Three Submissions a Month for Twenty Years: An Interview with Melanie Faith

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Melanie Faith is a writer, editor, and teacher whose books about writing include In a Flash, Poetry Power, and Photography for Writers from Vine Leaves Press. She’s also the author of This Passing Fever from Future Cycle Press, a book of poetry set during the 1918 influenza epidemic; and Her Humble Admirer, a pseudonymous regency romance novel.  Her short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in over 250 publications, and she teaches online for Southern New Hampshire University and the WOW! Women on Writing program.  On top of all that, she’s a photographer whose work I’ve scattered throughout this interview.

Melanie’s also the developmental editor of my upcoming novel, MFA Thesis Novel, and after a few back and forth emails I realized she’d be a perfect person to interview about her creative work life…

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Why I Stopped Checking My Phone in the Morning

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My phone is kind of the bane of my existence.  Like, I know it’s useful for staying in contact with people and finding stuff online and navigating strange areas and all that jazz, but there are times when the drawbacks definitely outweigh the benefits.

For example, there are plenty of times when I’m at home or on the train or waiting for someone and I instinctively pull out my phone to check…something.  Maybe it’s a new text, maybe it’s the news, or maybe it’s social media—in any case, that smartphone time is usually time I’d rather be spending doing something else, and I usually finish these screen-staring sessions feeling distracted and scatterbrained.

Oh yeah, and the more I use my phone, the more I want to use it—like I can’t just use it a little bit.

And I’ve been trying to find ways to control that. Continue reading »

Novel Progress Update: Let the Drafting Begin!

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Lately I’ve been writing.

Like, not writing shorter pieces or book reviews or essays, but working on the actual new novel I blogged about researching but not yet starting a few months ago.  I’ve been working in larger chunks of 2-4 hours one or two days a week, which is a pretty good rate for me with all the things I have going on.  So far in 2021 I’ve set aside six of these writing sessions where I sat down at the computer completely free of distractions and just wrote, which also feels really good.

Now let’s get one thing straight: I’m not the kind of person who usually brags (or blogs) about his writing progress, especially in terms of word count—which is why I’m not posting my word count here.  I don’t post my word count because all too often it can come across as bragging—like the number of words someone puts down on the page are an indicator of their self-worth even if all those words suck hard.  Other writers can read that and feel discouraged and inferior that they aren’t producing the same number of words—I know because I’ve been there.

I once read an interview with the writer John Banville where he talked about sometimes spending an entire day getting a single sentence exactly the way he wanted it.  John Banville writes some pretty beautiful sentences, but the point is that Continue reading »

Eliminate Distractions by Unplugging Your Internet

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I wrote this article a few (well, many) months ago as a guest post for another blog…that didn’t end up getting picked up :-(  Rather than relegate it to a folder on my hard drive I decided to share it here.  While the app I mention in the opening paragraphs is old news, whether you eliminate distractions through internal or external means is an important question to consider when taking back more of your time.

A while back I read about an app designed to improve focus for writers.  Cleverly named The Most Dangerous Writing App, it serves as your word processing program and monitors how long since you’ve actually pressed the keys to write. After five minutes of inactivity the app will assume you’ve gotten distracted and your writing will start to fade; go for much longer and it disappears completely. How’s that for incentive to stay focused? Continue reading »

Is Too Much Freedom With Your Time a Bad Thing?

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Short answer: Sometimes.  Long answer:

Recently someone asked me how I felt about the idea of having total freedom to write or do whatever creative work I wanted—and whether that much freedom would be overwhelming.

The question took me back to the last time I had a lot of freedom with my time, after I left my job where my boss was crooked and before I started my current job in Japan.  I was editing the fourth or so draft of MFA Thesis Novel during the day, editing the first New Hampshire Writers Project Anthology in the afternoons, and in between that I was brushing up my Japanese, doing editing side gigs, and trying to read a lot of books.  I also had to find time to move all my stuff into storage and vacate my apartment.

In short, I was pretty busy. Continue reading »

I’m Getting Ready to Write a New Novel But Not Actually Writing It Yet—Here’s Why

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My writing’s been in this weird state of transition for a long time now.  That’s because, for the first time in nine years, I’m not actively working on some sort of novel.

Instead I worked on querying MFA Thesis Novel to publishers for ten months, and in between queries worked on some shorter pieces in various states of completion.  Having time to focus on these other projects has been great, but I’m realizing how badly I miss having a bigger, more involved project to work on, and how much I want to get back into the creative process of working on a novel.

