Kristan Hoffman

About Kristan Hoffman

Originally from Houston, TX, Kristan Hoffman studied creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Now she lives with her family in Cincinnati, OH, where she writes both fiction and nonfiction with a focus on feminist, multicultural stories. Her shorter work has appeared in Sugar Mule, the Citron Review, and Switchback, among others. She is currently at work on a Young Adult novel, and is represented by Tina Dubois of ICM. For more, please visit her website.

Make the Ordinary Come Alive

January 31, 2019 By Kristan Hoffman 32 Comments

I recently stumbled across some parenting advice that resonated deeply with me, and if you’ll bear with me, I’ll explain why I think it’s valuable for us to consider in regards to our writing too.

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.
– William Martin, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

As a mother, it’s hard for me to look at my two-year-old daughter and not imagine all the amazing things she could do and become. Obviously I want the best for her, and I believe her to be full of limitless potential, capable of reaching the highest heights.

But is it fair to ask that of her? Is it best for her to feel that kind of pressure?

Or would it be better to follow where she leads, and to nurture her interests and skills as they make themselves known? To teach her that life is not a ladder that needs to be climbed to the top, but rather a playground to be explored and enjoyed?

Writers tend to be big dreamers, so it’s no surprise that when we look at our work, we see vast possibilities and hope for resounding success. And don’t get me wrong, hope and possibility are wonderful things.

But over the past few years, I have come to believe that setting them aside is better for the work.

[Read more…]

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What Motherhood Has (and Hasn’t) Changed About My Writing

August 2, 2018 By Kristan Hoffman 28 Comments

The first time my husband and I talked about having kids, we were in our early 20s, not yet married, and the idea of starting a family felt so far away it might as well have been on the planet Jupiter. But then 22 became 25 became 29. The years blinked away faster than I thought possible.

In that time, I also quit my job in order to focus on writing. I had grand dreams (or delusions?) of long days at the keyboard, words pouring out of me in a great rush, like rice into a pot. But truthfully, I didn’t write that much more than I had while working a day job. I was just happier, because I felt closer to living the writer’s life that I had imagined for myself as a girl.

I finished a manuscript, polished and queried it, and signed with a great agent. We went on submission. I turned 29.

By then, my husband was itching to become a father. In many ways I was ready too, but there was one major roadblock: I had always envisioned becoming an author first, a mother second. So I asked him to wait a little longer, until my book sold. Then we could try for a baby.

My book did not sell.

I could write a whole other post about that — about the slow, silent grief I didn’t even realize I was going through — but suffice it to say, it became clear that I couldn’t keep putting off motherhood. Couldn’t keep tying it to a day that might not come for years.

Throughout my pregnancy, I tried to write. Through the nausea and exhaustion and discomfort, I tried. Ever the optimist, I thought, “At the very least, I can finish a new manuscript and get it to my agent before the baby is due.”

Nope. Just like quitting my job to write full-time did not magically make me a faster writer, neither did getting pregnant.

The baby came — a sweet, tiny little girl — and for those first few months, everything was about her. (Well, and my own recovery.) For the first time in two decades, I put absolutely zero pressure on myself to write. It was foreign, frightening, and a little bit liberating. [Read more…]

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Shared Dreams, Shared Success: The Power and Value of Critique Partners

April 9, 2018 By Kristan Hoffman

I think there’s a common vision of the writer as a loner. Supposedly we all sit alone in our small dim rooms, hunched over the blue glow of our laptops, muttering to ourselves as we try to work out the perfect sequence of words. (I may or may not be doing that right now, haha.) Or even in a crowded coffee shop, we toil in a different sort of solitude, headphones on, coffees going cold, immersed in our own imaginary worlds, oblivious to the real one tizzying on around us.

And of course, there’s some truth to those images. But I also think — I hope — that we here at Writer Unboxed know the other truth. The truth of community.

When I graduated college, I lost the built-in community of my creative writing program. No more professors to mentor me, no more classmates to exchange work with. For a while, I tried to get by on my own, relying on reading to instruct me, and author events to inspire. But it quickly became apparent to me that I needed something more. I needed to be in a group of my peers, people who would see and understand me, who knew my dreams because they dreamed them too.

I considered an MFA (and still sometimes do) but the timing and cost weren’t in my favor, so I joined a small group of local writers instead. Most were hobbyists, and that was fine. But then, over time, the group ballooned into something large and unwieldy. So I approached the people with whom I felt the strongest connection and asked if they wanted to break off. I thank my lucky stars every day that they said yes.

