Interview: Eva Langston
How to Pivot in the Publishing World & Take Control of Your Writing Career
I had the amazing pleasure of connecting with Eva Langston and she graciously opened up to share some insider knowledge with you all!
Novelist, short story writer, mother, Eva shared with me the ups and downs of being a professional writer, dealing with rejection, bouncing back from publishing politics and maneuvering, and how to overcome self-doubt.
I got a lot from this interview and I hope you all do too!
Eva Langston received her MFA from the University of New Orleans, and her short stories have been published in literary magazines and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She has written multiple novels, worked with a literary agent, and been mentored by award-winning novelist, Lisa O’Donnell. A former high school math teacher, these days Eva focuses on her own writing, teaching writing classes, and raising her two young daughters.
What’s your number one struggle when it comes to writing and how do you cope with it?
My number one struggle, hands down, is confidence. I know seeking external validation can kill the creative muse, but sometimes it can be hard to keep going without it.
To me, writing is such a paradox. On the one hand, I have to just do it for myself, for the joy and self-satisfaction of it, because there’s no guarantee whatever I’m working on will ever be published. But on the other hand, I’m writing to communicate my thoughts and ideas, and if no one ever reads them, what’s the point? I engaged in some double-think, that’s for sure!
I cycle a lot between confidence and self-doubt. How do I cope? It helps to celebrate the small victories. I always cherish my “encouraging rejections.” The ones that say things like, “You write well, but this isn’t a good fit for me.” And I try to enjoy what I’m working on in the moment and not worry too much about whether or not it will be published one day. The writing part is in my control; everything else is not.
What’s your writing routine look like? Do you write everyday or just when inspiration strikes?
Becoming a mom has, in some ways, helped me become a more disciplined writer. When all you have is nap time, you learn to make those ninety minutes count.
I write every weekday for at least an hour, whether I’m feeling particularly inspired or not. (Most often I’m NOT feeling particularly inspired until I sit down and start writing!)
These days I’m usually working on a novel, so during my daily writing session I try to add a few more pages to my WIP (and not spend the whole time tinkering with stuff I’ve already written).
But, I also take breaks for things like sickness or family emergencies. Sometimes I take a break from writing to refill my creative well. Recently I took a whole week off from writing and told myself not to feel guilty about it. During the time I would normally be writing, I went for hikes, did yoga, meditated. It was really nice. I came back to my writing feeling refreshed and full of new ideas.
How would you describe your voice as a writer and where do you draw your inspiration from?
I think my writing voice has changed over the years. I got my MFA when I was in my twenties and single and living a wild life in New Orleans. I had a different perspective on things back then. Now I’m 40 and living in the DC suburbs with my husband and two daughters. I’m sure this change in lifestyle has affected my writer voice.
When I was getting my MFA I was writing literary short stories for adults. But I was always drawn to writing about teenagers. Since graduating from my program, I have written three middle grade novels and five YA novels. So my voice is certainly different depending on whether I’m writing MG, YA, or adult fiction.
My inspiration often comes from my own experiences. In fact, two of the YA novels I’ve written started because I was reading back over my old high school diaries. (A great thing to do if you’re trying to write for or about teenagers.) I took some gold nuggets from my diaries and built new stories around them.
You’ve been published in quite a few literary journals, what was this process like? How many times did you get rejected before your work was published?
I generated a lot of short stories in my MFA program, so towards the end of the program I started submitting to journals. I made it part of my daily routine. Spend an hour writing, spend an hour researching literary magazines and submitting. I would subscribe to a few magazines at a time and try to be diligent about reading them, but, honestly, I also submitted to plenty of journals I had never read.
I truly believe the way to get published in lit mags is to submit widely. It’s a numbers game. The more you submit, the more likely you are to get a yes. Of course, it also depends on your goal. Do you want the prestige of a top-tier journal, or do you simply want your work out in the world? My suggestion is, submit to top tier journals first (if you want), and if you get nowhere with those, move on to the lesser-knowns. Keep track of your submissions, and don’t let the rejections get you down. I always expected to get rejected so I could be pleasantly surprised whenever I got a story accepted.
Can you tell us a little about your current work in progress?
