We recently connected with Ian Kirkpatrick and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Ian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

It’s been a long process… So for anyone just starting out their writing journey, don’t be discouraged. Things aren’t perfect, especially when you’re just beginning. Patience and perseverance are also hard virtues to learn and I go through them every time I start a new project and now that I’m learning how to draw, I’m having to suffer it again.

The way I learned how to write didn’t just come from writing a LOT of words. It didn’t have anything to do with reading nonstop as a teen either. However, as a teenager, I spent a lot of time roleplaying online. That is, I’d make a character to go along in a scenario with other peoples’ characters and we’d just write collaboratively. I think this majorly helped me in both writing instinctually, responsively, and impulsively as well as normalizing myself to showing other people my work so when it came time to crit or be critiqued or make my work public, it wasn’t that out there.

I also studied theater in school, which gave me a lot of character focus because one of the things you focus on in theater is specifically the character you play. You’re embodying them and to be the best actor you can be, one of the things emphasized is that even if you’re not on the stage, your character is ALWAYS coming from somewhere and going to somewhere else. This is true for every single character in a book. Other principles I picked up from theater were things like how we learn about people isn’t always straight forward. There are three ways viewers pick up on character: (1) What the character says about themselves; (2) What others say about the character; (3) What the character does. These three elements may not be in alignment, and that’s, in part, how you find out who is lying to you. It’s because of this I find that a lot of books actually have the characters (or authors) lying to me about who their characters are as what they say and what they do and what others say about them are … not in alignment.

Another thing I picked up from acting was the Meisner Method which brought the focus into every scene, the characters have a purpose for being there and an objective they’re trying to accomplish, even if that objective is just boredom or leaving the room. It also emphasized how statements receive more of an emotional response than careful observations (You ARE angry vs you SEEM angry). With this in mind, I’ve been able to pay better attention to the purpose and reason behind every scene. I approach every character the same way an actor would approach the part to give that character life, motive, and direction. No one is *just there* to be there and I think the theater aspect of my learning experience heavily influenced and improved my understanding of story.

I later went to graduate school for creative writing. First, let me say you don’t need to go to graduate school to learn creative writing if you put in the time and effort to find good sources for information and critique. Learning how to critique and sort/receive critique is an important skill to learn, but so is reading and interpreting text. Both of these can be done without the cost of university if you find the right people. Anyway, learning how to read into critiques for what will help you do what you’re trying to do versus how people independently respond emotionally/personally to your work is valuable in learning how to not take crit or reviews personally and to learn that not all responses are good or helpful. Reading critically for analysis helps you see how a story is put together and what works or doesn’t work. Doing these two things together is often imperative to help understand what some criticisms mean.

I remember receiving feedback on head-hopping and breaking tension with jokes on my thesis project early on. I didn’t fully understand the problem until I read it in someone else’s work. It’s often hard to identify the problems in our own work or where we fall short because we’re so used to what we’re doing, but then seeing it in someone else’s work helps contextualize what others see in ours.

I think the most essential skill for writing is compassion, because without it, you’re likely to create flat or angry characters or characters who exist solely as a utility, a talking point, or some social/political message because you’re not treating them like a person. I’ve seen so much anger written into stories by the way of villainizing people.

One of the biggest obstacles I think people face in the arts is the ego. No one wants to hear how something they put time into is either poorly put together, doesn’t work, or just isn’t good. Many avoid critique and then are surprised to be given bad reviews or they only trade work with other people who will not give them poor reviews. There’s a business side to the arts and a learning side to the arts, but the ego and greed that say defend the business and only trade for business with always hurt the learning and expression side of what makes it art. At some point, if you sell out the artistic side, you’re no longer an artist, but a producer making content that looks like art.

Ian, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi! My name is Ian Kirkpatrick and I’m an author, idiot, and loinstreamer. That’s not as saucy as it sounds, I swear! First and foremost, I’m a storyteller. I not only write, but I also draw. Storytelling is more than just words or adventures, it’s people, lives, choices, characters, personalities… and that’s one of the things I’ve been loving to rediscover since picking up drawing again. My stories are much more personal than epic, focusing on lives and choices people make, how we become who we are, and where we go from where we’re at. I love doing things grounded in reality but may have a form of casual mysticism in them because I think there’s something magical about the world we live in, but it’s so subtle, if you’re not looking, you might not notice. I’ve discovered I write a lot of stories that bring up different kinds of family, love, loneliness, alienation, and really… just a love for people. Some of my favorite characters I’ve created in this last year or two with people like Ralph Reagan, KC, Jag and Joey from the Bodymore series, Michi and Katsuo from an unnamed series set in Japan, and Marcella, Billie, and Ace from my more recent western series I’m working on. I can’t wait to share all of them beyond the art and ideas I’m showing now.

