Today is my day for the Writing Process Blog Tour, a blog tour where various writers discuss what they are working on and their process, tag the writer who talked them into it and finds other victims—er—other writers to participate. You the reader get to follow the various links to discover new writers. I’d like to thank J. Alan Erwine for asking me to take part. His own post is here.
What Am I Working On?
At the moment my project is a new novel titled Ghosts of the Places We Live, though it is really three novellas intertwined together: a southern gothic horror piece that takes place in 1929, a secret history in 1979, and a ghost story/urban fantasy in 1999. It is set in the community of Oney, Oklahoma (Albert, Oklahoma according to the U.S. Government) a little place that was a big influence on my childhood and is today almost a ghost town. This novel is my small gesture at making sure this community is not forgotten and my nod to the memory of the place I love.
How Does My Work Differ From Others Of Its Genre?
This was a hard question for me to answer, because I don’t think of myself as an innovator in anyway. I posed it to a couple of people who have read my stuff and I think they gave me good answers.
I am able to focus on both The Big Idea of a novel and the Small Intimate Stuff. I do world building and characters with equal ease and intertwine them together easily with a focus on the small stories of the characters, who tend to be people trying to find their way and place in the world.
I try to focus on characters who a disabled, othered, and chipped up by life, with an emphasizes not on their limitations, or on making them All Better Thanks To Science/Magic, or Look How Noble They Are Because They can Do Things, but on how they go about life and living.
Finally, I write like I do because I had a very solid Midwestern mentality imbued in me by my “We survived the Great Depression and World War II” grandparents. My characters tend to be practical, down to earth folks who Get Things Done Even When Things Get Weird. They are pragmatic people; firm, calm, quiet, competent at pretty much anything they do. A lot like my grandparents.
Why Do I Write What I Do?
I write the stories I do because I think there is a place in our genre for the quieter stories, stories that are driven by the characters instead of the Big Idea or massive world building or the monster of the book to fight/fornicate with. There is nothing wrong with any of the things above. I fact, I love all three of those things, but as a writer I like people and characters and their personal, intimate stories. I suppose besides a Midwestern mentality I also have realistic contemporary literature sensibilities with a strong dose of magical realism.
How Does Your Writing Process Work?
Mostly, I seem to flail around like a demented Muppet. I once had a system and process, but these days I’m in flux, trying to find my footing. On the days I work I’m usually too tired and brain fried to commit fiction in the evenings, but I am able to sort out plot points, do research, create basic scene outlines and blocking, and consider what I’ve written up to that point, making notes of adjustments I need to make. On the days I don’t work, I have all the notes and outlines in place so that I can simply sit down and write. On the two or three afternoons and evenings a week I have for writing, I can apply all the previous work, sit my butt down, and just start writing—writing to whatever point in the plot/outline I’m working on. And if that isn’t working I go write a different scene, which usually jogs lose my problems in the scene that had stalled.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my part of this blog hop/tour. I now pass the baton off to three most worthy and talented writers.
Conrad Zero is an author of dark fiction from Minneapolis, MN, and the front man for ‘Northern Rock’ band Jagged Spiral (www.jaggedspiral.com). He has a Bachelor’s of Philosophy degree from the University of MN and a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do. When he’s not writing deep-dark-sugar-pop song lyrics, he’s writing deep-dark-sugar-pop fiction stories like Pinky The Invisible Flying Pony Vs The Giant Carnivorous, Poisonous, Exploding Spider-Leeches. No matter what he’s doing, he always wears black, because it makes laundry day simple. Visit his website here.
Catherine Lundoff is the award-winning author of three short story collections: Crave: Tales of Lust, Love and Longing, Night’s Kissand A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories, and one novel, Silver Moon. She is the editor of Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories and co-editor, with JoSelle Vanderhooft, of Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic. Her stories have appeared in over 70 publications. Her works and papers are collected in the SFWA/Gender Studies Collections at the Northern Illinois University Library. Visit her website here.
Marissa Lingen is a speculative fiction writer living in the Minneapolis suburbs with two large men and one small dog. She has written over one hundred works of short fiction and is working on a novel. Visit her website here.