To the goats, all people are equal, except for those who have treats.
Your first thought is often the best one. You know, the one that felt too weird or silly or stupid. Trust your imagination - it knows what it's doing.
When I returned to short stories, I'd started working on what is still central to much of what I try to do: putting myself in the place of the alien rather than describing it from an outside point of view.
All my stories and worlds spring from the basic principle of being a slave to the premise, to follow the consequences wherever they may lead without taking any easy or comfortable ways out.
Worldbuilding to me is taking the consequences of an idea.
I'm not comfortable with categorizing my own work, but I don't mind if others talk about it in relation to genre as long as they don't try to hold it up to some genre standard.
Some of my other stories are talked about as fantasy, some as horror, and some aren't talked about as genre at all. And the same story will be labeled differently depending on country.
I come from a nation where fantastic fiction has a very low status, unless it fits into some very specific categories or is written by already established authors. I don't by any means try to hide what I write, but the way people think in categories here is pretty extreme: it blots out discussing the actual work on its own terms. That's made me loath to talk about my own work in terms of genre, because once you get a label, it sticks and poof go a slew of potential readers and reviewers because eww, fantasy cooties.
Happily, fantastic fiction is slowly gaining in status.
I don't go out of my way to write Weird Fiction, or in any other genre. Some of my stuff easily slips into the Weird slot.
I don't consider genre while writing.
I can write a story in working-class Stockholm Swedish, but I'm not going to assume I can perform the same feat with Cockney. I'll focus on adventures in story, themes and structure instead.
I'm just being honest about the fact that a second language won't resonate with you like the first does.
I have control of my own style.
I want my voice to be consistent no matter if it's an original or a translation.
Some stories I write in Swedish, some in English. Short stories I've almost exclusively written in English lately, mostly because there's such a small market for them in Sweden and it doesn't really pay either. So, the translation goes both ways. What also factors in is that I have a different voice in English, which means that a straight translation wouldn't be the same as if I'd written it in English originally.
My early stories revolved around reality and faith. I wrote a series of stories about the darker aspects of Christian myth: a woman who hides in the attic and watches the Apocalypse, a cult whose members preserve themselves in huge formalin tubs waiting for the Second Coming, and so on.
What does seem to be a constant is that I write more emotional stories the older I get. I think a lot of that has to do with growing up in a patriarchal structure where unemotional intellect (male) is taken more seriously than delving into emotions (female), and gradually freeing myself from those expectations.
I've always been fascinated by the concept of time.
Time is built entirely on consensus: humans decide that they have linear time, so they do.
I think that the more alien and strange a world or situation is, the more concise you have to be if you want the reader to follow you. It depends on what effect you're looking for.
You have to be aware what the consequences are of the approach you take.
If you want the reader to accept the premise as a given, then being specific is vital. This is what I'm after; I want the reader to accept the setting and the mindset of the characters, so we can get on with the story.
What I do with the story itself varies of course, but what I want to do is to present the world so that the reader can access it without tripping over the details.
I do love the weird, and I realize that I write much in that tradition, so I'm happy to be counted in among some of my favorite authors.
