Zibby Mag

In anticipation of our forthcoming titles, Zibby Books has teamed up with iconic stationery and accessory brand Moleskine to produce exclusive interviews with our authors.

Continue reading below for an exclusive interview with Michelle Wildgen, author of Wine People (out now!), about her creative process. And check in with the Zibby Books Instagram account for a chance to win a limited-edition Moleskine x Zibby Books notebook.

How do you begin writing projects?

I have to walk around with it for a little while first. If I start writing before there are any layers on an idea, it can feel flat and thin on the page and then I lose hope for it. Once I feel like I might have something, I try to start with one scene. Sometimes that stays the first scene for good; sometimes it changes completely.

Are there other parts of your writing process that you prefer to execute by putting pen to paper?

Revision is definitely best on paper! You read differently and write differently on paper. Pen slows you down, changes the flow, and anything that helps you approach writing a little differently is helped by a change of view.

Can you speak to the importance of capturing moods, feelings, and ideas on the fly?

You think you’ll remember, and maybe back when my life was less busy, I would have! But now I need to jot down ideas and impressions as they happen. The act itself of writing also helps fix things in my memory, and once you know you have that idea somewhere safe, you can start building on it in your head. Plus whenever I go to a talk about writing, I want to take notes because it helps my teaching and editing so much.

Where’s the most unlikely or unusual place you’ve written something memorable?

I still have no idea how I wrote in a house with a husband doing Zoom calls and a kid doing online school while I stood at my desk with earbuds in and white noise drowning it all out.

When or where do you feel your most creative? Do you have any tips on re-igniting creativity when you’re feeling stuck?

Mornings, with coffee, and no one else around. I can be in a bare room with the window shades closed, it doesn’t matter if I am in a good place with a project. But when I am not in a good place, a few things help. One, I get out, take a walk, and listen to music instead of podcasts. Something like this, or any process that occupies the hands and only lightly occupies the mind, helps your brain work through whatever it’s stuck on. Or I change how I think about the writing itself: write a weird take on an existing scene, from another POV even if I won’t keep it, give myself a prompt. I once prompted a class of students who were feeling stuck inside their projects to write about a smell. That was it, just any smell, good or bad. And they wrote incredible stuff, so I have been giving that prompt ever since.

Michelle Wildgen‘s novel Wine People was published by Zibby Books August 1. Her previous novels include Bread and Butter, But Not for Long, and You’re Not You, which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and was adapted into a film starring Hilary Swank and Emmy Rossum. Wildgen’s essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review and Modern Love column, Best Food Writing, O Magazine, Real Simple online, Tin House, and other journals and anthologies. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she is a freelance editor and cofounder of the Madison Writer’s Studio with Susanna Daniel.