Who are you?
My name is C. L. Lauder, I’m a YA author and fantasy junkie. I live in Hong Kong with my husband, two children, and a family of albino geckos.
What do you write?
I started writing when I was in junior school. I remember I had this clipboard that I would carry around with me, scribbling notes like a disgruntled traffic cop. One day, my best friend’s mother took pity on me and typed up the entire manuscript. It was a foundational moment, holding all that neatly stacked paper in my hands—I felt about ten feet tall. Later, in boarding school, I would write just before lights-out, and pass pages around the dorm for the other girls to read. I write fantasy because I love the freedom of creating new worlds, that sense that anything could happen and probably will.
Where do you write?
My favourite writing spot is at the top of a small mountain, handily situated right beside our building. I’ll wake up at 5:30 in the morning and jog to the summit with a backpack loaded with provisions, and I’ll type away on my MacBook Air until the natural air-conditioning gives out and the heat makes my thoughts sluggish. I use Excel when plotting–I’ve built up a nice template over the years, but Scrivener is my go-to writing app because it lets me jump around from scene to scene without too much scrolling.
When do you write?
I’m most creative in the early mornings or after a nap. I’m an early riser, so I get in at least two hours of writing before 9 a.m. If I have a whole day for writing, I’ll write in two-hour sprints, taking breaks for exercise or naps. On a good day, I might write three thousand words, but if I can’t spare more than two hours, I’m happy with five hundred words. I work faster when I have a daily goal to hit, which is one of the reasons I do NaNoWriMo every year. The daily word count submission really motivates me to get the work done.
Why do you write?
For me, writing is an addiction. If I can’t write because life has me doing other things, I get twitchy. Luckily my family are pretty good at spotting the signs and will circumvent the fallout by ushering me into a room with a computer and quietly closing the door.
How do you overcome writer's block?
Since my books are always plotted upfront, scene-by-scene, I’ll rarely suffer from proper writer’s block, but there are days when I feel that my creativity is drained, and it’s hard to write anything that excites me. When that happens, I go for a walk with my trusty voice recording app and try to brainstorm some intriguing scenes. By the time I get back, I generally have some good material to get me going again.
Bonus: What do you enjoy doing when not writing?
When I’m not writing, my favourite thing to do is hang out at the beach. In an ideal world, I’d be reading and sipping cocktails, but my reality of building sandcastles and diving the waves with my kids is just as awesome.
My thanks to C.L. Lauder for today's interview.