A Writer's Take...... Archives - Page 32 of 101 - Trisha Sugarek, Author, Playwright & Poet

Interview with Best Selling author, Susan Wiggs

TS. Susan Wiggs’s life is all about family, friends…and fiction. She lives at the water’s edge on an island in Puget Sound, and in good weather, she commutes to her writers’ group in a 21-foot motorboat. She’s been featured in the national media, including NPR, and has given programs for the US Embassies in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. She is a popular speaker locally, nationally, internationally, and on the high seas.

The author is a middle child, a library enthusiast, a former teacher, a Harvard graduate, an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier and terrible golfer, yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book. She lives on an island in Puget Sound, where she divides her time between sleeping and waking.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? (your shed, room, closet, barn, houseboat….) Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.

SW. I write all over the place and always have. On the patio, on the sofa, on the ferry, on planes and boats…pretty much everywhere. I write when I travel. A good portion of The Oysterville Sewing Circle was written during storm season in Ilwaco, WA, close to the historic town of Oysterville. I learned early on that I can write anywhere. For me, the place is not as important as a good span of time to focus.

Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

SW. Oh, where do I begin? Clairefontaine grid-ruled notebook—check. Sheaffer fine point fountain pen with peacock blue ink—check. Mariage Freres French blue Earl Grey tea—check. Lenny (spirit animal)—check. After my first handwritten draft, I read the copy into WordPerfect. then edit on screen. And then print off that draft and edit by hand. It’s a messy process, but I’ve been at it for 30+ years and it seems to be working. The actual writing never gets easier, though. Every book is its own unique challenge.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

SW. I’m left-handed, a middle child, I speak French, I have several art pieces by Dr. Seuss, and I’m working on an unauthorized screenplay about his life.

Q. Do you have a set time each day (or night) to write?

SW. I try to do the “heavy lifting” (composition, revision) first thing in the morning before the internet wakes up to distract me.
Emerging writers often lament that they don’t have time to write. I’m not having it. You make time for what’s important to you. There was a time when I was a full-time teacher with a small child, a house, dogs, etc. And yet I still wrote 2 books per year. My writing session began at 9pm after a full day. I’m grateful that I don’t need to do that these days, but the point is, it can be done. It’s all in the motivation.

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

SW. Do as I say, not as I do! Minimize distractions and set realistic goals for the day. Decide you’ll write a scene, or a minimum number of pages (3 or more is good). Try not to get lost in your own process, “plotting it out” should not take six months.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?

SW. It varies from book to book. In The Oysterville Sewing Circle I discovered Caroline in bed next to me. My husband Jerry is an apparel designer, and I wanted to write about his world. The story took a dark turn, however, as I interviewed women in the industry who dealt with workplace harassment and worse. Their stories fueled one of the most heartfelt novels I’ve written—the explosive issues around domestic violence and the drama and healing that can result when women come together.

Q. What first inspired you to write?

Part 2 of my interview with Susan ~~ August 23rd.
Book Review for The Oysterville Sewing Circle ~ click here

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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Boo Walker, June: Anne D. LeClaire and July — Catherine Ryan Hyde. August: My interview with Susan Wiggs and September: Alan Foster (Sci-fi)

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How To Write a Play ~~ Journal/Handbook

My newest Journal created for aspiring and established PLAYWRIGHTS has just been published and can be found in your favorite bookstore.

245+ lined, blank pages for your writing PLUS Sections with instructions on ‘how to‘.

Section 1……How to Begin…
Section 2……How to Write a Play…
Section 3……Creating Rich Characters…
Section 4……Story Telling
Section 5…… How to Block…
Section 6…… Snappy Dialogue…
Section 7…… Set Design…
Section 8…… Formatting your Play…
Section 9…… Terminology..

To Purchase

Other custom journals for your journaling pleasure:

How to Create a Tantalizing Book Cover

What Other Writers are Saying…

TS. I am currently developing a new journal for creative writers who are or want to be writing plays. If my fans and readers are familiar with my journals, it is traditional for me to embed quotes from other writers, authors, actors, directors, etc., into the blank pages of the journal. These are meant to inspire the owner of the journal with their own story writing.

So I am always looking for new quotes as I hand pick every one when considering them for my journals. Here are what other writers have said about the joys (and heartbreak) of being a writer.

