The 7Q Interview: S.P. Miskowski
AUTHOR BIO
S.P. Miskowski is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Her stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies including The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten, Looming Low,Haunted Nights, The Madness of Dr. Caligari and Darker Companions: Celebrating 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell. Her novel I Wish I Was Like You was named This Is Horror 2017 Novel of the Year and was a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award. Her books have received three Shirley Jackson Award nominations and are available from Omnium Gatherum and JournalStone/Trepidatio.
QUESTIONS
#1. Looking back, what’s one fiction book that you feel truly made an impact on your writing? Do you still gravitate towards that author?
#1. Many books have stayed with me as a reader. As a writer I think the one that really changed my sense of what fiction was and what it could be was Catch-22by Joseph Heller. I read it when I was a teenager and it blew my mind. The structure fascinated me. All of the action occurs in a circular pattern. We begin at a point of crisis aboard a plane, and then we move outward to take in more characters and more events. This happens over and over, with new information added each time. Our perception of that moment on the plane keeps changing, growing deeper and more complex, as we become aware of everything leading up to it and surrounding it. I haven’t read Heller’s other novels, but Catch-22changed my way of thinking about fiction.
#2. How do you feel about the use of sub-genres in the industry? How do you describe your work overall?
#2. The best answer is simply that I write fiction. It tends to be strange because my sense of the world is that it’s mysterious—since we can’t be omniscient, and we can never see ourselves, or our lives, in context. Human perception is limited to a sort of peephole. The world is vast and what we can see is both inadequate and skewed. I try to examine that, to think about what it means to be a person in a universe indifferent to people, and only glimpsed now and then from odd angles.
Sub-genres and which ones fit my work, I would say, I only consider when it’s time to write a synopsis of a finished book or story to try and market it. I might think—‘this is too dense, or the language, the syntax, needs to change to fit the story I’m telling.’ I don’t think—‘I’ll write an erotic fantasy, or I’ll write a horror sci-fi story.’ I never do that. A story comes to mind and I try to make it as interesting as possible. The category and marketing labels come later. I’m aware of trends in publishing but only peripherally while writing. The story comes first.
#3. What about your writing process do you think is unique or quirky? What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever received?
#3. It probably isn’t unique at all, but I find I have to write early in the day, preferably right after I wake up. It’s best for me to have that feeling of emerging from a dream into creating fiction. The alternative—reading the news, checking social media, talking with friends, answering email—clutters my imagination with a lot of practical information, and with emotions I can’t use while writing. I need a somewhat neutral state of mind.
It’s hard to single out the worst writing advice I’ve received. There’s been a lot of bad advice. As you develop your own way of working you have to learn how to get tough criticism from reliable sources, and how to filter out all the junk most people offer for questionable reasons.
Here’s an example. I was in a writing group in which a rather arrogant guy told another writer she had to choose one tense for her book and stick with it throughout. She was new and she took this advice too seriously. She revised her book entirely in past perfect tense—“they had seen the water from a distance and had felt its blue heat”—and it became unreadable. As a short story it might have worked stylistically but slogging through a novel written that way was just too much. I hope she learned the importance of variation, and that variation doesn’t necessarily equal confusion.
The point is—most rules are informative but should be applied strategically. You need to ask yourself how the rule serves your story. There isn’t a blanket tip or guideline that will automatically make your story great. You have to use the rules, and at times ignore some of them, making specific decisions all along the way. This is what a writer does, and it isn’t easy. That’s why so many people who want to write but find it challenging are seeking rules that never vary. A writer doesn’t follow a manual. You learn the manual and then set it aside.
#4. How does music and media factor into your writing? Do you feel it plays as much an inspirational role as literature?
#4. Films and books I gather around me while writing a book almost always turn out to be related to the themes and ideas I’m addressing. Not that I choose them for that reason. It just turns out, time and again, that what I’m watching and reading informs and challenges what I’m writing. This tells me I’m making subconscious choices, and I’ve learned the hard way to trust that.
Music plays a smaller role in my life than it did when I was a teenager or in my 20s. I seldom try out new music unless it’s recommended by someone whose taste I find interesting. My taste is eclectic but if I had to choose only one type for eternity it would be rhythm and blues.
#5. As an author, how much do you engage in social media? Do you feel it is more for your own entertainment, or for marketing and networking?
#5. Like most of my friends, I engage in social media far too much. I use it to stay in touch with friends, and to check in with other writers who may be grappling with the same things I’m facing on any given day. Social media is also the tool used by most of the editors and publishers who have contacted me and invited me to submit work. I post about my books but the marketing aspect of social media is severely limited unless a lot of friends re-post. It’s extremely difficult to reach enough potential readers to make a difference in book sales. For that you need a publisher with a good marketing plan, and you need the ability to meet new readers at bookstore events, festivals and conventions.
#6. Where do you see the future of horror fiction heading? In turn, what changes would you love to see, either socially or technologically?
#6. I think horror fiction is becoming more interesting as new voices are added, and different mythologies and storytelling tropes are added. The future of all fiction is diversity and complexity. I see this as a positive trend.
Every time someone asks about social and technological changes and how they affect fiction, I remember my ex-husband. He’s an artist and he used to say, “In the future we won’t have to write. We’ll have electrodes implanted in our brains and we can just think fiction and it will happen.” That’s a neat idea but I’m a nuts and bolts kind of gal. I always ask, “So what would that look like? How would that actually occur?” No matter how cool the concept, I expect it to go wrong. If people are involved, I expect it to go wrong, or at least to be less than advertised. We all love our ebooks but people haven’t given up print, and recently new independent stores have started opening, to satisfy our desire to browse among printed books. Things change but not as quickly as planned.
#7. What can you tell us about any forthcoming projects? What titles would you like to promote now?
#7. My story collection, Strange Is the Night, is available from Trepidatio. If readers like the intrusion of strange elements into everyday life, they might enjoy my stories. And I have a new novel, The Worst Is Yet to Come, scheduled for publication by Trepidatio this fall. It’s a return to the fictional town of Skillute, where horrific secrets are buried everywhere.
AUTHOR PIC
