“I first met author, editor, and blogger Kris Spisak at the 2015 James River Writers Annual Conference in downtown Richmond, Virginia, when I attended her Friday Master Class, “Nuts and Bolts: Editing your Work like a Pro.” She was an energetic, dynamic, and knowledgeable presenter, and I found the information she conveyed so helpful that the following day, instead of eating alone, I overcame the introverted tendency so stereotypical of writers and attended her Lunch and Learn, ‘Ask an Editor,’ an informal, conversational lunch meeting during which writers could ask Ms. Spisak questions about the writing, revising, and publishing process (or sundry other topics)…”
You may have noticed that my Wednesday Writing Tips have focused on creative writing for the past few weeks. I’ve been so excited about the upcoming James River Writers Conference that I just couldn’t resist. Yes, we all need to know the differences between less and fewer, who and whom, and historic and historical; indeed, it’s important to know we’re spelling y’all, yeah/yay, and through/threw correctly; however, if our storytelling isn’t working, the entire piece suffers.
And for the storytellers among us, I have a special treat this week. The fabulous Kimiko Nakamura, literary agent at Dee Mura Literary, agreed to do an interview with me. I’ll just dive right in, but for more with Kimiko, she’ll be at the JRW conference this year. I’ll be there. Will you?
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KS: What drove you to become a literary agent?
KN: I grew up in a home overflowing with literature on every bookshelf we owned, real or makeshift.More
***My interview with Beth Phelan originally appeared on jamesriverwriters.org ahead of the 2013 James River Writers Conference***
Getting to know the agents you pitch gives you an advantage, whether you’re adding a query to the slush pile with fingers crossed or pitching face to face at a conference like JRWC. We’re excited to announce that literary agent Beth Phelan from the Bent Agency will be joining us at this year’s James River Writer’s Conference.
QUESTION 1: The publishing industry is changing rapidly these days. What are the biggest challenges that writers face in this new era? What are the biggest advantages?More
***My interview with Jeff VanderMeer originally appeared onjamesriverwriters.orgahead of the 2010 James River Writers Conference***
Jeff has had novels published in 15 languages, won multiple awards, and made the best-of-year lists in Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, LA Weekly, and many others. His award-winning short fiction has graced many anthologies and magazines; he has edited or co-edited more than a dozen influential fiction anthologies for, among others, Bantam Books and Pan Macmillan; with his wife Ann, he has lectured, conducted master classes, and given workshops all over the world; and his literary achievements hardly stop there.
QUESTION 1: Your fantasy writing has won the World Fantasy Award and been a Year’s Best Selection from Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among many other distinctions. Your novels are published in multiple translations and are well sold internationally. What secrets or lessons have you learned that you think all fantasy writers should know?
There’s only one secret: write from your heart and what you feel most deeply. The rest will take care of itself. Personally, I find no difference between writing fantasy and writing mainstream realism (which I’ve also done, at the short-story length). Following trends, trying to think of certain kinds of fiction as separate or apart from others tends to marginalize certain things, makes it less likely that cross-pollination will occur, etc.
QUESTION 2: What compels you to write fantasy and to bring your readers into a world with a willing suspension of disbelief? Was there a book or an author that highly influenced you?
It’s really not a choice. It’s more that I have an absurdist-surreal worldview that comes out in my fiction as fantasy, horror, SF, magic realism, what have you. My three primary original influences were Angela Carter, Edward Whittemore, and Vladimir Nabokov.
QUESTION 3: Do you approach writing a novel and writing a short story differently?
A novel allows for a certain number of digressions, tends to have more characters, and allows for a more complex structure in terms of breadth. A story can be quite deep but not have the same breadth. When an idea reaches critical mass in my head, I usually have a good idea of whether it will be a story or a novel because of the number of characters, the length of time involved, and the number of scenes. Novels tend to seem like a long hall of mirrors. Short stories are like one mirror, or window, I’m staring into.
QUESTION 4: How important should blogging be to a writer, in your opinion?
It has to support the main writing, it can’t replace it. Some writers start rapaciously blogging before they’ve even sold a book, as a way of building an audience for the book. I don’t think this is a good strategy. Get the important work done first. Blog if it’s fun, but don’t do targeted blogging like that. Once you do have a book sold, then, yeah, you can weave in some posts about the book. But the blogging should be fun, and secondary. Not just PR for the book and a slog.
QUESTION 5: You write a lot about “sustainable creativity.” Tell me more about what you mean by this phrase and what writers should take away from it.
