people things.

The concrete moment where I decided that I wanted to tell stories happened when I read The Hobbit in elementary school. I come from a family of readers, and my father in particular is a huge Tolkien fan (I grew up with swords on the walls of my home). When I read The Hobbit and followed Bilbo on his journey—that was it. I received so much joy from reading that book that I knew I wanted to write books of my own.

And so I did. And they were terrible because I was eight, but I loved every second of those stories’ creations, so I kept writing more and more stories, until finally, I wrote a novel.

When I was a kid, the novel was some distant dream I thought I couldn’t catch until I was ‘grown up.’ I’ll write one when I’m old, I thought. But then I read Anna Dale’s Whispering to Witches and suddenly I knew I didn’t have to wait for the magic of adulthood to write a novel. Don’t ask me what it was about that book that triggered my determination; I don’t know, other than I enjoyed the read and took a lot of inspiration from it for my own novel.

I was fifteen when I finished my novel. And it was terrible because I was fifteen. But the floodgates were opened. I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew I could do it.

The rest is history.

Where do you get your ideas?

I get this question all the time. Like, All. The. Time. I think writers of speculative fiction get this more than other writers because our inspiration isn’t as immediately obvious as nonfiction or even literary fiction.

Depending on who is asking, I might throw out something profound that has to do with deriving inspiration from the mysteries of the natural world or whatever, but the true answer is…I don’t know.

I used to tell people I knew my writing passion was a gift from God because why else would a girl born in California at the height of the tech boom go into the Arts & Humanities, but really the more obvious reason is because I don’t really know where, when, how, or why I get story ideas.

This isn’t to say there isn’t work involved. I believe creative writing can be taught, and I was taught how to use creativity as a skill for stories. Over the years I have trained myself to be able to create ideas. I’ve learned to take my own questions about other stories and answer them within my stories. I’ve learned to shape my feelings about reality into something fictional. And I’ve learned how to work with writing prompts and rules to build a narrative.

But there are times where I’m not exercising my creativity. Maybe I’m just sitting on my couch at home eating a baked potato, and next thing I know I have 90,000 words written about two men journeying home from war! (True story.)

Coming up with ideas is more about being willing to explore your own thoughts than it is about having special thoughts. So, next time you’re eating a baked potato, take some time to analyze that tuber and see what happens.

Do you ever get discouraged?

Every day. Multiple times a day. And I used to get discouraged that I was discouraged. I used to believe that, in order to succeed, I had to be the manifestation of positivity. Writing is a subjective field absolutely brimming with rejection. Nine times out of ten, the rejection isn’t personal. It’s a numbers game or your story was fantastic but not on theme or you just happened to get a slush pile reader that wasn’t a huge fan of your specific style. Nothing personal, no reason to be upset, right? Well, I hate to break it to new writers out there, but it’s going to hurt, you will be upset, and the discouragement is going to hit you hard all throughout your career, not just at the beginning. But, that’s okay. Once I gave myself permission to feel upset, I found the discouragement wasn’t long-lasting and it didn’t hinder my work anymore. This year, I am in the longest acceptance drought since before 2018. It sucks! And yeah, I wallow in my own pity party about it sometimes. But I have also written more stories this year than any other year previously. Instead of stressing that my writing life wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, I accepted it, felt the feelings about it, and then got to work, ready to enjoy the periods that are sunshine and rainbows, whenever they decide to come. But they can’t come if I don’t acknowledge and get over my discouragement and keep writing.

Thank you so much for submitting your questions! I had a blast reading and answering them. If there is a question you have still, please reach out. You can subscribe to my blog here to read my essays and get updates on my work. I am also on Goodreads and Twitter, if you’d like to follow me there.

Thank you again for your support over this year. I am looking forward to many more years to come.