Part II ….Mark Childress
Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing and for how long?
A. All the time, when it’s going well. I actually get kind of impatient with the demands of real life when the imagined life really gets up and cranking.
Q. When did you begin to write seriously?
A. In high school, after I won an “honorable mention” in a short story contest and Miss Eudora Welty herself put the plaque in my hand.
Q. How long after that were you published?
A. I was published as a journalist starting just two years later but it was nine years before I got my first novel published.
Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?
A. Assuming you have found an agent who has found an interested publisher, most of the process is directed by the writer. Despite what people think, publishers don’t generally force novelists to stick to strict deadlines or to stop editing the book before they’re finished. They want you to write the best book you can. First you write the book. Then you rewrite it a few times or a few dozen times for yourself.
Then a few more times for the editor. Then another time for the copy desk. After that, it is waiting, longing, hoping, and having Oprah dreams. Then publication happens and is both much better and much worse than you ever expected. Then you face the blank page and start the next one. Rewriting is the core of what writers do – so if you can’t stand rewriting and being edited, choose another profession.
Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters ?
A. It is different for each book. Sometimes it is an idea, or a place, sometimes it is a character. It’s important to keep listening for that little bell when it rings.
Q. What inspired your story/stories ?
A. Life, pain, a happy childhood that was also miserable. A weird family. Being from Alabama.
Q. Have you? Or do you want to write in another genre`?
A. The one problem my agent has always had is that I like to write a completely different novel each time. I don’t stick to one theme or one type of book. I love writers like Graham Greene who can do a little bit of everything, and I’ve always wanted to be like that.
Q. Please feel free to share more with us.
A. “I love my readers. They have made it possible for me to have the life I dreamed of back when I started out. If you are one of them – my thanks.”
http://www.crazyinalabama.com/
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”
I have had a wonderful response from other authors and plan on featuring an interview once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Robert McCammon, Sue Grafton,Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.
So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen.
Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander.
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“When in ‘doubt’, blow something up.”