It’s knowing both your limits and how far you can go, in the context of protecting your private book life — your writing — while also building a career. These two things need a firewall between them, and anything that erodes the wall, including Internet addiction, means your life and your writing life will suffer. Finding balance is a necessary thing in our modern world. You have to engage the world, but you also need that time to have ideas gestate and the time to write, without being fragmented.
– See more at: http://www.jamesriverwriters.org/jeff-vandermeer#sthash.ijrXtXJP.dpuf
***My interview with Michele Young Stone originally appeared onjamesriverwriters.orgahead of the 2010 James River Writers Conference***
Michele Young-Stone is full of surprises. From being a lightning strike survivor herself to publishing an exquisite debut novel, nothing can stop this self-proclaimed ‘glass half-full kind of gal.’
An MFA graduate from Virginia Commonwealth University, Michele has been writing creatively since she could scribble words with her crayons. Even after earning an ‘Unsatisfactory’ in First Grade for her messy handwriting, the author within prevailed.
In a starred review, Booklist called Michele’s The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, “Luminescent.” Publishers Weekly added “[she] has created a host of endearing losers—young, old, literate, and simple, all full of longing. What she does best is portray the incredulousness of the unlucky.”
QUESTION 1: How have your own life experiences guided your writing?
In major ways — My childhood and teen years weren’t “typical.” As a kid, I was a bit of an outcast. I had frizzy hair, buckteeth, and I was overweight. As a teenager, I “took a walk on the wild side.” I feel fortunate to have survived. All my experiences have really added to my writing. I’ve met a lot of unusual characters, and having been an outsider at different phases of my life, helped me to create the characters Publisher’s Weekly dubbed “endearing losers.” Like me, my “endearing losers” turn out pretty good in the end.
QUESTION 2: So many people struggle with writing believable, multi-dimensional characters. In The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, there is not a simple soul that enters your pages. Your characters are tragic and lovable, complicated but natural. What advice would you give writers about creating strong characters?
Let the characters come alive on the page. Don’t dictate to them. Rather, see where they take you. You’d be surprised at the places you’ll go. For instance, I didn’t intend for many of the characters in my book to come onto the page. They just did. I ran with it. Some of them were cut, and some (like Buckley) were essential to the story. I love all of my characters so much. I say that they come from my “monkey mind” — a term borrowed from writer Bill Tester. When the Monkey Mind is at work, it’s like a Zen state. I try not to worry about the final product. I try and enjoy the moment. I’m learning about the characters as they play out on the page.
QUESTION 3: In The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, your characters move across the country from New York to Texas to Arkansas to North Carolina. How important is it to you to personally know the locations you write about?
It is important. I did a lot of research on Chapel Hill, including interviewing residents and spending time there. I LOVE New York and have visited many times. As far as Texas and Arkansas go, I did a lot of research, but I had these images already implanted in my mind from stories I’d heard here and there over the years. There were seeds from my childhood in those places.
QUESTION 4: You earned your Masters of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University. How important was your MFA to your writing career? Would you recommend an MFA to other writers?
It was tremendously important. I went to the MFA program having previously been rejected by the same program and other programs, so by the time I got in, I took it very seriously. I knew that I had a natural ability and drive, but I didn’t know a lot of technique. I didn’t understand the importance of revision that they really drill into you in MFA school. The experience also taught me to crave constructive criticism. Anything that makes my writing better is great. I am especially grateful to Bill Tester and Tom De Haven for their support and feedback.
I would only recommend an MFA to writers who are committed to the craft. You should only go to an MFA program if you’re determined to “learn technique,” not to show off what you already know. It’s definitely about growing and trying new things.
QUESTION 5: What has your debut novel taught you about the publishing process?
More than I ever wanted to know! It’s crazy. I knew that screenwriting was a collaborative art form, but I had no idea how many people — from the agent, editor, assistant to the editor, proofreader, publicist, marketing director — were involved in publishing one novel … and there’s more. There’s a whole team of people that decide when your book should go on sale, what the cover should look like, etc. If you have time, check out the story on my book’s cover. You wouldn’t believe how many incarnations the cover had.
All that said, the thing that I carry with me wherever I am, as regards my novel’s publication, is “Yippee! Yippee! Publishing a novel has been my dream since second grade. How many people have their dreams come to fruition? Yippee!” I hope everyone will read the book and spread the word! Thanks.
