Tim has published close to 30 novels and three short story collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in publications including Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journal.
Learn more about Tim and his writing at www.timwaggoner.com
Q. How did you end up on the writing career path?
A. Like a lot of writers, I've always told stories all the time, even if it was just to myself. Making up stories was such a part of my life since I was a kid but for a long time. It never occurred to me to do anything with it. It was just something that I did.
Then in high school, I read an interview with Stephen King right after “The Shining” came out and it was the first time that I realized that a human being could choose to do this as a profession. It just didn’t occur to me. I’d read books and comics and saw the authors’ names, but somehow it didn’t click. Then I realized that writing is a job you could decide to do, like being a plumber, for example. I realized that a writing career might not be easy and you might not succeed, but you could try.
After reading that article and having that realization, I told my mom, “I think I want to be a writer,” and she just looked at me and said, “I think you’d be a good one.”
Not too long after that, my dad brought home a copy of Writer’s Digest. He said, “I saw this and thought you might be interested,” in that taciturn way of so many men of his generation, and then he walked off. But I sat there on our porch and read it from cover to cover.
Q. What had you thought about doing before you were struck by the writing dream?
A. I wanted to be a vet, a geologist, a musician! After that, I thought about being a research scientist. And then, a comic book artist! In sixth grade I made up my own comic book, called "The Bionic Team," because "The Six Million Dollar Man" was a big deal back then. It starred my friends and myself as bionic super heroes. I wrote it so I'd have something to draw.
But my friends made fun of the drawings and told me they liked the stories much better!
I kept at it through high school, and I did become a better artist. Eventually, though, I realized I could communicate so much more — and more quickly — with words.
Q. What were your next steps on your writing journey after high school?
A. I started at Wright State University as an acting major. On the very first day of class, our instructor gave us index cards and said write down the name of an actor you think you're like, an actor people have told you that you're like, and finally why you want to be an actor. I wrote down Alan Alda for the first two questions, and for the third, I thought there can't be a right answer. I just wrote down that I enjoyed acting.
The instructor gathered all of the cards, and said, it doesn’t matter what you wrote down for the first two questions, but there is only one right answer for the third question. And that is “because you have to.” That was because acting is so difficult, the odds are so long, and you have to make so many sacrifices. He said the only possible way to make it is if acting is the one thing you have to do. And I realized that day that it wasn’t.
But later I asked myself, well, what is the one thing I have to do? And that’s when I realized it was writing … and that the answer had been inside of me all of my life.
You don’t have too many moments in your life where you go one way or another because of just one little thing, but that was definitely one of them.
Q. Why do you think writing is the one thing you have to do?
A. There is something about the telling of a story, the rhythms of it, and what you learn and experience as you do it, that it becomes a natural part of the writer. I interact with the world imaginatively anyway. The most satisfying way to use that part of myself is to tell stories.
My dad had six acres and we had a garden. We had a lot of mowing every summer. I spent my mowing time day dreaming.
Q. Tell me about your progression as a writer in your adult years.
A. I wrote three novels while I was in college. They weren't published, and they weren't long, but I wrote them and learned a lot from the process.
After I was married to my first wife and we had our first child, my wife worked during the day, and I was an adjunct instructor of English at night. So there were many days when I’d grab a little bit of time to write while holding our baby in a snuggly or while she took naps. I started giving myself a page goal and tried to make it each day — three pages. If I made the goal, fine. If not, fine. I knew our daughters wouldn’t be babies forever. My great-grandmother told my mom, ‘your house will still be there when your kids are grown,’ and I’ve never forgotten that.
I knew I didn’t have to wait until my kids were grown to write, and that it was fine to work on writing, but I wanted to spend time with my family.
Q. You write in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. Is it all right to lump those genres together?
A. Sure. A lot of people do. I just think of all three as speculative fiction. The speculation part is the "what if" part. I just see myself as a guy who writes stories. Like many writers, I write the kinds of things I'd like to read. I've always loved horror stories.
When I was little, my parents let me watch horror movies with them. I still remember watching “Frankenstein versus the Wolf Man,” and I was fascinated that these two creatures lived in the same world.
Horror provides a distortion of normality that to me is very fascinating. Especially for kids, as they’re trying to figure out what is normal, so many things are mysterious and seem odd. A lot of horror is about what you imagine in the shadows. There is more room for your own imagination than in the other speculative genres, I think, or in the more realistic genres such as mystery. In horror, there’s a vast darkness, and so much room for you to put your own imagination in it.
Horror fiction is very cathartic. It’s hard to directly look at truly horrific things, such as death. Horror stories give us a way to look at things that are terrifying — just a little bit. It’s like looking at an eclipse through a pin hole in a piece of cardboard — you can look at it a little bit, but you can’t possibly look at it directly. Horror is a way of working out anxieties about terrifying aspects of life. Horror writers are like rodeo clowns dancing in front of the bull — we dress up and dance in front of the truly terrifying.
Q. You write tie-ins, novelizations, as well as your own original material. Why this mix?
A. I started working on tie-ins and novelizations to see what it would be like and what I might learn from it.
Q. How do you juggle teaching full time and also writing prolifically enough that one could argue your writing is also full time?
A. I'd get bored if I didn't do both! I like having a variety of classes and students. I also like that I write so many different projects. The time away from writing, that I spend on teaching and grading, helps me incubate ideas and characters and story lines before I actually sit down and put words on the page. I daydream dialogue and narrative structures and so on.
Teaching gives me a structure, and my kids are older, in high school and college now, so it’s become easier to fit my writing in around my teaching obligations.
Q. Do you have tips for writers?
A. Conferences are important to attend. Organizations are also helpful for writers of all levels. It's a good idea to join organizations' Facebook pages and then see if you want to join or get more deeply involved. There are a lot of opportunities with social media, especially Twitter, to connect with agents, editors and other writers.
Write a lot, read a lot, and get feedback!
About the Author