Crystal King

How did you become a writer? I was an early reader (I started at age two....wild, I know), and that turned me into an early writer, composing poems and little stories by the time I hit kindergarten. When I was ten some teacher had the foresight to send me to a young writer's conference, and I met Madeleine L'Engle, whose books I devoured, and she was very encouraging. And while I had some half-started novels in my teenage years, I never truly began writing until I was in my forties. They seemed too big, and my attention span too short. But by 2005, I had a newly minted M.A. in Critical and Creative Thinking, in which my thesis transformed brainstorming exercises from the business and science sectors into tools writers stuck in the middle of their books could use. But when I tried to shop this book idea around, agents told me that I should a. teach, b. write a book using the exercises, or c. find someone else to write a book using them. I started with teaching but then finally realized I should just write a book. My first novel, Feast of Sorrow, came out in 2017. And while I've had two more published since then (and another coming out next year), I'm actually starting work on my 7th novel now. I realized I loved the research and the storytelling and now I can't imagine not sitting down every morning to do a little dreaming on the page.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). I mentioned Madeleine L'Engle, and along the way there were a number of teachers. Mr. North, my high school journalism teacher. My professors at Whitworth College (now University), particularly Doug Sugano, Laura Bloxham, Leonard Oakland, and Vic Bobb. My friend Greg McCormick, now one of the forces behind the events at the Toronto Public Library, ran a literary magazine with me in the early 2000s, and he gifted me The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher. She opened a door into a world of food writing that I really connected with. Historian Roy Strong's Feast, a book about feasts throughout history, gave me the one-line spark I needed to write Feast Of Sorrow. Among my other influences, I would say Italo Calvino, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. LeGuin, Czeslaw Milosz, Anne Carson, Catherynne Valente, Tolkein, Virgil, Ovid, and SO many more. I also devoured every fairy tale and ancient myth I could find when I was young, ranging from Grimm to the ancient Greek and Roman myths. One of the books I loved most as a child was East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon, a collection of Norse fairytales. Fairytales gave me the permission to explore imagination and to question the way the world worked. 

When and where do you write? I have a home office where I write for an hour every morning. I didn't always write every day, but I find that the way the stories live in my head is so much richer, and of course, I am so much more prolific. And in this business, you get ahead by being lucky or prolific. I don't have control over luck, but I can sit my butt in the chair every day.

What are you working on now? I have a couple of ideas brewing, but I'm leaning heavily into a story about Morpheus, the god of dreams. I've been plotting that, and it's the most challenging story I have attempted to tackle so far. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? No, never. Part of it is that I weave so much history through my novels, and our historical past is a goldmine of ideas. All those exercises I developed for writers In Medias Res have helped immensely as well. I have gone through periods of my life where I don't feel like writing, but I wouldn't call that writer's block...I've never not had an idea that begged to be developed. But writing is a lot of lonely work, and sometimes it's more about getting the butt in the chair. Again, that's where daily consistency helps, at least for me. It keeps the ideas flowing.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Not so much advice, but a comment that helped transform my thinking. Early on, when my writing group began meeting (going on 16 years now!), we were at a restaurant talking about our pages, and the waitress asked us if we were writers. All of us sort of hedged at that. We weren't published after all (but now we all are). She just looked at us and said something along the lines of, "But you are talking about your novels, right? As far as I'm concerned, that makes you a writer. You should just own it." I feel like that was a pivotal moment for the three of us. Damn straight, we are writers. And we have owned it ever since. There is a LOT to be said for believing in yourself. Every novelist was unpublished at some point, but it didn't make them less of a writer. 

What’s your advice to new writers? If you've read this far, then you can probably guess that I am going to be an advocate for consistency. Stephen King has always been someone who said you need to write every day, and I used to scoff at this because I have a day job and a life that doesn't give me the leisure to write all day. But when I made the decision to write SOMETHING every day (I aim for 400 words (roughly a page and a half) or one hour of writing/editing), my work completely transformed. The stories began to live in my head, and the characters really came alive. And I realized if I do this every day, I can write a book a year. Even if you only have 15-20 minutes a day, that can make a big difference. Really, just stop scrolling Instagram and sit down with the page instead. 

Crystal King is the author of In The Garden of Monsters, The Chef’s Secret, and Feast of Sorrow, which was long-listed at the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and designated as a Mass Book Awards Must Read. A social media and AI professor by trade, her writing is fueled by a love of history and a passion for the food, language, and culture of Italy. Crystal has taught writing, creativity, and social media at Harvard Extension School, Boston University, and UMass Boston. A Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and former co-editor of Plum Ruby Review, she holds an MA in critical and creative thinking from UMass Boston. You can find her at crystalking.com.