MY WRITING DAY
Lori Ann Stephens
The author and professor tells Lynne Hackles about Paris, Texas, and how she writes best in the comfy chair
Lynne Hackles
Lori Ann Stephens is a full-time university professor. Her days are filled with teaching and grading undergraduate and graduate students She gets the creative writing done whenever she’s not teaching.
‘I love researching and planning for classes,’ she says, ‘but it’s a very different kind of mind-space to writing – methodical and addictive in its own way – and it can be hard to step away from during the school semesters. I have to mentally step into a very different brain space –a creative space – to write fiction.
‘When I’m in the thick of writing a novel and inspired, I can sit down twice a day, once in the mid-morning, and once in the late afternoon, and draft a chapter by the end of the day. My partner brings me a glass of wine and a tiny bowl of saucisson, and I slip easily into my story world, whispering my dialogue and looking like a slightly delusional woman. When I’m between novels it’s chaos. No structure at all. I’d like to say that I jump in with a cup of coffee and knock out a few thousand words before I allow myself to post a picture of my cat on Instagram, but recently my writing schedule more often begins with a few hours of mind-numbing social media scrolling, exhausting all possible avenues – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, emails, back to Twitter, anything new on Facebook now? – before I force myself to confront the page.