JinnNelson: An Interview

An interview with the champion of The Stellar Awards, JinnNelson

1. Why do you write?

Writing is my response to living, to put it simply. It’s how I explore my own thoughts and ideas, and how I connect with other humans. 

2. How long have you been writing?

I’m not exactly sure how long I’ve been writing. I began very young, writing sloppy weird stories and journalings in grade school and beyond. I started writing my first complete book at 14, which was…many years ago.

3. Do you believe in Writer's Block? If so, how do you deal with this?

I’ve gotten writer’s block many times. I find it’s usually due to fatigue, or occasionally a bad environment where I can’t relax or be alone enough to create, but most of the time it comes down to not planning ahead and figuring out the bones of a story before I begin. I’ve also learned there’s a difference between writer’s block and just plain fear of moving forward to the next book or chapter, or whatever it is I need to write at the moment. Overcoming both fear and writer’s block is a matter of writing one word after another after another, after another.

That’s what writing is, after all.

4. What is your favorite book outside of Wattpad? 

My favorite reads change, as I discover new book or authors, and as I change personally. Currently, my favorite fiction novel is Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones; my favorite nonfiction book is Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.

5. How do you select the names of your characters? 

I have several resources for selecting character names. I keep a running list on my phone whenever I hear or read a good one in passing. I have several go-to fantasy name generators I’ve been using for years. When those fail me, I get on Google and search something like ‘Welsh surnames’ or whatever’s appropriate, and I search around until I find the right name.

6. When was the first time you started writing?

The first thing I remember writing, besides in a journal, I was seven or eight. The story was in all three persons and all the tenses. I barely remember what it was about, I just remember writing it on my dad’s personal computer, which was a big deal at the time because it was the late 80s and PCs had just become a thing.

7. Can you give some advice on writing?

One thing that helped me enormously was to copy passages I loved from books and study them to find out how the author did what they did to make me like it so much. When I began to write Traveler, I wanted to challenge myself to write something humorous, since humor doesn’t come naturally to me. I gathered up some of the funniest novels I’ve read and copied paragraphs from them, and dissected them until I gained a new understanding about some aspect of the piece. For instance, I had no idea that verb personification was a thing until I studied and compared paragraphs from Douglas Adams and PG Wodehouse. Then a light came on, and I had learned that skill.

It’s a good, pure way to improve and add to your writing skill set. You’ll also gain confidence in your writing, because after all, you’re learning from someone who’s already mastered that skill.

8. How/where do you get ideas for stories? 

My subconscious constantly pulls in ideas from seemingly random sources and events. I’ve gotten great ideas from movies, past jobs, people I met or more often just saw somewhere, coworkers, books, music, cats, writing prompts…anything is fodder for ideas. Natalie Goldberg calls it composting. “Our senses by themselves are dumb. They take in experience, but they need the richness of sifting for a while through our consciousness and through our whole bodies.” I make it a practice to write daily while I’m working on a novel, not about the book but about whatever, sifting through my thoughts as they come to me. That practice produces a lot of material over time for books, blog posts, even letters.

9. Where did your love for reading/writing come from? 

My love of writing and reading probably came from the same place as my immense fascination with making/tasting coffee, with dancing, knitting, orchestral music, and places such as Scotland.  I have no idea what generates these interests, they’re just part of who I am. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins said it best: 

"Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, 

Crying What I do is me: for that I came."

10. Are you able to write everyday?

Sadly, I can’t write every single day. I used to be greatly bothered by this, but I’ve realized over time that it’s okay. I won’t lose my ability to write if I don’t keep it up constantly. It’s part of me. But if I go for a few weeks without writing, words start to build up in me and I find myself scratching out nonsense and fragments of ideas on whatever writing surface is available.

That said, when I’m in a season of writing a book, like when I wrote Traveler, I do write nearly every day, and for longer as I get closer to finishing. That’s just how it tends to work with me.

11. Are you able to write everyday?

Sadly, I can’t write every single day. I used to be greatly bothered by this, but I’ve realized over time that it’s okay. I won’t lose my ability to write if I don’t keep it up constantly. It’s part of me. But if I go for a few weeks without writing, words start to build up in me and I find myself scratching out nonsense and fragments of ideas on whatever writing surface is available.

That said, when I’m in a season of writing a book, like when I wrote Traveler, I do write nearly every day, and for longer as I get closer to finishing. That’s just how it tends to work with me.

12. What are your tips for someone who has just started Wattpad? 

Be calm and focus on your next project, or whatever goal you have set for yourself if you want to write on Wattpad. Don’t worry about the featured list or about rankings, just make connections, post regularly and read regularly when you can. For gaining views and votes, I am not an expert by any means, but my philosophy is to write excellent stories and to promote others whose work I like. When you promote others they often reciprocate. Second, enter contests. That's a great way to ensure someone will read your work, and others will also notice it.

Traveler Questions:

1. Where did the idea for 'Traveler' come from?

I got the concept for Traveler back in 2008 when I was working at a coffee shop with a drive-through. Something about the revolving nature working the drive-through window, and the range of customers who came in triggered this idea: what if there were a coffee shop that traveled to different worlds? What if it went to a different world each day of the week? And what if those worlds repeated, like an interdimensional, overcaffeinated version of Groundhog Day?

What if the customers weren’t even human? What if some of them were…I don’t know…tigers or something?

And so on. That idea eventually became Traveler.

2. The story takes place in a cafe. What's your favorite cafe?

I have a few favorites. Stone Creek Coffee in the Radio Milwaukee building in Wisconsin, and Houndstooth coffee in Austin, where I worked for a while, are at the top of the list. They just have some of the best coffee, and the best trained baristas to boot.

3. If there is any, who is your favorite character?

I enjoyed writing most of the characters, especially the host of side characters that visit the shop from various weird worlds. It was especially amusing to play Jaz’s cranky, Aunt Slappy persona against Bracken’s cheerful innocence. 

But my favorite scene, and probably one of my favorite characters to write, was with Huey, a half-elf hustler who sometimes visits the cafe. There was a whole backstory I wrote at first, where he had a run-in with a gang of tea drinkers while trying to run a betting syndicate in the shop. The scene read like a boxing match. It was glorious.

It had to be cut ultimately, but Huey and Jaz did get to botch a small con job in Traveler, and I frequently laughed out loud while writing that chapter. Sometimes in public.

4. In the first chapter, the old man said that the end was near. Whay would you do if someone said that today was the end of the world?

Since it’s currently 11:15 pm, if I found out today was my last one, I’d call my parents and brothers to tell them I love them, congratulate myself and my spouse on having a good run, make a cup of coffee and see how far I could get on the next book before midnight. :)

If you’ve read this far, thank you! Below is the summary for Traveler. Do come check it out on my profile @JinnNelson and let me know what you think! 

Trapped in a cafe that travels to seven dimensions on an infinite loop, Jaz Contra serves coffee while trying to locate the mysterious white-haired man who put her there. 

When a young shapechanger named Bracken--whose search for his missing aunt leads him to this very cafe--stows away in her basement, Jaz must help him survive until he can return to his own world. Through a series of bizarre encounters with talking tigers, polymorphs, alchemists, thieves and the occasional grim reaper, Bracken's efforts to locate his aunt create daily chaos, threatening Jaz's chances of ever escaping--not to mention the stability of seven universes.

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I'm currently writing a sequel to Traveler, and posting updates on Instagram. Link to that is in my WP profile. :)