Thoughts on Writing with Author Amanda Niehaus
5 writing questions answered by the lovely Amanda Niehaus, author of The Breeding Season.
Hello, friends! This week’s thoughts™ are coming from the wonderful mind of Amanda Niehaus, author of The Breeding Season, “a story of love, loss, and resilience based on the reproductive biology of northern quolls.” 💝
She is also co-editor of Science Write Now, a magazine which publishes creative writing inspired by science!
1) What are your favourite things about writing?
Every now and then all the pain pays off and you can get into something like a flow state … ideas just seem to come out, you become completely absorbed in the words. That’s when the best things seem to happen, but it’s impossible to predict how to get there. The rest of the time, it’s like ripping off skin.
2) What is a piece of writing advice that you disagree with, and why?
I wouldn’t say I disagree with it, just that it’s not for everyone - but I’ve gone through stages of pressuring myself to put words down every day. The whole word count thing - it makes sense, 500 words a day adds up pretty quickly, but I think we forget how much time as writers we need to think. I don’t always think best in written-out sentences, so in some of the breaks I’ve had from writing, I’m still actually making progress. It’s just harder to quantify.
3) If you could grab every writer and shake one specific piece of wisdom into them (gently, of course), what would it be?
You can’t rush this thing, any of it - building a writing community, finishing a draft, editing, getting your work published, shaping new ideas all over again ... it all takes time. This is a marathon. Bring snacks.
4) Can you tell us a bit about your process from getting an idea to putting words on the page?
I do a lot of mind mapping. I probably have dozens of pieces of paper with various boxes and circles and lines that represent my characters, their major conflicts with each other and themselves, and the science I want to embed in each part of the story. I also spend a lot of time at the front end of a piece writing, revising, building rapport with my characters - basically pushing the boulder uphill until it reaches a tipping point where I know what’s going to happen and how, and then it rolls over the crest and all the way down.
5) Lastly, I'm a fan of your poetic prose, so I couldn't resist asking you this. When crafting lyrical lines, similes, metaphors, etc. What do you think makes them most effective?
Thank you! Have you read Sarah Holland-Batt’s The Jaguar yet? She does so many incredible things with lines, words, and metaphors - I’m just in awe. It’s interesting because I’m very sensitive to the sound of words on the page. I’m aphantasic, so I don’t see things in my ‘mind’s eye’ but I do hear words as I write (or think) them. So as I write I’m constantly refining things for rhythm, repetition, sound, flow, etc - I listen. Or maybe I love to pretend I’m a poet, without having to worry about where to break a line :)
And that’s on writing with Amanda Niehaus! You can purchase her book The Breeding Season here. Don’t forget to check out the magazine Science Write Now, and as always, I’d love to here your thoughts on writing in the comments.