Given the numerous magazines in which this particular gentleman has been published, Xenith readers may have already stumbled across Andrew MacDonald’s short fiction. At 24, Andrew is working on his masters in creative writing and has been published in The Fiddlehead, Blackheart Magazine, Existere, qwerty, Feathertale, echolocation, and many other magazines. He also maintains a blog at caughtwithstring.blogspot.com. In this interview, he touches on the writing and revision process as well as his experience with publishing in the small press.

As someone who has primarily published fiction, you’ve developed an undeniable skill for it. When you contrast your writing now versus your writing from when you first started out, what is the most marked difference? What, if anything, has remained the same?

That’s a good question. When I first started out, I didn’t pay much attention to plot logistics. I focused a lot more on style, mostly of the high fallutin’ kind. Lots of big words, lengthy descriptions, tons of exposition. Nowadays I’m more interested in crafting stories, not sentences. An old mentor once told me that writers tend to be stylists or storytellers. I used to classify myself as the former; now, not so much.

The more I write, the more I realize that language will always service the idea. That sounds complicated, but it’s not. Your goal is to entertain, or otherwise engage, your reader. An alienating text is rarely successful. Or at least I avoid them like the plague. Everyone denigrates the Dan Browns, the JK Rowlings, the Grishams. Not me. I admire their mastery of storytelling craft. We like to think that writing is all about beautiful words. Maybe that’s part of it, and certainly it’s one of the first things I worked on when I started. But the art of crafting a plot is a huge part of writing fiction, and lately that’s the part of the game I’ve been focusing on. Someone like John Irving is a good example of a, quote, literary writer, who pays attention to plot, makes things happen, and doesn’t have a really graceful style. I think of Dickens too, or Graham Greene (though some people might disagree about him).

Other than that, developing discipline and shedding the title of weekend writer. You have to take your writing seriously if you want other people to.

Almost everyone has some definable method of organizing thoughts and ideas in preparation for writing. What is the typical series of events that takes place between the initial spark of your short story and writing the first sentence?

I like to have a vague idea of where I’m going, but I’m open to change. Usually something hits me, a sentence, an idea, some weird event, and I’ll try to work through the possibilities. Once I have something, anything, I’ll write a few sentences. Most of the time they’re not in any kind of coherent order, at least on the page, but in my brain they fit like jigsaw pieces in a bigger picture. The less time I spend being anal and planning the better. The less restraint, the better. The less time I spend analyzing what goes into that first draft, the better.

So when you tell someone that you’re working on a story, and they ask you what it’s about, it’s pretty safe to assume that you aren’t sure yet? In that vein, when someone asks the same question on a finished story, are you able to answer?

Sure. For me, the summary is really about isolating the story’s conflict. You hear agents throw around this piece of advice all the time for novels, and I think it applies to fiction of all flavors: if you can’t summarize your story in a sentence or less, you might need to do some thinking. Going into a story I’ll probably have a good idea about what it’s going to be a about. At least generally. It could change as circumstance dictates.

How would you describe your revision process? What do your first drafts generally look like in comparison to the copy that goes to the publisher?

Revision’s more fun that writing the first draft. Still painful, though. Sometimes my first drafts are pretty solid, but mostly they’re awful, putrid, stenchy.

Let’s throw in a quote by Charles de Gaulle: “Don’t ask me who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life.” What lambs have you digested? Who shows up in what way?

That was elquently phrased. Well done, Chuck. Immediate influences? Salman Rushdie, Mordecai Richler, John Irving, Zadie Smith. Recent digestifs include Shalom Auslander’s Foreskin’s Lament, Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love, Bechdel’s amazing graphic novel Fun Home, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.

Conversely, what lambs have given you indigestion?

This will get me chirps from both ends of the litgeek spectrum, but Chuck Palahniuk and Jane Austen. I think Chuck’s got a good marketing team and a bagful of gimmicks he employs every book. I enjoyed Fight Club. Anything after that . . . he just gets worse and worse. Sigh. Plain Jane’s got skills I respect, she’s just not my thing.

There’s no getting around the fact that you have an impressive list of publication credits. What is your usual process for submitting a piece of writing? Do you let it sit for a few months, awaiting revisions, or do you submit immediately after finishing? Do you submit to several magazines at once or just pick what you think would be a good fit? Do you write pieces and think, “Hey this would be a good fit for Fred’s Magazine” or do you come to that decision much later?

I used to be impatient, sending everything out the second I lifted my fingers off the keyboard. Which meant I’d have ten pieces floating in submission land, and ten rejections coming a few months later. While that didn’t yield particularly stunning results, it was an important step: send your stuff out there. Be too big for your britches. Grow thick skin and get used to the process.

Getting work out there, published in journals, is rough: the pay is crap, the wait is long, and most people don’t care. On the other hand, it’s a good way to build your CV and your confidence. And who knows who might be reading? An agent caught the story a friend of mine wrote in a nationally distributed literary journal and asked if he had representation yet. I don’t send stories out anymore unless I’m confident in them, and even then I expect a rejection letter. What used to be a week of editing a story has turned into months. Having one really sharp story is probably worth more than a handful of clunky ones. I’ve done some small-time journal editing and know from experience that editors are looking for reasons to trash your stuff.

I tend to avoid writing for specific markets, partly because I get caught up in writing what I want to, for better or for worse, and partly because I just plain suck when I try. Most of the places I submit to frown upon simultaneous submissions, so it makes for long waits. Duotrope is a fantastic resource and I use it every time I submit to a publication.

