My Writing Process blog tour

Thanks so much to the wonderful Sarah Yaw, who asked me to be part of the My Writing Process blog tour. Her debut novel, YOU ARE FREE TO GO, will be released by Engine Books* in September. Sarah lives in Central New York, where I lived for a decade. Over email, we discovered that we have a CNY friend in common. His name is Greg. If you're reading this, Greg, Hello!  
It's great to have an excuse to think about the writing process. I struggle with mine often, and I appreciate reading about how others go about their own work. And reflecting on process, as I so often tell my students, can be a means of understanding the work in a new way. Time to practice what I preach. 

Up next week are Andrew Scott and Barbara Shoup (see below for their bios). If you're a participant in this blog tour, I'm happy to link to your post here or in the comments. 

Away we go...

1) What are you working on? 

I'm in a waiting period on two projects: the release of my first novel, TRIP THROUGH YOUR WIRES, by Engine Books in Feb. 2015, and I've been querying agents for my YA novel, LAST SEASON. So in the interim, I've been revisiting short stories, working on revising them to put together as a collection. I've been writing very short pieces of fiction and some poetry, practicing compactness. (And, to be honest, the form appeals because I'm working within short stretches of time.) My back-burner project is a new novel; I've completed a first draft and plan to work on the second draft in the fall. I'm probably another full draft away from talking much about it. (See Question 4.)  

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre? 

It took me awhile to learn that my writing shouldn't necessarily fit into a category -- literary, commercial, mystery, or fill-in-the-blank. If it does, fine. But when I try to write toward a particular genre, then I'm not being true to the story and where it leads me. TRIP THROUGH YOUR WIRES could be thought of as literary, commercial, a mystery. But it's not truly a mystery novel -- only a mystery in that we can think that we know a person, when in fact they are a mystery to us. Often, we are a mystery to ourselves. Those are the kinds of books I like and strive to write: ones that may defy conventions, even as they pay close attention to language and character.     

3) Why do you write what you do? 

I write about what sticks in my mind and doesn't easily fade. The things I wonder about and want to know more about. Big questions or little ones that I don't have answers to -- I write toward those answers, even if I never find them. Sometimes I write because an image lurks in my consciousness and my subconsciousness needs to process it. I've always been fascinated by reading stories, and as I've gotten older, I've become fascinated about why we tell stories in the first place. It's such a common act of humanity, the kind of thing that truly binds us together. The need to understand our own experiences by describing what those experiences are like. And only we can tell others what the view is like through our particular windshield, as it were. I want to share my view. And when I read I want to look through other windshields.  

4) How does your writing process work?

Slow-fast-slow, alone-collaborate-alone. I start in semi-isolation, feeling out a story by taking notes, jotting ideas, writing lines and sketches and scenes. Then I write in big bursts and get the thing down relatively quickly. Then I revise, slowly, sometimes over the course of years. I tend not to talk about what I'm working on until I have a pretty solid draft finished. Keeping the story's energy close to me in the initial drafts has been useful, though I always want and need feedback later. But early on, letting the story sink in and grow and become whatever it's supposed to be is a necessary part of my process. I think it's possible to get too much input too soon, and instead of listening to the story, you're listening to feedback that could potentially derail it. I'm talking early-early. Once I'm a couple drafts in, I find it almost impossible to revise without feedback from trusted readers. Other people can see your work objectively, whereas you cannot. I say you, but I mean I. And you. We two.  

Coming up next week, these wonderful Indianapolis-based writers:  

Andrew Scott is the author of Naked Summer, a story collection, and the editor of 24 Bar Blues: Two Dozen Tales of Bars, Booze, and the Blues. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, Ninth Letter, The Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, The Writer’s Chronicle, and other outlets. He is an editor at Engine Books and Lacewing Books.

Barbara Shoup is the author seven novels, including four for young adults, and the co-author of Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process and Story Matters. She is the Executive Director of the Indiana Writers Center. A new YA novel, Looking for Jack Kerouac, is forthcoming from Lacewing Books in August, 2014.

*Engine Books seeks support for its Big Dream. Love literature? Want to see more great books in the world? Check it out and consider donating.  

This is it

The apocalypse, that is. In several steps:

The sky tonight was not quite a tornado sky but a butter yellow plus haze (butter smoldering in a pan, smoking but not burnt), along with pink and purple and navy blue. You are supposed to take pictures of these things to post and later to send to local news outlets who need footage, especially if it IS a tornado or pre-tornado and not just murky butter-sky. Instead I stood on the sidewalk and turned 360 degrees to take in the whole sky and wondered if the man driving by in the Jeep with tinted windows was someone I knew, wondering why I was spinning in a circle.

Today I was compelled to get a password reminder so I could log on to MYSPACE, which is a post-apocalyptic scene replete with desert and industrial smog. Some of you were there, un(re)touched since 2007, filterless, showing your eternal love of Death Cab for Cutie. I'm right there with you. I remembered when my profile photo was taken: we'd gone to the Purdue campus for a day trip to take our minds off of fertility treatments. We drank root beer floats at Triple XXX and walked through air so humid you could practically see the water droplets. We were about a week away from finding out those treatments didn't work, that I wasn't pregnant. The day the photo was taken was the same day Michael Jackson died. (Context clue to signal late June 2009, specific date I cannot recall and do not feel like researching, because that was not my particular apocalypse.) I still have the purple tank top I wore in the picture, but not the brown one layered underneath. I ought to delete the profile but it stands like a monument, and history exists whether we delete it or not.

Now we have two kids, almost 4 and almost 2. The things you think will sink you wind up not, sometimes. Now it is the day-to-day. The stress and hustle. The full moon behavior when there isn't a full moon at all. I could tell you stories, but I hesitate: these are their stories, not mine. My desire to protect is stronger than my desire to disclose. I will say that the oldest has taken to doing a very funny routine in which he imitates my husband and me telling a story in which we imitate the baby's speech and actions. We told this story several times recently to several people, and Big Brother is Watching. Hears all, sees all. Takeaway from the comedy routine: my husband and I say "like" a lot. Like, a lot. Now we can tell a story about our son imitating us imitating his brother. And then he can tell the story. Let the circle be unbroken. 

Minor apocalypse: a contractor's coming by tomorrow during a specific window. I've received a reminder message EVERY DAY for a week about this appointment, this window. Tonight the phone rang. I joked that it was the company, thinking, No. It is not really the company, not again. But yes. One last appointment reminder. Unless I get another one tomorrow morning. Unless the world ends before then, on account of the burning butter sky.

This is it: