Dilemmas…
It’s been a quite a day today.
One where I’ve been at liberty to get thoughts together.
We all chase dreams. Some more than others. But the writing dream is one that comes with its own issues. In this honest and revealing post, Gordon Doherty, writer of spectacular Roman and Byzantine fiction explains how the profession of writing really tested him!
My Office was inspired by that consummate commentator on all things indie, Joanna Penn, who wrote a post this last week on ‘Behind the Scenes Tools’...
Prior to new Year’s Eve, Joe Konrath said: This year, I’m boiling my resolutions down to the essence:
WRITE!
Elizabeth Hunter wrote: I NEED the writing. It’s still my most-fun-thing. My escape. My happy place.
I love writing and want to write more books, but they can’t happen as fast as I would like and that’s okay. In fact, that’s better than okay. It’s normal and I’m perfectly fine with that.
And then there’s Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a commentator whose words always hold a distinct resonance and clarity for me personally. In her annual ‘Close of Business for the Year’ address she pointed out a couple of salient things…
‘The new world isn’t actively hostile, but it is difficult. And why shouldn’t it be? We’re working on an international level.
But one of the degrees of difficulty we’ve been dealing with since 2009 is that the new system hadn’t stabilized yet. Things changed, sometimes weekly, and those of us who jumped into indie publishing from the beginning were constantly revising expectations as well as ways of doing things.’
I joined the new world of publishing along with some of my closest writing friends, in 2008. We were published POD by an organization in the UK that was government funded with an annual Arts grant. We sold, we did well. But then we stepped out on our own and by 2010, dived into e-books.
Not just diving in I might add, but swimming whole marathons because the industry was mega-populated and the technology seemed to change by the hour…
On this dreadful day, as we all wonder about Paris, a post such as this has little relevance.
I wrote it before the events in Paris and offer it up as a gentle escape for a short while…
I don’t often post on writing but I was playing with Pinterest this evening and came across this – a list from my favourite animation house, Pixar.
The storytelling ‘rules’ were originally released on Twitter by Emma Coats, Pixar’s Story Artist. And I wondered about the rules in respect of my own writing.
When I was under the editorial direction of Cornerstones at the beginning of The Stumpwork Robe’s life, I read a small power-packed book called How To Write A Blockbuster, by Helen Corner and Lee Weatherly. One of the very helpful details in the book was a little sheet: effectively a character profile sheet. I scanned off a number for the book I was writing at the time and spent profitable hours filling in the detail.
Whilst away last weekend, I read an interesting article on solitude in The Australian Weekender magazine, by writer Nikki Gemmell. She says: ‘aloneness can have a vast restorative power … it’s a space for your mind to uncurl … in the lovely, glittery alone, a door opens to a possibility and it’s when novel ideas sneak in, titles roar with their rightness and surprising character arcs veer me back to excitement over a project that hasn’t been singing.’
By some strange chance I was sent an email the other day which was semi-spam, but the article was terrific. Writers’ spaces. Now the ones they showed were quite simply wonderful. Inspirational. The source of great literature. And I wondered why I couldn’t have such a space… a cottage on a deserted estate on a distant island. And if I did, would my writing actually be any better?
*Title of post based on an iconic Australian tourism ad.*
Have you noticed I haven’t been round for a few days? You’re supposed to chorus with relieved tones: ‘Yes, where the b****y hell’ve you been?’