Email gets a bad rap. Well, actually, it might be largely deserved, but that’s not the fault of email itself. Everyone loves the ding of a good email showing up. A unique part of being a writer is waiting a long time for an email only to have it be a rejection. Writers, then, especially need some nice emails. Long story short, Mitch Nobis wanted more good emails, and because he also likes interviewing writers, Inbox Wisdom: Email Interviews on Creativity was born.

Rachel King is a writer and editor who lives in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. She is the author of the novel People Along the Sand and the linked short-story collection Bratwurst Haven, winner of a 2023 Colorado Book Award and a finalist for a 2024 Oregon Book Award. Her short stories have appeared in One Story, North American Review, Northwest Review, and elsewhere. The Red Heads, her novel that follows a traveling women’s basketball team, was recently acquired by Forest Avenue Press, and will be published in spring 2027.

At this point in history, we have a thousand things we could do with our days, so why do you write? Writing can be slow and solitary, which isn’t for everyone. So, why write? What’s in it for you?

I write fiction for many reasons, but first of all, I write because I have to write. I’m an artist, and that is my chosen medium—or the medium that chose me—and when I don’t write for an extended period of time, I feel antsy or angsty or empty. I also write fiction to create something beautiful; to tell a story; to connect with a reader; and to exorcise or alchemize pain.

As an artist, I think that surviving in whole or even in part depends on my ability to continue to play, even as an adult, and writing is also one way I play. I also dance and act and make-up never-written children’s stories with my spouse and write never-published poems with my friend: all playful pursuits which are less solitary and slow, a good break from or balance with my fiction writing.

I love the inclusion of play in your answer. There are a good many psychological and sociological studies showing that Americans are sick in invisible ways. We’re plenty sick in visible ways too, of course, but we’re also a sad and isolated people. There are the usual social media, etc., hypotheses for how we find ourselves in this situation, but I personally think we don’t pay nearly enough attention to the nation’s Puritan roots (note: not the land’s, but the nation’s). The notion of play is not only disrespected in adult American life, it’s outright disdained because of old Puritan “work is holy” ideals. We know, though, that humans need play. So, long story, short, we end up sick. Play has value in a million ways, but to me a prominent need for play is the ability to achieve a state of flow, a moment of forgetting the self to be in the moment of action or creation. I’m a big basketball guy, and in ball we call this being “in the zone.” Bringing this back to writing, how or when does writing help you get into the zone?

I know the phrase “in the zone” from basketball as well! I think you can fall into a state of flow or being in the zone while writing, but I don’t think it happens every time. I try to make my workspace conducive to flow by writing on an old desktop that is not attached to the internet—but still, some days, I end up doodling and daydreaming more than writing. But I’ve been doing this long enough to know it’s all part of the process. Usually, I’m able to reach a flow state in writing when I’ve been working on a project for a while: for short stories, that’s when I’ve established the characters, setting, and situation, some but not all action has happened, and I’m reaching the end, or maybe two-thirds through. If the story is working, with all the elements in place, I can then focus very easily/get into the zone as I write the final third/the ending. My most intense state of flow in writing happened almost exactly a decade ago, in spring 2015, when I was working on a complete second draft of my novel People along the Sand. I’d been writing the draft steadily on weekends for about two years; I was in the third and final section. Every weekend that I sat down to work on it over maybe a two-month period, my mind and fingers would drop directly back into the story so much so that sometimes I didn’t even remember writing or know what I was writing; it was as though the story was writing itself. The writer John Gardner discusses this kind of trance state in one of his books–either in The Art of Fiction or in On Becoming a Novelist—but it was the first and really only time I’ve experienced it to this extent. I’d love for it to happen again.

That’s a fantastic anecdote about getting into the zone when finishing your novel! That rings true to me, too, because it seems that with fiction flow happens best once the overarching details are established. After that, in a sense, you’re along for the ride too, at least when the writing is going well. That brings up another fun question: How do you know when it’s going well? How do you know when a story or a scene works or is done (or done for now, at least)? 

I like that you used the phrase “done for now.” I applied to a residency last week with five pages from an early draft of a novel, and I knew it was “done for now” because I could read it several times without making any changes. When I revise the whole novel, I’m guessing I will expand some paragraphs, delete some paragraphs, change aspects to better align with the novel’s plot, rewrite some sentences, and question word choices. But, for the time, it is done: I could read through that section without wanting to fiddle with anything, without slipping out of what John Gardner calls the goal when reading a novel: “a vivid and continuous dream.” I know the writing is going well when it contains moments (sentences/paragraphs/scenes) of that kind of vivid dream, and I know it’s done when that dream is continuous.

