After an international childhood lived throughout Asia because of her father’s non-profit aid work, Tracy Wise has spent her career in theatre, opera, and then higher education administration. She currently writes university presidential speeches, campus communications, and news stories in California’s Inland Empire. She has a BA in Theatre and Spanish from Washington University in St. Louis (which includes a year at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK) and an MA in Cultural Studies (a historiography degree) from the University of East London in the UK. A life-long passionate reader, she designs social media for the Friends of her local Redlands, California A.K. Smiley Public Library in her free time. Facebook: Tracy Wise, Author and Freelance Writer
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
MADAME SOREL’S LODGER, to be published by Type Eighteen Books in February 2025, is my first work to be published. So, watch this space! It is incredibly exciting to see my creative (as in, non-work related) writing entering the wider world.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I’ve been writing stories my whole life, and so fiction is the space in which I feel most at home. There’s a type of discipline for writing poetry which I simply lack. I know there will be some non-fiction in my future (apart from my day job), but I don’t feel as comfortable in it as a form of creative expression.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I tend to start writing and see if the story continues to call me forward. I basically have a sense of where the story is going, but what happens along the way is part of the daily discovery. To get started on a project, I need the mental space to be open to it. Once the opening is there, it tends to continue until it says, I’m done.
4 - Where does a work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
It is not a fixed thing for me. Projects may start as a short story and then say, there’s more here, keep going. Or not. Or they may emerge from the first as a full novel.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love reading out loud. I’ve done it my entire life and used to record story tapes for my younger cousins and then their children when they were small. I hugely enjoyed recording the audiobook for MADAME SOREL, for instance. But I have yet to do a public reading of my creative work (apart from in writer’s critique groups)—am looking forward to diving in.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I fully believe writers need to be alive and aware to the current moment, including concerns about racism, sexism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQIA issues, as well as to issues around the question of appropriation. That being said, writers also need to be free to write. I believe that writers can tap into that well of creativity which is part of our common humanity, and that should be celebrated and supported.
For example, in MADAME SOREL’S LODGER, the central character who I simply name “the Artist” is trying to pull all of life down onto a painted canvas, so that the canvas comes fully alive. I am striving to create a vivid experience for my reader using letters on a flat, white page or screen, so that this world and its characters come fully alive.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
The writer is a fellow human being in the larger culture and, therefore, they have as much right as anyone else to speak up. If they are published and well known, it can add weight to what they say in the public square and who is willing to listen to them. Perhaps I am an idealist, but I believe informed thoughtfulness and considered reflection can promote discussion and can strengthen us as a culture and as a society. Did I saw I was an idealist?
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
In my view, a writer always needs an outside pair of eyes on their writing (aka, an editor), the same way that an actor always needs an outside pair of eyes on their performance (aka, a director). We need another perspective, because getting lost in our own head can weaken what we are trying to do. So, yes, it is essential.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
There are no rules when it comes to writing. Write. And read-read-read-read-read.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to news stories and speeches)? What do you see as the appeal?
Writing is how I best express myself, so moving from fiction to press releases to speeches is natural to me. That is, once you understand the “feeling,” format, and intention of each “mode,” it becomes an easy switch. And it all provides an opportunity to hone your writing. No effort is ever truly lost. Honestly, I credit my years spent on Twitter as providing an excellent training ground for distilling what I want to say into as clear and concise a statement as possible.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
While I dream of having a set, orderly routine (just as I dream having a tidy, minimalist, organized house), I have come to the realization that I will always resist that. I am very Type A—I map each day out, with all my tasks, deadlines, and goals, and then set to work getting them done. Which then also involves rearranging like mad as the day throws new things at you.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
For me, the biggest hurdle is carving out both the time and the headspace to let the creativity free. I tend to overschedule myself.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
My college roommate was from Pakistan, one of the places where I grew up as a child. I came back to the dorm late one night after a theatre rehearsal. It was warm and humid, and she had the window open, the lights off, a couple of candles burning, and some Pakistani music playing softly. I opened the door and I was enveloped by the sound, the sight, and the smells, and I did not know where or even when I was. I have never forgotten that moment.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Honestly, for me, everything I do is somehow connected to music. When I am writing, it is the rhythm and cadence of the sentences as well as the sounds of the words themselves which I listen to. And I also want to put clearly down on paper the scenes I am seeing in my mind so the reader can see them, too. But all of that is also informed by a lifetime of being read to and then, from the age of 6, reading ferociously on my own.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
There are so many incredible writers out there, it is hard to narrow it down. As a child, poetry was hugely important for me. A childhood writer I loved was Joan Aiken. Recent discoveries include Sarah Winman and Alice Winn. Maggie O’Farrell’s THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT moved so well into the mind of an artist and made her come alive, which added a whole other level to the impact of Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” for me. I have loved Barbara Pym’s novels a great deal. Also, Robertson Davies has been very influential. Edward Carey’s LITTLE really spoke to me—the rhythms of his writing in the novel conveyed the strangeness and familiarity of fairy tales. Julie Otsuka’s ability to pack so very much into her short novels seems extraordinary to me—you get lost in her world and think you’ve been gone for hours, but you haven’t been. And Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B. DUBOIS was just incredible (you can tell she is a poet in how she constructs her sentences and tells her story). There are also some amazing non-fiction writers in history and philosophy—I read a lot of history these days, especially in the years since I earned my M.A. I know I will leave someone off whom I love…
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I always knew I wanted to write, but I also knew I wanted to perform. I decided to do the performing when I was younger and spent several years as an actress and then an opera singer (the first was something I had only dreamed of and the second I had never dreamed of; getting to do both was magical). I am reveling in my opportunity now to finally give time and attention to my writing.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I do wonder what it would have been like to have gone fully into academia and the professoriate, instead of just dabbling around the edges (I call myself a “closet academic”). I also wonder what it would have been like to have gone into the non-profit aid work my father did or into the diplomatic service.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing is like breathing for me. I tried balancing it with my full-time work when I was living in Chicago but woke up one night just before my head hit the keyboard. I couldn’t afford to quit my day job at that time, so regretfully had to put it all away. So, it feels like coming home.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last non-fiction book I really appreciated was Sebastian Smee’s PARIS IN RUINS:LOVE, WAR, AND THE BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM. The last fiction book I really enjoyed was Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel’s DAYSWORK: A NOVEL and now I am re-thinking Herman Melville. I confess that I have largely stopped watching films, after a lifetime of being an avid filmgoer, and I am looking forward to that switch being turned on again.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I have lots of ideas! When you put off doing something for so long and then you say, okay, it’s time, everything that has been in the back of your brain jumps up and says me-me-me-now! I have completed the first book in a trilogy which is again literary fiction and that flirts with the Regency trope and format but moves away from it at the same time. I have an idea around the years I spent caring for my mother through her dementia. And I have some ideas based on my rather itinerant and international lived experience.
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