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” Louis L’Amour

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” Ernest Hemingway

“What would you write if you weren’t afraid?” Mary Y-Arr

“The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.” Alan Dean Foster

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” Jodi Picoult

“The desire to write grows with writing.” Desiderius Erasmus

“I must write it all out at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“As a writer you try to listen to what others aren’t saying…and write about the silence.” N.R. Hart

“Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingertips.” MJ Bush

“We write to taste life twice. In the moment and in retrospect.” Anais Nin

“I think new writers are too worried that it has all been said before. Sure it has but not by you.” Asha Dornfest

“An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” Stephen King

“Be courageous and try to write in a way that scares you a little.” Holley Gerth

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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Boo Walker, June: Anne D. LeClaire and July — Catherine Ryan Hyde. August: My interview with Susan Wiggs and in September: Alan Dean Foster (sci-fi)

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Interview with Catherine Ryan Hyde (conclusion)

One of my favorite writers; the interview reveals the thinking and processes of a gifted author. Did you miss part 1?

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

CRH. January of 1991. I was working as a baker and pastry chef in a local restaurant. I live in a tourist town, and the restaurant closed its doors in January. That’s not the time to find a new job in a tourist town. So I got stuck home on unemployment. I woke up one day and realized I should write that novel I always swore I would write if I ever had the time. Because, like it or not, I had the time.

Q. How long after that were you published?

CRH. Depends on what you mean by published. I started getting stories published in literary and small circulation magazines in 1994. But that’s probably not what you mean. You probably mean when did I get my first novel published. 1997. Felt like a slow slog, but it’s not the saddest story ever told in the publishing business.

Q. Do you think we will see, in our lifetime, the total demise of paper books?

CRH. No. We will not. And, strange though it may sound at first, I say this as a horse owner. When I decided I wanted a horse to own and ride, I was not told, “Sorry, they no longer exist. The horseless carriage caused their total demise.” The world is still full of millions of horses. All the horseless carriage could do was bump them out of their spot as the mainstream form of transportation. The law of supply and demand will always assure the survival of anything people want.

I’m older than a lot of readers and writers (seriously, I’m pretty old) and I actually remember when “books on tape” (modern translation: audio) was going to kill the book. The book is still alive, and audio is thriving alongside the book as an alternative reading style. EBooks add another alternative. They take nothing away.

Q. What makes a writer great?

CRH. No idea. If I knew, I would bottle it and sell it. I do know that, for my own reading pleasure, an author has to make me feel something. Shed some light on the human condition without making it feel hopeless. Good story-telling skills are, of course, a plus.

Q. and the all-important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?

CRH. It looks like a lot of two- or three-hour mornings in front of the computer, doing what I love to do best. You probably wanted a more complex answer, but it feels simple. I sit down and do the work until it’s done.

Q. How have your life experiences influenced your writing?

CRH. Hard to say, because I don’t consciously go to my own life experiences to find a story. Looking back at the work, I can see patterns. I felt a bit lost as a child, so my books are full of coming-of-age characters getting found, usually by grownups who are not rightfully in charge of finding them (see previous link to Lenny story). And I do have questions about humans. Why we do what we do and don’t what we don’t. And they tend to come out in the work. But my fiction is far less autobiographical than people tend to guess. I really do make this stuff up.

Q. What’s your down time look like?

CRH. It has a fair amount of horse hair on it.

Q. Have you or do you want to write in another genre`?

CRH. Not really. I do have one book of photos and an essay collection. And I’m not a huge fan of genre fiction per se. The work tells me what to do more than vice versa. So I just keep writing character-driven stories.

Note to Self: (a life lesson you’ve learned.)

CRH. Take what you believe and apply it to yourself. Leave everybody else alone. What they’re doing may look wrong to you, but they are on a path, and it’s really none of your business. You will be happier and so will they. Besides, if people didn’t do strange things, fiction writers like me would be out of a job.

See my review of ‘Have You Seen Luis Velez?’
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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Boo Walker, June: Anne D. LeClaire and July — Catherine Ryan Hyde. Coming Soon! My interview with Susan Wiggs

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Interview with author, Catherine Ryan Hyde (part 2)

Q. What first inspired you to write?

CRH. I can’t define myself as a writer without mentioning Lenny Horowitz, my high school English teacher. I never called him Mr. Horowitz. He let us call him Lenny. Lenny sent my world in a completely different direction (and if you’d seen the direction I was going at the time, you’d understand that he was a lifesaver): he taught me to love reading again, and he told me I could write.

