Can you share one example of how you came up with the idea for a story?
Well usually I come up with just the tiniest hint of a character. All my stories spin from characters.
One book (that's in a drawer right now) started with "what about a really dorky social misfit who's actually quietly picking off the people she got too obsessed with and who failed to live up to her idea of their 'friendship?'" Teasing out the two girls who wound up as the central characters in the story, and what they loved and hated, and how they got along, and what was actually going to HAPPEN was much more involved, but the story IDEA sort of came to me like a character logline.
Sometimes. Other times I go through something funny or sad or awful in life and I say "some day, when I'm ready, THIS is becoming a book."
What’s your biggest challenge as a writer?
Plotting, which I'm just terrible at. I like characters more than anything else, both as a writer and a reader...which means I sometimes forget about including full-fledged storylines.
What genre do you write? What age category?
I'm a chameleon; the most-frequent genres are young adult contemporary and comedy, but that's just where I am now.
16+ for YA, definitely-for-adults in comedy.
Do you think you’ll ever vary from that?
Absolutely. All I DO is vary.
What’s the best book you’ve read in your genre recently?
It's not dead in my genre, since it's really on the younger side of YA, but I finally got around to reading Winger by Andrew Smith, and it was REALLY good.
What inspires you as a writer?
Self-loathing. I'm being serious.
Do you use visuals (photos, paintings) or audios (voice recordings, music) to help form the characters in your stories?
Not really, though imagining what they look like, listen to, see, and how they think is important. I just tend to keep that in-head, not inspiration-boarded.
What does a typical writing day look like for you?
Well a typical day involves waking up early so I can write for a half hour or 45 minutes before I have to leave for work...where I'm the company writer, but not in a company of YA novelists and professional humorists, so projects get put on hold between 8, when I leave the house, and 6:30ish, when I get home (though I definitely sneak in a little writing/editing on my lunch break). If I'm on deadline or inspired, I'll write for a while in the evenings, but office life--and just LIFE--makes that pretty unpredictable.
On weekends, I try to settle in with a big cup of coffee in the afternoon and bang stuff out, but I tend to only work well for a couple hours at a stretch.
So I guess it looks kind of like ADHD...
What do you do when you’re not writing?
I try to read, but let's be honest: sometimes I only have the energy for iPad games while I catch up on my Real Housewives. (Yes. I admit it. I watch these.)
Tell us about your current work-in-progress!
I have three, but one is on temporary hiatus, so we'll stick to the biggies:
WIP one is a choose-your-own-adventure novel for adults. It's dark, and funny, and everything on just about every path starts terribly and ends worse.
WIP two is a young adult contemporary novel in which my MC, Katie, loses her father, and (god, cheesiness alert) hopefully finds out more about herself. Also funny, I swear. Nothing easier to mine for laughs than the death of a parent, right?
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Wasn't that fun? I think so, that's why I'm nominating Jen Russ, Bettelynn McIlvain, and Jess Irish (more of my favorite "conference buddies!") to keep it going!
If you want to do it in your own blogs, tell folks I sent you (put your answers in a comment here if you don't!). Then tell them the answers to these questions (and come up with your own before passing on the torch):
1.) When did you start writing in earnest?
2.) What's more important to you: the characters or the story?
3.) Admit it: what book that everyone else seemed to love were you "meuh" about?
4.) What was the first book you really loved?
5.) How do you start a story? Do you outline, or character sketch or...well, what?
6.) What's the worst/hardest part about writing?
7.) What's the best?
8.) Do, dump, or marry: Gatsby, Mr. Darcy, Sirius Black (post-Azkaban, of course)
9.) How did you wind up writing in the genre that you currently write in?
10.) What are you working on now? DETAILS, PEOPLE!!
Thanks for playing along, Jilly! Fun to learn more about your process :)
ReplyDeleteLikewise! Thanks for the invite - I love this kind of stuff!
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