Dear Glimmer Train Readers and Writers,

From The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction:

AMY BLOOM, interviewed by Sarah Anne Johnson:

What is your process like when you’re writing? Do you have a set time to work each day?

No, not really. I tend to really get going later in the afternoon. But I can do a lot of puttering. I’m an expert putterer. Plus I have three children, so I can interfere in their lives. I have aging parents. I have plenty to do if I don’t want to write. I can keep myself busy for a couple of days without going anywhere near my computer. But basically, when I have work to do, I usually buckle down in the afternoon. Sometimes I’ll get a whole day in, but it’ll be toward the end of the day. I’ll work an eight-hour day, but never more than a couple hours at a time at the desk. I have to walk around, check the mail, make a cup of tea. So it’s an eight-hour day that unfortunately starts around four in the afternoon.

BLOOM, Amy. Short-story collections: Come to Me, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You. Novel: Love Invents Us. Stories in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Vogue.

DANIEL WALLACE, interviewed by Linda B. Swanson-Davies:
I worked every morning from 8:30 or 9:00 to 12:00 or 12:30 or 1:00, depending on where I would be able to stop. Every single day, regardless of whether I had a novel or a story or nothing. I would be there at that time just like you would go to your job at the 7-Eleven, even though you don’t know if any customers are going to come. You have to be there just in case. And so I feel like what had happened is I trained myself to be open or available at that time to make these voices accessible.

I can’t just sit down and start writing. I write at certain times now. I really do feel like my creative mind has been trained to be available at that time and kicks in at that time.

WALLACE, Daniel. Novels: Ray in Reverse, The Watermelon King, Big Fish. Stories in Prairie Schooner, Story, Shenandoah.

MARGOT LIVESEY, interviewed by Ellen Kanner:
I'm a morning person. As I've got older, I've tried to learn to be more flexible. I used to have so many things in place. Up to a certain point it became prohibitive. If it was quiet and if the phone didn’t ring, then maybe I could write a sentence. I try to be less rigid as I get older.

LIVESEY, Margot. Story collection: Learning by Heart. Novels: Homework, The Missing World, Criminals, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona. Emerson College.

MELANIE BISHOP:
Some people work best late nights, others early mornings, some work crazy hours and then take several days off, while others respond best to a more balanced approach. I doubt any two writers maintain identical routines, and many writers I know don’t have a reliable routine, as in one that never changes. After ten years of college teaching I am currently on a year-long sabbatical from my job. My goal is to finish a book manuscript this year. Initially, I was frightened by how much time I had before me. A couple of days into the actual writing, I managed to let that fear silence me. There is always something else to do, some distraction to keep you from the misery that surrounds some of us when it comes to our craft. It took me a couple of months of floundering around with a new scheme every week before I found what really works best for me. And I would not go so far as to say I’m now wedded to this system. It could very well change, but it’s working for now. Instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, I try to get up the first time I wake, often four or five a.m., always pre-six.

I make a cup of coffee, feed the cats, and go into the room where I work. I find this such a rich time of day. With the blinds open I get to watch the sky go from dark to pinkish blue. No one else in the house is awake and the silence has a different quality to it. Dawn is, symbolically, a beginning, a good time for creative energy. I find two hours of this early morning time to be more valuable to me than four hours of time later in the day. Later, I’m already distracted by other things, and have already expended much of my daily quota of energy on miscellaneous tasks. At that point, it sometimes feels impossible to get the jumpstart I require. But in the early morning, pre-dawn time, I’m just right there. No having to travel or arrive. Straight from a dream state to the paper and pen, by way of a strong cup of coffee.

A close writer friend of mine could not conceive of the routine that works for me. He likes to write late nights, after the rest of the world has gone to bed. He might read or watch some television after dinner, and then begin writing at eleven or midnight and go to three or four a.m. This is his most productive time. Everyone is different. Find what works for you and don’t be rushed about it, and know that your own routine may change, just to keep things interesting.

BISHOP, Melanie. Founder of literary journal, Alligator Juniper. Anthologies: Florida Review, Puerto del Sol, Greensboro Review, Love's Shadow. Prescott College.

NOMI EVE, interviewed by Linda B. Swanson-Davies:
Now I’m at a point where I’ve been writing a little amount of time a day, from half an hour to two or three hours, and producing tons of stuff, good stuff. Other times, I need a month to write a hundred pages no one will ever see. Of sitting there every hour of the day, doing it. And then the next month, I can write easily again. It just demands different time from me. Sometimes I’m incredibly productive in half an hour. Other times, I really need all day to get a paragraph.

Do you think that’s related to the material?

Very related to the material. Very related to the material.

EVE, Nomi. Novel: The Family Orchard. Published in Village Voice, Boston Globe, International Quarterly.