When I was little, nobody had to teach me to love reading. Books were water; I was a duck. I pitched into Dr. Seuss, Winnie the Pooh, the Black Stallion series. I was unstoppable. Then came school, in which my irresistible force met an immovable object. I hated the books I was given to read. They didn’t speak to me. They were almost as bad as–I hate to even utter the word–homework.

I began to avoid reading if possible. I honed the talent of writing book reports on books I hadn’t read. To this day, I have a chip on my shoulder about the classics. I’ve tried twice to read Moby Dick. I give up. I’m not ashamed, either. I like modern, fast-moving fiction. I’ve taken my last run at the great white whale. Ever. It’s over.

Back to Lenny. He gave us different books. Books written in the same century he assigned them. Books with down-and-out characters, people outside the mainstream. I understood these people. I was outside the mainstream. I was overweight and had braces on my teeth. My peer group thought I was from outer space. I liked reading about characters on the margins. We had something in common.

Miracle of miracles, I woke up. One day Lenny gave out a creative writing assignment: an essay, on any subject. I still remember how he walked up to the blackboard and wrote, in big block letters: I AIN’T TAKING IT AFTER FRIDAY. Not exactly your run-of-the-mill English teacher, right? I was so impressed by his willingness to meet us where we lived that I decided to impress him back. I wrote an essay intended to be funny. Always risky. It was a takeoff on the “my dog ate my homework” excuse note, a long, rambling, slapstick story explaining why I was not able to hand in my essay on time.

Sight unseen, Lenny read it out loud in front of the class. They laughed. Everybody, including Lenny. They laughed a lot. For a long time. It was my first whiff of the rare smell of success. Lenny told the class my essay was clever. Later I found out he was still talking about it in the staff lounge that day. He told all my other teachers I could write.

Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?

CRH. It’s a tie. What comes is a character in a situation. For example, Jody in WORTHY, watching as someone puts a dog out of a car and drives away. Or Pete in SAY GOODBYE FOR NOW, finding the injured wolf hybrid beside the highway. Or Roseanna in HEAVEN ADJACENT, getting into her car and driving away from the city to some remote location and never going home. Or Ruth in ASK HIM WHY, arriving home from school to find that her brother has returned prematurely from the Iraq war in less-than-honorable circumstances. It’s not enough (for me) to find a character. I have to know what is making their life so interesting/challenging in that moment.

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?

CRH. Not really. I’ve been doing this for quite a while. I’m on my 39th book, and that doesn’t count anything that ended up in a drawer. If I get lost, I might get lost. End up nowhere, or somewhere I did not intend to be. Now I’m more like a person following a roadmap. Not calculated, exactly. But fairly organized.

Q. Are you working on something now? If so tell us about it.

CRH. Always. I’m on a two-book-a-year contract. There is never a time when I am not working on something new. And here’s what people don’t tend to see, unless I tell them. You see the book that just came out, and then you want to know if I’ve started another. I’ve started three others. And finished two of them. The one I wrote after Have You Seen LUIS VELEZ, I just finished reviewing the copyedited manuscript. The one after that, I’ve finished with the developmental editing, and we’re going over cover design. The one I have in progress is almost done. But I don’t want to talk about that one, because I haven’t even finished writing it yet. So I’ll tell you a tiny bit about the other two.

STAY is a novel set in the Vietnam War era (but here at home, not in Vietnam). Its hero is a teen boy whose brother is overseas, and who is trying to hold his family and friends together at home. Of course the plot is more complex, but this is just a quick glimpse. Its theme is more or less suicide-related, but there is no suicide in it. It’s about the opposite of suicide. It’s about staying.

BRAVE GIRL, QUIET GIRL is about a woman who briefly loses her infant daughter in a carjacking, and her eventual relationship with the homeless girl who finds her.

Did you miss Part I?

Conclusion to this wonderful interview is August 2nd.
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Last Summer….A Review

2 out of 5 quills A Review ‘Last Summer’ by Kerry Lonsdale

This could have been a good little story. But unfortunately it needs some serious editing. The tense of the writing switched, for no apparent reason, from current tense to past tense and back again. Very distracting and amateurish.

After the first couple of chapters I wondered why an editor hadn’t caught this. Most, if not all, books are written in past tense. And when the author chooses to write in present tense it is intentional and consistent.

