Wednesday, March 4, 2015

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Eric Lange, author of fantasy and science fiction

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.

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Thank you, Eric!

Learn more about Eric:
*Some language in Eric's material

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