Larina Warnock Member Member since 2018

Where do you prefer to do your creative work?

Every year, I go on a one-week writing retreat with two of my best friends. This is my most productive time of the year. Having the accountability of others who are also working helps me stay focused, and being away from the demands of daily life keeps me from being constantly interrupted.

During the rest of the year, I don't have a preferred space to write. I write when I feel the need calling, wherever I am at the moment.

Do you read literary journals and magazines regularly? If so, which are your favorites?

I love Clarkseworld and Strange Horizons, as well as The McNeese Review and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. I try to cycle through which journals and magazines I'm reading, though, because I want a broad view of what's being published and to be introduced to writers and poets I'm not yet familiar with. I think it's important for writers to read widely.

Who are your literary (or artistic) heroes?

I have a signed photo of Anne Rice and a framed copy of TIME Magazine with John Irving on the cover on my office wall. These two authors introduced me to what was possible, each in a different way, although I don't know that I would call them literary heroes. Inspirations, perhaps.

If I had literary heroes, they would be the ones who tirelessly advocate for others and are dedicated to bringing marginalized experiences into the mainstream: TJ Klune, Tananarive Due, N.K. Jemison, T. Kingfisher, Carolyn Forche. These are writers who use their influence and popularity to remind us that the world is a diverse place and people experience it in wildly different ways.

And then there are the writers I've had the privilege of knowing personally who are always helping other writers: Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Eric Witchey, and Marianne Xenos come to mind immediately.

If you could only take one book on a ten-year voyage, what book would you choose?

Yikes! Please don't ever put me in this position!

How much of a typical day (or week) are you able to dedicate to your creative work?

I try to dedicate a few minutes every day to something creative, and it is frequently just a few minutes. I try to get a solid 45 minutes of creative time each week, but that time isn't always writing. Sometimes it's lapidary work, sometimes painting, sometimes photography, sometimes just submitting work to magazines or listing my pieces on Etsy or Ebay. I have never been able to create the habit of creativity, mostly because of a combination of my neurodivergent brain and my autoimmune disease. Both are unpredictable and exhausting. So I fit it in where I feel up to it--sometimes a little at a time and sometimes in a marathon of manic energy.

What makes you procrastinate when you could be doing your creative work? What are your strategies for finding focus?

Any excuse will do.

I've only found three effective strategies to help me focus. First, I need an activity that I want to do even less than writing: dishes, yard work, visiting extended family. Second, if one of my writer friends needs an accountability buddy, I will make the time. Helping someone else makes it feel less selfish for me to take the creative time for myself. Finally, if I pay for it. Paying for a class gives me a sense of obligation to do the thing.

Yes, my rational brain understands that all of these are silly strategies, that if I want to spend time on my writing, I should just do it. No, knowing that doesn't change anything.

How do you celebrate your successes, such as acceptances? How do you handle rejections and other setbacks?

I should probably celebrate my successes more often. I tell people about them, and that's about it.

I used to have a hard time with rejections. Now, as soon as I get a rejection, I search for another publisher and send the piece out again. Editing a journal made a huge difference in my mindset about this. I came to realize that there are a hundred reasons a piece might be rejected (or accepted) on a scale of "Holy Grammar Errors, Batman" to "We've published something on this topic in the last two months" to "My dog died yesterday and this piece is about a dog dying." Unless an editor specifically calls something personal out, I don't take it personal.

How much time do you spend reading for pleasure or edification?

I spend more time reading than writing. I always have at least three books going: an audio book I listen to on my commute to and from work, a novel I read a chapter or two of before bed, and some kind of nonfiction book I am learning from whether for work or creativity. Sometimes I have a fourth book going--something my husband and I are reading together.

Do you have a personal creative style? How would you describe it?

Someone once described my work as "Sweetly bleak," and I've described it that way ever since.

Where do you find inspiration?

I don't think inspiration is something you find. I think it's something you actively look for, and it is literally everywhere.

What single creative achievement are you most proud of?

Oddly, it isn't a writing-related achievement. In 2017, I gave a TEDx Talk at TEDxRoseburg about my experience as a teen mom, high school dropout, and overcomer-of-poverty. It's available on the TEDx YouTube channel. There were a few surprises with this:

-I was guided in a direction by my speaking coach that didn't exactly lead to the speech I wanted to give.

-I was aiming for my audience to be the folks out there helping others without truly understanding what those others were going through.

-The audience it seemed to impact the most were other people trying to change their lives.

How could I not be proud of a speech that led one of my former students to seek me out at graduation and tell me that speech was the reason he made it through high school?

What advice would you give to a young, budding writer (or artist) with less experience than yourself?

Read a lot, but don't read (or write) so much that you forget to experience the world. Your real life experiences are the ones that will make you a writer. Authenticity matters. Lean into the quirks that make you uniquely you instead of trying to imitate the quirks that made other writers them. We don't need another Mark Twain, another T. Kingfisher, another Toni Morrison. We need you.

For your first draft (or sketch), do you prefer analog or digital tools, or a mix?

Depends on where I am and what I'm working on. I tend to write first drafts of poetry on paper, often without proper line breaks, because whatever paper I'm using won't let me get them right. Fiction is usually a mix. If I get a scene in my head while I'm away from my computer, I'll write it on paper.

Are you an unreliable narrator?

We are all unreliable narrators because we can only see things from our own perspective.