Emmie Christie’s work tends to hover around the topics of feminism, mental health, cats, and the speculative such as unicorns and affordable healthcare. She has been published in Intrinsick Magazine and Allegory Magazine and she graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2013.
What is the best piece of advice you have for new writers?
Don’t hoard your words. Write short stories, release them into the ether, and write another story again the next day. It doesn’t matter if they suck, because the more words you write, the faster you’ll get better. In writing short stories you practice plot and character in miniature, over and over and over, so when you do write a novel, you’ll have the process down and know your own style much better. This, of course, is not to say that short stories are not as important—they are just as important and I would argue, easier to consume in the short attention span of modern society—but if you want to get better at being a writer, short stories and flash fiction are the best method I’ve found to attain that.
Are there any writing resources, such as books or websites, you’d like to recommend?
Submission Grinder! It’s a free resource that allows writers to track their submissions to different magazines. I also very much enjoyed K.M. Weiland’s books on plot structure and outlining.
What is your favorite type of fiction and who are your favorite authors?
I adore fantasy and soft sci-fi, along with some psychological horror fiction. Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, and Brian Jacques are my three favorite authors.
Have you attended any conferences or writing retreats? What was the experience like and do you have any to recommend?
I attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop in New Hampshire and it changed the course of my writing career: meaning, it gave me the chops and confidence to make writing my career in the first place. It was the most in-depth, immersive, and helpful education I’ve received, far exceeding my four year college degree in creative writing.
How do you deal with rejections?
I created a colorful sheet for my wall titled “Countdown to 100 Rejections.” There’s an industry motto that writers will receive at least one acceptance per 100 rejections. That way I view it from a more analytical standpoint, and not from somewhere where I’ll be let down. Submitting more often helps, as well, so that I don’t pin all my hopes on a few submissions where I wait for four months, only to have them all rejected. Submitting is a numbers game—the more you do it, and the more stories you put out there, the more likely you will find an editor who likes your style and a particular story.
Do you ever get criticism from family or friends who don’t understand your passion?
Yes. The criticism tends to be more well-meaning questions and side comments where they don’t understand that they are being hurtful or minimizing. I encourage friends and families of writers to support them by reading their work and in sharing it to others in their sphere of influence if they enjoy it.
What are your writing goals for the next twelve months?
I write a short story a day, and this next year I am trying to increase my word count to 5,000 words a day for each story. I also want to reach thirty published short stories and poems.
What are your writing goals for the next five years?
I aim to have an established audience and have two or three novels published, along with fifty shorter pieces in fiction magazines.
What book are you reading right now?
I started American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
Is there anything you’d like to plug? Feel free to share a link.
Check out my short story that came out on Zooscape, “The Squirrelherd and the Sound.” It is about squirrels that have developed intelligence and are building a kind of portal to a New Earth, and how one young woman deals with the knowledge that the Earth is doomed by a coming cataclysmic event.
