Creative Writing

Where I Write: With Stone Mims

Where I Write, a series of short interviews with current students, faculty, and alumni of the Creative Writing Program. It is a discussion of place in writing. What our writing spaces look like can be as varied as the physical spaces that exist (or don’t!) in New York and beyond, and as varied as the mental and psychic spaces we occupy while we write. Share in the infinite of productivity and procrastination with MFA student Stone Mims, dual in fiction and Writing for Children and Young Adults.

Where do you write?

I pretty much write everywhere, usually in my room or my office at work. I guess my favorite place would be my little work desk. It’s been the site of both infinite procrastination via PS4 and infinite productivity in the revision process. It’s really 50/50

Stand, sit or other?

I hunch over my computer or notebook with the weight of the infinite student loans I’ve taken out pressing firmly on my vertebra. But in all seriousness, I do find that I lean really far in when I write, as though I can like join my characters through the pages or something.

What is your writing practice?

I usually wait until the words come to me and then sit and write. This is a generous way of saying that I usually have writer’s block and I have these spurts of motivation where I feel compelled to write at once. Picture vomit, but with your keyboard instead of your throat. 

What are your favorite procrastinations?

I will watch The Good Place or the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon several times in a row before I write anything. I also am a huge fan of blowing my entire paychecks on Door Dash for (what some would consider to be cheap, but for me and my malnourished wallet is very expensive) Indian Food.

We live in interesting times, which book/author keeps you sane/grounded?

I read a lot of James Baldwin these days–partly for thesis, but also because he just has this uncanny way of speaking beyond his time into the present moment. There’s something deeply prophetic lingering in his words and I often feel affirmed in the knowledge that the conditions of LWB (Living While Black) have not changed in the last few decades. Basically, he makes me feel valid in my own frustrations. 

What is your new skill learned during the shutdowns of the Pandemic

All I learned during the pandemic is how to increase jean size by like at least 3-4 inches. 

What is your dream writing space?

I’ve always wanted to grow up to be Old Man Mims and have this black house with an iron gate and have the kids who play outside like toss a ball over my fence and know that they can’t get it because “Old Man Mims lives there.” And in this house, I would live alone as a recluse from the world and only out a novel every ten years or so. And a black limo with my driver, Chives will show up to this Black mansion and ring the doorbell and I’ll stick my hand out and drop a manuscript in it and that will be my only human interaction until the next time Chives returns. But yeah this is my ideal writing space–this black ominous iron gated house.

Stone Mims is an MFA Candidate for the class of 2022 concentrating in Fiction and Writing for Children and Young Adults. Born in Atlanta, Stone enjoys writing fictional stories that blend racial allegory and Science-Fiction. He’s worked as a Diversity officer at Bard College and a freelance journalist at cracked.com and rolling out magazine. He is currently represented at Serendipity Literary Agency.

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