Where do you work?
I work in my living room on the sofa. I admire people who can sit at a desk and write. I need to be physically as comfortable as possible, so that I can’t use the excuse of needing to stretch my back to take a break. I picked the living room as my writing space, as it’s the room with the most light. Even with its natural light, I will still turn on bright lamps. For some reason, I need brightness to write. Wherever I go, the dogs will follow me, so I have to accept that one of them is going to insist on having my attention and interrupt me at a key moment. Also, an upstairs neighbour has an uncanny knack for choosing the exact hour I start working to play the piano (badly). This makes me want to tear my hair out, but I try to remind myself that I’m just lucky to have picked a quiet artform to practice. She doesn’t have to hear any of my bad writing.
What is your writing routine? Are you a morning or evening person, do you have any rituals associated with your writing?
I’m a night person, so I can stay up as late as I need to work on something, but I generally start writing in the late afternoon/early evening. I write 1,500 words a day when I’m into something. Often that 1,500 words is terrible and needs to be discarded entirely, but I can’t relax until it’s done. Then I can take my time and keep writing at a more leisurely pace, or go back and revise what I’ve written. If I don’t get that 1,500 words in, I feel like I’ve failed myself that day.
Do you have any writer “habits” – bad or otherwise?
I used to be terrible with adjectives. That is, I overused them. Now I have to be careful of overusing certain verbs. At present, my characters tend to ‘hesitate’ a lot. I keep a small notebook in which I log the number of hours I’ve worked on my writing that week. It’s a little OCD, and I’m not sure what exactly it accomplishes except to pat myself on the back or make myself feel bad.
If you could develop one amazing writer super-power what would it be?
I would love to be able to write for eight or nine hours at a stretch. I wish I had that kind of creative stamina.
Do you ever experience writers’ block? And how do you reward yourself or celebrate after the completion of a story or manuscript, or on publication day?
So far, knock on wood, I’ve never had writer’s block. I can think of a couple of friends and a sibling who might wish I did (I ask them to read a lot of my work). I like to take a break after the first draft of something to clear my head so that I can go back to it cold. I will generally use that time to read an accomplished novel so that my standards are high when I look over what I’ve written. I also relax by walking a lot and watching crime documentaries. Although I reward myself with a break after a first draft is finished, when I’ve managed to get a story published, I’ve immediately worried it would never happen again, so quickly started on something new.
Any words of advice to other writers, who might like to be in your shoes – shortlisted for the award – next year?
I love that quote by Faulkner, “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go”. I have received an embarrassing amount of rejection slips. You just have to brush it off and keep writing. I would tell other writers that, in my experience, the quickest way to get over a rejected story is to begin a new one. It keeps hope alive.
Read Laura Demers’ shortlisted story, Sleeping Beauty, here