I don’t think I have a strategy. My pen is my catapult: I go along with it, shooting at words and ideas like birds. Sometimes my shot catches a flock, and sometimes the flock migrates, leaving the sky barren.
Sometimes when I write, I listen to good classical music. It can be magical—violins and flutes and clarinets morphing into words and ideas. I also find prompts from gazing out the window at a calm, blue sky while filling the silence around me with hard thoughts.
When I get stuck, I treat writing as a deity that needs constant libation. At such times—when I hit a dead end, when the door is slammed on me—I invoke the pantheons of writing deities in a long, circuitous walk to the countryside. I look for the key among books. A new vista of ideas opens up to me just by reading a book by a favorite author, or by looping back around backwoods and hills in the greenery of spring.
Hearing writers talk about self-imposed word counts makes me feel lazy. I’m a very slow writer. I don’t know if some writers are offended by criticism, but I value all feedback. I taught myself to write. I couldn’t identify my weaknesses unless someone was kind enough to figuratively punch me in the face and open their fist for me to see that there was no stone concealed within.
—Uchenna Awoke, author of The Liquid Eye of a Moon (Catapult, 2024)
Photo credit: Andrew Kilgore