Tasha and I met maybe a year ago when she filled out a contact form on my website, and then we connected on Twitter. We’re members of www.shewrites.com and have both worked with She Writes Press in some capacity. Tasha has been a great supporter and a positive voice in my Twitter community. When I was asked to be a guest on Kristen Harnisch’s blog and knew I had to choose someone for the next week, Tasha came immediately to mind. I’m thrilled to have met her, and wanted to get to know her better as well as highlight her and her upcoming debut novel, Red Carpet Day Job!
Welcome, Tasha! It’s great to have you here today. Let’s get started.
What are you working on?
I am currently working on final edits for my debut novel, Red Carpet Day Job (BookFish Books). It’ll be out in time for Valentine’s Day, so I’m very excited about that. This book is about five years in the making, so I’m really looking forward to getting this book out in the world. I love these characters and I love this story (think Notting Hill meets The Devil Wears Prada). I’m also working on placing my second full-length poetry collection, as well as finishing edits on a book I co-wrote with my good friend, Chris Green. The book is titled Us, in Pieces. It’s a big, messy love story across time.
How does your work differ from others of its genre?
I like redemption in novels and I am sometimes prone to sentimentality, which I feel like I should shy away from, but I (mostly) don’t. I like emotion and I like complexity. I like to write in several genres, though early on, I felt like I was supposed to choose one tribe over the other (poets or novelists), but I couldn’t and so I didn’t. I love working in different genres and that’s not always been an easy decision to wrap my brain around. I like language and I like storytelling. I think I tend to orbit around the same themes in all my work, to some degree. I’m interested in people and relationships, mostly, and to a lesser degree, where people come from and how that shapes them and informs who they become.
Why do you write what you do?
I know it’s cliché to say that the story or the character chooses you, but I can definitely relate to this idea. I only write maybe one or two poems a month, and each one feels like a gift, though each one takes a lot of work and thinking to get right. Novels— and their origins— are more mysterious to me. For me, they usually start with an idea for a character, and that initial inkling sort of unspools itself – I start wondering what their life looks like, where they work, who they love, what sort of person would he/ she find irresistible and why, and I go from there. I write what intrigues me.
How does your writing process work?
Short-form work is much different than long-form work in how it gets written. Poems can happen in ten or twenty minutes and then take some dedicated efforts to make them really shine, whereas, novels require long stretches of uninterrupted time and attention (ideally weeks, if not months) to get written. After the first draft is written, revising and editing can be a little more broken up. But I’ve found that novels demand a daily re-focusing to stay in that particular universe, and to keep up with what’s being set in motion.
About Tasha…
Tasha Cotter's first full-length collection of poetry, Some Churches, was released in 2013 with Gold Wake Press. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in journals such as Contrary Magazine, NANO fiction, and Booth. Her debut novel, Red Carpet Day Job, will be released in time for Valentine's Day with BookFish Books. A graduate of the University of Kentucky and the Bluegrass Writers Studio, she lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where she works in higher education. You can find her on twitter @TashCotter.
