I am thrilled to welcome back Nancy Christie. Today Nancy chats a little more about the short stories in her book Traveling Left of Center. 

The characters in the stories all seem a little (in some case, a lot!) wounded or vulnerable. What draws you to write about these types of characters?

I’m not entirely sure. It’s not like I set out to write stories about odd, eccentric or unstable people. It’s just, for some reason, I am drawn to those types of people—perhaps it’s one of those “There, but for the grace of God” things.

My fiction—or at least, my short fiction—tends to be about people who are damaged in some way—by what they have done to themselves or by what was done to them, by what they have received, what they gave up, or what was taken from them. They are, for the most part, struggling to navigate through dangerous waters. Some survive and move forward toward land, some are just treading water, and some don’t even know that they have lost the battle and are, even now, drowning.

I feel sorry for those people, wish I could do something for them, and perhaps, in the writing of their stories, that is what I am doing. Because somewhere out there, there is a real person who is held in thrall by his or her obsessions, who is controlled by past or present circumstances, who wants to live a happy, normal, balanced life but finds that the tightrope of life vibrates too much and maintaining equilibrium is but a dream.

“Dream”—and there it is again. The idea of what we want and what we have. For some of us—perhaps for most of us—the former is the dream and the latter is the reality and never the twain shall meet.

Can you share what inspired some of your stories?

Misconnections (originally published in Wanderings Magazine) was inspired by a dream I had of a toddler wandering through plane wreckage, holding a tooth in her hand.

Beautiful Dreamer started when I woke up in the middle of the night, holding the telephone receiver in my hand and hearing the buzzing sound and wondering if someone had called and I talked to them in my sleep. And if I did—what did I say?

The Healer came after I had a series of reiki sessions and started wondering what it felt like to be the practitioner rather than the client. As for Annabelle —I started it so many years ago that I don’t know where it came from!

Some of my other stories that aren’t in the collection… Aunt Aggie and the Makeup Lady, published by The Chaffin Journal was inspired by a conversation I had with a vendor at a flea market. She said that, although being there wasn’t her favorite way of spending a Sunday afternoon, it was better than being stuck at home with her husband’s crazy Aunt Aggie. That’s all it took, and the story was born!

Ice Cream Sunday (published in Fiction365) came after witnessing a father and his adult disabled daughter at a local ice cream shop.

But for the most part, many of my stories are triggered by words—overheard or imagined— and I don’t know how the story will turn out or even what it’s about until it’s written.

Purchase Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories on Amazon or B&N.

About Nancy Christie

How long have you been writing? When did you start? Why did you start —what triggered your writing?

I was always a reader—the best gift anyone could give me was a book—so I would imagine that influenced me. And as a child, my next-door neighbor Danny and I were always making up stories, acting out scenarios, creating our own worlds out in the woods. From making up stories to writing them down was a natural progression. I wrote my first short story (actually I called it a book—it even had a cover!) in second grade.

There’s a lot to be said for not having all those electronic games that only require button pushing. When children are left to their own devices and have nothing but their imagination to work with, they can be very creative.

What stimulates your creativity or serves as a writing inspiration?

I wish I knew what triggers my writing! Then I would make sure I had more of it! Probably dialogue—most of my stories start with conversations—between two people or internal ones—so probably a good round of eavesdropping can really start the mind running.

Conversely, what creates a major writer’s block for you?

Thinking about what other writers—writers younger than me!—have accomplished. Worrying that some reviewer will consider my fiction amateurish or boring. Even getting good reviews scares me a bit—they are so complimentary that I start wondering if they were talking about some other Nancy Christie who wrote some other really great book!

Do you have any writing totems? Superstitions? Strange routines? Things you do or have to have around you when you begin your writing process?

No. I was cured of having requirements when I worked for the newspaper part time and had two kids and a fulltime job. I have written everywhere and anywhere: in hospital waiting rooms—and more than once, in patient rooms!—airports, hotel rooms, in a temporary office in my basement surrounded by workers who were jackhammering a floor, at a cottage by the beach (the kids were swimming but I was working), in a fabulous room at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California. That suite was wasted on me, by the way—all I did was sit with my laptop and pound away at the keys! I might as well have been in some cheap roadside motel!

What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most? The least?

I like just about all of it, except for the final round of nitty-gritty, fine-tuning of the manuscript. When I was doing the last round of edits for TRAVELING on the advanced reader copy, I started to doubt whether the stories were any good or if I was just fooling myself. Then I started imagining someone reading them and life for awhile was very unpleasant. The only thing that saved me was reading what other writers said about their thoughts and fears at various stages of the process and realized that we all worried about the same stuff. Writer stuff. Self-doubt stuff. Marketing stuff. Stuff stuff!

What is your idea of a perfect writing day?

No phone calls, No interruptions. The sound of the waves outside my window. Lots of coffee. And lots and lots of words pouring out of my head and onto the paper—the majority of which are half-way decent.

Thank you Nancy for joining us.

Please read excerpts from Nancy Christie’s novels here.

 

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