Ask the Author: Allyson Rice
Answered Questions (7)
Allyson Rice
It was a dark and stormy night, with torrential rain battering the isolated cabin in the woods where I had gone to work on my book. Suddenly, there was a loud banging on the cabin door, and when I answered it, all of my ex-husbands were standing there together, with confrontational looks on their faces...
Allyson Rice
Hey, Luke! Thanks for the question. Well, I had been an actress for a lot of years. In acting, you're always the last piece of the puzzle in terms of the process of getting a project made. You don't really have any input in the creative process. (I had a yoga teacher years ago who called it a "table scraps" career, as in you're always waiting for someone else to throw you some scraps.) When I left acting to pursue other things I decided I wanted to do something where the creative process was up to me. I had a number of story ideas, so I started putting pen to paper (or, rather, fingers to keyboard). I loved the process of world-building. First, I started writing spec scripts, but as soon as I started writing a novel, I LOVED that process. With scripts, you're working in a very strict format/length/etc. But with books, you can do anything you want. It's up to you. I fell in love with that.
Allyson Rice
All I knew when I started was that I wanted to write a story where someone is trying to get somewhere, obstacles keep getting in the way, and the landscape is populated with funny supporting characters. A fun movie in the 80s called After Hours with Griffin Dunne and Rosanna Arquette was an initial, basic inspiration, but I wanted the location to be larger than one city. From there, it was all about answering questions that came up. Who is the protagonist, where is she trying to go, and why? Then whenever I hit a "well, that won't work because..." I had to figure out what needed to happen in the story to make it work. I also love the crazy characters in Carl Hiaasen's books, so that was in my mind when I came up with the supporting characters that my three protagonists run into on their strange journey. Basically, I wrote a story that I would love to read. A story that would make me laugh out loud throughout the entire book but also had some serious themes with emotional punch woven in.
Allyson Rice
I always have multiple projects going on at any given time. I'm a mixed media artist and photographer as well as a writer. So if I'm feeling writer's block with one project, I'll put it aside and work on something else for a while. Sometimes I'll go on a wandering day taking photographs. Sometimes just getting out in nature for a few hours does the trick. Doing something visual like art or photography uses a different part of my brain. Then when I come back to the project where I was feeling blocked the writer's block has shifted. Basically, I just work on whatever I'm feeling drawn to on any given day.
Allyson Rice
I'd keep the writing process private for a while, even if you're really excited about your idea(s). Hold the energy inside you without talking about it to anyone, so that the energy around the project grows inside you. Let the ideas percolate. Talking about it too soon with people can dissipate the energy. Then just sit down and just start writing. You don't need to know where the story ends before you start it. I had no idea where my novel was headed when I started it. And even if you think you know where it's going, be open to allowing it to morph into something else if it needs to go in a different direction.
And don't let anyone EVER make you feel like you aren't qualified to be a writer just because you've never done it before, or didn't study it in college, or didn't go to college, or... or... or... You are absolutely qualified to write because everyone has a story in them, and you're the only person in the history of the planet who has your unique way of perceiving something and putting it out into the world in your unique voice.
Also, once you feel like your book is done, hire a professional editor/proofreader. Seriously. Even if it takes you a little while to pay it off, it's absolutely worth the investment.
And don't let anyone EVER make you feel like you aren't qualified to be a writer just because you've never done it before, or didn't study it in college, or didn't go to college, or... or... or... You are absolutely qualified to write because everyone has a story in them, and you're the only person in the history of the planet who has your unique way of perceiving something and putting it out into the world in your unique voice.
Also, once you feel like your book is done, hire a professional editor/proofreader. Seriously. Even if it takes you a little while to pay it off, it's absolutely worth the investment.
Allyson Rice
I love that you can set your own hours, and you can write wherever you happen to be, no office needed. But the best part for me is the process of world-building. I love all the research that goes into it even when it's fiction–the discovery part of that is exciting to me. Even if you're not creating the world itself from scratch, like a sci-fi story, you get to choose the elements that are included in the world in the book, and how they intersect, and what ramifications those intersections create. You choose the people who are in the story (or maybe they choose you!) Like the Ricky Gervais movie "Ghost Town" where all these dead people started talking to him. Why? Simply because they realized he could hear them. It felt like that with a lot of the characters in my novel. They were talking to me about themselves because they realized I could hear them.
Allyson Rice
Now that I've just completed my exhausting move across the country I can get back to book promotion and outreach for my novel The Key to Circus-Mom Highway (Jan 3, 2023 release date). When I come up for air from that, I'll get back to work on my second novel already in progress, and my fourth women's coloring book with inspirational writing. I'm also working on a screenplay that takes place in 1920 in Indiana outside of Chicago and in Chicago itself–a mystery/detective story. I also continue to work, in the middle of my writing, on my mixed-media art projects and photography. I always have multiple projects going on in different creative areas so that if, for instance, I'm stuck on where to go next in my writing, I'll work on some art in a completely different area, then when I come back to the writing it's shifted my brain and I see the work with fresh eyes.
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