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Writing Process Blog Hop

April 7, 2014 by L.S. Johnson

Rhonda Parrish, the wonderful editor of both Fae and Niteblade, has tagged me in a blog hop on process. Which is rather fortuitous, as I happen to love thinking and talking about process; I find the more aware I am of my own process, the more I am able to hone it and direct it. Writer, know thyself!

So without further ado:

1) What am I working on?

I’ve got three projects on the go right now:

–fine-tuning Talassio, my first novel, and making notes for its sequel (I wrote a draft some time ago, but it needs restructuring due to characters in Talassio deciding to do their own thing)

–a novelette tentatively called “Little Men with Knives”

–a novelette which I can only describe as “the olives and lemons thing”

There are several other short stories in various stages of writing, but I am studiously ignoring them . . . I am trying to break myself of a lifelong habit of tackling too many projects at once. So right now there’s the novel and its projected trilogy, and then there’s a story or two I can work on when I’m sick of the novel and its projected trilogy. It’s all I can manage at the moment.

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

Hrmm. I don’t really have an answer for that, so I’ll try a different approach. Two of the reader responses I most often get are that my work is literary and my work is slow-paced.

I love slow fiction. I love lush detail and poetic language and fleshed-out inner lives, I like being able to linger in a moment. The stories I love are ones that utterly subsume me, not just with plot but with world-building, complex characters, philosophy and concepts woven in to the fabric of the story—what I think of as capital-S Story, a kind of all-encompassing empathetic act that pays as much attention to where, who, and why as what happens next.

I don’t think my work has yet reached the level of Story, but it’s what I’m striving for. Lately, though, it seems that the more I push my work in that direction, the more difficult it becomes to sell: “genre” magazines reject me for being too “literary,” yet “literary” magazines reject me for writing “speculative” fiction. It’s a frustrating position to be in—and yet when the acceptances do come, they are far more satisfying.

3) Why do I write what I do?

Like many others, I write the kinds of stories I want to read. I have favorite subjects that I have been revisiting for, oh, can I say decades now? The body, culture shock, systems of power and knowledge, the many forms love can take . . . But I also write out of anger: writing is a way to make my anger productive. Recently I was looking over the last few stories I’ve written, and I realized they share a common theme: women in lousy situations trying to seize/subvert power in order to gain control of their lives.

I don’t think I’m quite done with that theme.

4) How does my writing process work?

I try to write every day. On work-free days I get up, brew a cup of tea and feed the cats, and sit down at the computer, where I spend about half an hour looking at email etc. while I sort of submerge; once I start writing I try to keep at it for at least three or four hours. If I’m feeling blocked, I use Freedom and bribes to keep myself going, and I remind myself of rule #1: when it comes to getting the words out, anything is better than nothing.

When I’m going in to the office I bring pages to edit on the train and at lunch, or I do crits, or catch up on research for the novel. I’ve learned not to try writing fiction on office days; instead I write journal entries at night to clear my head out enough to sleep.

I used to be very precious about my writing—only when it moved me, late at night, just the right kind of music on, etc. It took me a long time to learn that if I really want to do this, I need to just write, as often as I can. Editing can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but it can’t do anything with a blank page.


Thank you, Rhonda, for giving me the opportunity to natter on! Please do check out the other Fae contributors that she tagged. I will be reading them all, and probably learning a few things as well!

 

Filed Under: Interview, Process Tagged With: blog hop

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rhonda Parrish says

    April 7, 2014 at 7:37 am

    “Editing can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but it can’t do anything with a blank page.”

    Dude. I have to remind myself of that freaking constantly. One of my biggest struggles is with first drafts. Hate ’em. HATE them.

    Thank you for participating in this blog hop. For what it’s worth, I’m not sure I agree that you haven’t reached capital S story… but I think when you write the story that makes you feel like you have, it’s going to be amazeballs.

    Yup, I said amazeballs.

    Because.

  2. L.S. Johnson says

    April 7, 2014 at 7:46 am

    *makes sign and hangs it over monitor*
    BE AMAZEBALLS.

    Thank you for the invite! And for the mantra as well. 😀

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