Posts Tagged → Writing

A Million Words

As someone who has written literally millions of words and curated just as many since moving into print and publishing, it’s a mute point as to what’s hard and what’s not when it comes to writing. Whether it’s for myself or work, a short story or a blog post, each offers it’s own set of challenges and sometimes, obstacles. Including do I really want to write today to, “Oh my god the deadline is when tomorrow?”

When it comes to writing for myself, I have no set agenda I write when inspired and enjoy the whole process rather than subject myself to pressure for whatever reason. My short stories are written when they’re written, same goes for a blog post. I simply do not stress anymore. And for good reason. I’ve had a life time’s worth of deadlines and stress working in publishing so take the approach, this is for me, it should be fun.

I want to enjoy life, and that includes my writing, I want it to be something done purely for pleasure. Like today’s post, which is, in part, inspired by David over at Forking Mad writing on the same topic.

And you? What do you find fun or hard about writing?

Why I Write

I’ve been writing for as long as I’ve been reading. All thanks to both parents who were both avid readers, though very different kind of books. My mother mostly read romances and historical family sagas — think, Thorn Birds. My father, on the other hand, who use to take us weekly to the library, would go to the new section of recent arrivals and pick 6 of the biggest books he could find. I’m not kidding. It didn’t matter what they were. Non-fiction, fiction, historical, or sci-fi. He’d read it all. And it was his passion and love of reading that also spilled over in to us being taught at very early ages how to form our letters.

I was smitten. From the minute I realised I could make words with these strange looking letters and make sentences, like: the cat sat on the mat. I was creating my own stories and, when old enough, making them into little books.

From that point on, I always wrote, at least that is when I wasn’t reading, and despite my early choices of leaving home at 17 to join the military, I still managed to do not one, but 2 degrees (you know, because I loved writing) and, by a strange twist of fate, ended up working for over 25+ years in the print and publishing trade after leaving the military. A trade that fed my need to both read and to write.

All the while I worked in these trades, I wrote articles, create publications and e-zines, and even full-on magazines, till print become difficult, due to costs. At which point, I went online like so many. And the rest, they say, is history.

I ran two different websites curating fiction for both the sci-fi lover (The SF Hub) and for the discerning lesbian (Kissed By Venus) who wanted to read both good fiction, but also read reviews and interviews with the authors and publishers. I also curated two on-demand print quarterly magazines for both websites, which turned out to be an awful lot of work, but also, great fun to do at the time.

I haven’t stopped writing and have never looked back from that very early age after being encouraged by my parents to just do it.

Footnote: At once point back in 2012, I calculated just how many words (roughly) I might have written over those intervening years, and shocked myself when it came out at over 2 million. A conservative estimate. Don’t ask me how many words I’ve written since then.

Let’s Get Authentic

You don’t have to become an expert on a subject to write about it, but you do have to do research and due diligence in order to write with authority and make your work sound plausible. Authenticity is key, that’s why I love authors who do their research like Steph Broadribb, author of the Lori Anderson crime thriller series. Broadribb went to the US and learnt all should could by working as a bails-bond person in order to lend authenticity to her characters and world building. You can’t get it anymore first hand than that.

Even science fiction authors have to start somewhere. Having a fundamental understanding of the sciences helps. Which is probably why I have such a hard time reading or taking horror or fantasy seriously, to my mind at least, most lack any cohesive background or believable world building.

That said, authors who do ground their work with structure, can knock it out of the ball park. Take S. A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad series. This author has put so much effort into her characters, setting, and palace politics, and grounded her magical realm with so much realism, as to make it all seem so very plausible. This makes her storytelling all the more compelling never mind enjoyable because she’s paid attention to every detail.

I suppose the same could be said about writing blog posts as writing a full-length novel, or even, short stories, after all, you could argue that each post we write and present is, in and of its self, a short story. It should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It needs structure, logic, and while it can have whimsy as well, it also needs to, in the end, say something, if not about a subject or topic then, at least about us, as the author.

We are, after all, authors on a quest, world building our own habitat in the ether between the ones and zeros, looking to connect with other like minded people.

I guess whether it’s books or just blog posts, the key to connecting with our readers is to be as authentic to ourselves as possible.