I’m about 75% through the first draft of a YA novel that is romantic but not really a romance. It’s about a girl whose boyfriend dies in a car wreck so she starts trying to communicate with him through paranormal means.
It’s the first time I’ve attempted a dual-timeline novel. The novel alternates between past and present; it covers the year leading up to the accident, and the year following.
How do you deal with imposter syndrome, self-doubt or feeling like you’re not a good enough writer?
As mentioned, this one has been hard for me!
In 2014, I landed an agent with a middle grade novel I’d written. This is it, I thought. My writing career is getting off the ground. I’m finally going to have something to show myself. It felt so validating to know I was going to have a traditionally published book to my name.
But right before going on submission in 2015, my agent quit agenting. None of the other agents at the agency wanted to take me on, so I was back to the query trenches. The self-doubt didn’t hit right away, but it came a while later, after a pile of rejections. I finally shelved the middle grade novel and started working on something else.
Right now I have a YA paranormal thriller manuscript out with three different agents, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but I’ve also learned I have to (as much as possible) let go of the outcome because it’s mostly beyond my control.
It’s very, very, very hard to get traditionally published. And it’s only gotten harder since COVID. You cannot let your ego be too affected by rejection. Because there’s a lot of rejection in this business.
So how to deal with self-doubt? Maybe it helps to remember that most writers feel these feelings, no matter where they are in their careers. I have a friend who has published seven award-winning, well-received novels, and she says every time she starts writing a new book she feels like maybe all of those other novels were lucky flukes, and she’s not going to be able to do it this time.
At the end of the day, I comfort myself with the fact that if I wasn’t meant to be doing this, I would have quit a long time ago. I can’t imagine not writing. It’s part of who I am.
How do you decide that a story is a short story or a novel when you come up with a new concept? And how does your approach to each medium differ?
I think it has to do with scope. I might write a short story based on a single interaction, a single scene, even a single image. For example, I once let a drunk guy cut my hair on the roof of a hostel in Mexico. (That wild life of my twenties I mentioned earlier.) I decided that would be a great scene for a short story – plenty of ways to increase tension when you’ve got a drunk guy with scissors! (And thus my short story “The Cut” was published in Front Porch Journal.)
Novels, on the other hand, are so much larger in scope. With my current work-in-progress I wanted to explore a teenager falling in love for the first time, as well as dealing with loss and learning to let go. It would be extremely difficult to do all of that in a short story.
Read “Clicker” and “Living Room” Now!
What’s your favorite line that you have ever written and why?
Oh my goodness, I have no idea. But I was once told by a professor that I wrote great opening lines. I used to take long walks in New Orleans, and sometimes the first line of a story would pop into my head, seemingly from nowhere. I would go home and start writing, with nothing more to go on than that first line. Here is one such first line, which became the beginning of my short story “The Guide,” published in Main Street Rag’s Altered States Anthology:
Friday evening I was feeling especially low, so I drove to Wal-Mart and bought a shovel.
What is the best writing advice you have ever received?
I recently read Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell, and I really resonate with his suggestion that a first draft should be an exploratory one. He says:
“…what I’m trying to do in the first draft is to discover the book I’m writing by writing the book… overplanning before beginning writing risks blocking opportunities for discovery and surprise.”
I used to think if I could only get better at plotting in advance I would save myself the time of multiple major revisions. But I’ve learned I just don’t write that way. When I write a novel I have the major landmarks in mind, but I’m mostly driving without a map. It’s not the only way to write a novel, and you have to be tenacious about doing multiple major revisions, but I’ve realized it’s what works for me.
Also, I also find a lot of comfort in this old TED talk on creativity from the wonderful Elizabeth Gilbert.
Anything else you’d like us to know about?
Yes! I’m now offering do-it-on-your-own-time virtual courses! Paid subscribers to my newsletter now have access to the full course of Cultivating a Regular Writing Practice, and coming soon is Getting Started on Your Novel (or Memoir). If you’ve always wanted to write a novel but felt daunted by the enormity of the task, this course is for you!
Where can people find you online?
Sign up for my writing-related newsletter!
Check out my website
Follow me on facebook or on Twitter @eva_langston
Read Next: My Review of Eva’s writing course