How did “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

This story began, as a lot of my flash pieces do, as an entry to a flash fiction challenge I do every year through an online writer’s group. The challenge is to write a flash fiction piece every weekend for five weeks in a row. However, the original draft of this one didn’t quite work, so I set it aside to revise later.

But then I forgot about it. For years. It sat in a folder where I keep story stubs until about a year ago, when I decided all at once to clean through the whole folder and see what was worth keeping. It turned out the long lapse in time had been exactly what I needed to see what was working about the story and how to give it a proper ending, and I revised the story to its current form.

What is your writing space like? What do you like to have around for optimal creativity?

I got serious about my writing space after working from home thanks to COVID and the quarantine years. Even though I don’t work from home anymore, I’ve been grateful for the upgrade to my writing space. Ergonomics is the number one most important factor to me. I’ve got a good chair, a setup that allows me to position my screen at eye level, and a walking pad to use when I’m doing the kind of work that allows for movement. I also have a great view out the window, and I keep a small shelf of brainstorming tools at hand (such as the wonderful Story Engine card decks). I always keep a handful of fidgets at my writing station, anything to keep my hands busy while I think so I don’t get tempted to zone off with my phone.

Speaking of my phone, I’m a devotee of the Pomodoro Method of writing, and use an app on my phone to track my twenty-five-minute writing chunks and five-minute breaks. The app serves double duty, since it’s the first thing I see if I get tempted to touch my phone during a pomodoro, which redirects me back to writing until it’s a real break period.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

It seems to me like most good advice on writing boils down to 1) read widely, and 2) write. But I wish more people understood that all published writing is an optical illusion, a magic trick that looks effortless but is in fact the product of endless rehearsal, practice, and revision.

I say this because too many people get caught in the comparison game, reading published work and having that sinking sense you could never write something that good yourself. I’ve fallen into this trap too, even with my own work! Sometimes I’ll reread something I wrote, and think, How did I ever write this?, forgetting how much the story sucked in its first draft and how much I struggled to get the words down, forgetting the critiques from my writing buddies, the rounds of revision, the editorial feedback, everything that goes into making a published story look its very best. A published story is the final iteration of many attempts to produce it.

But you can never write a good story if you don’t write a bad draft to begin with. There are no shortcuts through the Wall of Suck. Only by going through the Wall of Suck will you ever level up your craft. And in fact, this is what the Wall of Suck is good for, because like I said, all published writing is an optical illusion. There are really only iterations of the writing, as you carefully chip away all the bits of stone to unveil the masterpiece beneath.

So my advice would be not to fear the Wall of Suck. Write your story as badly as you have to in order to finish it. Embrace the Wall of Suck. It’s ultimately your friend.

What are you reading lately?

I’ve been on a nonfiction kick recently. I really loved Accountable by Dashka Slater, which examines an incident where a bunch of teen boys made a racist Instagram account featuring their Black female classmates. I thought it was a great piece of journalism about racism, social media, and all the levels at which this group of people grappled with the fallout—on individual, community, and institutional levels.

Somewhat related, I also just finished a pair of books on power, ethics, and justice. One, Corruptible by Brian Klaas, goes into what power does to people and institutions, and why the people who would make the best leaders just don’t seek positions of power. The other, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael Sandel is a book about moral philosophy and the ethical basis for various systems of justice.

Speaking as a genre writer, I love dipping into nonfiction because of how much it can inform all the worldbuilding we need to do as part of our work. I don’t know how my current round of reading will eventually make its way into my stories, but creative cross-pollination has always given me the best ideas. I’m excited to see what comes out of this latest batch of thought-provoking books.

What trends in speculative fiction would you like to see gain popularity in the next few years?

Ooo, I know! Can we have a unicorn boom in adult fiction? Serious, philosophical unicorns, a la Peter S. Beagle and Tanith Lee? Let’s bring back unicorns!