What’s your creative process like?
One thing I’ve discovered for myself is that creativity goes hand-in-hand with refilling my imaginative gas tank, so I don’t try to do full days of writing, usually. I can do that if I’m revising, but coming up with something new is dependent on having new observations and experiences. I usually spend mornings writing and afternoons are spent doing other stuff. Almost all of my story ideas begin with a first line coming to me. The hard work happens when I sit down and have to figure out what comes next. So that’s my second discovery about my own process: figuring it out only happens while I’m hard at work writing; there’s no “Aha!” moment that happens sitting in the bathtub, as the myth goes.
What keeps you motivated to create?
I know that reading saved me as a kid. When I was bullied, or was struggling in any way, there were books that I could escape into. I have very clear memories of curling myself hard into a corner of our orange living room couch and putting my nose in a book after school. I’m not writing for kids now, but I have always been deeply aware of the power of storytelling, so I’m motivated by that. Maybe one of my stories can be that for someone having a terrible day.
How do you push through creative blocks?
I’ve mostly stopped worrying about it now that I think of creativity as a tank that needs to be filled. The longest writer’s block I’ve had lasted about a year. I spent the year reading instead. It wasn’t wasted time.
If your work had a soundtrack, what songs would be on it? Why?
For my horror and speculative stuff, it would be Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings soundtrack, and for everything else, the beautiful drama of Ludovico Einaudi’s music.
Elizabeth Rosen is a former Nickelodeon Television writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as North American Review, Glimmer Train, Pithead Chapel, JMWW, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, and numerous others. Her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Her story “Tracks” was the winner of the 2021 Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition (literary/mainstream category). She is a native New Orleanian and a transplant to small-town Pennsylvania. She misses gulf oysters and southern ghost stories, but has become appreciative of snow and colorful scarves.