The Urge to Create

In which I alienate people with different work habits.

I’ve finished revising a novel, so it’s time to discuss the psychology of writing!  I have written a couple times about writer’s block, that worldbuilder’s disease can distract you from thinking about more productive things, like character motivation. I still haven’t had the experience of “the words don’t come” and I just don’t get these statements like “all professional writers hate writing” or this ridiculous tweet:

How To Write: get as distracted as possible for as long as possible until you are driven to start typing by an overpowering sense of shame.

— Sam Bain (@sambaintv) August 2, 2017

Sorry if I’m being too simplistic, but I just don’t understand how you would write if this is your modus operandi. I replied that instead you could just pick a time and start writing (an opinion held by Stephen King, Roald Dahl, Ernest Hemingway, and Philip Glass, among others). Writing, for me, is just something that I do, like breathing. I can’t not do it. I’m not trying to make anyone jealous, that’s just how I’ve functioned since I was a kid. I never thought it made me a “writer” until I was in my thirties. I just never noticed it until someone pointed it out, that normal people don’t do that.

Anyway, the strange thing that happened to me this week still wasn’t “the words won’t come” but trying to hold myself back from writing. I finished the polishing edits on my novel Firesage Saturday morning by writing a new prologue. I ditched the one with the two demons talking to each other about the fate of the world and replaced it with the last bit of my main character’s old life, the one she ditches in favor of becoming an officially sanctioned sorceress. I breathed a big sigh, and then by that afternoon I was seized with panic.

“What do I do?” I kept asking myself. I’ve got a great book to read, luckily, but the underlying urge was “I need to write something.” I vowed not to touch Firesage until the beta readers got back to me (and one already did, which was totally unexpected), and I didn’t think it was a great idea to start outlining the sequel until my agent has seen it. I tried working on a screenplay based on “Stages of Man,” but then I realized that I didn’t have the character’s motivations mapped out very carefully. I started telling myself that I’m not a screenwriter and I shouldn’t try it, I should focus on novels anyway. I’m good at that and I can get better at it by doing it more.

And every day I wake up and I feel like I should be writing something. This could just be inertia, and it could be displaced energy. I don’t get the focus out of my day-job that a lot of people do, since it’s basically managing chaos (i.e. parenting). If it were inertia, then I wouldn’t have had this same feeling all the time when I was younger and hadn’t figured out how to write a novel. It wouldn’t have kept me up at night scribbling in notebooks. It wouldn’t be that the way I “blew off steam” after a long day was writing an essay when I got home at midnight. The only thing that I’ve found can effectively channel this energy is building something, working outside, or drawing, but I still feel like I should rather be doing something that I know I’m really good at.

I want to get into outlining the next book, and I am just going to stop denying myself that. In fact, writing this blog post was pretty difficult because I want to be doing that instead. There’s nothing else on my mind.

Weak Female Characters

Why write weak characters? To see them become strong people.

Is Terisa Morgan the long-sought weak female character?

Last month after watching The White Queen I questioned the compliment “you write strong female characters,” by saying there’s no good reason to write a weak female character.  Weak female characters, or passive ones, are simply not as interesting as strong characters of either sex.  There’s no compelling reason to write a character who’s boring, at least not in a fantasy or historical adventure.  Even a weak side character can just use up valuable space.  “Every character should want something, even if it is just a glass of water.”

I’ve now found an exception to this.  A weak main character can be quite interesting because, of course, characters need to change.

New short story

A quick note here just to let you know my short story “Stages of Man” is now available here for free:

I should be able to get used to something like that, like how Southerners should be expecting the heat, or how people really shouldn’t fear death: you know it’s coming, so it’s no big deal, but no, every time I run into her, it leaves me feeling cold and sick and exhausted for days… . She never seems to understand how painful it is to see her. If she could avoid it, I wish she would. As it is, it’s almost like she’s still alive.

Young Adult Protagonists

In which I alienate fans of lawyer books…

Young people: horny, stupid and capable enough to get into major trouble.

First the news: I am about a quarter of the way through editing Firesage. I don’t have much inclination to do anything else because editing is so rewarding. I thought about doing a blog post on my editing procedure, but actually editing is so much more fun, I thought I would share some thoughts on the age of protagonists. I got two more short stories rejected this week, and will post them here soon. If you haven’t read “Talons of the Sun” or “The Lapis Dragon-Tamer” yet, head over to my short fiction page, and stay tuned for more.

