We recently connected with LaShawn M. Wanak and have shared our conversation below.

LaShawn M. , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

Actually, what’s happening to me now is the opposite. I’m going from a regular job to being a creative full-time.

My first instinct would be to say that it’s a dream come true. Fifteen years to the dot, my dayjob laid me off. It had been a goal of mine to become a full-time writer, and when it finally happened I was simultaneously excited and wrecked. How does one go from very little time to endless, endless hours to write?

It’s a hard thing.

I am in the process of unlearning 8am to 5pm work productivity restraints. I thought I would be able to have oodles of time to write, but I’m learning that’s not the case. If anything, I feel I’ve grown busier. I still need to carve out time to write, and there are still times when it has to take a back seat to other things. But I don’t worry about it as much as I used to.

What I am doing now is relearning the craft through writing exercises and books. In many ways, it feels like playing. But playing is an integral aspect to writing stories. You are using your imagination to create whole worlds. It’s fun, and I’m grateful to be in this new rhythm of life.  I feel this new rhythm is reflected in my newest story, “Deconstruction in the Form of a Cat God“, which was just published in the December issue of the speculative magazine Sunday Morning Transport.  I am eagerly looking forward to what else will be created in this new normal of mine.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve always loved stories– I started reading around the age of four and often made up stories for my sisters and cousins. When I was twelve, I received a typewriter for a Christmas gift and began typing stories out. In college, I started writing a fantasy novel as well as writing Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2 fanfiction, but it wasn’t until I became a stay-at-home mother in 2004 that I started to work towards writing speculative fiction professionally.

My stories tend to focus on Black women and their relationships, whether it’s between best friends or family. Within the past ten years, they’ve also held a common theme of grief, but I would also say my stories are hopeful as well.

I write mostly short stories, but I’m starting to experiment with different ways to tell a story. One of the projects I’m very proud of is creating the story for the immersive art collective Meow Wolf in their Grapevine, Texas permanent exhibit. Now I can honestly say that I’ve written a whole house!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

A few years after I started writing professionally, I was offered a part-time job. It worked well for me and I was able to balance the dayjob and my writing time. Several years after that, I was asked to increase my hours to full-time. I knew this would cut into my writing time, but we were in a position where I couldn’t turn the extra hours down.

So I learned how to write in bits and snatches. I always carried a notebook and pen with me and wrote whenever I could. 15- minute breaks, lunchtime, in the evenings (I tried writing in the mornings, but seeing I’m not a morning person, that never worked well). I had to snatch time whenever I could, and for the most part, it was tough. I also had to drop being an associate editor at Podcastle, which was heartbreaking to me.

But I still wrote, and was able to complete a few stories, including my novelette “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good”, published by Fiyah Magazine and wound up in the 2019 Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

That I absolutely had to come up with a story every week. I’d always felt guilty because during the time I worked full-time, there’d be weeks that I’d be too exhausted to write. There were also always people coming out with books and stories on social media. I would look at them and feel even worse, because I felt I had nothing to show for the work I was doing on my own stories.

Eventually, I had to learn that a lot of what I do with writing isn’t just putting down words. It’s coming up with plots and themes. It’s daydreaming. It’s sketching out plot scenarios. It’s research. And sometimes, it’s putting down the writing and going out on walks, or talking to people; getting the inspiration to help feed your story. Once I realized that, I stopped worrying about the time it took for me to write a story and enjoy the process.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://tbonecafe.wordpress.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tbonemjenkins/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lashawn.m.wanak
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lashawn-m-wanak-7a318224a/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TboneJenkins
• Other: Substack: https://wanak.substack.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tbonejenkins.bsky.social

Image Credits
Illustrated pictures are by Jesse “YISHAII” Brown.