For almost 10 years now, Sarah Wedgbrow, Stephanie Mooney, and Ingrid Palmer have been my critique partners. Somewhere along the way, they also became some of my closest friends. When we all lived in the same city, we would meet every week at Barnes & Noble and mark up printed pages with comments and questions. Now we use Google Hangouts to span 3 time zones and 4,600 miles, emailing each other files to read and discuss.

I can say without a doubt that I would not be the writer (or the person) I am today without these women. We each bring our own strengths to the group, and then we use those strengths to build each other up. Sarah is a master of character, with impeccable story instincts. Stephanie’s imagination never fails to dazzle and delight me. Ingrid could rewrite the phone book into poetry.

Critique partners have a tough job. They have to balance feedback with cheerleading. They have to maintain their own voices and perspective while also helping you to best express yours. They work for free, somehow making time for your pages despite their own busy lives, and their own hungry manuscripts. Of course you’re doing the same for them — and that’s what makes this such a special bond. All of the blood, tears, sweat, and heart are shared.

[Read more…]

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Dear Young Writer

October 26, 2017 By Kristan Hoffman

"I wrote you" (Photo by Tekke) — Photo by Tekke

Dear Young Writer,

(“Young” meaning where you are in your writing journey, by the way. Not your actual age.)

I may be older and wiser, or I may just be waxing nostalgic, but either way, I’d like to say a few things to you, if you don’t mind indulging me.

First, you are innocent and hopeful, and that makes me smile. You only have the vaguest notion of how books are made, but you know without a shadow of a doubt that you want to be part of making them. You have big dreams and ambitions, and you’re eager to reach them. You’re ready to “starve” for your art, for your career.

But are you ready to work?

Because, my cherished friend, making books takes a lot of hard work. Even if we focus just on the writing part, it’s so much harder than you think. Right now, your writing process is basically just playing make-believe on paper. That’s not a bad thing! You imagine people and places, you watch them in your mind, and then you jot down their stories in a flurry of words. Your only purpose is your own excitement. It’s so pure and self-fulfilling.

But someday it may not feel like enough, I’m sorry to say. More than likely, you will begin to ask each new story, “Why am I writing this? What will it achieve? Will other people like it? Will anyone pay me for it?” Those questions cannot drive a story forward, but they can drive a writer to madness.

It’s so tricky, this business of being creative. On the one hand, you have to be a dreamer, someone who lets their imagination roam, and who enjoys trying to capture those boundless flights of fancy within the limits of language. On the other hand, you have to work within an established system, finding your path through the rules and rigors of publishing, and accepting that not all stories will sail successfully out of the safe harbor of your heart.

To be clear, this is not an either-or situation, and it’s not a battle. It’s more of a spectrum, or a dance. I think most writers exist in constant motion between the artistic and commercial spaces. We try to negotiate the right balance for each story, and for ourselves. We try to forgive that balance for constantly shifting beneath our feet.

Part of me thinks that I shouldn’t mention any of this to you, dear friend, because I don’t want to scare you off. I believe in the value of what you’re doing. Stories shape our world. Please never forget that.

But the other part of me feels compelled to share these truths with you, because I want you to be emotionally prepared for what’s coming. I don’t want you to expect your writing career to go quickly or smoothly, because it probably will not, and if/when it doesn’t, I don’t want that to cripple you.

If you do find yourself starting to lose some of the joy — that spark in your soul that ignites when you’re following a story — try to remember this: [Read more…]

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Writing Through Life’s Stages: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

July 31, 2017 By Kristan Hoffman

It’s almost midnight, and I’m sitting in the dark with my laptop, music on and earbuds in, my husband falling asleep in bed next to me. This is what so much of my writing life has looked like over the past decade. I imagine this is what much of it will look like in the decades to come, too.

But of course, there have been changes over the years. Big ones. For example, my husband wasn’t always my husband, and we didn’t always live in this house, and hey, when did this baby monitor become a permanent fixture on my night stand? (Answer: about nine months ago.)

Sometimes it feels like I’ve always been looking for a better way. Looking ahead to a time where writing will rule the day, instead of sneaking in with the moonlight. I remember when I was a teenager, imagining how great it would be when I got to college and could specialize in writing, instead of having to spend so much time on homework for other subjects. And then in college, dreaming of graduation and life as a “real” adult, when I could work a mindless job just to pay the bills so I could focus on my novels. And then at work, wishing there were some way to quit my job and write full-time.

And then do you know what happened? I did quit my job to write full-time, and I still dreamed of a day when I would write more. More more more. Faster. Better. Quicker. Smarter. More.

To be honest, I don’t know if that desire will ever go away. But I try not to let it take over. Because if I pursue Faster Better Quicker Smarter More More More, I will never be able to rest. There is always more More.

