Ask the Author: Meg Long
Answered Questions (5)
Meg Long
Hmm...the only current mystery in my life is how the Wolves sequel will turn out once it's done. 😆 The Mystery of Writing the Sequel would be a very angsty read with no plot. Just vibes about writing struggles. 😅
Meg Long
Hi Sarah! Thanks for your question! To research CTNFTW, I watched a LOT of videos and documentaries about the Iditarod sled race as well as read as much as I could on the subject. I tried to learn about everything, from how the sleds and lines function to how the dogs work together as a team. I watched a lot of training videos to understand how the dogs learn to pull sleds and be on a team. I also chatted with dog experts and owners whenever I had questions. I researched survival tactics for arctic conditions too. Hopefully, I got most of it right!
(My favorite Iditarod racer is Blair Braverman. Her Twitter is a super helpful resource and so fun because she's always posting about her dogs and racing and plus--so many cute doggo pics! 😍)
And sadly, I have not gone dog sledding--YET! When I wrote the book, I was still living in Louisiana so there weren't really any opportunities for snowy activities. 😅 But I really want to go and hopefully will get the chance to next winter!
(My favorite Iditarod racer is Blair Braverman. Her Twitter is a super helpful resource and so fun because she's always posting about her dogs and racing and plus--so many cute doggo pics! 😍)
And sadly, I have not gone dog sledding--YET! When I wrote the book, I was still living in Louisiana so there weren't really any opportunities for snowy activities. 😅 But I really want to go and hopefully will get the chance to next winter!
Meg Long
For me, feel like there's two kinds of writer's block. The first is when I sit down and am unsure what goes in the scene I'm trying to write. The second is when I am completely unmotivated to start writing. Usually the second one happens because the first one is true -- I don't know what's going on in the scene. Usually, it's because I need to back up and adjust something or throw something wilder into the scene to make it spark or I need to change up the characters/setting/etc. Doing one of those things generally gets me out of the funk and excited to write again. But there are always days where I am just not in the mood and that's okay too. If I try and force creativity, I end up with thousands of words that go nowhere. (Seriously, I have a lot of drafts stuck around 15k words because they weren't really the words I wanted or needed to write.) So, sometimes its okay to let yourself take time off from writing. These are just things I've discovered about my own process. Everyone's process is different and there's no right way to do things that involve creativity. :)
Meg Long
I got the idea for Cold the Night Fast the Wolves from a tweet thread by Iditarod racer Blair Braverman. She tells a hair raising story about something she saw late at night while running on the trail with her dogs. She thought she was hallucinating until her dogs saw the dark figure too... and that spookiness got me imagining and the book was borne from that!
You can still read the tweet here: https://twitter.com/BlairBraverman/st...
You can still read the tweet here: https://twitter.com/BlairBraverman/st...
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