Tell me a about yourself. What got you
started in writing?
I have always had a love for fantasy and
science fiction, and have made a few attempts to write a novel with no background in
creative writing. I barely got past a few pages on each try. I just didn't have
the patience for it at the time.
Sometime last August, I stumbled upon Phillip
Trippenbach’s blog 30SecondSciFi, in which he was writing a science fiction
short story every day for a year. He was wrapping up his challenge and which
gave me the luxury to read through the majority of his work without waiting for
it to come out. The concept of a short story a day stood
out to me and I turned
it over in my mind for several weeks. Then, on September 14th, I
took the plunge and created 30SecondFantasy and started my own year-long
journey of writing a daily fantasy.
How and where do you write? Do you prefer a lap top or do you prefer writing freehand?
I use my home PC and Google Docs to
write all of my stories. My day normally involves me working at the office,
thinking about a story outline on the drive home, and then knocking it out once
I am home. I then give it a read-over and pass it off to my fiance' for
editing, who is an absolute asset to my whole process. From there it goes up on my blog.
What's your favorite part about
writing? Your least favorite part about writing?
Since I write mostly self-contained
short stories, I love being able to have the freedom to jump around to
different worlds and different characters. It keeps things interesting and
allows me to try out different types of narratives, settings, themes, moods,
etc., without it ever getting tiring. My least favorite part of writing is the
endless amount of revisions I think up while creating a story. I constantly
feel the need to self-edit and if I am not careful, I will spend well over an
hour for just a 500 word story editing it without being satisfied with the
result. Somewhat fortunately, I have a schedule to keep and stories to go out
on a strict timeline so it forces me to keep the edits to a minimum.
How do you come up with your
characters? Why would readers want to get to know them?
This
varies between each story. More often than not, they are ordinary people forced
into challenging and extraordinary circumstances that require them to use
whatever trick they might have up their sleeves. I aim for likable characters
who do interesting things and then let the whole situation play out naturally.
I think readers would want to get to know them because they are interesting
without being absolutely unbelievable.
What types of marketing do you do to
promote your writing?
Right now I’m using social media
entirely. My blog is hosted by Tumblr which has allowed me to grow a following
of dedicated and fantastic readers that I interact with on a daily basis. Other
than that, I use Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.
How do you schedule your writing
time? When do you write?
Since I
have to write a new story every day, I always have a niggling voice in the back
of my head telling me that I need to write something before midnight. I set
aside thirty minutes to an hour every day, normally after work, and knock
something out.
What are you currently working on? Do
you have a new book out?
My main project is my blog, 30secfantasy.com in
which I write a short fantasy story every day and post it there. My plan is to
do this for a full year and I’m almost 150 days into it. My goal is to compile
all of my works into an anthology that is formatted better than a blog.
Do you
have a project on the back burner? Tell me about it.
I've been dying to add some art to a few
of my stories and I have been investigating the best way to do this. I would
love to be able to put out a fully-illustrated story, I just need to find the
time to set everything in order.
What would you tell a beginning
writer who wants to publish but doesn't believe he/she has enough talent?
I stared my project with absolutely no
creative writing experience besides one or two failed attempts in writing
something. Since starting my project and keeping up with it, I have already
written almost 50,000 words, over a hundred stories, and have only felt myself
improve as I move forward. It only takes a small bit of time out of my day, but
I feel that writing every day is extremely important to getting over the first
jitters one might have when starting something new.
***
Thank you, Eric!
Learn more about Eric:
*Some language in Eric's material
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