Ask the Author: Jeffrey K. Walker
Answered Questions (6)
Jeffrey K. Walker
I don't pretend to be experienced enough to give sage advice to new writers. I can just share a few things I've discovered so far.
1. Any words on the page--even truly malodorous ones--are better than words that are still flotsam in your anxious brain. Editing is a powerful thing.
2. Word counts matter because they represent accountability to the most important person in the writing process--yourself.
3. Beta readers come in many flavors. Don't make major edits based on each one's notes. I'm an old aviator and they used to say when teaching us to land airplanes, "Don't chase your instruments." If you see things are trending off course, make small corrections to get back on flightpath.
4. There's a lot of perverse pleasure in a) torturing your main characters relentlessly and b) killing your darlings.
5. It's hard saying out loud "I'm a writer" without sounding phony or pretentious to yourself.
6. Writing is a trade, not a lifestyle. Writers write. It's what we do.
7. Choosing to be a writer does not necessitate being neurotic. Or alcoholic. Or a crashing bore at dinner parties. It's OK to be a normal person, too.
8. Remember, your Work in Progress is infinitely more interesting to you than to the rest of the world. Modulate conversations accordingly.
9. It's OK to fall in love with your own characters. It's not cheating, since they're fictitious and there's almost always a little of your significant other in that character anyway.
10. There's nothing more satisfying than someone giving up nine or ten hours of their life to reading your novel and telling you they loved it.
1. Any words on the page--even truly malodorous ones--are better than words that are still flotsam in your anxious brain. Editing is a powerful thing.
2. Word counts matter because they represent accountability to the most important person in the writing process--yourself.
3. Beta readers come in many flavors. Don't make major edits based on each one's notes. I'm an old aviator and they used to say when teaching us to land airplanes, "Don't chase your instruments." If you see things are trending off course, make small corrections to get back on flightpath.
4. There's a lot of perverse pleasure in a) torturing your main characters relentlessly and b) killing your darlings.
5. It's hard saying out loud "I'm a writer" without sounding phony or pretentious to yourself.
6. Writing is a trade, not a lifestyle. Writers write. It's what we do.
7. Choosing to be a writer does not necessitate being neurotic. Or alcoholic. Or a crashing bore at dinner parties. It's OK to be a normal person, too.
8. Remember, your Work in Progress is infinitely more interesting to you than to the rest of the world. Modulate conversations accordingly.
9. It's OK to fall in love with your own characters. It's not cheating, since they're fictitious and there's almost always a little of your significant other in that character anyway.
10. There's nothing more satisfying than someone giving up nine or ten hours of their life to reading your novel and telling you they loved it.
Jeffrey K. Walker
That's easy. I get to sit around an make up stories all day. What a great job.
Jeffrey K. Walker
Hmmm... inspiration. I don't seem to have "Ah ha!" moments. Maybe I'm too old for that now, but I hope not. Mostly, I find a time period or a setting or an overarching situation that interests me and I create characters and stories that go with the milieu I've chosen. I'm also not a "pantser"--just the opposite--so I spend a lot of preparatory time doing research and outlining the story, setting, characters, etc in advance. I lay out every scene on an e-index card (I use Scrivener software) that includes a few lines about the setting and characters, any bright ideas I have about the scene, and the one or two objectives I have to achieve in that scene. Then I just write down through my virtual stack of index cards. When they're gone, I'm done with the 1st draft. This also seems to keep writer's block at bay, at least for me. I always know what the next scene is going to be and what I have to accomplish in it.
Jeffrey K. Walker
I just finished the second draft of the middle volume in my "Sweet Wine of Youth" trilogy, which is scheduled to come out in Sep or Oct. Book Two, "Truly Are the Free," is set in about the same period, 1917-1925, and tells the stories of three minor American characters from my first book, with great new settings and circumstances, like post-War Harlem and avant-garde Paris in the 1920s. You'll meet some interesting new characters, too. Several scenes dovetail closely with the first book, but they're designed to be read stand alone if you prefer. And I just started outlining the third book, "No Hero's Welcome," this week. So I'm staying busy.
Jeffrey K. Walker
Curiously, I blogged about this recently. Here's the link: bit.ly/2rlLtAU
I'm going to use a little of that blog post here.
I must be a terrible writer. Seems to me writers as a tribe spend a lot of time whingeing and sighing about how tortured we are. (And obsessing about adverbs, which is kind of weird when you think about it.) It’s all “Oh! I didn't make my word count!” and “Don’t you understand how I suffer for my art!” What makes me a terrible writer, I’m fairly certain, is that far from being tortured, I feel kind of privileged to be writing every day. I came to fiction writing later than most. I say fiction because I’ve been writing for a living most of my adult life. I’m a lawyer—about 75% of what we call work is mostly writing. Come to think if it, many of my former opposing counsel might claim I've been writing fiction for quite some time. But I digress.
Because I started in with serious (non-courtroom) storytelling 35 years after graduating from college, I began with much more self-discipline and far better organizational chops than I would have earlier in life. Yes, I sweat my word count, but I’m such an obsessive planner and outliner that I really don't have any idea what ‘writer’s block’ means. I always know what the next scene is going to be and what objectives I have to achieve within it. So getting the words down on paper isn’t all that torturous. More like tedious some days, but not that many. Therefore, it’s a fair critique to say that I might suck at writing. It’s unfair to say I’m not efficient at writing.
I'm going to use a little of that blog post here.
I must be a terrible writer. Seems to me writers as a tribe spend a lot of time whingeing and sighing about how tortured we are. (And obsessing about adverbs, which is kind of weird when you think about it.) It’s all “Oh! I didn't make my word count!” and “Don’t you understand how I suffer for my art!” What makes me a terrible writer, I’m fairly certain, is that far from being tortured, I feel kind of privileged to be writing every day. I came to fiction writing later than most. I say fiction because I’ve been writing for a living most of my adult life. I’m a lawyer—about 75% of what we call work is mostly writing. Come to think if it, many of my former opposing counsel might claim I've been writing fiction for quite some time. But I digress.
Because I started in with serious (non-courtroom) storytelling 35 years after graduating from college, I began with much more self-discipline and far better organizational chops than I would have earlier in life. Yes, I sweat my word count, but I’m such an obsessive planner and outliner that I really don't have any idea what ‘writer’s block’ means. I always know what the next scene is going to be and what objectives I have to achieve within it. So getting the words down on paper isn’t all that torturous. More like tedious some days, but not that many. Therefore, it’s a fair critique to say that I might suck at writing. It’s unfair to say I’m not efficient at writing.
Jeffrey K. Walker
I've always been fascinated by the First World War, more so than the Second World War. That might seem odd for an American. World War II was really the final act, the denouement of the First World War—the international order was fractured by the conflict and not very effectively put back together, leaving space and oxygen for fascism, Nazism, Stalinism. Initially, I set out to write a book about the terrible damage war does to the young men and women drawn into it and how they struggle with putting their lives back together after the war. At first, I assumed I’d set the book present day, using Afghanistan or Iraq. As I dug into the project, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was appropriating the stories of young men and women struggling today, real time. To a guy like me who spent 20 years in uniform, it felt a little wrong. So the First World War offered a compelling alternative setting, yet with many of the same problems that young veterans face today. I guess you can say I was a bit of a coward and that landed me in 1914 rather than 2014.
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