From Miles from Brooklyn (see below)
Accepting the baton toss from Avra Wing’s thoughtful post on the continuing writer’s blog tour to whom I bow in thanks for her lovely work (After Isaac, for example) and for this invitation.
What are you currently working on?
Edits for a novel, the first volume of a trilogy; inching along with the second volume, which I spend more time thinking about than adding words to; returning periodically to a memoir that is probably finished draft-wise but needs a thorough edit; and,, moving to the back of the line for the moment, a nonfiction book or article or essay or just a blog post (the ever-shrinking idea) that is an easier mark for me because I’ve done a number of such books in the past.
How does your work differ from others of its genre?
“Genre: a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.” Which means that I don’t fit one. I write different kinds of work with different voices and different intents dictated by the material. So a novel does not read like a memoir or a nonfiction book and yet my style is likely similar across the forms. (I use a lot of parens, --'s, and series of independent clauses.) I suspect that this question was generated by someone who ONLY writes in one form – mysteries for example or children’s books – but I plead genre-less.
Why do you write what you do?
Why do I write at all? It’s an impulse that’s been driving me for as long as I can remember, that never recedes. Sentences, phrases, word choices are always running through my head. I’m waiting for the neurotechnology that captures such things effortlessly. They always sound so great when you think them and then when it comes time to do this, actually record them, well, maybe I don’t want that device after all.
How does your process work?
I write for a bit, whatever that period of time might be – fifteen minutes, four hours, sometimes longer—then call it quits for a while. When I come back to it, which could be a few hours later or next day or …, I start from the beginning again. That return to the starting line is a warm-up and a good editing pass as I see awful things that cannot stay while I try to go on, almost as if the garbage needs to go out before starting to cook again. It may not be the most efficient way to do it but it’s the way I’ve always written even while mixing metaphors.
Now I throw the baton to Miles from Brooklyn, aka Miranda Stamps and Jay Albany, who are chronicling their Australian odyssey in a four-wheel drive vehicle towing a camper trailer with Lake and Finn, their five-year-old twins; cancer doctor, mother, and writer Robin Schoenthaler; and the indescribably eclectic techno-seer and writer Susan Scrupski (that link taking you to just one of her writing venues).
