Vivian Li

I don’t remember when my stories started looking like a collection to me; perhaps when I realized similar themes kept repeating in them. I think that I tend to notice the speculative/ fantastical in everyday objects or events, and they keep jumping out at me as potential stories. My stories often come from an instinctual response to a moment in time in the world.

I don’t have a specific writing process, for me, it depends on the piece. Most pieces start off with an idea that I’ve written down, whether it be on the subway, or as I’m eating dinner, or while I’m sifting through conversations. After that, I sit down at the computer and try to build on it (though it mostly takes a lot longer than I imagine).

I hope that through this mentorship, the characters in my writing will become more three-dimensional, and that I’ll be able to incorporate dialogue more seamlessly with the characters’ actions. As a writer, I hope that I’ll be able to refine any accidental ambiguities, and become more adept at smoothing the process for the reader.

If I were able to choose any author to write about my life, it would be Virginia Woolf.

For some reason, I cannot imagine a perfect world. However, I feel that a writer should be dedicated to questioning or pushing the status quo. I don’t think I would like being a ruler, because I’d have less time to write and create.

Ten years from now, I want to create, write, and learn interchangeably. In my writing career, I hope to have at least published a novel and a collection of short stories, and written a few plays and screenplays. I also hope to have written at least a dozen songs. Leading up to it, the lowest point will hopefully be when I was caught in a shadow, and the highlight will be re-reading something I wrote, and reconstructing it.