Consulting the Stars

Sometime I think that everything I ever learnt about how to write, I learnt from reading Ursula K. Le Guin novels [with humble apologies to my favourite English teacher]. Even now, I still find myself reaching for one of Le Guin’s works, not just for that spark of inspiration, but to remind myself on the how. How did she write this scene, capture that character, make it all work?

And just to interject here, Le Guin also wrote some edifying articles and posts. One need only look at her, “On Rules of Writing, or, Riffing on Rechy” to get a taste of her knowledge, wit, and insight. Certainly, you can’t do any worse than reading through her articles on writing, especially, and specifically, “What Makes A Story?”

“I define story as a narrative of events (external or psychological) which moves through time or implies the passage of time, and which involves change.

I define plot as a form of story which uses action as its mode usually in the form of conflict, and which closely and intricately connects one act to another, usually through a causal chain, ending in a climax.

Climax is one kind of pleasure; plot is one kind of story. A strong, shapely plot is a pleasure in itself. It can be reused generation after generation. It provides an armature for narrative that beginning writers may find invaluable.”

My research isn’t just confined to Mme. Le Guin. I also find myself referring to other SF luminaries such as Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke and Herbert. They each have added to my knowledge, and to stretching my horizons well beyond Earth’s gravity well, and aided me in building my language of description. While I hope I’ve learned my lessons, I’m not naive enough to simply think I can stop learning. On the contrary, I know I will never—as a writer never mind as a human being—stop learning.

Not until, that is, they nail the coffin lid down and tell me to shut up already!

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, or so most fairy tales would have you believe, there has lived a princess. But, this time around, fed up with being typecast by every writer since God called into the void, “Let there be light!” this particular princess I’m going to write about got her Mojo together and cleverly found a way to whisper to this author’s muse and tell her:

“Hey, you, Muse lady, tell that damn writer of yours I want to be a space pirate, or the captain of a starship fighting invading aliens or, at the very least, a futuristic Delilah with magical powers bestowed upon me by the Fates. Anything but, you know, the dreaded Disney version or worse, the Brothers Grimm version, of a princess where I end up being eaten by the big bad wolf. You got that!”

Needless to say my Muse had something to say about my characters giving her a hard time of it there, in the dark ether of nothingness between words and sentences, muttering in turn to me about bad form and unruly behaviour of those yet to be born, and that the unborn were just that: unborn and should stay silent till given form.

Sigh!

Only in my head could it get this complicated when I sit down to write a story. What with Muses muttering about going on holiday, characters shouting to be heard that my Muse was lacking in empathy for them and their plight forever lurking in the dark corners of my mind. And then my staring at a blank screen listening to arguments of:

“I want to be called the Lady of the Red Hood, you know, not damn ‘little red riding hood!’” and “I want a laser blaster, and a crew of amazon warrior women like you saw in Xena . . .” to “Don’t have me kissing that wimpy guy, I want to be six feet tall, wear armour, and rescue the girl!”

At best, it can drive a writer to distraction, and worst, to madness.

LOL & OMG Toll the Death-Knell of the English Language

English is one of those languages that begs, borrows and downright steals from other languages to the point of stalking them down dark alleys. Where, before hitting them over the head with a dangling participle, rifles through a language’s pockets in search of any word it thinks it can get away with. It doesn’t care whether it’s bright, shiny, and new, or if it is dog-eared and long since forgotten. The only criteria is, can I use it?

You have to remember, languages live by adapting or die by stagnation. English (and yes, we’ll include American, Canadian, and Australian English here too) knows this and isn’t above grand theft and petty larceny in the verbiage world at large.

So, to any and all of you out there bemoaning the death-knell of the English language when reading announcements that the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) is once again adding new and controversial words to its pages. Ask yourselves, do we speak the same language of Shakespeare, or even the Victorians? Could you imagine a dapper-dressed Victorian saying, “I better Google that, or check that fact on Bing.” Eh, of course not. Nor do we, in our time, go around asking, “doth thine eyes, of palest emerald, beseech the heavens above …”

Hell, no!

We speak and write a vibrant, living, growing, transforming language that is constantly in flux and adapting to the changing needs of those using it.

And to that, I say, hallelujah!