– See more at: http://www.jamesriverwriters.org/michele-young-stone#sthash.cSZVGPYY.dpuf
***My interview with Silas House originally appeared onjamesriverwriters.orgahead of the 2010 James River Writers Conference***
The Southern Literary community took notice when Silas House was named as one of the South’s “Ten Emerging Writers” by the Millennial Gathering of Writers at Vanderbilt University in 2000, but so many more than just Southern readers and writers have fallen for the poetic prose of his writing.
The Atlanta Daily Journal called Silas, “A writer of startling abilities,” and others heartily agree. Awards he has garnered include the Appalachian Writer of the Year, the Chaffin Prize for Literature, the Award for Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and many other honors including the Helen M. Lewis Community Service Award in 2008 from the Appalachian Studies Association for his environmental activism.
QUESTION 1: Do you have any advice on transporting readers into a story?
When I am composing a scene in my head, I’m seeing it like a movie, so I think that I use those same cinematic techniques to help the reader to see what I’m seeing. I like to use a lot of motion because that creates a visual in a reader’s mind in an easier way. If you begin a story or novel with a face being slapped, the hand being drawn back in the air, the palm hitting the cheek, the intake of air as the slapped person realizes the pain, the rage on the face of the person doing the slapping, etc. — a reader is able to see all of that, and feel it. The main thing is to use as many of the senses as possible, and to describe them in the more economical and powerful way.
QUESTION 2: The natural world has a presence in your novels. Whether it’s Vine’s native home in Redbud Camp or Eli’s favorite tree, the reader feels spirits soar when they’re surrounded by green leaves overhead and tree roots under their feet. Is this connection with nature a character trait of yours bleeding onto the pages?
I tend to find the most important lessons in nature, so that does show up often in my writing. I go to nature to think, to be still, to rest, even to worship. I don’t mean that I’m a tree worshipper, but being out in the woods is the best kind of church, to my mind.
That’s usually the most autobiographical element of my novels, that my characters and I both love trees. And I think it’s something that we need very much right now. We need literature to preserve the power of nature because it’s an idea that has so much less importance in our consumer-minded culture than it used to. I think often the most important thing literature can do is to preserve.
QUESTION 3: In your opinion, what are the differences between writing for adults and writing for young adults? Do you have a preference?
I don’t really think there is a difference. The key is to just write the story you want to tell and sometimes, for me, it turns out that that story is more suitable for an adult audience and sometimes it works better for a younger audience. Even my first three books, which are decidedly “adult” books in theme, are written in such a way that a YA audience can read them, too. The only time I’ve ever thought of an audience at all was with the novel I just finished, SAME SUN HERE, which I wrote with Neela Vaswani. We knew from the get-go that it was a YA book because we knew the themes in advance. And I think that’s what ultimately decides if a book is YA or not, the themes.
QUESTION 4: Writing about the South and Appalachia specifically, you avoid commonly used stereotypes to create characters that are vivid and alive. Are there any stereotypes that you feel you have to actively combat about the area, or is this something that you don’t think about?
I try very hard to not think about that. When I am writing, my first responsibility to my characters is to present them as human beings, so I always think they are people who happen to live in the South or Appalachia. If a character of mine likes to go barefoot, and I know that that is a defining characteristic of the character, I can’t cut it just because being barefoot is a stereotype of being Appalachian. For instance, in my second novel, the lead character is a Cherokee woman. Part of her essence is that she is very in touch with nature. That’s a huge stereotype about Native Americans, that they all have some magic connection with the natural world. So that was a real danger, to write her that way, but all of my lead characters are that way — I didn’t do it because she was Native American. I think readers are smart enough to know when a stereotype is being perpetuated and when a character is just being themselves.
QUESTION 5: There is so much to admire your imagery and poetic language. Who are your inspirations? What specifically did you take away from them?
Two of the most important things I ever learned about writing is that we must operate in images and rhythm. This is advice that is usually driven into the heads of poets but not taught to prose-writers. So I try to make all writers aware of the importance of imagery and rhythm. I draw a lot of inspiration from poetry, and from the beauty of any perfect sentence, and, as I said, images of nature. But my favorite writers are Willa Cather, Thomas Hardy, Louise Erdrich, Zora Neale Hurston, Mary Oliver, D.H. Lawrence, Alice Walker, Lee Smith, Marilynne Robinson … I could go on and on.
– See more at: http://www.jamesriverwriters.org/silas-house#sthash.vQxqv7U6.dpuf