ERNEST GAINES, interviewed by Michael Upchurch:
I do rewrite a lot, and my books are written over a long period of time. For example, A Lesson Before Dying was written between 1985 and 1992, but only during the summer months—spring and summer—because I was teaching at the University of Southwestern Louisiana during the fall and winter.

I’m never in too much of a hurry. I write every day, five hours a day, when I’m writing. I never try to deliver a number of pages or number of words, as Hemingway did, counting every word or page. I just write five hours a day and then I put it away. If it sounds good the next day, I’ll let it stay there until I go through that entire draft. If it doesn’t, I’ll just go over it all over again the next day, until I get the feeling that it’s what I want. I wish I could produce faster books and bigger books, but I’ve never been able to do that.

GAINES, Ernest J. Novels include Catherine Carmier, Bloodline, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, In My Father's House, A Gathering of Old Men, A Lesson Before Dying. Essays: Mozart and Leadbelly.

We've recently accepted these stories for publication in Glimmer Train Stories (note):

• "Soledad" by Al Sim
• "Walking on the Moon, Or One Small Step for Ivan in Which He Pretends to Have Cancer So He Can Get His Daughter Back and Start Over, as if He Had Never Been a Drunk and, Therefore, a Bad Father to Begin With" by Christopher Bundy
• "Blood Rush" by Paul Carroll
• "Morth" by Marc Basch
• "Ashes Rain Down" by William Luvaas
• "The Light on the Windows at Marienburg" by Ingrid Hill
• "Bad Numbers" by Evan Lavender-Smith
• "The Dearborns Aren’t Home" by Colleen Curran

Earlier this week writer Ken Hull had some good questions that many writers, getting started, have. (Ken’s questions and comments are in italics.)

Does the story to be entered need to be edited first?  I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, but I'll answer what I think I understand: You absolutely should carefully review your story before submitting it. Be sure to use a spellchecker. Read it out loud, maybe ask someone else to read it out loud to you--it'll help you catch errors and rough spots.  Although we don't reject a story because it has a few typos or punctuation errors, if it seems evident that you don't take your own work seriously, we may be less likely to as well. All that said, if we accept a story, we read it and copyedit it and read it and proof it endlessly so the chances of they're being printed when their is the right word are very, very small.

Will I retain all rights to the story entered regardless of the competition outcome? If we accept a story for publication, we reserve first-publication rights and non-exclusive reprint rights only. You are the copyright holder and after we publish the piece, you are free to do anything you like with that story so long as you don't give away our non-exclusive reprint rights.

If chosen, will I still be able to use this story for my own publication? Absolutely, after we've printed the story.

What will happen to my entry whether accepted or rejected? If the story is accepted, we will begin to prepare the story for publication. If the story is not accepted, you will be free to send it back out into the world to find it a home.

Thank you for taking time to answer my questions. I've never done anything like this so please forgive my lack of knowledge. No problem at all, Ken. Please let me know if I may use your questions as stated in our bulletin and if you'd like your name and city mentioned or no?

A few more questions followed...

Yes, feel free to use my name. The first question should have been stated to mean "edited by a professional" first—I realize I need to present it to you in a final and well groomed form, but thank you for that clarification. Also, what exactly are first-publication and non-exclusive reprint rights? When we buy "first publication rights," it means you are selling us the right to be the first people to publish your story.

What do you mean by this: "so long as you don’t give away our non-exclusive reprint rights"? If you sign a contract with us for a story, if you subsequently sign a book contract (that includes that story) with a publisher, you may need to specifically say that Glimmer Train's non-exclusive rights to reprint the story must be respected by this contract. It's generally not a problem, just needs to be stated.

Thank you, Ken, for the good Qs!

You can view the survey results from our last Bulletin. Look for Bulletin 2 at the top of the page and click a link to view the results.

First thing in the day is the most productive time for 46% of you, and, interestingly, roughly equal numbers find “into the night” to be their most and least productive writing time, and just about the same again regarding “early, when the world is asleep.”

We've noticed that some people are including their email addresses as well as their names in their survey responses, which is fine. (Absolutely no pressure either way. The surveys are an opportunity to constructively communicate at whatever level you choose.) It's given us an idea we'd like to try out: Letting you tap into the broad range of experience and perspective of your fellow writers by proposing survey questions which—next survey—you will have the opportunity to answer for each other.

So, the next survey!

We hope you’ve gotten some value from Bulletin 3. Adding bulletins to our lives is making them much more complicated—we’re now working ourselves and our husbands pretty hard; look out, Henry! (Susan’s 11 year old.) But your responses suggest you’re liking this, and we know we’re enjoying learning from you guys.

We’re so glad you’re part of Glimmer Train!