Getting 2 Know Teri Vlassopoulos

What is your creative process?

Teri Vlassopoulos: I strive to make my creative process organic, to slip into writing mode as seamlessly as possible. As much as I love and believe in the power of ritual, I don’t want to associate one with writing. There are already enough real life distractions out there; no need to create more.

I have favourite places to write (my kitchen table) and favourite times of day (Sunday morning), but those are simply preferences, not requirements. Otherwise, my creative process involves a synthesis of reading, note taking, listening to music on headphones, walking around the city, glasses of wine, literary gossiping and pep talks with my friends, traveling down Internet wormholes while “researching” and taking a few long drives for good measure.

One of my favourite places to think about characters or suss out plot problems is while I’m on the metro commuting to and from work. When I sit down at the computer to type, I try to gather what I’ve learned from these activities into a coherent clump of words and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but even if it doesn’t, at least I’ve had a good time getting to that point.