This quarter’s interview is with Writers of the Future award winning writer Jay Lake. His story, “Into the Gardens of Sweet Night” was originally published in Vol. 19, and will be reprinted here every Thursday starting tomorrow!

Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2009 novels are Green from Tor Books, Madness of Flowers from Night Shade Books, and Death of a Starship from MonkeyBrain Books. His short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. He is represented by Jennifer Jackson of Donald Maass Literary Agency.

WOTF) Hi Jay. You’re a prolific author who, in addition to winning the Contest, was honored with the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction. I’m sure many of our readers have read your books and would love to follow in your footsteps. Thanks for agreeing to be our “spotlighted winner” this month.

JL) Thank you. I’m very pleased to be here.

WOTF) Can you please describe how you found out about the contest and how winning it affected your career?

JL) I first heard of the contest back in the mid-1990s, through fellow aspiring writer Mike Brotherton. I went to a WotF ceremony in Houston with him. I began entering the contest in earnest around 2001.

Winning the contest had a big impact on my career. The most obvious element was that my first-place story, “Into the Gardens of Sweet Night”, went on to be a Hugo nominee on the 2004 ballot. That was a wonderful piece of visibility, and certainly drove both my John W. Campbell Award nomination and eventually winning of that award, also in 2004.

In a somewhat less dramatic but more fundamental fashion, I feel like the workshop experience with Tim Powers and K.D. Wentworth did a great deal to drive me towards a higher level of craft and professionalism. I’d love to come back and teach with them some day, in fact, just as a way of paying forward.

WOTF) What was the creative process behind writing your winning story “Into the Gardens of Sweet Night”?

JL) I wanted to write a story about a dog and his boy. It’s pretty much that simple. I first wrote “Into the Gardens of Sweet Night” when attempting the market, BONES OF THE EARTH, but it came out too long for the market guidelines. (These days I’m pretty good at writing to length, but that wasn’t a skill I’d yet developed back then.) I’d just ‘followed the headlights’ through the story, and it wanted to cover a lot of ground. I suppose the easiest way to explain my creative process was that I listened to the characters.

WOTF) One of the first times I heard your name, it was in regards to the “Jay Lake Method of Achieving Fame”™. The idea was that you’d write a story a week and keep submitting it until it sold. Was this a conscious strategy on your part, or has the Internet led me astray? Can you talk a little about how you approached writing short fiction?

JL) That was a very conscious strategy on my part. Not to achieve fame, but to achieve competence. Back in 2001 I decided the best thing I could do was push myself, and practice, a lot. I was in a workshop that meets weekly (the Wordos, in Eugene, OR) so I had a table to take my weekly stories to. I felt like the discipline of constant, consistent productivity, combined with the direction provided by my workshop’s feedback, would really drive me forward. And, well, it did. I finally got away from the story-a-week practice around 2005 or 2006 because I began working seriously on novels. I still hew to some pretty strong productivity goals, but they’re either annual goals or project-based, because the story-a-week model doesn’t quite fit with the work I’m producing today.

As for the approach, again, I just wrote. Though I’ve become a pretty intense outliner when working on novels, most short stories I write are still in ‘follow the headlights’ mode. I never lack for ideas, and I don’t seem to lack for writing energy, so it works pretty well for me. Sometimes, of course, I’d be writing to a market’s call for submissions, or to a challenge from other writers, but mostly it was just whatever entered my head. And I sold over half of what I wrote in that period of my career, so it seemed to work for editors and readers.

WOTF) You’re famous for wearing a Hawaiian shirt to every convention. Was this also a part of the above method, or do you just like the shirts?

JL) A little of both. Mostly I just like the shirts. I don’t have an elegant body shape, and clothes never wear well on me, so I figured out years ago that the thing to do was be comfortable. And as long as I was comfortable, I might as well be recognizable. I won’t claim deep cleverness, but in a world of hallway costumes, leather gear and black t-shirts, a bright aloha shirt often stands out very sharply. It also looks good with a tux…

WOTF) Could you talk a little about your journey from winning the Contest to your first novel contract?

JL) As I said, the Contest propelled me onto the Hugo and Campbell ballots in 2004. About that same time, I began working in earnest on getting a novel out to market. The lift in my public visibility and writerly reputation coincided with the strengthening of my skills in the post-Contest period, so I suppose the best thing to say is that I wrote my way into that contract in part on the strength of what the Contest had done for me.

WOTF) Anyone who has read your blog in the last couple of years knows that you’re battling cancer. What has it been like trying to summon the muse while undergoing chemo?

JL) Bluntly, and excuse my language, but writing on chemo is a stone bitch. I did six months of chemotherapy in 2010, and another six months in 2011. Both times, about three or three-and-a-half months in, my right brain essentially shut down and I stopped being able to write. Those two empty times are the only periods in the last decade or more where I’ve been blocked for longer than a weekend. And it makes me *crazy*. The ideas are still in there, and I would occasionally get these little postcards from my subconscious, but I had lost conscious control over my writing faculties for the duration of chemo and some weeks after. In one sense, that’s been the worst thing about my cancer journey.

WOTF) Finally, do you have any advice for new writers who are considering entering the Contest?

JL) Write more. And send it in. You can’t win if you don’t submit. I know that sounds facile, but I know plenty of writers whose worries and fears of rejection trump their willingness to mail out stories.

And really, whatever you’re doing in your writing, do more of it. Write more. That’s how we all improve.

WOTF) Thank you for your time and we look forward to reading the first installment of your winning story in these pages next Thursday!

JL) You’re very welcome. I’m most pleased to still be part of the WotF community.