What would you say is cardinal advice for authors looking to start submitting their work?

Cardinal advice? Just do it. Follow the guidelines and get work out there.

If you could boil it down to something specific, what is the most important lesson you have learned in the years you’ve spent improving your craft?

Keep going when everyone else quits.

Most Xenith readers have at least a passing familiarity with artist and writer Ken Krekeler through his webcomic My Nemesis. My Nemesis has been on hiatus for more than a year, however, and during that time Mr. Krekeler has been working a massive undertaking–the creation of a graphic novel called The Colodin Project tentatively scheduled to be published later this summer.

In this interview, Ken talks with us about the creative evolution of The Colodin Project, writing and his artistic inspirations.

The Colodin Project has existed in some form or another since you were a teenager. You’ve referred to it as your “magnum opus” in the past. Talk a little about its background and evolution. What was the original spark that seeded this idea in your mind and how has it changed over the years? I am especially interested on how this latest incarnation came to be. After ten years, what finally brought you to the point where the story just began to flow?

I’ve been into comics and sci-fi stuff since I was a kid. There was no single origin point for The Colodin Project; the story and characters evolved over time as I got older. But the first time I started writing notes for the plot was on a cruise ship. I was fourteen, stuck alone in my cabin for some reason, watching terrible movies on television, when I suddenly decided I was tired of following other people’s stories, and that I would invent my own. So I drew some designs, some of which made it, some that did not; and that was how it began.

The story has never “flowed.” It has undergone too many overhauls to recount. But there is a difference between a single story, with a beginning, middle and end… and an epic, which is made up of smaller, shorter stories. Over time, I’d gone over the plot, breaking it down, breaking it down, until I felt like things were right. Until the events made sense, the characters made sense, their choices made sense. But even after I’d gotten to that point, even after I liked what I had, it still felt contrived somehow. So I got the idea to create an objective character, a kind of third party, which evolved into Steven Richards, private investigator.

You are that rare breed of comic creator that is both writer and artist. Do you consider yourself more a writer or an artist or some indivisible fusion of the two? How does one skill set influence the other?

I consider myself a hybrid of the two, although it’s less common to be recognized for my writing, so I tend to value that side a little more. With comics, almost everybody sees the art first. Because if it LOOKS professional, it probably is. You flip through the pages, you skim, and if it seems up to par, you’ll give the first few lines a once-over to make sure there aren’t any typos. And then you buy it. Maybe.

But the writing always comes first. There’s a script. There are revisions. There’s editing. There’s logistical thinking. It’s only after I’m happy with a script that I move onto the thumbnail stage.

I try not to let my art be determined by my writing. That is to say, if I have an idea for a script in which a giant fish monster with robot legs attacks a fairy princess in an underwater battle, I won’t worry about how difficult that battle will be to illustrate. If the story works, then I move on to the next phase, crossing any future bridges when I come to them.

Let’s talk about your artistic process. You use photographs of live models and locations as the basis for your characters and scenery. How is this advantageous to your work and what happens next? You take it to Illustrator? Paint it in Photoshop?

I use Photoshop. Models are a vital part of my process now. With live models, I don’t have to worry about consistency, proportion, or extreme angles; all the information is already there. In addition, my photo shoots are usually pretty fun to do. My models are all friends and family, and working together on a project like this is very enlightening to the relationship.

Speaking of the artistic side of Colodin, your visual style is very cinematic. What media–movies, comic books, whatever–have particularly influenced that style and why? Returning to your writerly side, what authors, if any, have influenced your narrative style?

I think of comics as a written form of film. I choose my shots the same way a director would choose his angles with a camera. This isn’t as common as you might think. Many artists, especially up-and-comers, try and add as much drama to every panel as possible. You’ll have a scene where two people are drinking a cup of coffee, chatting about the weather, and you’ll have these extreme bird’s eye view of a character, or they’ll be popping out of the panels. This doesn’t make sense to me. It comes off corny and over-the-top. Save dramatic shots for dramatic scenes; use simple shots for simple ones.

Alan Moore is a big influence. If you look at his work (From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), you’ll notice his illustrators keep the panel layouts static, the shots straight-on, like storyboards rather than comic books. For dialogue, I draw a lot from Brian Michael Bendis (Ultimate Spider-Man, Powers), who uses very realistic characters saying very realistic things. They don’t react with blatant exposition; they react the way a person would.

You began releasing The Colodin Project as 21(?) individual issues, but now you are, instead, releasing the first five chapters as a trade paperback. Why the change?

Single issues of independent books like mine are on their way out. Graphic novels are on the rise. You see, pretty much all comic books are distributed through Diamond Distribution. Everything from Superman to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is listed in a catalog called Diamond Previews. If you don’t meet their minimum order requirements, you get cut from the catalog, and that’s it for your book.

Comic book readers know this. Even if they like your first couple of issues, even if it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever read, they’re well aware it’s very likely they’ll never get to read the end of your story. So now, with the decline of the economy, with the slow death of print coming to an end, it’s easier for people to get on board with completed stories like Watchmen. Even the big time guys, Marvel and DC, have begun periodically taking each story arc from their mainstream books and re-publishing them as graphic novels. And sales on the novels are good.

Learn more and read The Colodin Project‘s entire first volume for free at its website.