Writing tag - My Writing Process Q & A

My Writing Process is a series of blog posts in which authors ‘tag’ each other to answer some questions about their work. Gill Hoffs asked me to take part, along with Shane Simmons.

About Gill Hoffs

Gill Hoffs grew up on the Scottish coast, studied Psychology, Biology and English Literature at the University of Glasgow, then worked with children with a variety of needs (ASD and/or EBD, mainly) throughout the UK. She married her best friend and they now live in Warrington in the north of England with their son Angus.

What am I working on?

I am working on the last 4 stories for my own part in Pure Slush’s '2014 A Year in Stories' which I am also editing. ‘2014 A Year in Stories’ is a multi-volume anthology and includes 12 volumes, each volume devoted to a month of the year, and therefore named January Vol. 1, February Vol. 2, etc.

Each writer involved is contributing one story per month ... so 12 stories in all, from 28 of the 31 writers involved. (11 from two of them, and 7 from the last.)
 And each of these writers is taking one day of each month – the 5th, the 13th, the 21st, for example - and setting his / her stories on that same day of every month.

So, for example, a writer takes the 10th – Friday 10th January, Monday 10th February, Monday 10th March, Thursday 10th April, etc – throughout the year. 

What we’re publishing is a series of stories from each writer that arcs across the whole year, involving the same character or set of characters. Twelve days in the life of that person or people. So every month, as the books are released, readers can dip into these characters’ lives. Like a serial.

You can find more about it here: http://pureslush.webs.com/2014.htm

How does my work differ from others of its genre?


What’s genre? God, what an awful question! What genre do I write? I usually write humorous stories ... so is humour a genre? Someone recently said my stories are ‘zany’, though I think ‘absurd’ is a better adjective. They are different from the humorous stories others write because they’re my sense of humour.

Why do I write what I do?

I write because life is better for me when I do so. I write what I do because I like to reframe life’s tragedies and absurdities in a funny way.

How does my writing process work?

I write to deadlines ... though I often miss them and then, don’t write. I often write because if I don’t, the ideas will disappear and the notes will just be disconnected scraps of paper. But still, I often don’t write even then. I usually write at night and sometimes into the early morning.

I have tagged Paul Combs and Stephen V. Ramey in this ...

Paul Combs lives in the not always literary state of Texas, and his ultimate goal (besides being a roadie for the E Street Band) is to make reading, writing, and books in general as popular in Texas as high school football. It may take a while. His fiction has previously appeared in Pure Slush, The Faircloth Review, and Postcard Poems and Prose.

Stephen V. Ramey is an American author of contemporary and speculative fiction.His short stories and flash fictions have appeared in dozens of places, from Microliterature to Daily Science Fiction. His first collection, Glass Animals, is available from Pure Slush Books.