Author Visits 2011
Fiction
Mojie Crigler I wrote this story and considered it done, but two reliable readers said, “Are you sure this is finished?”
Clint McCown My process is one of slow discovery. The chapters in Haints move through a dozen different character points of view, but I had no idea that would happen when I began the book.
Karen Munro I write best when I write every day, but for a long time I didn’t do that.
Mayumi Shimose Poe Research shows that your brain muscle flexes better if you make it do diverse tasks. Like how doing interval training for twenty minutes can be more productive than jogging at a comfy pace for thirty. I read both of these things somewhere, I’m sure. Or maybe I’m writing fiction right now.
Liz Prato I’m not saying I aim for happily ever after, but I’m also not interested in landing on the darkest crevices of humanity.
Josie Sigler When working on stories, I try to write at least 1000 words per day or for four hours per day, whichever results in more words for that day.
Deborah Vlock Although I’ve lately been writing darkly humorous stories, my typical mode is fairly serious, even heavy. At heart I’m a pretty emotional person, and I like to evoke emotions – including levity, but also anxiety, sadness, bittersweet pleasure – in my readers.
Creative Nonfiction
Meredith Anton My writing habits tend to consist of an initial period of time where I stare at my computer screen, type something, delete it, make coffee, look outside, feed the cat. Then repeat.
Charisse Coleman Pretty much everything I’ve written about I’ve carried around for years, sometimes aware that I will one day write about it, more often not.
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Richard Farrell When I first started writing, I was a planner. I had specific intentions about where a piece was going, but they never turned out as intended. It took a while to learn to let go.
Ben Nickol I write fiction and nonfiction, and generally try with nonfiction to unpack some kind of central idea or observation.
Carolyn Walker Writing has become such a part of my life that I can’t imagine how people who don’t write get through theirs.
Poetry
Jeff Alessandrelli I’m not sure I ever decided to be a writer exactly. As a child I liked to read and eventually—also as a child—that begat trying to write.
Anne Bruner I do what every writer, every poet, does—I sit down and write. As I write, I begin to get carried along by the words. I begin to really like their sound and rhythm, to take delight in the feelings they evoke.
Jean Esteve People who are sure are so blind, so blue, so mistaken. Maybe.
Karen Holmberg The most difficult part of writing for me is resisting the urge to push and force the poem into some form that’s alien to it.
Rochelle Hurt My writing process is mysterious even to me. I tend to be inconsistent in my methods, but poems usually start with an image or a phrase for me, rather than a concept or narrative.
Ginny MacKenzie A teacher in junior high school told me I wrote like Ernest Hemingway. That did it. I went and read Hemingway, then wrote like Kafka.
Mark Neely I try to change up my writing process from time to time to access different kinds of material, but recently it seems to work like this: three or four lines of a poem begin to form in my head…and I start to mull them over.
Emily Pulfer-Terino Perhaps the only consistency in my writing process is that I always write aloud, voicing drafts over and over, to try to satisfy my ear and breath.
Austen Rosenfeld My writing process is different every single time I write! Every poem I’ve written is a little ghost of a person I once was.
Cyndle Plaisted Rials I try to get to the point where my brain switches off and I can follow associations into the poem’s place.
Neil Shepard I wanted to balance intentionality with serendipity in these poems. I’m often worried about strong-arming a poem with too many preconceived ideas—as you can see I’ve done with these poems!
Julie Marie Wade I didn’t start writing poetry seriously until I was in college. I had always written stories up to that point, even as I consistently referred to myself as a poet.
Phillip B. Williams I sit down. I write. Or, I sit down and I stare at the page. My process is one of jumping into it and waiting to see what happens.
The Writing Life
Erika Anderson Most ideas come to me when I’m doing the American version of “nothing”—soaping the loofah in the shower, mumbling to myself while walking, contemplating some detail of life on public transport…unabashedly staring at strangers…and so on.
Stephanie Friedman My story ideas are strange accretions that build up over time—not exactly good anecdote fodder. Usually I get some germ of a character from something I have read or somebody I have seen….
Caitlin Leffel It takes me two hours to get my head to a place where I give in to the rhythm of writing, and email, Facebook, and paying my credit card bill lose their distinct appeal.
Robin MacArthur I don’t tend to get “ideas” for my stories (if I did they would, no doubt, be better works of fiction). Instead, my stories are born out of a synthesis of impressions and memories and emotions….
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Richard McCann Most of my ideas come from the same starting place. I ask myself what I would prefer not to write about for fear of the feelings the subject matter might arouse. Then I write about that.
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Heather Sharfeddin I often go to the cemetery to think (not any one in particular, just whatever is convenient). A cemetery is a place where you can curse, talk aloud or cry, and no one asks if you need help.
Children’s Lit/Young Adult
Jaramy Conners I tend to draw heavily from my own life when creating fiction, though not so much that I’m constrained by actual events.
Jane Kohuth Often I will carry an idea around for quite a while, anywhere from days to years, before a story (or perhaps a sentence or stanza) begins to form in my mind.
Marcia Popp I repeatedly break the rule of not letting an unplanned character take over a story. Villains often become so interesting that it is tempting to follow their histories back in time….
S.E. Sinkhorn “Chasing Shadows” was one of those stories that appeared in my mind upon waking in the morning and wouldn’t shut up until I put it to paper.
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