The subject came up on Facebook about why so many stories are about people of a particular age, and I have some quick thoughts on this.

Strong Female Characters, Point of View, and The White Queen

A story has to be told from the right point of view; the author can’t always choose that.

Yesterday was the Summer solstice and marked two interesting divisions. The summer solstice (or “Langesttay” in the language of the book) marks a critical division in the plot of The Queen’s Night, and four months ago Mark Gottlieb submitted this book, and we haven’t heard anything back. Although Mark has assured me it’s not time to give up hope, he does think it’s time to try to sell the next book, so that’s where my focus is. I am not giving up hope primarily because every person I’ve shown this book, or pitched it to, has said it looks fantastic. I am extremely skeptical that out of fifteen editors who might see it, none of them would like it. It’s gotten to the point where I hope someone will tell me what’s wrong with it so I can fix it. But nevertheless I am moving on with the next book.

Reaching my target audience: a new approach

I’m not reaching my target audience submitting my short stories, so now you can read them for free.

After last week’s post on short stories, I gave my short stories some serious thought while I mowed the lawn.  I realized that although I could improve my short stories over the next few years to the point where they would get accepted into the elite publications in the field, over the same period of time I could reach my actual readers much faster by giving these stories away.  The  best thing I can do to get my stories published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lightspeed, Apex, or Fantasy and Science Fiction is to have a best-selling novel that will create name recognition and drive traffic to those publications.  However, in that time I will have missed the opportunity to share stories that I really enjoy and I think you will as well.

Short stories: what the hell?

In which I reveal all my flaws as a writer.

I read a very informative and helpful article on short story writing by David Farland this week. As everyone should, I have submitted a few stories to Writers of the Future, and one got an honorable mention last year. I write very few stories that are appropriate for the contest, as they demand a PG-13 rating, but I have submitted plenty of stories to the usual publications, and haven’t gotten much more than a few personal rejections (this is a good sign, but it’s not publication). Fortunately Farland’s blog post included usable information that writers can use to improve their stories, maybe even sell one.

Worldbuilder’s Disease: Oops, I Did It Again

In which I alienate writers who use index cards.

Tools for writing this week: quotation mark sticky notes, D&D Player’s Handbook, and the ever-watchful Elsa.

Earlier this week I celebrated getting to the climactic chapter of my novel Firesage, where pregnant sorceress Elspyth Stonehouse, and her rival Bálarmos of Dwynhagen finally confront each other over her husband’s traitorous attempts to make the magical academy independent of their warlord king. Everything comes together in this chapter, and as written, I thought it was very exciting. The two groups of sorcerors clash on the grounds of the academy itself, along with a group of soldiers: there’s a huge conflagration, quite a bit of tragic drama, some heartbreak, and different magics that no one was expecting! On top of that it all starts out with an awesome catfight between Elspyth and another sorceress: an epic “Hands off my man!” leads to an all-out battle.

The Black Witch (Goodreads Review)

The Black Witch by Laurie Forest

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I consider Laurie Forest a colleague. We both write epic fantasy and live in a small state with an active writing community. I have not received any material support from her, encouragement, or endorsement to write this review. I paid full price for my signed copy.

Elloren Gardner lives in a diverse magical world, but for many reasons, her uncle has sheltered her on his farm since she was a small child. She is the granddaughter of The Black Witch, a legendary sorceress who is regarded as a patriot and freedom fighter for her people, who all achieve some level of magical ability. Elloren’s curse is that despite her striking resemblance to her grandmother, her only magical ability is to find peace, comfort, and psychological communion with bits of wood. She’s a great violinist, but can’t even light a candle, and wouldn’t be allowed a wand.

Screenwriting advice (for novelists?)

In which I alienate still more people who liked Arrival

The main thing I’ve been doing other than working toward the climax in the rewrite of Firesage is studying screenwriting. Since The Queen’s Night is on submission and people seem to like the characters (despite my efforts to make them horrible people bent on nothing but pleasure, power, and geometry) I have thought it would make a good movie. A lot of readers and writers think about their favorite books in a sort of filmic way, and when readers get their favorite books adapted, it’s a sort of validation. A lot of the heroic and dramatic can be succinctly expressed in film, and so a lot of us get our sense of the dramatic from the movie screen, and seeing our favorite story on that screen gives it a larger existence. So naturally I thought of adapting the movie myself, and learning about screenwriting in the process.

For a couple reasons, I don’t think I will even try.