Interview Me

Did you all know that I love The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron?  It’s a book/program about how to connect with your inner artist and get to work.  I love it because it says it’s okay for me to hate reading.  I know, everyone thinks it’s unforgivable for me to hate reading when I’m an author myself.  I think that reading dulls your mind.  Julia Cameron says it’s a tranquilizer.  I’m like, “Sing it, Sister!”  So, I’m going to write a little interview with the questioner being me (the angst ridden, oppressed me) and the interviewee also being me (the happy, free me).

Q.  Isn’t the first step to becoming an excellent writer reading?

A.  No.  Reading someone else’s work will never put you in contact with your inner voice.

Q.  But how will you write something of the same quality as Jane Austen if you don’t study her work until you accidentally start calling your husband Darcy?

A.  Who wants to gain their success by imitating someone else’s style?  She wrote about her day.  What’s so bad about writing about mine?  Do you hate me?

Q.  I’m the one asking the questions here.  Don’t you know that everything has been done and anything you create will just be a copy of something else?

A.  Wait a second.  Two seconds ago you were telling me to copy Jane Austen and now you’re telling me that I can’t use any material that anyone else has used in their writing ever?  The human experience has many similarities.  Naturally, there is going to be some overlap with other authors.  We are all humans.  If you make it too weird, or original, it loses its relevance.

Q.  You have written 18 novels and you only have one tiny novella up for sale.  Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

A.  No.  Putting my books online for free has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.  My readers spoke to me and encouraged me.  I couldn’t have written such good pieces without them.  And truly, I write better when I’m writing a serial.  I almost want to go back to doing that instead of putting books up for sale because I wrote excellent cliff hangers at the end of chapters when I knew I had to work my tail off to get my readers to come back the next week.  Living that way really suited me.

Q.  What about awards?  You hear about authors who can barely find publishers for their pieces getting awards and winning prizes.  Why haven’t you tried to do that?

A.  I hate reading.  Reading the rules of how to enter a writing contest puts me to sleep.  It’s the same with recipes.  I can’t make something that has more than nine ingredients or more than six steps.  I just get too bored.

Q.  And you don’t think you’re weak minded? 

A.  If I was really weak minded, I wouldn’t have been able to finish 18 novels.