A Writing Conversation with Aura Wilming
in where we chat about beginnings and building confidence
For the third installment of Writing Conversations, I chatted with Aura Wilming, one of the editors of the popular publication, The Weekly Knob, and a talented writer in her own right. Aura is also the author behind The Unsolicited Bloggings, a blog full of her musings on a far range of topics. For someone who has only been publishing for only around a year, Aura is an extremely accomplished writer whose simple style is a delight in both her nonfiction and fiction. Her story, “Tragedy Struck” is one of the stories that drew me in with its simple yet poetic depiction of Life, Death and Time.
R: To start, tell us a bit about yourself and your writing. From what I’ve read, you seem to write a wide variety of genres and subjects. Where do the stories come from?
A: I do two type of stories; fiction and blogs. I’ve always been an over-thinker. The blogs are often things that kept my mind busy for days. It’s a way of exorcising the thoughts that keep spinning and occupying space in my head if I don’t do something with them. They almost always start off as something I saw, read or noticed, and for some reason my mind latched on.
Often I feel these opinions are not something people are waiting to hear about. That makes it more comfortable to write and publish them in a blog, giving others the chance to ignore them without seeming rude, than to bother someone in a face to face conversation. That’s also how I got to the name “Unsolicited Bloggings” for my blog publication. I keep being slightly surprised people enjoy reading those things.
My fiction is what I would consider my “serious” writing. In quotation marks, because I’ve only started writing — with the intent of letting people read my stories — very recently. A little over a year ago I took the plunge and started thinking of myself as ‘aspiring writer’.
Before, there was a time I only wrote erotica with an intended audience of one. Not always the same one person. I have written sexy stories for a lot of different platonic friends, personalized to their kinks and tastes. That was a lot of fun. And getting requests made me feel like I wasn’t too bad at it. This suddenly changed when I found myself in a online/long distance relationship. Our main form of communication is the written word. I discovered three things:
- Writing personalized sex stories now feels intimate in a way I don’t desire to share with anyone else.
- Writing sex stories when I mean every word is a whole lot harder for me to write than fictional sex. My mind often runs away from me without getting any sentences formed. No coherent sentences anyway.
- I really missed writing. I did still blog, but that’s different from creating a story.
My solution was to go public. Publicizing erotica to me is more an act of exhibitionism. It feels a lot less intimate with my audience because I am not taking their needs into account. Only my own. That’s how I got started at Medium, with a serial story which was meant to be BDSM erotica. Because I was going for a long story for once, I allowed myself a long buildup. With as result that the first few parts are pretty much safe for work.
Funnily enough, not too long after I started writing on Medium, something S Lynn Knight wrote prompted a response from me, and we started The Weekly Knob, a publication with writing prompts. While we don’t have anything against erotica, and we have published it before, the main focus of the publication is other sorts of short fiction. This had led to me writing fiction which isn’t erotica. I’ve now published more other sorts of fiction on Medium than erotica stories. The serial fiction story that got me started is woefully neglected. This is the reason why I’m trying out all sorts of genres now. I’m still trying things and figuring out what suits me best. The ideas often come when I’m doing things that don’t need my mind to focus, like doing chores or walking. It’s a time to just let my imagination run wild. I walk home from work every day, which is about fifteen minutes. Most days I get home with an idea I can write down. Some dialogue or a scene I thought up. Very rarely do I get a story beginning, middle and end at once. It’s usually a little part I can then sit with and build on.
R: What drew you to writing in the first place?
A: Writing was forced on me from a very young age. I suffer from dyslexic dysgraphia. Back when I was about 8, it was just called “a form of dyslexia”. It means my spontaneous writing is pretty much illegible to anyone but me, due to poor spelling. My copied work is not bad. Unlike other forms of dyslexia, my reading has never been affected. Unlike other forms of dysgraphia my individual letters are well formed and it’s not linked to brain damage. I’m not sure if they have better methods of teaching kids with dyslexic dysgraphia these days, but my treatment was writing. It didn’t matter what, just write, write, write some more and keep writing everyday to understand the words and get intimate with the language. At first, I hated it, because I was so bad at it. Slowly I learned to love writing, but I still hated to have anyone read anything I wrote. My saving grace has been computers with spell check. It’s still annoying to write something, get one of those red squiggly lines, click it and see ‘no suggestions’. One of the things I learned to deal with this, are long lists of synonyms.
I sometimes get told I write clearly. Not entirely accurate. I write simple. If I ever use twenty dollar words in my writing, then that’s because they were important enough for me to spend the time learning how to write them. Which can take months. For instance, I still couldn’t spell ‘verisimilitude’ without a spell check, but I can come close enough for the spell check to pick up on what it is I am attempting to spell. It happens to be one of my favorite words for anything fiction related, because often ‘realism’ or ‘believable’ aren’t quite right.
