Interview
Interview with Tony Graff, author of Juniper Crescent
When I did the interview with Tony Graff, he mentioned that his way of writing and producing a book was entirely different from mine. This intrigued me – how different? In the spirit of things, I asked to do an interview with him to host on my website, since he was nice enough to do an interview with me. Below are his answers to the three main questions I asked him.
What gives you inspiration?
Anything can. As I'm developing the characters, I try to find every detail about them, down to movies they would watch and their favorite foods. Once I think I know them inside and out, the inspiration comes in the most unusual or common of place. It could be a song, a pair of earrings, the odd angle of a bent paperclip, the texture of a meal or the shape of an MP3 player. It feels so much like I'm surrounded by my characters, and they point themselves out to me in everyday objects. Sometimes they come out like multiple-personality disorder, especially when I'm working with powerful personalities. Sometimes they even show me images from their story like a Youtube video in my mind. These strong images stay with me until I write them, then rewrite them until it is right. As I'm outlining a book, I pretty much have to keep a notebook on me at all times for when some character decides to tell me something.
What's your usual modus operandi for writing?
I have to set goals for myself. Each day I sit down with my notebook and plan out my day, then set a word goal to accomplish. The biggest struggle in writing a story is sitting down to write, and setting the word goal pushes me to get something down. I've come to learn that there is no such thing as rewriting, only good rewriting, to paraphrase many, many authors.
Once I have it on paper, I have to turn my ideas over to my friends to look over. I find I get so wrapped up in my love affair with all these characters that I have to have someone else (usually several someones else) pry me apart and tell me what's not adding up. With my latest project, Hallow Terrace, I think I've gone through the entire manuscript ten times. That's how I make sure that the people who read my work fall in love with the characters like I did.
You said your approach was different than mine. What's so different?
I was lucky enough to find an agent willing to work with my manuscript. I spent months after writing Juniper Crescent sending out queries and submissions to various publishers and agents. That was a lesson in humility, but also passion. In total, I had 18 different letters of rejection before one person saw what I saw in what I wrote. From there, she used her connections to get a contract with Blue Planet Publishing, located in Texas. I hadn't even thought of self-publishing.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Write. Just write. It doesn't matter if it sounds like the best thing ever, just get it on paper. Once it's on paper, its real. Once it's real, then you have a point to draw from. That's why I fully support events like National Novel Writer's Month. It gets down to the basics of all people who tell stories: get it down. Write, write, write. Once it's written, you can always go back and tweak, edit, mold, and manipulate. Can't do that if it's still floating around in your head. Just write. You don't need another episode of House, or another round of Call of Duty. Write. You won't miss it, I promise.
It just goes to show that it takes all kinds. To visit Tony at his blog or see more of his book, “Juniper Crescent” please go here: http://tonygraff.com/