how writers do what they do: Nancy Fulda

One of my favorite parts of grad school (MFA in writing) was hearing guest writers talk. Inevitably in the Q & A someone would ask the “process” question. “Do you have a creative process? How do you write?” I loved that part. Every answer was so different.

I don’t get to hear writers talk very often any more—I’ve decided to remedy that here on my blog. Welcome to the first in a series of brief writer interviews on creative process! I’m interviewing a bunch of published writers from the Codex writers group on how they do what they do. I’m selfishly hoping, of course, to pick up some tricks I hadn’t thought of. It’s like industrial espionage, only all out in the open. How cool is that?

So, up first we have Nancy Fulda, short story writer and author of Dead Men Don’t Cry. It’s great timing because Nancy just found out she has won the Grand Prize in this year’s Jim Baen Memorial Contest for her story, “That Undiscovered Country.” Congratulations, Nancy!

Here we go…

Maya: Can you describe your writing process? For example, do you write every day, at a certain time, wearing a certain hat, sporadically binge write, highly caffeinated, when the kids are asleep, early morning, late night, in crowded cafes, alone in your bunker, seat of the pants, obsessive outline, sweating blood, taking holy dictation, etc?

Nancy: I’ve got three kids at home, one with strong autistic tendencies, so my writing time is anything but structured. I usually manage to write for an hour while the toddler’s playing and the older two are off at school/kindergarten. If I’m lucky, I’ll squeeze another hour in after lunch — if my nerves are up to the challenge of concentrating while my kids charge around the house with their friends who live down the street. Obviously, these are not uninterrupted hours, and in reality my writing time comes in ten- and fifteen-minute bursts interspersed with requests for glasses of water, conflict mediation, and the all-important application of band-aids.

Interestingly, the interruptions are one of the most productive aspects of my writing process. I seldom get stuck for long, because sooner or later a kid will come along and need something. The act of getting up and moving around jolts my brain cells out of gridlock, and by the time I sit back down I usually know what I need to do next.

Maya: I’m totally impressed with your ability to write and be interrupted. I haven’t found a way to do that without getting irritated at them (the kids), so I have to find time to write when they are asleep. How do you go to the far-away-in-your-head place to write, and still manage to return quickly, then go back, repeatedly, without getting irritated (it’s like a physical response for me, this irritation, like having some poke me with a stick)?

Nancy: I think I know what you mean about the irritation reflex because I have the same response sometimes. Some cute kid comes up to show me her drawing and I don’t even want to take my eyes off the screen to look at it because I’m deep in writer-trance-mode. It was worse when I was still pushing towards my first few sales. I was trying desperately to excel at writing and parenting, and felt like I was failing at both of them.

I got around that, mostly, by establishing a personal family-first priority. I decided that I was allowed to write only when nobody else needed me. This meant that I never even made it to the computer some mornings, but it also had the psychological benefit of freeing me from the irritation response. In my mind, I had given the kids the right to interrupt my work, and so I no longer felt irritated when they did so. (Or rather, if I felt irritated, it was the irritation of a woman who opens the door to discover it’s raining rather than the irritation of a woman whose upstairs neighbors have started renovating at 3:00 AM.)

I also got very good at leaping in and out of my own thought process. Before my first child was born, I habitually spent the first twenty minutes of each writing session reading back through my work from the day before, picking up my train of thought, and settling into the writer’s trance. After baby came along that didn’t work so well. I was lucky if I could slip to the keyboard for ten minutes at a stretch. Eventually I discovered that those twenty minutes of “warm-up” were a crutch. I thought I needed them, but I didn’t really.

Honestly, while I like to pretend to myself that I never grouch at the kids anymore, the simple truth is that some days are just better than others. I’ve gotten pretty good at judging my own internal state, though. If I’m too crabby to juggle kids + writing, I generally try to stay off the computer altogether. Which impacts my productivity but, well… life’s a game of trade-offs.

Maya: Have you ever had writer’s block, or given up writing for a while? How or why did you come back to it?

Nancy: I don’t think I’ve ever stopped writing completely, at least not since I made my first sale. My productivity goes WAY down whenever I’m pregnant, though. I just can’t manage to chug through the brain fog. Once the baby’s there, things get better. Typing one-handed is slow, but I find it far easier than typing with only half my brain cells.

Maya: Tell us about your recently released book!

Nancy: Dead Men Don’t Cry is a collection of my published writing over the last ten years. It includes stories that first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Jim Baen’s Universe, and Apex Digest, as well as my Phobos Award Winning Story “The Man Who Murdered Himself”. I debated long and hard about putting this collection together, because we all know collections don’t sell well. But so many people have asked where they can find more of my work that it seemed easier to assemble one than to send out a smorgaspord of links.

And — I love these stories. They were written with the heart, and they still speak to me. I can’t bear to let them languish in obscurity merely because their initial publication run has expired.

Maya: Thank you Nancy!

Dead Men Don’t Cry can be found at amazon, Smashwords, and at Nancy’s own site and cool service, the Anthology Builder.

Look for more author interviews on creative process in the next few days….