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.