An Interview With Rachel Seo (Author Of When The Party’s Over) Questions Asked by Sanjana Dhamankar, Content Writer Q: Let’s talk first about your creative inclinations. What kind of writing do you gravitate towards? How do you come up with ideas for them? A: I love writing everything except for poetry. I probably gravitate the most towards fiction—usually book-length projects, although short fiction is fun too—and essays; I enjoy reading and writing cultural criticism. For fiction, I usually come up with a logline or a concept that has inherent irony in it and then work from that. I usually come up with essay topics based on how snarky or nit-picky I can be about something––a book, movie, trend, etc. Q: Tell me about your writing process. Are you more of a “sit at a typewriter and bleed” kind of writer, or do you have an intricate planning system? A: I enjoy structure and organization, so I usually don’t like starting a project completely blind to what I’m about to do. If I’m planning on seriously writing something, I usually incubate an idea for at least a week in my head before I start getting stuff down on paper. My general rule is that if I forget about an idea, it wasn’t one worth remembering. Once I’ve decided that whatever idea I have is worth pursuing, I map out what I think will happen in the story I’m writing. That being said, I’m usually pretty eager to get to the actual writing part, so I don’t usually plan with a ton of detail. No complicated organization tiers for me. Q: What is the most important to you as a writer: plot, character, themes, message? A: Structure, flow, and quality of prose are the most important to me as a writer. I wish I could say I focus on character, but the truth is that the stories I love the most are the ones Midnight Oil
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