About JW Fagan:
I grew up in several places in the U.S. and Canada, before settling in upstate New York. I've loved writing since picking up a crayon in preschool, and contributed to high school and college newspapers, various media projects, wrote a blog for 9 years, as well as a good deal of technical writing for work. My day job is with software, computers and people, not necessarily in that order. ‘The Survival Job’ is my second book.
What inspires you to write?
Expressing myself through words is comfortable, and a natural way to share with others. I've had writing as an outlet in many forms thought my life, and enjoy the many outlets available. It's also free therapy.
Tell us about your writing process.
I typically write during my lunch hour at work, then at night for an hour or so. I don't force myself to write every day as some writers do. I have weeks I'm inspired and weeks that I'm not. But rarely do I go more than a few days without adding to my current project, or working on an outline of a different one. I need to outline so I have a sense of where things are going to go, but it's amazing when something heads in a different direction and opens new avenues for plot. Once I have a draft, I get index cards and start riffing ideas for alternate plot points to what I heave. I find this allows me to either defend a character or direction, or let it go. Another trick is I do google searches for images of people and "select" my characters and put them in a separate google doc, so I can refer to them. having a clear image of a real person helps me describe them consistently.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I listen to them, and try to assign a speaking pattern to each of them. I find this helpful in pacing scenes.
What advice would you give other writers?
There's a ton of writers out there, and so there's more content than outlets for the content. Marketing a book is a whole thing in itself but don't let it discourage you!
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I did explore the 'traditional' routes for getting work published, but it's a competitive and discouraging path. It's so easy to share your work, and it's actually an interesting part of the whole experience.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
It would be amazing for a artificial intelligence to develop that can consume and 'judge' a book. That might help works that are currently buried in the sea of self-published works to get noticed based on merit, and not money.
What genres do you write?: Fiction, humor, crime
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
JW Fagan Home Page Link
Link To JW Fagan Page On Amazon
Your Social Media Links
Goodreads
All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