But, as I wrote about in my post a few weeks back, I’m having trouble starting.

That’s partly because this novel idea is particularly ambitious—it’s like nothing I’ve ever written, and writing it the way I’m imagining it is going to take every bit of my writing skill, in addition to a lot of skills I’ve yet to get a handle on.
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Do You Have Trouble Starting New Projects, or Trouble Finishing Them?

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I’ve got a big writing project I want to start, but instead of actually starting it, I’m going to blog about it instead.

I’ve always had trouble starting new projects.  In high school I was a bad procrastinator who often watched TV and played video games when I should have been writing papers, and as an adult I developed productive procrastination habits where I do the million and one other things I have to do apart from the difficult project, thus creating the illusion of productivity.

I guess I just get intimidated by big projects.  If I start something new, I know I’m going to have to finish it, which can feel downright scary.

A lot of other people, though, start projects easily because they’re excited about them.  Unfortunately, when the initial excitement wears off Continue reading »

My Ideal Creative Work Schedule Explained

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I think a LOT about how we structure our days as creative people who have to be self-motivated. It pays to be efficient, and a lot of that efficiency comes from being able to slip into a work routine without a lot of hassle so you can get more done.

However, we also need to work around the realities of real life, which means that making a work schedule requires balancing the way you work best with your particular situation, especially if you have a Day Job.

My work schedule has changed a lot (as has my work situation) since I started keeping this blog almost four years ago (!!!!!!). I’ve worked from home grading standardized test essays, held a full-time office job, spent three months without a Day Job at all, and finally come back to teach in Japan. Each of these stages required adjusting to changing realities so I could make progress on my creative work. Continue reading »

Sometimes I Take on Too Much and Then Screw Up

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Let’s get one thing straight: we all make mistakes, whether it’s in our creative work or at our Day Jobs.  If you think otherwise, you’re living on another planet.

For me, the vast majority of my screwups happen because I take on too much and rush through things.

This wasn’t always the case—when I was younger most of my screwups happened because I was inexperienced, or because I wasn’t organized enough and forgot appointments or deadlines.  I improved the former issue by getting better at things I wanted to do well, and solved the latter by implementing a To-List system that’s served me well for the past nine or so years.

Now, though, I notice a different kind of problem: because I have so much going on, and so much of it coming from different directions, I tend to rush through some tasks so I’ll have more time Continue reading »

Texting While Working on Something Else is the Bane of My Existence and I Hate it So Freakin’ Much

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Before starting this post I responded to a text someone had sent me and then put my phone away on silent so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at.

Why?  Because I HATE getting distracted by texts when I’m trying to work on something.

My usual mode of working involves disconnecting from my phone and all the distractions that come with it when I’m trying to get something done.  This normally works pretty well…except when I’m feeling down, or having trouble with my work, or waiting for something important.  In these cases I’ll intermittently pick up my phone hoping for a new message that’ll boost up my energy,.

That kind of compulsive phone-checking is…not good, and I don’t like that it invades my work habits.  At best, these microchecks distract me even further Continue reading »

Stay-at-Home COVID-19 Creative Work Schedule!

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If you’ve read my earlier posts on Coronavirus in Japan, you may recall that cases here have progressed more slowly than in the States, and there haven’t been nearly as many.  Schools have been almost entirely closed since early March, and they’re slated to stay closed until the end of May at least.  In Toyama, most businesses are still open, albeit with limited hours and fewer customers, and most people seem to be practicing safe social distancing, mask-wearing, and hand sanitizing.

I too have been working from home since early April, and have started to understand what my friends and family back home are dealing with.  Not leaving your house…kind of sucks, especially when your house is a three-room apartment and you spend most of your day sitting on a tatami mat floor. Continue reading »

It’s About Prioritizing: An Interview with Haley Alt

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Haley Alt is a dystopian YA author whose three novels have sold more than 10,000 copies on Amazon under the name H. Alt.  (The first half of her fourth novel, Godless, is available for free on Wattpad.)  She recently moved back to the States after almost eight years in Japan, where she taught English, worked at a travel agency, and promoted sightseeing and did English translation for the town of Tateyama in Toyama.  I met her through my work on the TRAM art and culture zine, and sat down with her at a Starbucks in the suburbs of Toyama City, where we talked about religion, her upcoming move back to America, how scary it is when people actually read your work, and how Tom Cruise helped her sell a lot of eBooks. Continue reading »