Author Interview: Jason Washer

Write a lot and read a lot. And write what you want to read. And keep writing.

Are there any writing resources, such as books or websites, you’d like to recommend?

John Gardner has a few really good books on writing. Also Lawrence Block. Stephen King’s On Writing was helpful and a good read. Also any interview by John Irving, David Mitchell, Joe Hill, or really any author I admire. And there are a ton of podcasts that interview writers that I find incredibly helpful. This Is Horror, The Lovecraft E-zine, Writing Excuses, and a lot more. Brandon Sanderson also teaches a writing course that he has put up for free on You Tube, and I’ve really enjoyed that and found it very helpful. The advice is very concrete and specific. And Mary Robinette, I think in that same course, teaches an hour on writing flash fiction that’s very helpful as well.
What is your favorite type of fiction and who are your favorite authors? I’ve always read a lot, and I read pretty widely across genres. A lot of speculative fiction, horror, sci-fi, literary fiction, cozy mystery, crime, classics, fantasy, thrillers, you name it. My favorite authors include Stephen King, John Irving, Charlaine Harris, Donna Tartt, Richard Powers, David Mitchell, Joe Hill, Grady Hendrix, Paul Tremblay, William Goldman, Graham Greene, Ray Bradbury, and a bunch more.

How do you measure success when it comes to your writing?

Getting my work published is fantastic, and very validating. Also, in my daily writing, once or twice a week–if I’m lucky–I’ll write a sentence or two that I really like and that feels emotionally true. That feels like success.

Are you an outliner or discovery writer? Or somewhere in between?

It depends on what I’m writing. Most often I find myself writing a bare bones outline, a paragraph or a page, depending on the length of what I’m working on, just so that I’ll have a basic framework to work from. Maybe a premise, or an ending, sometimes a short list of plot points. The story almost invariably veers off from whatever I imagined to begin with.

How do you deal with rejections?

I try not to let it bother me too much, but of course sometimes it does. And I try to always resubmit something as soon as I get a rejection, to keep my odds up for an eventual acceptance somewhere. Persistence is key.

Do you ever get criticism from family or friends who don’t understand your passion?

Until the last year or so the only person in my life who even knew I wrote at all was my spouse, and she’s always been incredibly supportive. Over the last year or so I’ve told a few more people, and so far I have not run into any criticism.

What are your writing goals for the next twelve months?

To keep writing, and keep submitting my work. I’d like to continue to improve my prose and storytelling.

What book are you reading right now?

I try to read every day if I can. I just finished The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones last night, and I loved it. The writing is just beautiful, and the characters are really well drawn. I’ve got Paul Tremblay’s A Headful of Ghosts waiting for me to start tonight. I recently finished Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstor, and loved that as well. Very funny and scary and just a really great reading experience. I would strongly recommend that you read Horrorstor in a physical copy as the book’s layout and illustrations really add to the book’s effect.

Is there anything you’d like to plug?

Feel free to share a link. I’m very proud of my story Billy Campbell’s Bones that just came out in Corpus Press’s new anthology In Darkness, Delight: Fear the Future. Some of the other authors in the anthology include Penn Jillette, Max Booth III, Lisa Morton, and a bunch of others. Here’s the link to it:  tinyurl.com/FearTheFuture. Also please check out my website at https://jasonwasher.net.