Jan Miklaszewicz
What made you decide to become a writer?
I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember and was always in awe of writers, so it felt natural to me to want to become one. Funnily enough, though, that actually got in the way, as I fell in love with the image of being a writer rather than the process of writing itself. Only when I dropped the act did I start to make any real progress.
What comes first for you – the plot or the characters? And why?
I’m quite an extreme pantser, so plot tends to come along in dribs and drabs after I’ve started writing, like walking into the darkness with a flashlight. Before I start a new project, I’ll put together a book cover for vibes and a three-sentence blurb, which I then use as a pole star for extra guidance along the way. So, I guess that means the characters come first.
How many books have you written and/or published and which is your favourite?
I’ve written a fair few books, four poetry collections, two narrative poems, a children’s poetry book, and several anthologies, but in the last year or so I’ve moved to fiction, with one collection of short stories and two novellas under my belt. Poetry was extremely helpful with this transition, as it happens, with brevity and clarity of expression translating across quite well.
My favourite poetry book—the collection Istangrade, which I wrote while living in Istanbul then Belgrade—is amusingly my least popular. It’s a bit cynical and cryptic, so I get it, but that just reinforces the fact that my primary audience is and always will be me.
My favourite bit of fiction is my soon-to-be-released novella The Devil in Mia, which is the second in my Hartmouth Horrors series. It’s basically me asking myself what a demonic possession would look like for an ‘average’ couple in an ‘average’ English household. The story is pretty rude and nasty, but beneath the surface there’s a good deal of heart.
How do you feel about killing off popular characters? Is it something you enjoy doing in your own books? Have you done it?
As a horror writer, I suppose killing off characters comes with the territory. That said, I don’t exactly revel in it. My first novella, Eyes Wide Open, is a slasher with plenty of gruesome deaths, so I mitigate this by not creating particularly deep characters. And for future novellas, who knows? I’m not against it as a general proposition, but the beloved character’s death would have to serve the story and not just be an arbitrary, shock-value affair.
How many hours a day or week would you say you spend writing? Is it a potential career for you, is it something you do outside your day job?
I try to give at least an hour a day to writing when I’m actively working on a project, and I’m a plodder, so a rough target of 250 words per session suits me just fine. I’ve been burned before for bringing this up, but the prevailing advice to just smash out a first draft is not, I believe, appropriate for all writers, especially those new to the game. Sometimes patience is the better approach, particularly if you’re still developing your writing skills at the sentence level.
How do you react to reviews? Would you prefer just good ones or are you okay to receive a bad one occasionally? How does this make you feel?
Being human the last time I checked, I love and hate reviews in fairly equal measure. Good reviews I find encouraging, especially those short and sweet ones where the reader just expresses that they had a fun or scary time, and bad reviews are discouraging, especially when the reader doesn’t give me much to work with. It is what it is, as they say, but like most indie writers, I do wish readers would think about how much work we put in and how a bad or careless review (rather than none at all) can cause a fair bit of pain.
