Two options for when to decide on genre. Many people advise you to consider genre at the very start of your writing process, and that’s good advice if you’re a plotter—one who plots their stories in detail from the start. Then you can be clear on what kind of story you’re writing, and you can write specifically to suit that market. Excellent. Problem solved. All you have to do is make sure that your story has all the elements to satisfy reader expectations. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t work for those who discover a story somewhere in their creative mind and then write it down. Such stories often don’t fit into clear genres. Nor does it work for those who like to write their first draft without concerning themselves with where it’s going (pansters). In these cases the author may not know exactly what it is they’ve written until they’ve written it. Looking back and seeing what it is that you’re trying to achieve with a story is something you do at the second … [Read more...]
I’m a visual author: the role of visual imagery in my writing.
Today I take a trip to the blog of M.T. McGuire, another AIA author who is helping me to spread the word about the Diamond Peak Series. Her book, Few Are Chosen, is a delight and the K'Barthan Trilogy is my favourite series at the moment. She writes light-hearted fantasy that has lots of action and drama in it as well as humour. She also designs her own delightful covers. Click on the link or the cover to find out more about her books. They are well worth a read. I hope you'll leap over to her blog and discover why I say that I'm a visual author. http://hamgee.co.uk/blog/guest-post-how-i-write-by-tahlia-newland/ Don't forget that book one, Lethal Inheritance , is on sale on Kindle and Kobo until the 5th of July for only 99c . This book will never be offered free, so this is your best offer! … [Read more...]
A change of focus – going hermit for a bit
Sometimes I focus on publicity and sometimes more on writing. It depends where I’m up to with book production. If I’m writing a first draft, that’s all I do, apart from keeping the blog going, but I’ll use posts I’ve written previously. First drafts require all my focus. I write them only when I’m inspired and that puts me on a kind of creative high where I simply can’t do anything else unless I really have to—like make dinner or sleep. Rewriting is another area that takes a lot of focus, but I can also do other aspects of my job, like marketing or formatting, at the same time. It’s actually beneficial to have space between working on the restructuring because ideas and solutions come to me when I’m not thinking about it. Editing is the same in that respect. But, even so, when doing any of these things, my focus turns away from marketing back to writing, and that’s where I am now. Stalking Shadows—the second book in theDiamondPeak series— has just gone to my last beta … [Read more...]
Blog Tour – Why I wrote about Bullying
Today I have a guest post at Pretty in fiction about why I wrote about bullying. Pop on over and have a read. http://www.prettyinfiction.com/2012/09/blog-tour-guest-post-why-i-wrote-about.html … [Read more...]
Review – Wayfinder by C.E. Murphy
Title: Wayfinder Author: C.E. Murphy Publisher: Random House Publishing Group http://www.randomhouse.com/book/118852/wayfinder-by-ce-murphy Imprint: Del Rey Pub Date: 09/06/2011 Category: Adult fantasy but suitable for older young adults. Wayfinder is a unique and engaging story set in a vibrant world and brought to life through evocative writing. I particularly loved the imagery. Blurb Lara Jansen is a truthseeker, gifted-or cursed-with the magical ability to tell honesty from lies. Once she was a tailor in Boston, but now she has crossed from Earth to the Barrow-lands, a Faerie world embroiled in a bloody civil war between Seelie and Unseelie. Armed with an enchanted and malevolent staff which seeks to bend her to its dark will, and thrust into a deadly realm where it's hard to distinguish friend from foe, Lara is sure of one thing: her love for Dafydd apCaerwyn, the Faerie prince who sought her help in solving a royal murder and dousing the flames of war before they consumed … [Read more...]
How to get and keep your creativity flowing.
Real creativity (as we saw in the first post in this three part series on creativity) comes from the essence of mind not from our thoughts and emotions. If we can open our self to the natural creativity of the essence of mind, then we’ll get creativity of the greatest possible depth and find ideas that truly surprise us. In my last post I gave you a way to find the space from where creativity comes. Let’s assume that you can get into that space, now the question is, how do we get our creativity flowing? Intention is the key to set your creativity flowing. If once in the creative space your creativity doesn’t start flowing by itself, to set it flowing you need to hold in the back of your mind the intention to find something. This is not a thought, just a subtle awareness that you’re looking for ideas. It’s a very open, non demanding thing. You can’t care whether anything comes up or not, and you have to trust that there is a wealth of possibilities there and that they will reveal … [Read more...]
How to find the state where your creativity flows.
In my last post, I gave some simple ways to enter the open state beyond thoughts and emotions where the deepest form of creativity can emerge, but sometimes (often, if you’re not used to meditation of some form) our minds are too wild for those to work straight away. If your thoughts are speeding along, you won’t notice the gap between them and if you can’t find that gap, you can’t enter there, but that’s where we’ll find the creative space. So first, we have to slow down those thoughts. There are various ways to do this, generally they’re called meditation, but that’s a word often loaded with erroneous concepts, so I try to avoid it. Here are some key points as taught by Tibetan Meditation masters. If you’re a Christian, please don’t freak out; the mental space you’re going to is where you experience God or become one with God, however you want to look at it. It is also the space from which prayer is most powerful. Where else are you going to get the best creativity from? · … [Read more...]
Real creativity and how to get it.
I can safely say that I know how to be creative, because I spent twenty years employed as a performance artist. During that time, I created posters, publicity blurbs, props, masks and costumes as well as creating and performing in Visual Theatre performances. Our shows were known for being unique, and now, my writing isn’t like anything else out there either. That’s my qualification for this post and the next two on the same subject. If you want to be creative or more creative, I think you need to 1. Know what real creativity is – then you know what you’re aiming for. 2. Know where real creativity comes from 3. Learn how to go to that place 4. Learn how to set the creativity flowing 5. Learn how to express what you find there I’m going to write this as it applies to writing, but the principles apply to any creative field. 1. What is real creativity? Real creativity is hard to define, so I’m being lazy and telling you what it’s not. It’s … [Read more...]
Interview with Mary McDonald author of ‘No Good Deed’
I came across Mary in the comments on a post on the Fiction Groupie blog asking if people would buy self published books. Some people said they would never look at them. Mary began her comment with - As a self-pubbed author who has never been traditionally published, I guess I'm one of those some of you would never buy. Then she went on to say that her book No Good Deed was doing quite well. I checked out the book and bought it (only $3.99 on Smashwords for the ebook – I can take a risk for that). From the reviews I read, I thought it might be a candidate for an M-Award. It was and I awarded her one last week because I found the book highly moving and memorable. Here’s the blurb. Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances,Chicago photographer Mark Taylor finds himself in the incredulous position of being arrested as a homegrown terrorist and incarcerated as an enemy combatant. There's no rights, no trial--no way out. After reading it, I wanted to ask Mary some questions and I … [Read more...]
My guest post on ‘Great (book) Expectations’
Cathryn Isakson of http://novelexpectations.wordpress.com/ asked me to write a guest post on her blog site about finding resources on the web and it's up there now. Cath is an author and publicist from Melbourne and her blog has excellent posts for writers wanting to be published. There's a link to her site in my links box too. Here's a link to the article if you're interested. http://novelexpectations.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/a-guide-to-finding-writers-resources-on-the-web-a-guest-blog-by-tahlia-newland/ … [Read more...]
