Where Stories Are Made: Tim Waggoner

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Where Stories Are Made is a new feature here at Book Chick City. It's where the author takes us on a tour of their writing place, be it an office, coffee shop or park and tells us about their writing day and rituals. My guest today is Tim Waggoner...

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Like a lot of writers, the first and most important place I write is inside of my head – which works out well since I usually take it with me wherever I go.

Joking aside, it’s an important point to make. Some writers need to compose text in order to work out their ideas, so they’re bound to their notebooks and computers. But I develop plots, create characters, and devise dialogue while I’m driving, walking to class, or sitting in boring meetings. In a very real sense, I’m always writing, even when it looks like I’m just staring off into space, glassy-eyed and expressionless.

Once during a week-long writers’ conference where I was one of the instructors, the faculty gave a reading and afterward did Q&A with the audience. One person asked me when I write, and I truthfully answered that I was working on a scene for my novel right then. Everyone in the audience laughed, but I was serious. I’d only been half paying attention to what my fellow faculty had been saying. The rest of my mind was busy working on story stuff, as usual.

I began seriously pursuing a writing career twenty-eight years ago, and for a good portion of that time I wrote in a home office. But for the last few years, I’ve found it more difficult to write at home for several reasons. For one, I currently live in a two-bedroom apartment, so I don’t have a home office. When I do write at home, I set up my laptop on the dining table, right by the patio door, with an effectively distracting view of the outside world. It’s March now, so the view isn’t as green and lovely as in spring and summer, but it’s still just as diverting, so I often keep the blinds closed when I write. 

Desk at home

Unfortunately, because I’m not sequestered, my family members are often around, and while they do their best not to distract me, it’s difficult for me to ignore them. (Though my attitude toward our two cats is more one of benign indifference, so it’s much easier for me to ignore them.) Because I’m tempted to interact with my loved ones, it’s harder for me to focus solely on my writing.

And when I am alone, the apartment is just too damned quiet. Yes, I know this seems like a contradiction, but I have trouble concentrating without some kind of background noise. For some reason, music doesn’t work well for me to write by, though I sometimes listen to it to help get me in the mood for certain projects. For example, when writing the Nekropolis novels, I often listen to goth music of the sort you might hear in that dark city’s clubs.

View from home

So... since I can’t write easily in my place with people around or when I’m alone, I usually go out to write. I’m a writing professor during my day job, but I can’t write in my college office in between classes. Too many people know where to find me – students, the department secretary, my boss, my colleagues... So by necessity I’ve become one of those dreary clichés – the writer who writes in a coffee house. Noted SF author John Scalzi wrote a wonderful book on writing called You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop, but seriously, I really do get work done there. There’s plenty of background noise and activity, but no one there requires my attention – as my loved ones and people at my college often do – so there’s no temptation to stop writing, and there’s a certain energy to being out in public that I draw on when writing, almost as if I’m a psychic vampire who feeds on others’ energy as I work. (Don’t worry – I’m a nice vampire, though I steadfastly refuse to sparkle.)

I especially like writing in Barnes & Noble cafes because of the bookstore ambience. I’m surrounded by books there, some of which I use for research and reference. What could be more inspirational? And if I feel like what I’m writing at the moment is a bunch of crap that no editor in his or her right mind would ever publish, I can walk over to the SF/Fantasy section and see a few of my books on the shelves and remind myself that maybe I don’t completely suck at writing fiction.

Me in Barnes & Noble

Of course, the bad thing about B&N’s is that they eventually close, so if I’m on a deadline and need to keep cranking out the words, I’ll head for a twenty-four-hour Starbucks next door to my favorite B&N. How’s that for writerly convenience? This Starbucks is livelier than most – a lot of chatty teens and early twentysomethings gather there and it can get a bit raucous at times, but that just makes for a better feeding ground for us psychic vampires.

Students in my creative writing classes often ask me what’s the best way to deal with writer’s block. One of the tips I give them is to try writing in different places, at different times, using different methods. Sometimes finding the right environment to work on a particular project on a particular day is how you can start the words flowing and keep them coming. So if I can’t work at home, I go out. If I can’t make progress on my laptop, I write by hand in a notebook. If the teens at the twenty-four-hour Starbucks start to annoy me – “OMG! You won’t believe what HE said to HER about THEM!” – I go home and write. Then point is to be versatile, flexible, and above all, keep writing.

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Nekropolis: out now

Dead Streets: out now

You can find out more about this feature HERE

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**Next week on 'Where Stories Are Made': Linda Wisdom**

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