Who: K’wan

Claim To Fame: K’wan is a multiple literary award winner and bestselling author of over a dozen titles which include: Gangsta, Road Dawgz, Street Dreams, and Hood Rat. K’wan has been featured in: Vibe, The Library Journal, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Press, and Time Magazine. K’wan was also the recipient of the 2012 and 13 Street Lit Book Award Medals (SLBAM) in adult fiction for Eviction Notice and Animal

Where To Find K’wan: Amazon, Twitter, Instagram

Praise For K’wan: “One of hip-hop fiction’s hottest authors…fans will appreciate many of the qualities that make K’wan a writer to check for: gritty settings, memorable dialogue, and authentic action.” —KING magazine

When do you like to write? Are you regimented about your writing routine?

I wouldn’t say I have a set routine. Generally, I write whenever the itch hits me. For the most part I write early in the day or late at night when the house is quiet. However, my laptop is always on and ready to go. Sometimes I’ll sit in front of it for hours and won’t churn out more than a paragraph or two. Then there are those times when I catch lightning in a bottle and before you know it hours have passed and I’ve written a few thousand words.

Is there anything you do to get started in the morning? Like, how do you signal to yourself ‘The writing day has begun’ or do you?

My brain kind of flips the switch on its own and let’s me know when its time to get to it. I’ll usually warm up by responding to emails or social media messages just to work the kinks from my fingers and jump start my body. It’s kind of like letting your car warm up before you drive.

Can you write anywhere (airplanes, coffee shops, etc) or do you prefer to write from home or the same place every time?

I can write pretty much anywhere. Doesn’t matter so long as I have a window near me. Looking out the window is like collecting data for me and it helps with the process.

What’s a successful day of writing for you look like?

A successful day of writing for me is when my wife or my daughters hinting to me that I’ve been inside my head for too long. This usually happens when I lock myself away in my office and just go without taking a break to bathe or eat.

How do you know that what you’re writing isn’t working? Are there signs you look at to tell you that you’re going in the wrong direction?

Signs that I’m not going in the right direction is when my train of thought is easily broken. When I’m in the zone there isn’t too much that can bring me out of it. When I’m not in the zone I’m easily distracted. When I can be distracted that tells me that I’m not married to whatever I was writing and need to revisit it.

When did your aspirations to become a writer begin, and at what age did you start writing in hopes of making a living out of it?

I didn’t actually want to be a writer until my third book—Street Dreams—was published. My first book was written at a very low point in my life. My mom was dying of cancer and to cope I would pour my grief onto the pages of a story I didn’t even realize I was writing. This was my first novel “Gangsta.” My first book “Road Dawgz” was written on a dare. My publisher at the time told me that people were calling me a one-hit-wonder. She dared me to prove them wrong and so I did. Around the time my third book was finished I had fallen madly in love with the craft of storytelling. I started to believe I could make a living out of it when I was able to stop hustling and was able to pay my bills writing books. It was an alien feeling to me, not having to do things I wasn’t supposed to in order to survive. This is when I gave myself to writing wholeheartedly.

You’re always writing and have published so much. What’s your secret to keeping that momentum?

My secret? My mother. She was the writer, not me. My gift manifested when she got sick. It was her dream to be published but she died before it could happen and I picked up the torch. This was a blessing to me and I feel like I owe it to her to keep pushing myself to be one of the greatest writers of this generation. To live your dream is one thing…to live someone else’s dream is something else altogether.

What books or writers have most influenced the way you think and the way you write?

Growing up I read a lot of Anne Rice. I loved her Vampire Chronicles and would read them over and over, and envision myself in her stories. I also took quite a bit from Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim. They taught me not to be ashamed of writing about where I come from. Walter Mosley is also a favorite. From him, I learned how to properly set a scene.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?

The best piece of writing advice I’ve ever gotten was that I should stop writing. In the beginning people would tell me that my words had no value, that my books would never sell. I’m one of those people that if you tell me that I can’t do something I have to go out of my way to prove to you that I can. To date, I’ve written over forty stories and collectively sold somewhere in the neighborhood of one million books. I think its safe to say that I’ve proven the early doubters wrong.

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