Interview with Lyle Skains [lskains] on Whohub

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What did you first read? How did you begin to write? Who were the first to read what you wrote?

My first book was 'Winnie-the-Pooh' by A.A. Milne, which my dad gave to me a day after I was born. Took me a few years to learn to read it!

Once I learned - teaching myself on a set of primers my grandmother gave me - I read everything I could. I can't really remember starting to write, only that I wanted so badly to create stories like those that gave me so much pleasure.

I still have a few of the stories I wrote as a kid. My parents read them, and my teachers would laminate them and bind them so I would feel 'published.'

What is your favorite genre? Can you provide a link to a site where we can read some of your work or learn something about it?

My favorite is fantasy, not the sword-and-sorcery kind, but the contemporary urban stuff that tends to cross genres. Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint, Jim Butcher, Chris Moore, Diana Wynne-Jones, and Jasper Fforde are a few of my favorites.

You can see samples of my work on my website at http://lyleskains.com. I also maintain a blog about what's going on in my writerly life, available on the site.

What is your creative process like? What happens before sitting down to write?

I'm midway between an OCD outliner and a seat-of-the-pants streamer. I like to have a character in mind, a basic conflict, and a general sense of where the story is going.

For short stories, that's about all I need to get going. For novels and longer works, such as the digital stories I'm currently working on, I need a bit more planning, outlining, character and world building.

What type of reading inspires you to write?

Good stories, with compelling characters. Stories that are so creative, I kick myself that I didn't think of them first, and characters that I wish could continue on even after the last page.

I find this a lot more in really good fantasy or magical realism books than I do in many others, but maybe that's just because that's mostly what I read. I stay away from a lot of the bestseller lists, because they are often sadly stereotypical or predictable (thus appealing to a broader section of the masses...and thus selling more). I want to have a bestseller, sure, but not a cookie-cutter one.

What do you think are the basic ingredients of a story?

A character who wants something very badly, and obstacles that stand in the way of getting what they want. I.e., a character and a conflict.

Sometimes, what a character NEEDS is different from what they WANT. Sometimes conflict arises there. But in essence, all stories are character and conflict, however you choose to build them.

What voice do you find most to your liking: first person or third person?

Absolutely depends on the story. Point of view is a conscious choice for me, depending on how I want the reader to receive the story, how close to the main character I want them to be, and whether I want to be able to see things from other characters' POVs.

What well known writers do you admire most?

I think I answered that above, but here's the list again:

Neil Gaiman
Terry Pratchett
Chris Moore
Jim Butcher
Jasper Fforde
Diana Wynne-Jones
Larry McMurtry
Richard Russo

What is required for a character to be believable? How do you create yours?

They have to be real - with flaws and imperfections. Perfect characters are perfectly boring, just like in real life.

I often use character builders, creating detailed profiles of my main characters, particularly if it's for a project I'll be working on for a while. For short stories, it's no big deal to scroll back to see how I described them or where they live, but for novels it helps to have all the info in one reference file.

Are you equally good at telling stories orally?

Not a bit. I'm awful at talking out loud. I can't really even tell a joke, beyond a snarky one-liner here and there.

I write with my fingers, not my mouth.

Deep down inside, who do you write for?

Is writing a form of personal therapy? Are internal conflicts a creative force?

Sometimes. Moreso when I first really started exploring real conflict, as opposed to early fumbling attempts focused purely on plot.

After a while, though, you run out of your own neuroses to write about, or at least I hope you do. I start to get bored when it looks like all my characters are just different representations of my own flaws. It's nice to pick other people apart every once in a while.

Does reader feed-back help you?

Always. I love to hear what works, what's confusing, whether people would read on or look for more. I can interpret and evaluate and make useful sense out of almost every comment.

I absolutely invite readers to comment on my blog (http://lyleskains.com/Blog.html) or contact me (http://lyleskains.com/Contact.html) with feedback on my work!

Do you participate in competitions? Have you received any awards?

A few, but not many. They get expensive, and I'd rather take those fees and apply them toward sending stories to agents and publishers.

But at the moment, I'm a quarterfinalist in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Contest. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Do you share rough drafts of your writings with someone whose opinion you trust?

Never. I try not to show anyone anything until I have a complete draft I've revised a couple of times, something I'm relatively happy with. No sense in getting people's opinions on something that's not really even born yet; it's like asking people if the fetus in your ultrasound printouts is cute.

It drives my husband crazy, though, waiting till I'm ready to show him something.

Do you believe you have already found "your voice" or is that something one is always searching for?

I think it's something that grows and changes as I mature as a writer. Every time I sit down to write something new, I'm absolutely certain I've lost it completely, and that every word is rubbish, and not nearly as good as what I wrote last year, or the year before.

But every time I come back to it, it's there. Developing, changing, evolving, but still there.

What discipline do you impose on yourself regarding schedules, goals, etc.?

That's difficult, because it changes with life circumstances. I'll have periods in a steady job with a lot of free time, and so dedicate hours a day to writing, and I'll also have periods where I'm scrambling for every penny, or studying toward a degree, with barely 20 minutes a day to set aside for writing.

I'm in one of those latter periods right now, studying for a PhD and teaching quite a lot. I do enforce the 20 minutes of writing a day - timed sessions, where I set an alarm or play a 20 minute music list and WRITE - and that's working pretty well.

What do you surround yourself with in your work area in order to help your concentrate?

Not much helps me concentrate. The most difficult thing is that I write on the most distracting item in my home: the computer. One keystroke takes me to the internet, where I can spend hours doing nothing.

So the timed sessions force me to concentrate in short bursts, after which I get a little net-surfing reward.

Do you write on a computer? Do you print frequently? Do you correct on paper? What is your process?

I write on a computer, almost never longhand anymore. The process of drafting longhand, while a romantic notion, just wasn't efficient enough for me. I can't write longhand fast enough to keep up with my brain, but I'm a pretty quick typist.

I almost never print, either, unless I'm working on something and need to take it where I won't have computer access. Even then, I only print a few pertinent pages.

What I do is backup everywhere (an external hard drive at home, and on off-site server space) so I never lose my work.

For revision, I'm just as happy revising on the computer as I ever was with a print-out. I do always try to read my work out loud - it helps me catch a great many more issues than reading silently, from screen or page.

What sites do you frequent on-line to share experiences or information?

I used Critique Circle quite often before the current status of my life usurped all my time. I pop over onto authors' blogs, and agents' blogs, for inspiration and motivation, and to keep up with the industry.

Writer Unboxed is a nice, general writers' resource, as it collects articles, experiences, and interviews all in one place. Discourse via comments is useful as well.

What has been your experience with publishers?

The literary presses I've worked with have been great - open, friendly, and community-oriented. I'm glad to keep up the relations I've formed with those editors.

What are you working on now?

I have two major projects underway. One is a novel that is about half-finished, based on some cultural mythology from New Mexico, where I'm from.

The other is my PhD research: writing a novel/series of interlinked short stories with the intent to adapt to digital format, adapting to digital format, and publishing both versions in parallel. For more on this project, including a lot of notes on the process, trials, and tribulations, you can follow my blog at http://lyleskains.com/Blog.html

What do you recommend I do with all those things I wrote years ago but have never been able to bring myself to show anyone?

Pull them out. See if you find anything in them you like. Rewrite if need be.

Show them to strangers, maybe on an online critique group. Send them out.

If you're too horrified by them, write something new!

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