(You will believe what happened next.)
SK: If a detective looked at your browser tabs right now, would they arrest you, call an exorcist, or buy you a weighted blanket?
SM: My tabs currently distracting me from writing are the NYT Spelling Bee, and a football predictor spreadsheet… I think they’d just yawn.
When you’re stuck on a scene, grappling for a metaphorical weapon, do you precision-strike like a sniper, or spray and pray like Trump?
Spray and pray, but then delete pretty much every metaphor in the redraft because metaphors are a real thorn in my side…
What’s a word you’ve used in a draft that you definitely don’t know how to pronounce?
Coulis. Which is of course pronounced coo-lis.
If your main character sued you for emotional distress and gross negligence, would you win the case or be sentenced to life in a Happy Ending colony?
I think any writer worth their salt should be losing that court case. If you’re not torturing your characters then you’re not doing it right!
Do your protagonists guide you toward the light, or sit on your shoulder whispering, ‘Kill the mentor, kill the mentor’?
Equally, if your characters are not torturing you then there’s something amiss…
Would you rather delete your favourite 5,000-word chapter or replace every instance of ‘said’ with ‘ejaculated’?
Ejaculated! I’m a big Jane Austen fan, and her characters ejaculate all over the place. Quite often with their hands inside a muff.
Are your characters named after ancient deities and celestial bodies, or did you just glance at a spice rack and decide ‘Cumin’ sounded heroic?
I have a tendency to name every protagonist ‘Simon’ in my first drafts, even the women… I don’t know why.
If you could magically delete one trope from existence, which one are you throwing under the bus with zero regrets?
That gay love stories must have a sad ending. Having said that, ‘The Ballad of Billy Lopez’ is a gay love story with a sad ending… However, with said book representing the pinnacle of the genre (ahem), that trope is now welcome to die.
What font do you write in and why is it superior to everyone else’s?
Times New Roman. A proper, grown-up font.
Oxford Comma: Life-saving necessity or pretentious clutter?
I love cooking my friends and my pet cat. And have no need for commas of any kind… Seriously though, the Oxford Comma is one of mankind’s great markers of civilisation.
Plotter or Pantser?
Wish I was a plotter. In reality I’m a pantser. It’s why too many of my projects run out of steam and get filed away in a ‘come back to it in ten years’ folder.
What’s your writing ritual and why is it a cursed superstition?
My writing ritual is: write for five minutes, check Instagram, write for five minutes, check Grindr, write for five minutes, play Spelling Bee, write for five minutes, close my eyes and curse how short attention spans have become.
One word that makes you go feral every time you see it misused?
An obvious one, but ‘literally’ literally makes my head explode.
That is literally so annoying. What non-existent job do you wish existed?
Full-time author.
Would you rather find a typo in the first sentence of your freshly published novel or the last?
The last, surely? Because hopefully the reader will have been so blown away by your prose over the preceding couple hundred pages that they forgive it.
Would you rather your status on Submittable remain forever ‘received’ or ‘in-progress’?
‘In-progress’. At least they’ve opened it…
Which creature adds more joy to your world: butterflies or geckos?
Geckos, because I see them in my house and I choose to believe that they help keep it free of mosquitoes and cockroaches. For which I allow them to shit down my walls.
Cursor status: blinking and judgmental or solid and reassuring?
Either, depending on how the writing is going that day.
Drafting fuel: coffee, tea, liquor, Haribo or the tears of your antagonists?
Coffee, or alcohol. If writing under the influence of coffee, my work is sensible, forthright, plain. If writing under the influence of alcohol, and maybe a cheeky fag, I become a cross between Oscar Wilde and Carrie Bradshaw.
Are you a ruthless assassin or a sentimental hoarder on a kill your darlings scale?
It’s taken me a long time to improve at brutal editing. It’s an ongoing process, and I still get shivers when I delete an entire paragraph at once.
Stinky Books: old library vanilla or fresh-off-the-press chemicals?
Old library vanilla, please. And, seeing as I live in Hong Kong, a nice side of brittle, yellowed paper from the humidity, please.
Your biography as a clickbait headline?
This young man dreamt of making a living as a writer. You won’t believe what happened next…
(N.B. you will believe what happened next.)
How do you write: sitting like a human or perched like a gargoyle?
Perched and with a constantly aching back.
Describe your latest WIP using three emojis and no context.
Beach. Surprised face. Skull.
‘Chaos Desk’ or ‘Aesthetic Nook’?
I had a science teacher in high school that marked you down for messy work, even if the answers were correct: “A good scientist is a neat scientist,” he would chant, with a self-satisfied air. Ergo, as we are creatives and not scientists, looking to bring beauty rather than order, surely a “good writer is a messy writer”. Right…?
Would you prefer a 1-star review that says ‘This changed my life for the worse’ or a 3-star review that says ‘It was fine’?
Either! Any! Just say something about my work! Please!
Are you an Ellipsis… (trailing off into mystery) or an Exclamation Point! (perpetually caffeinated and/or yelling)?
I criminally overuse ellipses……
Would you rather commit bookish blasphemy by dog-earring the pages of a rare first edition or reading the ending of every book before you start chapter one?
I know some psychopaths that do the latter, every book, without fail. They look up TV show recaps before watching them too, the freaks… No, I’m a committed corner folder. People need to stop being precious about it!
If you had to turn into an animal for an hour every day, are you a Majestic Hawk (great view, very cold) or a Fat Housecat (great nap, very judged)?
Reincarnation is the only belief system that I am tempted to consider, as it offers me the potential to come back as a fat, spoiled housecat.
Is ‘breakfast for dinner’ a symbol of freedom or a sign that society has failed?
Yeah, breakfast for dinner is pure squalor. Dinner for breakfast, on the other hand…
What’s the most useless talent you possess that you humblebrag about?
I can flutter my eyelids very quickly. It doesn’t look anywhere near as cute as you might think…
STEWART MCKAY – YOU HAVE PASSED THE WRITERS GAUNTLET!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR WIT AND WRITERLY WISDOM!
Stewart McKay is from Dunfermline, Scotland. Having previously lived in Thailand, he moved to Hong Kong in 2012, and has worked there as an ESL teacher, tutor, and examiner ever since. He is a member of the Hong Kong Writers Circle, and has contributed to several of their anthologies, as well as editing 2017’s ‘HK24’ and 2023’s ‘Lost in Transition’. His flash fiction and short stories have appeared, and have been shortlisted for prizes, in various online publications, such as Grindstone Literary, Raconteur, Fiction Factory and Free Flash Fiction.
His debut novel, ‘The Ballad of Billy Lopez’, was a finalist in the International Proverse Prize, and was published in 2024. It is a coming-of-age story told through the eyes of Brad, a teenage philosopher-slash-delinquent. It has been described as ‘absorbing and gritty’, ‘deeply moving and often funny’, and – perhaps most importantly of all – ‘enjoyably sexy’.
Stewart uses his fiction to explore the minutiae of what makes us human, for better or for worse, with a seam of humour, often dark, running through all his work. His writing covers topics ranging from sexuality, to aging, to various speculative visions of how our future might pan out to full-on post-apocalyptic nightmares.
The Ballad of Billy Lopez, a Proverse Prize publication, on Amazon.
Instagram: @whatididinhongkong
Facebook: Stewart McKay
Substack: https://substack.com/@stewartmckay
