Ask the Author: Tim Pingelton
Answered Questions (6)
Tim Pingelton
The best thing about being a writer is realizing a complex sense (like the multi-sensory feel of autumn coming on, a moment of personal silence amid cheering fans at a home football game), putting that sensation into words, and realizing that I captured the event in its entirety. This is taken to a more profound level in writing fiction because the event is experienced not by the writer but by a created character.
Tim Pingelton
I am currently working enticing an agent or publisher to help me get my second novel published. The Grim Figure and the Big Tree is an upmarket crime novel that brings a Druid ritual from the misty past into the present day under the disguise of the mundane. If that makes sense.
Tim Pingelton
Art museums always do the trick. Not just painting but sculpture, design, or textiles. History museums are also good to get the brain in that creative vibe. Such visits, for me, work two ways. First, I think "If this artist spent so much time and effort learning their skill and then creating this arresting piece, surely I can finish off that chapter and move on to the next." Second, it takes me out of the quotidian and re-introduces me to an entire different world beyond the things I see around me every day.
Tim Pingelton
I enjoyed a couple of years researching my ancestry a while back (shifted more to writing since), and I discovered that an ancestor was involved in a barroom brawl in Alabama. The brawl spilled out into the street, and my ancestor drew a handgun. It seems his foe ran away down the road, and my great uncle (something like that) pursued him. It ended up that my great uncle was at the glass front door of a store, and the other guy was at the glass back door. They could see each other. My ancestor raised his handgun and shot the other guy through the glass doors and the length of the store.
I would certainly like to know more about what precipitated (probably something trivial) and more about my ancestor. Could be interesting or could be completely banal.
I would certainly like to know more about what precipitated (probably something trivial) and more about my ancestor. Could be interesting or could be completely banal.
Tim Pingelton
Two things: 1) looking at visual arts. The Impressionists room at the Chicago Art Institute really did it for me. 2) reading a book on the couch and forcing myself to realize that I read way too much when I should be writing.
Tim Pingelton
As a teenager, I was a stutterer, but I discovered that I could mask the stuttering by adopting a stupid British accent. Eventually, a cute girl in Iowa asked me what part of England I was from, and I said "London" as I grabbed my change and ran out of the convenience store. My protagonist masked his stutter with such a ploy, but, unlike me, he traveled to England to "earn" the accent. I eventually settled as a stutterer, and then most of it went away after a few years.
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Oct 17, 2024 10:13AM · flag