P0000519 Louise Marley, Sharon Shinn, and Kay Kenyon at ArmadilloCon 2004

Sharon Shinn was a Guest of Honor at Armadillocon, a literary science fiction convention in Austin, TX. She was interviewed by her friends Kay Kenyon and Louise Marley.

My impression. I haven't read anything by Sharon Shinn. I don't have much interest in angel-based fantasy, even when its author is the Guest of Honor at the convention. Still, I always feel compelled to go to the Guest of Honor interview. As it turned out, some tidbits of the interview were interesting even to me.

Both interviewers Kay Kenyon and Louise Marley are writers, and there seemed to be quite a few aspiring writers in the audience too. It was to be expected, then, that a lot of questions revolved around Sharon Shinn's path to writerly success. How did she pull it off? What steps did she take to go from someone who wrote 10 or so novels before selling one, to someone who has two books coming out this year (2004) and two more next year? How did she manage to find time for writing while having a full time job? How many hours a day does she write? Answer: 2 hours at least 3-4 days a week, often 5. "Well, if my math is right", Kay Kenyon said, "some weeks you are writing nearly, I would say, 10 hours. Now, my question is, how many pages are you getting in an hour?" Sharon Shinn: "I actually write by the numbers, so my goal in every 2 hour slot is to write 8 pages." The audience gasped in disbelief.

Read the full interview on my web site.