The story couldn’t hold my attention due to this problem.
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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Boo Walker, June: Anne D. LeClaire and July — Catherine Ryan Hyde

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Book Review…’Before and Again’ by Barbara Delinsky

5 out of 5 quills

A Review

Are second chances very common? Can divorced people reconnect and put all the bitterness and heartbreak behind them? Mackenzie Cooper ran far, far away from unimaginable heartbreak and pain. She rebuilt her life and was relatively happy, until her ex-husband showed up. Not in town just for a visit but purchased an Inn and a house.

Once again, Barbara Delinsky has crafted a beautiful story about real people and real places. The reader is immediately drawn in and becomes a resident of Devon, Vermont, until the last page. What a delightful trip.

This reviewer has been reading Barbara Delinsky for well over 20 years. She never disappoints. Rich, well drawn characters that the reader readily relates to and cares about.

I highly recommend Before and Again to my followers.

Did you miss my Interview with Barbara Delinsky?
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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Boo Walker, June: Anne D. LeClaire and July — Catherine Ryan Hyde, August: Susan Wiggs and September: Alan Dean Foster

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Interview with Catherine Ryan Hyde

TS. I found Catherine when I stumbled across her stunning novel: Have You Seen Luis Velez?” By now most of my followers know that I am a voracious reader so it’s really something when I tell you, …Luis Velez is the best book I have ever read.
Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of 39 published and forthcoming books. Of all of them, Pay It Forward seems to be the most important to other people. Catherine says it’s not the most important to her. She says she writes two books a year, because she has always written fast, and now, “I have a publisher who is willing to keep up with me. When not writing, I ride my horse, travel, and take photos of distant galaxies and nebulae (spoiler alert: this is not easy). I’m also learning to play the cello, but not well. Yet.”

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.

CRH. I write in my easy chair in the living room. When my mom was alive, and shared my home with me in her retirement, and my sister and her kids came up to visit regularly, we created a writing studio for me. We had it built over the garage. But my mom passed away in 2012. My sister is also deceased, as is one of her children. The other is a full-grown adult. So now the main house is very quiet. I have a zero-gravity chair, which is better for my back than sitting up in a desk chair at a desktop computer. It has a sort of lap-desk arrangement, and I write on a notebook computer. There’s a seed feeder and a hummingbird feeder hanging right outside the window on my right, and plenty of light. So this is where everything gets done. The studio is now a guest quarters.

Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, a laptop at the ready, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

CRH. Nope. The only thing I need is a good enough sense of the next scene. I’m not putting down people who do. Whatever works. But I think we need to be careful about stating what we “need” to write. I just need an idea and I’m good to go. If I sat down with a cup of tea it would only get cold.

PS: What exactly would a #2 pencil have to do with writing a novel? (Kidding. Half. Well… mostly kidding. No, not kidding so much at all. It’s 2019.)

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

CRH. Hmm. Let’s see. I’m a big Randy Rainbow fan, and I know his mom. She’s one of my readers, which got me all fangirling, and then she was all fangirling because I’m a Randy fan, and we fangirled our way into a friendship.
I ride classical English dressage with my horse, because I guess nothing is ever too challenging for me. I am a major glutton for punishment.
I spent a week in an ashram in Rishikesh, India, at the invitation of a very well-known and venerated swami who was (he is since deceased) a big fan of the book and foundation (Pay It Forward).
About three years ago I celebrated my 61st birthday by flying to Nepal, taking a small STOL plane to “the world’s most dangerous airport” (Lukla) and then trekking several thousand feet uphill for a stay at the Hotel Everest View. As previously stated, I like a good challenge.
Anybody who follows me on Facebook knows I’m learning astrophotography (speaking of being a glutton for punishment) but I’m sure there are also many people who don’t know.

Q. Do you have a set time each day (or night) to write?

CRH. Yes and no. If I have something ready to go, I’ll sit down in the morning. I get up in the morning, do some Yoga and deep stretches, a little bit of meditation, then one cup of coffee and I’m off. But there are mornings when I don’t write. It comes and goes in fits and starts.

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

CRH. If you haven’t started the project, make a digital file for it. Put the title and author in the header. Number the pages. Type “Chapter One.” Then challenge yourself to write a first sentence. Nothing beats an inability to start like starting.

