Write Now with Tracy Wolff

Who are you?

Hi! I’m Tracy Wolff, a writer based in Austin, Texas and the Berkshires in Massachusetts. I’m so excited to be here!

What do you write?

I write all kinds of things, but lately I’ve been writing young adult and middle grade fantasy novels, filled with magical creatures, fantastical myths, and a whole lot of things that go bump in the night.

I got started writing at an early age—when I was in second grade, I wrote my first short story and was completely and totally hooked on storytelling. From the time I wrote those first few pages with a princess and a rainbow and a happily ever after, I knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I’ve written eighty books on all different themes and topics, but the one thing they all have in common is a happy ending. I know that, in real life and sometimes in literature, things don’t always work out the way we want them to. But for me, hope is such an intrinsic part of the message I want to deliver that I steer away from writing endings that feel hopeless or sad.

Where do you write?

I tend to write in a bunch of different places, partly because each book likes to pick where it gets to be written (there’s always a place in my house that the words flow better for each book) and partly because I travel a lot for work and I’ve grown used to writing in airports, on planes and trains, and in hotel rooms late at night after a book signing or a conference. I like to write on my laptop, but I usually have a pen and notebook nearby to brainstorm, jot ideas down, or even to write a paragraph or two when I get stuck on the computer. Something about handwriting things usually gets my muse, and the story, back in gear.

When do you write?

When I’m on a tight deadline I write all the time, like twenty hours a day. That’s just how my brain works when I’m deep in a story. But my best writing time is usually around four or five in the morning until around eight or nine. I can get more (and better) words in in those four to five hours than I can get in for the rest of the day. One of my writing friends told me it’s because I conditioned my brain that way when I was a single mom with three kids and a teaching job. I would get up really early to write before I had to make breakfast and lunches and take the kids to school, so now my brain is trained to work really well in those hours.

Why do you write?

I do what I do because I can’t imagine doing something else. My brain makes up stories and characters all the time—when I’m driving, when I’m laying in bed, when I’m cooking dinner, when I’m grocery shopping. I’m always thinking what if this happened … and then I’m off, a new idea or story forming in my brain even (and by even, I mean usually) when I’m in the middle of writing a different book.

How do you overcome writer's block?

I tend to think writer’s block happens for two reasons—either something is going on in my life that is so overwhelming that I can’t turn it off or push it aside long enough to immerse myself in whatever world I’m creating or it happens because I don’t know what’s going to happen next in the story. Those two reasons are very different, so I have two very different solutions for them. For the first reason, when my real life is overwhelming for whatever reason, I try to be kind to myself. I set small time limits to write—five or ten or fifteen minutes, or maybe two or three hundred words at a time—so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. I may not be able to block things out for hours on end when my real life feels too big or too loud, but I can do it for fifteen minutes at a time.

For the second reason—not knowing what’s going to happen next in the story—I try to stop that from happening. When I’m writing, I don’t let myself stop at the end of a scene. Instead, while my brain is firing and the words are coming, I push a few paragraphs or a couple pages into the next scene, so that I’m not starting from scratch the next day. I’ve already started the scene and I’ve usually left notes for myself on where I want the scene to go, so I am ready to write the next day instead of trying to figure out what I’m going to do. Neither of these tricks are foolproof, of course, but they’ve helped me a lot through the years.

Bonus: What do you enjoy doing when not writing?

I love to read. I collect cookbooks and enjoy trying out new recipes. One of my favorite things to do is hang out with my boys, watching movies and comedy specials or playing board games. And I love taking my two dogs for walks and playing ball with them.

My thanks to Tracy Wolff for today's interview.