Instead, I try to keep hold of something I discovered about two or three years into writing full-time: I can live the writing life that I want, right now. It doesn’t have to exist only in a faraway future. In fact, in some ways I’ve been living that writing life all along. [Read more…]

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Making a House a Home (and What It Taught Me About Writing)

August 31, 2016 By Kristan Hoffman

Maybe it’s because I’m the daughter of two architects, but I’ve always thought of writing a book as being like building a house. You pour the foundation, frame the walls, install the roof, rough-in the plumbing and electric… etc. etc. If you’re a plotter, you’ll do all this work based on blueprints you drew up ahead of time. If you’re a pantser, you’ll just rent a cement truck, buy some lumber and bricks, and hope for the best.

But the reality is, most of us will never build a house from scratch. So maybe a more relatable starting point for the analogy is moving in and decorating. [Read more…]

Fallow Fields — An Argument for Letting Your Creativity Rest

May 18, 2016 By Kristan Hoffman

"tired field" by Pea Chesh — “tired field” by Pea Chesh

The first sign was music. Or lack thereof. My mind was calling for silence. Demanding it, to the point that I couldn’t even bear to turn on the radio while driving. And not just because I was tired of hearing the same 10 songs over and over. (Even the good ones get old after awhile.) Something inside me needed to rest.

The quiet went on for days. Weeks. Months. No music. Few books. Hardly any writing. It feels scary, almost shameful, to admit that last part. I’ve spent so much of my life wanting to be a writer, carving out space and time to be a writer, justifying the cost and heartache of being a writer. How could I not be writing?

Only recently, when I finally found myself yearning for music again, did I realize what I’d been doing, and how very vital it was to my work. [Read more…]

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What’s in Your Bag of Tricks?

March 16, 2016 By Kristan Hoffman

Since I was about 9 years old, all I’ve wanted is to be a writer. Some of my strongest memories are of sitting in my own little room at my parents’ print shop, surrounded by filing cabinets and spare computer parts and dusty paper samples, filling the hours between school and dinner by scribbling stories into notebooks. Back then, the words seemed to flow so easily, like water, like magic. Now? Not so much.

To be honest, most days I have to trick myself into writing. No joke. I think my Internal Editor is to blame. I don’t know when exactly she came into my life, or how she got to be such a powerful voice in my head, but she is the definition of a frenemy. She claims to be on my side, says she’s only trying to help me be better. And maybe sometimes that’s true. But mostly she slows me down, makes me doubt myself, and urges me to strive for perfection — which doesn’t exist and thus can never be reached.

What a jerk.

So when I say that I trick myself into writing, I guess what I’m really doing is tricking my Internal Editor. Getting her to go away for a while, or at least quiet down.

Here are some of the techniques I turn to: [Read more…]

Getting Over the Hump

September 2, 2015 By Kristan Hoffman

14759513462_3e14ab9bcd_z — *Photo by IQRemix*

There’s a carnival game I love called Roller Bowler. The objective is to propel a bowling ball over a hump on a metal track. Sounds simple, but it’s not so easy. Too little force, and you won’t make it over the hump in the first place. Too much force, and the ball will go racing over the hump, rebound against the rear wall, and come hurtling right back at you. Either way, you lose.

Daily writing sessions are like Roller Bowler for me. If I don’t bully myself a little bit, I can easily waste the day running errands, surfing the internet, or even cleaning the house. But if I push myself too hard, I can end up sucking all the joy out of my follow-your-passion pursuit. For me personally, that kind of negative energy creates an even bigger obstacle than regular old distractability.

But if I apply just the right amount of pressure, that’s when the magic is unlocked. Like a Roller Bowler ball settling into the valley of its track, I find myself comfortably in the zone. The minutes pass by without my even noticing. My fingers fly, and my words fill the page with tension, imagery, and snappy dialogue. I’ve won the game.

Again, sounds simple, but it’s not so easy. How do you find that balance between too much force and not enough?

[Read more…]

Change Your Mindset

July 3, 2015 By Kristan Hoffman

A few months ago, my husband recommended that I read the book MINDSET. At first I dismissed it as just another one of the many business/management guides that clutters his nightstand from time to time. But my husband insisted that this book was different, that it would be good for me. In fairness, he has been known to be right on one or two occasions, so I decided to give it a chance.

He was right.

MINDSET explains a lot of things about myself — especially about my attitude toward writing and achievement — that I had sensed but never fully articulated. Furthermore, the book offers productive alternatives for some of my biggest hangups. It’s not really a how-to or self-help book, but in examining the benefits and the power of a growth mindset, it does end up guiding readers toward a better path.