Fo me, art and creation are compulsive. Characters tell me who they are and I follow to find their stories. They’re very human stories too. Things of love and struggle and loss and pain, but ultimately hope. That’s what I want people to know when they pick up any of my books. Even the darker ones like Bodymore or Cain/abel, my stories may show a dark setting, dark desires, or traumatic events, but not one of them has ended so far without a note of hope because ultimately, I don’t believe anyone is hopeless. That, I think, is also something I’ve loved discovering about my writing in the last few years especially.

I hope that readers will be able to find something in any of my stories that makes them laugh or be entertained or be inspired or feel hopeful. The biggest compliment I can receive is knowing my book or even /a/ character in a book mattered to someone, somewhere, for some reason.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

If you’re unhappy with what you’re seeing, take chances and seek out new content and new creators. There is SO much out there, some more surprising than others. The indie community specifically is an interesting section because you will have no polished first drafts from school kids to adults with accolades all publishing the same way. You also have the freedom to write whatever you want without stipulating to trends.

I recently read an article about how Cormac McCarthy got his start and how his first 4-5 books were financial flops, but his agent believed in him, his craft, and the stories he had to tell so his agent fought for him at the publisher. Eventually, one of his later stories really kicked off, and that ended up helping to sell all of his lesser favored, earlier stories. It was because of the chances that agent took on Cormac for his unconventional stories that actually gave him the opportunity to write what he wanted, not what the industry was trying to push and sell.

Publishing is a business, traditional publishing is no different. They want to ensure they’ll make back the money they’re investing or that they’ll fulfill their mission statement. Sometimes, that means books become stale or have to fit a certain criteria for normalcy in order to pass into publishing. In some ways, this is great as it enforces a certain standard, in other ways, it can also quash creativity as nothing “too out there” or even possibly transgressive can maybe make it.

Add to that the rampant theft happening with generative AI users trying to make quick money off stolen art. Creatives and artists have put their lives into their works, to share the world they see in one artistic medium or another. The best thing anyone can do is seek out true artists and look for those stories. Support the arts, not product producers and if you enjoy something, share it.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I’ve experienced a couple of things from both noncreative people and producers in the creative industry. Producers in the creative industry in this case mean write-to-market, people focused on creating books just to make money as opposed to the art. They talk and work like business people. Not meant to be an insult, it’s just in the way we operate and talk about what we’re doing, we’re very clearly different, and it’s the same as if talking to someone who isn’t creative.

Family members who are more business-focused ask about how my creative endeavors, and when it’s said I’m not making closer to 6-figures like they are in their traditional job, they talk about selling politics or personal details in order to build a base. It’s not about the creative works, it’s about what could possibly build a financial base faster. On more than one occasion, I’ve heard others who write books also insult the idea of writing books to tell the story you have to tell or for the art of it over the business side saying, “I’m glad you can write for the art, but some of us have bills to pay.”

All I have to say to that is that not everyone, in fact, I’d guess probably most who pursue for the art aren’t without bills, it’s just a matter of priorities. At times, it’s really hard to express creative interest even in creative circles when the business mind is around because there’s a lack of understanding or compassion for the creative side of things and people aren’t seeing as those you share your creativity with, but people to get money from. I feel like this has also corrupted a lot of online discourse about books and reviewing as many authors now only see star ratings as business responses. So a low rating isn’t about an experience with a book, but is somehow meant to destroy your business and is personal. High ratings are meant to manipulate the algorithm. You have mentions of leaning into politics specifically to sell for sociopolitical support instead of it being about the book or stories and that’s something I don’t know if non-creative people (or business-minded people) understand. This results in calling creative-minded people not just eccentric, but stupid.

Contact Info:

• Website: steakhousebooks.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kirkpattiecake/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KirkpattieCake
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZyQi8QoQY5wpNv1ub7eJg

Image Credits
Bodymore Illustrations commissioned from Inessa Burnell. Boom, Boom, Boom Cast Art & Dead End Drive Cast Art commissioned from Inariawan S.