Tag Archives: author

Writing is like using a big flashlight.

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Finding your way through a story is like having a big flashlight with a little beam. You’re hoping to find something, but the small beam doesn’t allow you to search a wide area. So you’re stuck searching with this big flashlight. Hoping you see what you need but know you might not.

I started work on a new project. I mentioned it last week, and it was fun, but there were times I felt the flashlight wasn’t in my hands.

It’s frustrating, and I kept thinking I should move on to another story. But I loved the fear it created in my mind as I wrote, which kept me going.

I wanted to know what happened to the characters. I worried about them. And although some writers say writing is like playing God, to me it’s more like being a harbinger of Fate.

One thing leads to another. I worry about whether the characters will live or die, but as a pantser I don’t have that control, the story does.

I’ve written all different ways, but discovery, or pantsing, works best for the way my brain works.

Not sure why it’s that way, but it is.

Anyway, I finished it yesterday. It was over 5k but needed a different pace than the 86k fantasy novel I finished in December.

Either way, I finished another story.

But I hope you’re having a good day and meeting your writing goals.

A Long Week Ends and New Writing Begins.

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There are days, weeks, and sometimes months that try us. We must get through those days and on to better ones.
This past week, was one of these.
Celebrities come to this little corner during Sundance Film Festival.
Those of us in the service industry cater to them and take care of them.
Its difficult working long hours but we do it.
Over the past week I worked crazy hours, woke up tired, but I persevered.
The only thing that fell apart was my writing. My family held it together because it was Sundance.
I’m getting my writing back on track and working on a new project, something darker. The past week was a lot of fun, I served some great actors and actresses, but I’m ready for normality. Whatever that means.
I’ve worked hard to get stories ready for publication. I still plan on publishing this year, but not sure which novel it will be.
I’ll begin the read-through this weekend of the novel I finished in December. I’m looking forward to this.
Every day is a
challenge, especially when I’m tired. Depression sneaks in when I least expect it and it tried this past week.
Today, I’m a day closer to publication and working on a story idea that came to me a while ago. Now that I’m working on it, I love it and it scares me. If I’m not scared, the reader isn’t either.
Happy writing.

How Being Forced to Read Changed My Writing.

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For the last couple weeks I thought I’d try and write something different. It hasn’t turned out well.

My usual stories are fantasy of one form or another. I tried to write a Sci-Fi novel.

It was going good, as my other attempts at writing within the genre had, then the bottom fell out and I got bored.

I’m not sure whether it’s the story, the process I use, or whether I can’t write a Sci-Fi novel.

I’ve written a couple of Sci-Fi short stories in the past, no problem. When they grow longer than 10,000 words, that’s when the problems happen.

For now, I’ll be sticking to Fantasy, and its mini-genres…i.e., Epic, Sword & Sorcery, Urban, Grimdark, and the like.

But Science Fiction gives my brain fits.

I’m still not sure why this is. I can write a horror novel and be completely in love with it, same goes with Fantasy, but science fiction, I have trouble with it.

I believe that comes from the books I felt forced to read growing up.

My father would read Tom Clancy novels, I would read them. The Techno-Thriller had so much tech in it at times it bogged me down and I believe its why I can’t write similar things today.

Whenever I wanted to read something different he would look at the cover, read the blurb and decide for me whether I could read it.

Many times I would be reading a couple of books at a time, one that he chose, one that I found at the library.

It wasn’t until I moved out of his house and in with my mom and dad, that I felt I could read without judgement.

Though there were times I would have comics hidden under my bed or wherever I slept. The fear of someone finding out I liked comics, that I enjoyed fantasy novels was too great a thing for me to break from.

It took me a long time to enjoy reading fantasy and not having the fear of judgement for what I read.

Today, I enjoy fantasy and horror more than other genres. I don’t read Tom Clancy style books, though I do believe they have influenced some of my current writing.

I feel we should read and write what we’re comfortable with, though stretching ourselves can lead to great things.

Anyway, on to the next story, may it be ripe with Fantasy.

How I get through the hard days.

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This past week I’ve struggled to write.

It may be a hangover from the previous book and the thoughts of writing in a new world or it could be a disruption in my schedule.

I think it’s all of the above and it’s thrown me for a loop.

While I’ve worked; squeezing only a few hundred words until yesterday, the words have been stilted. There’s been no flow.

As I said already, I wrote 86,000 words in a month. This may have given me a writing hangover.

There is another thing. I stopped reading a book because it was in the same genre as the book I finished and since I stopped, so has my writing, mostly.

The schedule issue is another thing.

Every day after I take my kids to school and get breakfast, which is usually from 8:30 until 11:00. I do four writing sprints of twenty-five minutes, with a five-minute break in-between.

This is one of the ways I wrote so many words last month.

I was also more focused last month on writing, but in being focused, I did screw up a few times. I didn’t get my critiques done for my writing group.

This is something I’m really upset with myself over.

The other thing is by not getting any solid writing done, doubt and depression have nudged their ways in.

I’ve written numerous times about depression. Check out my page about Transcendental Meditation or my post on TM.org to read more about it.

I won’t let myself get stuck in the spiral again. I went back to the book I’d been reading and I wrote more than I have since last week.

Every day as a writer, especially an unpublished writer, is an adventure, but I wouldn’t quit for anything.

On to the next…

How I learned to embrace the narrator voice.

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For the longest time I’ve had a fear of using the narrator voice while writing.

As I write mostly fantasy, horror, and science fiction, I’m sure this fear comes from being told show don’t tell and of the dreaded info dump.

I spent the latter months of 2018 dealing with this fear.

I knew a couple things would have to change in my writing, and mindset, to fix this.

I would have to let the narrator speak what needed to be said and I would have to stop worrying about info dumps. Sometimes a small info dump is needed in a story.

When dealing with an info dump, I’ve made sure it’s either a character explaining things or if I’m using the narrator, it’s in small chunks.

I also didn’t want to sound pretentious. Which is something my wife says I’ve done with the narrator.

I read a lot of books this past year, and I took to analyzing how the author would speak with the narrator, either in description or in regards to world building.

The Wheel of Time series writer by Robert Jordan and finished Brandon Sanderson are a few of the best examples of this.

I love how Jordan does narrator voice. I don’t feel like there is an info dump when he’s world building and the narrator is consistent throughout the books I’ve read in the series. I’m on book 5 in the series.

With horror, it’s the same. I looked for how the author differentiated between the narrator voice and character voice. Doing this helped my writing a lot.

From the end of September until the end of November I focused solely on improving my narrators and how they dealt with the world.

These stories turned out well and I’m happy with them. I only wish I would have done it years ago instead of being afraid.

I’ll be talking about how I did this for the month of January.

What did you improve upon in your writing or life the past year?

Let me know in the comments.