Photo © 2010 Jennifer Parker Photography
Today we have the pleasure of chatting with Brand Gamblin, self-published author of the YA sci-fi novella, Tumbler. A geek after our own hearts, Brand uses his background in computer science working as a video game programmer and (in his non-writing spare time) produces a hit web show, Calls for Cthulhu. In the latest entry for our Self-Publishing Interview Series, we ask Brand about his outlook on writing, the books he’s written for NaNoWriMo and how he’s used technology to market his work.
On Writing
What is your earliest creative writing memory?
I remember doing some pretty horrible Fraggle Rock fanfic when I was about ten or eleven, but it’s foggy. In junior high, I wrote a serial story for the school paper. It was about a girl whose teacher finds a magic spell to open a portal into a Dungeons & Dragons fantasy world.
What does your writing space look like?
I use a netbook to do all of my writing, so I’m pretty flexible on where I can write. I usually get 500 words at the breakfast table before everyone else is awake. At night, I’ll get another 500 in a rocking chair in my bedroom, which faces a bay window overlooking a forest. The chair isn’t particularly comfortable, which is good, because it encourages writing over napping.
Do you listen to music while you write? If so, which artists?
I can’t listen to anything. It sounds weird, but the only way I can write is by speaking in my head and writing down what I “hear”. If I hear something else, even another conversation going on around me, it distracts me from the internal monologue. On the plus side, it makes my written dialog sound a lot more believable.
What’s your favorite part of the writing process?
Outlining. It sounds weird, but that’s the point where I take a general idea, and see whether it really would work as a story. Outlining gives me an idea of how long the story will be, how the pacing will work, and how the characters change. What’s more, when I’m done outlining, I’ve got the story down to about 500 word chunks for each element. That makes writing a lot easier.Continue Reading
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