It took me decades to get the confidence to put my stories out there for anyone to see. Even with my developed love for writing, even with the encouragement of teachers in high school, the idea that I couldn’t write persisted. But privately, I was always writing. I don’t think I can stop writing. It’s as much habit as passion. My longhand notebooks are still my closest guarded secrets though
R: When do you find time to write? What is the witching hour of writing for you?
A: Usually as I get home from work, between 5:30 and 7. Because I walk home, and walking is one of those things that gets my imagination going, this works out pretty well. Sometimes I don’t have the time to sit down and write until after my son has gone to bed. I will admit that I sometimes write when I shouldn’t be writing. Like, during work. A sentence will pop up that I have to write down. While at work, Medium’s text editing program has replaced notebooks. Since I’m at a computer, and it’s right there, available to me on any device with internet later without ever getting lost, it’s just much easier that way. As a result, I now have Medium on my browser in the background whenever I am on a computer.
I’m not sure I have a real ‘witching hour’ I try to write whenever possible. I did notice that if I can plan my day in myself, in the weekends and days off, I hardly ever write before noon. Mornings are for reading. And having lots of coffee .
R: You mentioned that you’ve been trying out different genres. What are the kinds of stories that seem to stick the most for you right now?
A: Most of my stories focus on relationships and family dynamics. I suppose you could say, since I doing themed work, without focusing much on plot and aiming to describe some of the human condition, it’s literary fiction short stories. But the term ‘literary fiction’ sounds a little pretentious.I’d sooner call it mommy-lit since it focuses on relationships and raising children. I hope that won’t offend any male readers.
Even the horror story I’ve written recently that keeps to the relationship/family dynamic theme. And the NaNoWriMo Novel I will be writing this November is also going to explore relationships/family dynamics. It seems to me the only story that breaks this pattern is my Science Fiction story about criminal aliens and a lawyer. That was so much fun to write though, I’m definitely going to revisit those characters.
R: I’m sure a lot of aspiring writers feel the same way about building enough confidence to put their stories out for public consumption. What helped you finally get to that point? What advice would you give to your past self, knowing now the popularity of your writing on Medium.
A: Two book series with a real big fan-base, so this is going to upset a lot of people. Can I start off by saying I mean no disrespect at all? I don’t want this to sound like I’m judging anyone’s tastes.
First is the Harry potter series. I don’t think they are particularly well written. I will admit they improves significantly as the series goes on. But they helped me realize that a lot of people really don’t care all that much about a writer’s skill. What they care about, is the story. They care about the universe. They care about characters. They care about creativity. They care about ideas. If you have those, readers are surprisingly forgiving of technical writing. They will give you room to figure it out on the fly. All you need to write, is a story to tell.
And then there are the Fifty Shades books. Unlike Potter, which I can admire, I loath Fifty Shades. They are badly written AND they are just so very wrong on so many levels. Friends started getting sick of me ranting that I could write a better smut novel, whenever the topic came up, so they started replying “Yes, you should.” And slowly my answer changed from “Maybe I will” to “I will”. In a year of writing my priorities have shifted a little, but I still think I will. Maybe for NaNoWriMo 2017.
As for advice to my past self — I would want to tell myself to stop throwing out those notebooks and papers I felt compelled to fill with writings. I don’t think I should have started writing for a public earlier. I’ve been doing a lot of things I can now use to write about, so that’s good. But I do mourn those early writings I just unceremoniously put in the trash. Today, that might have been a gold mine. Or not. But I will never know and that’s a little sad.
R: I greatly enjoy the Weekly Knob and I think you have garnered a great community of writers submitting fantastic work. What is one tip you would give to writers wanting to write for one of your prompts?
A: I’ve said before I consider The Weekly Knob a writer’s sketchbook. That’s why we have only 5 days to write. I say we, because every other week I write for it as well. I have no idea what sort of prompt comes up on those weeks until I see it on Monday, just like all our writers. When it’s my turn to provide the prompt, I don’t write.
The first tip I have for people is “Join in”. Even if you don’t finish, even if you don’t like what comes out, even if you end up not submitting, just join in. It’s a exercise. Every time you sit down to write a short story you will get better at your craft. That’s why The Knob is for writers at all skill levels.
The second tip is, don’t worry about a story that comes to mind when you see the prompt, seeming too obvious. In almost 30 weeks we have had not one instance of people writing the same plot line. They might think along the same theme, but they will take it in completely different directions. Don’t over think the prompt, just go where it takes you.
And please, don’t feel obligated when you’re added as a writer. You can join in once, or every week, or whenever you feel like it. We want The Weekly Knob to be fun, not work. To everyone still on the fence about joining The Weekly Knob, jump in, the water is fine. Send us a mail, even if you don’t have an idea or story yet. You’ll surprise yourself. The writers keep surprising us every week.
Check out Aura’s works or if you’d like to get in touch with her, email her at aura.a.wilming.com.
Got some thoughts on writing you’d like to share? I’d love to interview you! Give me a shout at renee@wiredcrow.com.
