Author Tim Waggoner Gives Creative Career and Writing Advice
Welcome to The Creative Wayfinder’s Compass, a publication from author and writing coach M.K. Hancock that features written interviews with creative minds across industries. Each person is asked the same 11 questions, and all of the interviews featured here will be collected into a book. This interview features Tim Waggoner, a prolific author in the horror and fantasy genres as well as an college English professor since 1999.
1. Who are you and what do you create?
I’m Tim Waggoner, and I write fiction and nonfiction. My original fiction tends to be in the horror genre, but I also write media tie-in fiction, stories based on existing media properties, such as the TV show Supernatural. My nonfiction focuses on writing advice. I’ve published over sixty novels, eight short story collections, and four nonfiction books. I’m a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a one-time winner of the Scribe Award, and I’ve been a two-time finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and a one-time finalist for the Splatterpunk Award. I’ve taught composition and creative writing at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio since 1999.
2. What first inspired you to pursue your creative path, and how has that inspiration evolved over time?
I’ve told stories all my life in one form or another, whether in scenarios I’d create for my friends and me to enact on school playgrounds, or in comics I wrote and drew in junior high. I’d been a big reader throughout my life, and I loved to watch movies, cartoons, and plays – anything that had a story to it. I toyed with becoming a comic book artist or an actor for a time, but I first consciously considered being a writer when I read a magazine interview with Stephen King in the early 1980s. It was the first time that I realized a person could choose to pursue a career in writing.
I don’t create from inspiration, really. Creating is a natural function of who I am as a person. Creating is as natural and necessary for me as breathing. I need to do it to exist.
3. Can you walk us through your creative process? Do you follow specific rituals or habits to get into the flow of your work?
I started writing seriously with a goal of making it my life’s work when I was eighteen, and I’m sixty now. I’ve used many different techniques in my creative process over the years. I’ve written for an hour a day at a specific time, I’ve set daily page goals for myself, I’ve written by hand in coffee shops, I’ve written using word-processing programs, I’ve written first thing in the morning and right before going to bed. These days, I tend to write whenever I have time in my schedule. Being a college professor means I know exactly what my schedule is each semester and when I have time to write, and I use that time. I normally have contracted deadlines for projects, and once I start working on them, I do so steadily until they’re finished. I like to have a cup of coffee when I write, but otherwise, I don’t have any rituals. The good thing about having so much experience with different writing processes is that if I ever find myself stuck, I switch to a different process, and if necessary, I’ll keep switching until a certain process clicks and the work starts flowing.
I do tend to immerse myself in the kind of story I’m currently working on. So if I’m writing horror, I read and watch horror. If I’m writing fantasy or science fiction, I immerse myself in those genres. It gets me into, and keeps me in, the mindset I need.
4. What themes, ideas, or emotions do you find yourself returning to in your work, and how have they shifted over time?
Over the years, I’ve identified several different themes in my work, and once I’m aware of them, I can choose to consciously use them and strengthen them, and I can try not to repeat exactly what I’ve done before. I often write about the duality of human nature, the search for meaning in an ultimately meaningless universe, how we can never truly know others, even those closest to us, and the fragility of what we think of as reality. I almost drowned when I was nine, and water often appears a symbol of this latter theme in my work.
The themes themselves haven’t shifted over time so much as my awareness of them has deepened, allowing me to employ them more consciously or consciously play against them.
5. What’s been your biggest creative breakthrough, and how did it change the way you approach your art or writing?
Throughout my twenties, I sought to find a way to create a true “Tim Waggoner” story, one only I could write. I suppose you could say I was searching for my voice. I began drawing more on my own experiences, thoughts, feelings, and observations, and I started writing with deeper immersion in characters’ perspectives and made sure my stories had emotional cores at their centers. I’d focused more on fantasy fiction early on, and I gave myself permission to go all in on horror. I also gave myself permission to follow my creative instincts wherever they led, and I found my stories becomes more imagistic and surreal as a result. Eventually, I wrote a short horror story called “Mr. Punch.” It was what I consider the first “Tim Waggoner” story, and it was my first professionally published piece, appearing in the anthology Young Blood in 1994, when I was thirty years old.
6. How do you navigate periods of creative block or self-doubt, and what techniques have helped you push through?
Immersing myself in the kind of fiction I’m writing always helps. My need to write keeps me going through times of doubt. Pushing myself to keep writing, knowing that eventually things will start moving more smoothly helps. Having published so much by this point in my career helps because I know editors and readers have appreciated my work over the years, so even if I have doubts about it, I have objective proof that those doubts are probably not a reflection on the actual quality of the work. I’ve dealt with depression all my life, and along with therapy and medication, I’ve learned to regard periods of depression like spells of bad weather. I know they’ll eventually pass, and I apply this attitude to struggles with writing as well. Lastly, when I start telling myself negative things about my work or myself as a writer, I remind myself that this voice lies, and I try to focus on the work and just keep going.
7. How do feedback and criticism play a role in your process? How do you decide what advice to follow and what to set aside?
I discussed “Mr. Punch” earlier. My writers’ group at the time thought the story’s imagery and surreal nature didn’t work and it needed major revision. I knew the story was good, so I ignored the feedback and submitted the story to the anthology where it was published. I haven’t been in a writers’ group since then. I found my experiences with such groups valuable as I was learning how to be a better writer, but eventually I found them to be counterproductive.