I love that Gardner quote and how you apply it. Calling back to our conversation about getting into the zone as a writer, it seems like part of the goal of achieving that flow when writing is to help the narrative also get into that “vivid and continuous dream” state for the reader later on. This leads to my next question, which is totally a greedy one. I rarely have more than 10 minutes to write in any given day. I’m currently sending out a couple of query letters for a novel that took me twenty (yep, TWENTY) years to write because parenting and teaching had to come first. My kids and students should come first, but that also meant it took years upon years to finish the book. How do you approach your creative work in a way that balances the demands of daily life (like doing work that actually pays…) and the creative work you want to do? How do you help the writing achieve the flow of a continuous dream when the project might not be the only thing demanding your time and attention? 

Yes, I agree that the reader might more easily slip into a vivid and continuous dream if the writer has done so first! However, sometimes the writing that feels the most effortless to the reader has been difficult for the writer to write—and that’s OK, too; the reader doesn’t have to know that.

I hope that your novel finds the perfect home! Twenty years is a long time, but totally understandable. I don’t have any magic words of wisdom on getting the work done/dropping into a flow state for any specific individual, but I can tell you about my path. 

In my twenties, I didn’t know any serious artists, so I took my models from historical and literary figures. Three of my favorites were Vincent Van Gogh, Carson McCullers, and Virginia Woolf. Writing was my reason for getting out of bed in the morning, and I tried to structure my life around it; one reason I didn’t have kids or avoided serious romantic relationships back then was so that I would have more time and energy to write. However, all those artists had mental health issues and/or continuous, solid financial backing, so I’m glad that I took on contemporaries as my role models in my thirties: women like Kathleen Rooney and Wendy J. Fox who balance full-time jobs, relationships, writing, play, and interacting with a wide literary community. Now in my forties, I have many reasons for getting out of bed in the morning, thankfully, but I still couldn’t imagine my life without writing. Right now, I work on my novel on Saturday and Sunday mornings for a few hours, and fit in poetry or journaling or answering interview questions during the workweek.

I love your comment about historical literary figures as models. I definitely grew up thinking guys like Thoreau or Steinbeck were the models, and I wonder how younger artists perceive who their mentors and models might be. The internet has of course changed everything, including this, I think. How do you think the internet, and especially our ability to share and find art over social media, has changed the creative process for yourself and/or in general? 

The internet has changed everything! As far as my own creative process, however, I still type away on an internet-free computer. I was also a late adopter of smartphones: I didn’t have one until 2019, and I didn’t use social media until around 2016. I also didn’t have internet in my apartment from 2010-2012 or from 2013-2015. I have enjoyed finding wonderful writers through social media the last several years, however—some writers, I’ve simply savored their writing; others, I’ve reached out and told them I like their writing; and still others, I’ve asked them to do events with me when my books came out. 

For more than a decade now, it’s been important to have a social media following to land a large nonfiction book deal, and I think it’s becoming increasingly necessary to have one to land a large fiction book deal as well. That sometimes makes me sad because although I’m a good writer—my linked short story collection Bratwurst Haven won a 2023 Colorado Book Award and was a finalist for a 2024 Oregon Book Award—I don’t have a huge social media following. But I keep writing for all the reasons we’ve discussed, and I try to connect in authentic ways on the internet.

So, this has been a pleasure. For your last question, could you tell us a little about your most recent book and about what you think you might focus on next? To bring us full circle, I guess you could say, please describe how your creative works look as a finished product versus one in-progress. 

I have published two books of fiction: People Along a Sand, a novel about characters working for and against the Beach Bill, the legislation that made all Oregon beaches public land; and Bratwurst Haven, stories about characters linked through a sausage factory and their daily lives in small-town Colorado. I have also published two poetry chapbooks. Both fiction books were favorably reviewed by Kirkus and elsewhere, and have sold about five hundred copies so far.

I’m currently in the latter stages of writing The Red Heads, a fictionalized account of the women’s basketball team that travelled across the United States playing men’s teams during the Great Depression. I’m also in the middle stages of writing Love in the Time of COVID, a novel about characters whose beloved dairy/home/workplace permanently closes during the first year of the pandemic. I have several projects I’ve worked on over the last twenty years that have never been published—but hopefully these two will eventually find a home!

I’ve really enjoyed this interview as well! Thank you so much for taking the time, and for your unique questions and dialogue. 

Thanks again for chatting over the last month or so, Rachel!

Inbox Wisdom is an interview series conducted by Farmington writer Mitchell Nobis. He is the author of The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees (Match Factory Editions, 2025). He also hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series for KickstART Farmington, facilitates the Teachers as Poets group for the National Writing Project, and co-founded the Not at AWP (NAWP) reading series. For more, see mitchnobis.com.