J. W. Parr lives in the southeast United States with his wife, daughter, and puppy. He has been writing for several years, with some of his stories winning local writing competitions, as well as his poetry being published in an online magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. He is currently looking for a literary agent to represent his first novel.
1. How long have you been writing and what got you started?
My earliest memories of writing (in a broad sense) was with poetry and lyrics for songs, mostly in small ways like for a birthday card for my mom, or to purge some emotions from a relationship. But I’d say I really got into it around 2013. I’d stayed in touch and had gotten to be good friends with my Lit. teacher from high school – who is also a writer in his free time – and looked up to him and was always amazed that he had been published multiple times in all sorts of magazines. I’d had small fantasies and dreams of one day writing a book off and on growing up, but I’d never seen it as being any sort of realistic. But during my time in his class, and the years that followed, he showed me and encouraged me that writing could be a very real dream, even for someone from a small town down south. I started writing short stories soon after, and eventually dove into writing novels!
2. What is the best piece of advice you have for new writers?
Set goals for yourself. Obviously the most important advice would just be to WRITE. But all writers know how daunting and stressful it can be to sit down in front of a keyboard or notebook with the only goal being “to write.” I’ve found that if you set small, realistic goals for yourself, then you are more likely to achieve them. The more goals you achieve, the better and more confident you feel about yourself, and the more likely you are to keep on going. It will always be tempting to try and push yourself to write two- three- or even five-thousand words a day and finish quicker, but most of the time it will just burn you out. But if you start small, say five-hundred or a thousand words a day, or whatever works for you and your time schedule, then you will be more likely to make it to the end! And if your goal becomes too easy, you can always bump up the difficulty along the way, just don’t overburden yourself. Remember: write because you WANT to!
3. Are there any writing resources, such as books or websites, you’d like to recommend?
I know it’s been said a million times, but Stephen King’s On Writing helped me so much while I was writing my novel. What works for one person may not work for another, but the tips and advice on writing and editing, and the information on the writing and publishing industry, really opened my eyes to things I had been blind to. Also, the website for Writer’s Market can be very helpful, as well as the yearly Writer’s Market: The Most Trusted Guide to Getting Published. Other than that, just make sure you do plenty of research online for any of your questions on editing, agents, and publishing.
4. If you could go back and find yourself five years ago, what advice would you give yourself?
Don’t wait around trying to figure it all out before writing, just start writing and fix your mistakes later. I used to plan out an entire chapter in my head before I would even start writing it. Sometimes it would take two or three months before I was satisfied with my vision and started putting pen to paper. But I never would have finished my novel this way. It wasn’t until I started forcing myself to write every day, no matter if I had the next part planned out or not, that I started making serious progress and finally completed it.
5. What tips do you have for finding time to write?
The biggest thing is that you have to make it a priority. There are no magical tips and tricks that will get you to write if you don’t have your heart set on it. It can help to leave your phone in another room, and disconnect from the internet so that you won’t waste hours on other websites, but the bottom line is that it comes down to your own will and resolve. You can always find time to write, you just have to make it a bigger priority, even if it means giving up an extra hour of television, or an extra thirty-minutes of sleep. It’s kind of like exercising; it sucks sometimes, and it doesn’t seem as appealing as the other things you want to do, but if you just get up and do it, you’ll feel much better in the end.
6. How do you deal with rejections?
Dealing with rejections it all about your mental (and sometimes emotional) strength. I don’t think anyone, even if you’ve been rejected a million times, ever gets a rejection without feeling at least a little hurt. But it’s all about what you do with that. It’s okay to let yourself be sad for a minute, or hour, or a day, but then you’ve got to get up and send it back out. I’ve gotten better at it over the years, but it’s still hard some days. But the thing I try to tell myself is that it just means I’m one submission closer to finding the one that WON’T reject me!
7. What are your writing goals for the next twelve months?
Over the next year, I really hope to secure an agent for my first novel and to start sending it out to publishers. I would also love to see more of my short stories get published. And while I wait for responses, I want to keep writing short stories and trying out different genres that I haven’t dabbled with yet, as well as finishing a second novel.
8. What are your writing goals for the next five years?
Five years from now, I would love to be writing for a living. I would like to have one, if not two, books published and to have a publishing deal for many more. But I also want to keep reading and working to become an even better writer and storyteller. I’d like to even try my hand at screenplays one day.
9. What books are you reading right now?
At the moment, I am reading The Fireman and Strange Weather, both by Joe Hill. I’d strongly recommend them both.
10. Is there anything you’d like to plug? Feel free to share a link.
I have a fairly new blog at https://itsjwparr.wordpress.com/ that I would love for people to check out if they get a chance. It’s mostly haiku and poetry, but there’s an occasional short story thrown in here and there. I hope to really keep working on it and boosting it over the next year.