Here’s the crux of it, from the back cover:

“World-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck explains why it’s not just our abilities and talent that bring us success — but whether we approach our goals with a fixed or growth mindset.”

What is fixed mindset?

The belief that we are who we are. Period. Static. Maybe you can change a little bit here and there, but for the most part, you’re born with whatever skills, intelligence, creativity, personality, etc. you’re ever going to get.

What is growth mindset?

The belief that we can always improve — and that the process of improving is as important as the improvement itself.

Why does your mindset matter?

As Dweck shows through various case studies, the fixed mindset sets people up for failure, generally speaking. I mean, if you happen to be a super genius with natural talent and charm, then OK you’re all set! But for the other 99.99% of us, it’s not so easy. And if we’re convinced that we’re either smart or not, either artistic or not, either (fill in the blank) or not, then when we fail at something, that’s it. We’re done. No point in trying again.

But if we instead believe that every failure is just a step on the path to success? A necessary step? A valuable step, because what doesn’t work teaches us about what will work? Then we’re already where we want to be. The journey is as much the destination as the destination itself.

There is a lot more nuance to fixed vs. growth mindset than that — and really, it’s a spectrum, not just one or the other — but many of the problems that Dweck identifies as part of the fixed mindset remind me of issues that writers face. [Read more…]

Talent, Perseverance, and Hard Work: Lessons on Writing from Football

February 1, 2015 By Kristan Hoffman

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. For some of you, that might mean painting your face and screaming at the TV. For others, it might mean eagerly watching the commercials for a change. And for still others of you, it might not mean anything at all.

Personally I am a huge football fan, and in honor of the big game, I want to spotlight a few NFL players and the lessons that I’ve learned from them — lessons that apply to writing.

JJ Watt, defensive end for the Houston Texans

If you’re not familiar with JJ Watt, then it’s safe to assume you’re not a football fan. At just 25 years of age, JJ is a force to be reckoned with on the field — sacking quarterbacks, intercepting passes, and even coming in on offense to catch a touchdown or two. He does it all, and he does it better than anyone this game has ever seen. That’s why he recently secured a 6-year, $100 million contract, and just last night was named Defensive Player of the Year for the second time. (He is actually the first player in history to be unanimously selected for this award.)

Genetically blessed, with a comfortable upbringing, and now fame and fortune — JJ Watt is the kind of guy that should be easy to hate. But no one hates JJ, not even the guys that he slams into the turf every Sunday. Why? Because he is passionate, humble, and hard-working beyond belief. Off the field, he is known for his kindness and generosity, as well as his sense of humor. He is a source of inspiration, not jealousy.

Once upon a time, he was just a kid with a dream, like anyone else. So how did he get here? Through tireless effort and relentless focus. Since high school, he has been renown for putting in more hours in the weight room than anyone else, for working on his days off, and for approaching every play like it’s the game-winning snap of a Super Bowl.

Imagine how far you could go as a writer if you had that kind of attitude.

Fred Jackson, running back for the Buffalo Bills

Not everyone is going to have such a charmed path, no matter how hard they work. Take Fred Jackson, for example. His path to the NFL has been full of zigzags and setbacks. [Read more…]

Rising Expectations, Daily Pages, and Having Fun

November 16, 2014 By Kristan Hoffman

According to one of my favorite children’s books, if you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want a glass of milk to go with it. And if you give the mouse a glass of milk, he’s going to want a straw (to drink with). Then a mirror (to avoid a milk mustache). Then scissors (to groom himself in the mirror). So on and so forth. There is always something more to want.

I think the writing life can be that way too. If you write a good short story, then you’ll want to try a novel. Once you write a novel, you’ll probably want an agent. If you get an agent, you’re going to hope for a book deal. Then good reviews, bestseller lists, prestigious awards, bigger advances…

Rising expectations are a double-edged sword. It’s good to have goals, and to push oneself to grow. But it’s destructive to never be appreciative of where you currently are and what you’ve achieved.

I often struggle to walk that line in a graceful, healthy way. In fact, I often fail. But lately there are two things – two pretty basic things – that are helping me to keep a better balance.

1. Morning Pages

Made famous by Julia Cameron’s THE ARTIST’S WAY, morning pages are supposed to be handwritten and stream-of-conscious. A way to get in touch with one’s inner self, as well as to clear the pipes for creativity to flow. I basically do them all wrong – I type them on the computer, sometimes in the morning but usually just in spurts throughout the day – and yet I still find that they work.

They help me the way that scales help a pianist. [Read more…]

About Kristan Hoffman

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