My friend Katie Qué of imyourkatieque.com asked me to follow up her post in the “My Writing Process” blog tour because once upon a time, I did do some writing. My college degree is in English, and my focus was in creative nonfiction with the intent to write about . . . I don’t know what. I lived in Ohio at the time and never had any expectation of leaving. I guess I just thought things worth writing about would happen to me. So, without further ado:
1) What are you working on right now?
My photography. But the last thing I wrote was the slow, wonderful/painful development of the relationship between Jack and me, in which we started as co-workers eight years ago, became friends, became roommates, became closer friends, and then became irresistible to each other. I stopped writing it when we started dating, but I’d like to pick it back up again. I remember that when I was in college, I was writing about things that were happening to me in the moment, and my thesis advisor told me that I needed to wait and write about things in retrospect to have a clear vision of them. He was right–when I first started dating Jack, I thought our dating relationship was somehow less real, less serious, because it’d started as a friendship. I have no idea what I was thinking. But it’s hilarious in hindsight, and I’d like to write about it.
2) How does your work differ from others of its genre?
I’m not sure that it does, except that I have all of the feelings of a teenager with fresh hormones and all of the nostalgia of a world-weary grandmother. Is that novel, or is that just most women in general? I also hear from people that my voice is my own. People who read me and then meet me say I’m just what they expected, and people who know me and then read me say that they can hear the things I write in my voice. Maybe they’re just being nice, but I love the idea of being authentic.
3) Why do you write what you do?
I have a bad memory, and I like to remember. The minutiae of my own past life is fascinating to me. Reading about my early days in NYC from my old LiveJournal, when I used to have no money and a trip to the Whole Foods hot bar for dinner was the highlight of my life? So rewarding. In my life, personal relationships and having love are the very most important things, so they’re the things I want to remember most.
4) How does your writing process work?
I’m very much a “first thought, best thought” writer. What comes out of me when I’m feeling inspired to write usually doesn’t need a rewrite later. (In my own opinion. An editor would probably tear me to shreds.) So I like to wait until I’m ready and then get down to BIZNESS. I mostly get inspired at 3 a.m., which makes working when I want to pretty difficult. And explains why I got so much of my Jack writing done while I was unemployed, in bed, on my phone, tapping my thoughts into Evernote while he innocently slept in his bed across the apartment.
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I’ve asked three of my favorite bloggers to take the baton from me, mostly because they’re actual writers who’ll have real answers to these questions.
Kelly, a.k.a. Mrs. Bachelor Girl, has been one of my longest-running blogfriends. She makes her living writing and photographing, so I basically want her life. Her blog is about to blow up, because she just acquired the best dog to post pictures of all day.
Lisa, a.k.a. Elembee, started out blogging about lipstick and sandals, moved on to color palettes and touring the country, and eventually became known for sharing her WordPress expertise. She recently wrote a book on using WordPress with your business, and I’m pumped to hear about how she did it.
Erin, a.k.a. Musings of a Madwoman, became someone I looked forward to reading almost immediately when I found her blog through another friend. No surprise, she published her first book a short while later, and then an even shorter while later, it started blowing up Amazon. I’m patiently waiting for the next installment.
Look for their writing process posts soon!