My interview with writer Caroline Beuley
Caroline Beuley is a writer of flash and short fiction, essays and has a hugely popular Substack Fairy Tales by Caroline. In this interview, Caroline shares her creative process and routine (she packs a lot into her days!) and offers invaluable wisdom for writers and creatives at any stage of their journey.
What’s the secret to never running out of ideas? Caroline reveals her approach and why getting the right idea is actually the hardest part. She opens up about her militant writing schedule, the specific times of day she protects for her best work, and why Saturdays are sacred no-writing days.
Discover who Caroline’s creative heroes are – from the writer whose award is her ultimate dream to the pioneering feminist who stayed in the back of her mind for years until drawing her into fairy tale retellings. She also shares which contemporary short story writers remind her that you really can try anything if you tell it the right way.
After six years of writing seriously and daily, why does Caroline still consider herself at the beginning? She shares the surprising timeline multiple instructors have told her about truly giving writing a fair shot, and reveals the one thing she actually misses about being a complete beginner.
But perhaps most valuable is what Caroline learned after finishing her first novel in isolation – a realisation that changed everything about how she approaches her craft. Despite the romantic image of the solitary writer at their desk, she discovered where real improvement actually comes from, and it might surprise you.
Whether you’re just starting your creative journey or years into it, Caroline’s insights about dramatic improvement, handling frustration, and building community will resonate deeply.
Catch the interview on the podcast
Interview with Caroline Beuley
Introduction
MD: Hello, Caroline. Do you want to start by just telling me who you are and where you’re from?
CB: My name is Caroline, and I currently live in North Carolina, where I’m getting my MFA in fiction writing.
MD: Can you tell me what your creative discipline is or disciplines?
CB: So I primarily write fiction. Recently, in the last year, I’ve gotten into non-fiction and essay writing, but I would say fiction is sort of my artistic calling. And I write flash fiction. I’m working on a young adult fantasy novel and a short story collection that has some flash fiction and some longer stories. And I particularly, as you can tell by my shirt, am inspired by fairy tales and love bringing kind of magic in the fantastical into conversation with our world and our lives.
Creative Process
MD: Can you tell me a little bit about your creative process, like where you get your ideas from?
CB: Yeah, I think I always, so I write a Substack called Fairy Tales by Caroline, and I always worry, how am I going to come up with enough ideas? I post two pieces a week. But I find as long as I’m reading, I always have new ideas. Reading and then talking to other creative people. Last night I was talking to Georgia, and she was telling a story from her childhood. And I said, oh my gosh, can I use that to start a story idea? And she said yes, and we talked about it. So being around creative people, reading a lot. And then I think for short stories, getting the idea is the hardest part. Getting an idea that I think has legs, that I’m interested in pursuing. A lot of times with short stories, I’ll get an idea and write the first couple pages and realise this isn’t going to work. But once I have the idea, I’m very militant about my writing schedule. So I usually write a couple hours every morning. And yeah, just stick to it. Get the hours in, get the pages in. With my novel, I have usually a page or word count goal for the day. But with short stories, it’s more kind of a feel of, did I write enough of this today?
Creative Routine
MD: That segues nicely to what I am curious about next, which is creative routines.
CB: Yeah, so here it’s been great. The creative routine is just write all day. But normally there’s a lot more demands on my time. So I would say that I’m most productive in the morning, so I write in the mornings. And then I have my classes and my job on campus. I work for an independent press called Lookout. And most of that work I can do remotely, which is my dream because it allows me to use my best hours where my brain is functioning at its highest for my own work and my writing. And then I usually have lunch and I either go to class or I work for the press. And yeah, those are my weeks. And then if I ever need a really big writing block where I want to work on something for a whole day, I’ll do that on Sundays. Saturdays are my no writing days.
Creative Inspiration
MD: Who or what is your creative inspiration?
CB: There’s so many. Two of my favourites are Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter.
MD: I love Shirley Jackson.
CB: My dream is to win a Shirley Jackson award. That would be the peak. But Angela Carter was kind of the woman who pioneered fairy tale retellings, especially feminist fairy tale retellings. And I read her book, The Bloody Chamber in college. And it was so dog-eared, so underlined. I had so many post-it notes in it. I remember it being my favourite book I read in college. And then as I came back to writing years later, I sort of just had this book still in the back of my mind. And that’s what made me kind of get into fairy tale retellings myself. So Angela Carter is a huge inspiration. I also, for short stories, I love Carmen Maria Machado and Karen Russell, who are both current or contemporary short story writers. And just the power of their imagination and their ideas. And that you really can, they’re just reminders that you really can try anything if you just tell it the right way. So I really admire them.
Creative Wisdom
MD: I work with a lot of people who are at the beginning of their creative journey. And I’d love to hear what wisdom you would want to give to someone who’s at the beginning.
CB: Well, I guess I still feel like I’m at the beginning. I started getting back into writing with my New Year’s resolution in 2020. So I’ve been writing seriously and daily for six years. And someone once told me, or not just one person, I’ve had multiple professors, multiple writing instructors tell me that you can’t really say you’ve given writing a fair shot or you’ve tried to become a writer until you’ve given it 10 years. So I’m just waiting for everything to happen at the 10 year mark. But I think while it’s frustrating at the beginning, because you feel like you have these ideas and you don’t necessarily have the skills to bring them to fruition, that can be frustrating. But I think it’s balanced out by the fact that at the beginning, I felt like every six months, I looked back on what I’d made before and I thought, oh my gosh, it’s terrible. And what I made now is so much better. And then the next six months, I felt the same thing in the next six months. And I feel like that continued for about five years, where I just could see myself growing in leaps and bounds every couple of months. And so while there’s a lot of shitty stuff when you’re starting out, a lot of rejection, a lot of struggles and difficulties and thinking, oh, this is never going to work. I think the one really exciting thing at the beginning is getting to see that dramatic improvement. And it does, I still think I’m improving. I think I’ll be hopefully improving my whole life as a writer, but it tapers off and it’s not as dramatic. And so that is the one thing I think I miss about being at the very beginning of it all.
MD: Yeah, that’s beautiful. Is there anything else that you would want to tell people who are…
CB: Thinking. I had something in my mind and it just left. I was talking about progress. No, I forgot.
MD: That’s okay.
CB: Yeah, take classes. Don’t just write in isolation. The first year in my writing, I just was working on my novel, you know, by myself. And I finished it and I read it and I said, oh my God, this is terrible. This is not a book. And so I realised, you know, even though I had an English degree and I felt like I was a smart person, you can’t improve as a writer completely by yourself. You need feedback. You need to take workshops. You need to be in community with other writers. And I know there’s this like image of the solitary writer at their desk. But when I really started to improve the most was when I started to get feedback from other people and to expand my writing circle. So I definitely recommend that.
Connect with Caroline Beuley
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This interview was originally published on the Creative Momentum with Meg podcast. If you haven’t discovered the podcast, go have a listen for more interviews with creatives talking about their creative process, routine and inspiration.
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