How I Write – Sean Lovelace

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Lovelace writing (1)

When/how/where do you write?

I prefer to write in the mornings. The mind crackles. I usually write at the kitchen table, which my wife finds annoying, but marriage is often annoying in general, and adding a small additional annoyance doesn’t really affect the whole, much in the way that adding another bassoon to a symphony won’t really affect the overall volume of the performance, due to some acoustic theory I don’t really fully understand. If I can’t write in the mornings, I just look for shards of time. I have an incredibly busy life and really do so many things besides writing (like all writers), like fishing and shooting my guns or bow and playing disc golf and running races and whatnot, so, yeh, I look for shards of time to write. That’s OK. They say Charles Dickens did the same and Woody Allen wrote Annie Hall on napkins and stationary and Lydia Davis once wrote a series of flash fiction while working in a slaughter house and anyway, you get my point.

Do you eat while you write? If so, what?

I eat nachos and drink beer while I write. Sometimes I don’t drink beer. I always eat nachos.

Do you play music while you write? If so, what?

I don’t listen to music. I’m the only writer I know who doesn’t enjoy music, period. It makes me feel lonely, but I am what I am. I do sometimes listen to The Smiths, but even then I don’t really like the music.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading Meg Pokrass and Ana Maria Shua and Etgar Karet.

Sean Lovelace lives in Indiana, where he directs the creative writing program at Ball State University. His latest collection is about Velveeta and published by Bateau Press. He has won several national literary awards, including the Crazyhorse Prize for Fiction. He likes to eat nachos and to run, far.