If I have something in process, but can’t seem to get the next chapter or scene going, I’ll get into the file to just add one sentence or paragraph. In almost every

case I end up with several new pages before I close the file again. If that doesn’t do it, it might be time to look at what you’re writing. Have you lost interest in it? This may surprise you, but my advice might be to dump it. You may have lost interest in it for a reason. Don’t throw it away. Never throw anything away. Just give yourself permission to work on something new. If it’s not inspiring you to write it, it may have trouble inspiring total strangers to read it. Try to find a project that’s exciting, and that calls you back to work.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?

CRH. When I have finished a novel and turned it over to my agent, and I know I need a new idea. I open up for a new idea, and I meet a character. I generally just see a glimpse of them, having some sort of life experience. Then I spend a few weeks in my head, with nothing down on paper yet, coaxing them to tell me more.

Q. Q. Where did the concept for ‘Have You Seen Luis Velez?‘ come from?

CRH. Oh, how I wish I knew. I have no idea where any of this comes from. Sheer imagination, and anyone who understands it has a better brain than mine.

Interviewer: I so understand. Most of my stories I can identify where they have their Origins. My mother and her equally outrageous sisters are the basis for that fiction. But I also write rather bloodthirsty True Crime Mysteries and I have no idea where they came from. I just hang on for the ride.

Q. What first inspired you to write?

Continued…July 26th: Part Two

Did you miss my Review of Have You Seen Luis Velez?
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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Boo Walker, June: Anne D. LeClaire and July — Catherine Ryan Hyde

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Writing Tips: Prequels and Sequels

Recently I’ve returned to the Fabled Forest writing a new book for the series of children’s books.
Emma and the Aardvarks will address endangered species when two sisters, aardvarks, arrive unexpectedly in the Forest. Just when I think a series has run its course another book pops into my head.

I write fables (not fairy tales) with a lesson in every story. Subjects like bullying, running away, being different, ecology and so on.

For you new writers: A sequel, of course, is a new story that continues (almost) where you left off in the last one. It has reoccurring characters and the scene is usually the same as in my forest.

A prequel is a story of what happened before your current book. For example: I might write a story about Emma’s life before she entered the fabled forest and met all her mystical friends.

Is there a prequel or sequel to a story you have written? I’ll bet there is. This idea is very popular with readers. If they like a story, they want more of the same.

GIVE IT TO THEM!

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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Boo Walker, June: Anne D. LeClaire and July — Catherine Ryan Hyde

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Inspiration in the Check Out Line…really?

Back in 2015 I wrote this post. It’s been getting some ‘clicks’ lately from visitors so I thought I would reprise it. When something or someone inspires you, grab hold and don’t let go?

The other day I was standing in line at the grocery store, minding my own business…preoccupied that I was leaving my dogs in the car too long….when I suddenly became aware of the man in front of me being checked out. I had picked that line because it appeared that he only had maybe six items, (boxes of something) and I was eager to get checked out. (the dogs…remember?)

Well, it turned out that in front of the ‘boxes’, and out of my line of sight, were two dozen very tiny cans of dog food. It seems that you can buy three tablespoons of dog food in individual cans for your darling pet. Two bags of doggy treats and then we were ready to ring up the boxes.

Those six boxes were actually fifteen (yes I counted every one of them; the dogs in the car, remember) boxes of Healthy Choice ‘nutritious, packaged dinners; microwavable, ready to eat in just twelve minutes’. Fifteen boxes of over-processed, heavily salted, flavor enhanced, empty food. The nutritional value in the dog food was probably better. I wanted so badly to take my bag of fresh spinach out of my cart and give it to him with my best wishes. But, wait, he wouldn’t know how to steam the spinach or for how long.

Well! That made me take a closer look at the customer. And by the time he paid ($86.13 for the dog food and the TV dinners, OMG!) I had half of a short, one act play written in my head.

The man in my story is a newly widowed senior who was married for forty years and never cooked a meal in his life.

He goes home with his sad little boxes of food. He puts his delicious, processed dinners in the freezer to be enjoyed later in front of his fifty-two inch high definition television. Speaking baby talk he rips open the doggy treats and gives his overweight shiatsu a goody.

If this sounds as if I am making fun…..no, no, no…it’s written with love as this is the typical existence of the widowed male. A snapshot of life that gave me a great little story. And the lesson to be learned, fellow writers, is to keep your eyes and ears open. You never know when inspiration will strike!
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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Boo Walker, June: Anne D. LeClaire and July — Catherine Ryan Hyde

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