Please welcome the woman who has kept me writing for the last nine years, W.S. Gager!
What inspires you to write? What keeps you motivated to write? I can answer both of these with a single answer. I do need to be inspired to write. That means I have to be excited about the project I’m working on. I can write without it but I lose the joy of creating if I’m not excited by my characters. That inspiration keeps me motivated. I do have to push myself to get to the keyboard on some mornings or to not let other people distract me. When the characters are speaking to me, they keep me motivated!
What are your current projects? I have three projects I’m juggling. One is a mystery series that I have three of five books done but want each book completed before I market it. That is the one right now which least inspires me. The second is just finished and will be marketed to publishers this week. It is a nonfiction collaborative project that took three years but am glad to have a final product. The last project is the one that inspires me the most at the moment and is a romance and is in the very early stages but the characters are bombarding me day and night!
What is the most difficult project you’ve worked on? The nonfiction project has been difficult because I have to be honest about my feelings and how things have influenced my life. I’m very uncomfortable with that. Fiction is much easier because it is all made up and has only small bases in reality. The nonfiction is all about reality and belief.
Describe your ideal writing space. How does it differ from your actual writing space? My ideal writing space would be an office from HG TV with a nice desk in front of a window and lots of storage with everything in its place but easy to put my fingers on. The reality is I have a folding table for a desk covered with things I don’t have a place for. I’m working on the organization but it has been a work in progress for three years. Now I’m organizing again because my office will have a dual purpose as a bedroom for the summer. The organization I’ve attained will be shoved into boxes to make room for another person’s essentials.
Quick questions:
Campground or hotel? Hotel, definitely!
Favorite super hero? Wonder Woman
Favorite author? Catherine Coulter
Perfect vacation? Paris with my husband or a family cruise.
Angela Schroeder
Patricia Kiyono
Elaine Cantrell
Jeff Salter
Joselyn
Tonette Joyce
Four Foxes, One Hound 
Enjoyed your interview. I did not know your desk was a folding table. You don’t need a fancy office anyway. You spin your tales just fine with a folding table…So many projects. Congratulations on the non-fiction book ready for submission. I agree. It’s so much easier to make up the stories. Wishing you all the best and continued success in your writing career!
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JQ – thanks so much for the encouraging words. The last few days my chair has been a GIANT exercise ball. Lets just say my distractions end up with my butt on the floor! Thanks ,
Wendy
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Joselyn and the other foxes and hound, thanks so much for letting me ramble on today.
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So good to see you here WS! Looking forward to your next mystery.
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Thanks. I miss seeing you every month!
Wendy
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Big welcome to W.S.
Your comments on inspiration really resonated with me. I’ve just exited a fairly long (sev. months) spell which has consisted mostly of revisions and editing on three diff. projects (now under contract). So the time/energy for any NEW projects was significantly impaired.
However, during those months, I was still doing the weekly writing sprint with some friends and had been working on 3 or 4 new stories. At least two of those had reached the point that sprinting was not very effective because they really needed focus and organization and planning (before they can properly proceed). So, when one of the weekly sprints arrived, I realized I’d be spinning my wheels to work on them during a speed drill, when they really needed diagnostic attention.
All this is to say that I started a brand new story and have gotten really excited about it, and it reached over 12k words through sprinting almost exclusively. Alas, after 10 weekly sprints on that new story, I once again reached the point that it needs the diagnostics. In that process of structuring, I’ve added about 8k new wds. and it crested 20k just a day or so ago.
Hmm. I think my mind drifted. I was talking about being excited and inspired by story and characters. This one definitely has the front burner for now. Don’t know when I’ll get back to those other several (each with several thousand words).
But all this has diverted me from my primary comment — about unorganized work space. Somewhere in my cluttered study, I have a folder with detailed hand-drawn maps of my fictional town of Verdeville, in fictional Greene County. I really NEED those maps because many of my stories are set there. But in all the disarray, I CANNOT find them.
Do you suppose they’ve gotten mixed up in YOUR office mess?
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Jeff, I feel your pain, err writing and organizational issues. I’m using the box method. Each box is a work in progress. I like your writing sprints. I do really well with NANO WRIMo in November but then spend a year editing and fixing all the issues. I need to do more writing sprints to keep projects moving.
Wendy
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I’ve had at least one 1-hr sprint each week for the past 160 weeks or so. Have probably worked on two dozen different stories. With an average of between 1000-1100 words for each of those hours, that has been something around 176,000 new words… that I might not have otherwise committed to paper (well, screen). And, just so you’ll know, some of those (which I’ve sprinted on) have been completed, contracted, and even published… so not all are resting in their own files waiting for the maestro to return to them. Ha.
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Welcome to the blog! I think it depends on the subject matter as to whether or not non-fiction is easier than fiction; you have to have your information and interest in either one.
Keep keeping our Tuesday Fox on her toes!
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Thanks for the welcome Tonette. As for the. Keeping the Tuesday Fox on her toes, that is a tough…
Wendy
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What a great interview.
I think non fiction would be a tad more difficult to write.
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Thanks Angela. It may just be that left brain, right brain struggle between creativity and logic.Wendy
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