Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Vaughn Jackson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Vaughn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I think most, if not all, authors can point back to a time when they were very young, picking crayons or pencils and writing little scraps and snippets of stories as they grew up. Whether it was glorified fan-fiction or something they brainstormed up all on their own, childhood is the place where imagination first blooms. I’m no different in that regard, though having a father who constantly put new, more challenging, books in my hands may have given my young imagination a heartier kickstart. Reading, after all, is the first step to learning how to write. And I read a lot. I don’t think I realized that I wanted to write as a career until I read Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, after which I promptly sat down and said: “I want to do this!” This was probably my junior year of High School, when I decided i wanted to be Neil Gaiman. So, I guess I first learned first by imitation…finding what styles I liked and didn’t like and cannibalizing them for my own writing. Overtime I began to distill that into something that was wholly my own. Stories stopped sounding like Neil Gaiman meets Stephen King meets Douglas Adams, and started sounding like Vaughn Jackson. And in college I wrote my first novel! It was terrible. And while I’ve come to accept that, the realization stung at first. I mean, I had taken classes on writing, read books on writing until my head hurt, workshopped with friends, squared away time every day to write and…it was crap. It took one of my writing professors (and my girlfriend, who was very nice about the whole ‘this book is bad’ revelation) explaining to me that I needed to stop thinking of a bad book as a failure, but as a stepping stone to a better book. And from the ashes of what I believe was called “Long Live Earth” came something entirely different…a novella that eventually evolved into my second novel, “Touched by Shadows”.
Knowing what I know now, I am not sure I believe there is a way to “speed up” the learning process for writing. It comes at its own pace, and every person is different. Every new thing you write is exactly that: “new”, and comes with its own completely different issues and obstacles. But I will say that if I had been able to work through my discouragement faster, or not let it sink its hooks into me in the first place, I may have learned “faster” what was and was not working in my writing.
I’ll also add that if you are well-read, not just in your preferred genre, but all around, you’re likely to have come across ways others have overcome those obstacles and handled those issues. I know for me that as an adult, finding time to read through books as fast and often as I did as a child has grown…difficult…to say the least. Setting aside more time to read, may have helped me along faster and I do find that as I try and make headway in that goal, my writing has become more fluid, and I find myself stumped less frequently.
To me the most essential skill for a writer (if you haven’t picked up on it yet) is the ability to read broadly and deeply. I believe I’m stealing Stephen King’s words here when I say, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write”. Since I think I’ve harped on the importance of reading enough at this point, so here are some other important skills:
Self-Motivation: Writing is not easy, and only you can make yourself do it.
Editing: Finishing a story is only the first step, and a first draft is never going to be high-quality.
Thick-Skin: Even the nicest rejection can hurt like hell.
Patience: Writing takes time. Editing takes time. Submitting your writing takes time. Acceptances take time. Editing again, takes time. And so on…there will be waiting…so you best get used to it!
Vaughn, 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?
Vaughn A. Jackson began writing somewhere around the time his tiny hands could first grasp a writing utensil and has since authored two novels: Up from the Deep and Touched by Shadows. His writing falls under the speculative fiction umbrella of genres, often blending elements of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association, and lives somewhere outside of Baltimore, depending on who you ask. His girlfriend Stephanie, two cats, Roland and Persephone, and his dog, Constantine, like to be mentioned in his bio. When he’s not writing, he can be found playing video games, watching terrible (read: great) science fiction movies, or trying desperately to keep up the illusion that he is an adult.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
So, perhaps not necessarily earlier, but something that I’ve recently realized I need to utilize more frequently: Writer’s Conferences. I’ve been attending one called Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity since 2018 and there’s something about being surrounded by a bunch of other people who share the same creative passion as you. I always end up leaving the conference refreshed and ready to jump back into writing. Writing itself is a solitary endeavor most of the time. You’re writing or editing or staring at a blank screen/page, and you’re alone. Eventually more people do join the process, but during the initial doing, it’s just you.
These conferences are something akin to hermit conventions. Everyone there is a writer who has experienced that loneliness and you put all of them together and it’s just a wonderful environment. You get to meet people and talk about projects and philosophies behind writing and most importantly receive encouragement from people and are able to network. I personally am hoping to make my way to more than just one of these events per year, and I cannot suggest them enough to any writer, published or not.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The liberty to do whatever I want, really. Most things have structures and rules, but if you look at the world of art (and for my case in particular, writing) while there are…frameworks and expectations…they are often broken. You look at something like Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves and you can get a taste of just what types of wild things you can do in a book. But outside of the structural, the story itself lends itself to endless possibility. One of the things I often hear reiterated is that everything has already been written…but not by YOU. Your voice and background will always influence you and create something unique, and to me, that freedom is the most rewarding. My first novel was a Kaiju Thriller, something pretty niche, but I wrote it for myself and it just happened a publisher liked it. Separating your art from the need for success is difficult, but once you do, the possibilities are endless!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://vaughnthewordslinger.weebly.com/
- Instagram: @blaximillion_author
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blaximillion
- Twitter: @blaximillion
Image Credits
For the photos of me: Lauren O’Byrne