I began focusing on editorial feedback – since editors were the ones buying my stories – and once I had an agent, I focused on my agent’s feedback as well. Once people began reviewing my work, I paid attention to reviews to see what readers thought worked and didn’t work in my stories. For editorial and agent feedback, I accept whatever suggestions I think will improve the work. With reviews, if any feedback seems good to me, I keep it in mind when I write the next piece. I always try to focus on what will make the story better, not on my ego or on pleasing readers.
8. How do you balance personal creative expression with the commercial or external demands of your work?
I try to make everything I write a personal creative expression – including my answers to these questions! I was on a conference panel with author Michael A. Stackpole once. Mike writes a lot of tie-in fiction, and at one point, he said that it didn’t matter if a novel he wrote was his original work or a tie-in. “If my name is on the cover, it’s my book,” he said. Mike added that he gives his best effort to anything he writes, and I took that attitude to heart and try to approach my work in the same way.
9. What’s one of the most challenging projects you’ve worked on, and how did you overcome the difficulties you faced?
I’ve had two major challenges in terms of projects. One is that when you write a tie-in based on a popular media property, you’re aware that there are fans who have a lot of expectations about how an Alien or Supernatural story should go. You need to keep the fans in mind without allowing their expectations to make you too self-conscious as you write.
The other challenge has happened to me twice. Two times I worked with new editors who were also aspiring writers, and they both acted more like collaborators, giving suggestions on how they would write the story rather than trying to help make the story itself better. And because they were new, they didn’t have experience at clearly communicating (or even fully knowing) what specific revisions they wanted.
In both cases, I did my best to address the editors’ concerns in the time I had, and the books were published and readers seemed to like them well enough. These experiences weren’t enjoyable, but those editors were only two out of the many I’ve worked with over forty years, so I can’t really complain.
10. How do you stay motivated and disciplined, especially during times when inspiration is lacking or inconsistent?
As I’ve said, my need to write helps a lot. Having deadlines definitely does! Learning to function despite experiencing negative emotions in order to deal with my depression was important for my work as well. Trying to focus on the present moment, not worry about what I’ve already written on a project or what I still have to write, and just focusing on what I’m currently writing, moment by moment, word by word, helps a lot.
I tell myself “The first word is the same as the last word.” This means that all the words are equal, none is more important than any other, and it helps keep me focused on the words I’m currently writing, helps me stay in the moment.
11. What advice would you give to someone just starting out, or to an artist who’s struggling to find or trust their creative voice?
I started college as an acting major, and on the first day of acting class, the professor said the only reason to be an actor is because you have to. Only that kind of drive would help you get through the tough times of having a career as an artist. I realized I didn’t feel that way about acting, but I did feel that way about writing, so I dedicated myself to that art, and while it hasn’t always been easy, I’ve never truly regretted my choice. I view my writing career as part of a process of fulfilling my truest, deepest self.
Also during first year of college, my freshman composition instructor urged me to take my writing as far is it could go. This is the best writing advice I ever got, and I always pass it on. My instructor didn’t tell me to become a rich and famous writer. She didn’t tell me to become a bestseller or an award-winner. She didn’t tell me what story or type of writing to do. She told me to keep going, keep growing and developing as an artist, throughout the course of my life. She told me to focus on the process, not the result of that process.
A colleague named Taylor Grant, who recently passed away, was a Buddhist, and he used to say that he approached writing “with intention but without attachment to an outcome.” He crafted his stories to be the best they could be, and once they were, he’d achieved success. Whatever happened to them afterward was icing on the cake. Yes, he wanted his work published, wanted people to read it, but the goal was its creation. I took that advice to heart and strive to have the same sort of attitude toward my work. I think this viewpoint also helps with self-doubt, writer’s block, etc. It keeps you focused on the work instead of on yourself.
I also advise writers (and this applies to any type of creative) not to accept anyone else’s paradigm for a career. On social media, you can often find writers, usually newer ones, trying to define what it means to a real writer. One person will say you must make your entire income solely from your art or you’re not a real artist. Another will say you have to win this-and-such award or be published in a specific market.
Back during my freshman year in college, after that first day of acting class, I asked myself what I really wanted from a career, and my answer was “I want a life in writing.” For a time, that meant writing while I was finishing my undergrad degree. I then went to grad school to get an MA in English so I could teach part time while I wrote. Then when I realized how much I loved teaching writing – and how much I learned about writing through teaching it – I started looking for a full-time teaching job, and was fortunate to eventually land one. The majority of my income has come from teaching over the last twenty-five years, although my writing income has finally reached a point where I could live on it (although I still make more teaching).
This is the career paradigm I’ve created, and it’ll shift again when I retire from teaching in a few years. Your paradigm, your path, will be different, and that’s how it should be. It’s your path, no one else’s. We use our creativity to make our path just as we use it to create our art.
M.K. Hancock here, and I want to thank you for reading The Creative Wayfinder’s Compass, a publication for the edification of creative minds. Stay connected for more conversations with inspiring creatives by signing up to receive this as a newsletter in your inbox. If you’re ready to further your own journey, explore my resources on creative writing and coaching. I’m here to support you, every step of the way.
How do Tim’s experiences resonate with your own creative path? Leave a reply to share your thoughts in the comments below!
Very nice