David B Coe Faith Hunter A J Hartley Misty Massey | posted by  DavidBCoe read all posts by David B. Coe  Did you know that Eleanor of Aquitaine, in addition to being married to two kings and giving birth to three more, and in addition to riding to the Holy Land with the Second Crusade, spent sixteen years of her life in prison (by order of her second husband) and outlived all but two of her ten children? Did you know that Samuel Adams, in addition to helping to build momentum for the American Revolution, and in addition to being a brewmaster (yes, he really was, although not a successful one), was afflicted all his life with a mild palsy, lost his first wife when she was only thirty-two, and spent much of his early career deeply in debt? Character, we often say here at MW, is the most important element of storytelling. Stuart wrote about this on Friday. You can come up with a great story and set it in a fascinating world, but if your characters are flat, your book probably won’t capture your readers’ imaginations. On the other hand, characters that are powerful and intriguing can often overcome other flaws in a story or book. And I have said before that the best characters I write are those who are fully products of my creative process. When I try to base a character on a person I know, the character often doesn’t develop a personality of his/her own. But then, how are we to develop and write historical figures who become characters in our books? How do we take people from history and make them “our own”? Continue reading Making Historical Characters Your Own posted by  Stuart Jaffe read all posts by Stuart Jaffe Next week, I will begin the first of two sessions speaking to a small group of students at Wake Forest University on the subject of writing — in particular, writing openings and creating creatures. The catch: these are biology students. See, this all began a few years ago when a professor in the biology department that my wife worked under found out I wrote genre fiction. Every two years she runs a seminar on science and science fiction and wondered if I would be willing to come in to speak with her students and answer questions. In addition, I agreed to read/workshop the opening paragraphs of their stories. This turned out to be a lot of fun and I was thrilled to be asked to do it again this year. The main reason I bring this up for a Magical Words post is a matter of perspective. Continue reading When Readers Write posted by  Carrie Ryan read all posts by Carrie Ryan Hey y’all! I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a new regular here! Seriously, I remember going to my first ConCarolinas and seeing Faith and David and Misty on panels and being so awed! And now here I am blogging with them! Squee! (I promise my books don’t have nearly as many exclamation points but I do tend to use them with abandon in blog posts). A bit about me: I write young adult novels and live in Charlotte with my fiancé, two fat cats and a lazy dog. My first book, The Forest of Hands and Teeth (FHT), came out a year ago and the second in the series, The Dead-Tossed Waves (DTW) just came out on Tuesday (yay!!). I’m writing this post from a hotel room in Baltimore, the first stop on a tour for DTW (and hoping I have time this afternoon to sneak out and visit the National Aquarium and a cool looking old ship). Everything I’ve published so far is set in the same world about 150-200 years after the zombie apocalypse. I wasn’t always a fan of zombies — in fact, when I was a kid my babysitter sat me down to watch the movie Poltergeist and I never recovered. It wasn’t until I was in law school and my fiancé somehow convinced me to go to the Dawn of the Dead remake that I became fascinated with zombies and the idea of survival after an apocalypse. But at that time I was writing YA chick lit (I’d started out in 2000 writing romances) and so, to me, zombies were just sort of a hobby — my fiancé (JP) and I would watch movies, we’d read a few books, but that was it. Until National Novel Writing Month in 2006. See, one of the rules for NaNoWriMo is that you have to start something new and I just had a bunch of unfinished projects laying around. I was whining about this to JP when he said “Write what you love” and I laughed and said “The zombie apocalypse?” and he smiled and shrugged. A year later I sold a zombie apocalypse book. You can see why I dedicated it to him. When it comes to the publishing industry and the craft of writing, I’m a big geek. That’s one of the reasons I’ve always loved Magical Words because everyone gets into the meat of things and I always leave with something to think about. I only hope I can help contribute to the conversations! If you can think of anything specific you’d like me to talk about in upcoming posts, just let me know! And if anyone of you live in the NYC, Chicago, Lansing, Seattle or San Francisco area I’d love to meet you in person when I head your way during the next two weeks! I’m so excited to get to know all of y’all and thanks for inviting me aboard! Carrie www.carrieryan.com www.twitter.com/carrieryan posted by  Faith Hunter read all posts by Faith Hunter It’s one of those days when RL (real life) is getting in the way ofany kind of writing, even this blog. Between other stuff (which could go in caps, like OTHER STUFF) a co-worker fell at work and I have been pulling the graveyard shift. Ugh-ick. So I thought it might be smart to build on that, and talk about the writing life, when RL gets in the way. Some of the best advice on writing (to me, anyway, but you can put yours in the comments) is : 1.) Read a lot.
2.) Write every day.
Neither of which I do. Yep, I’m a baaaad writer.
But I have another life. (Two of them. Maybe three. And looking for fourth. Call me schizoid. I won’t deny it.) I do read, but it isn’t quite what the writing-rule requires. The writing-rule is suggesting that I read a lot of books and short stories in my genre, books that will show me market trends, written by writers with far better skills and more devices in their tool boxes than I have. The idea is to feed my mind and my skills while reading for pleasure. I don’t follow the spirit or letter of writing-rule number one. I ignore it regularly. Instead, I usually spend my reading time on other things—nonfiction for the lab field, manuscripts and partials for the 3 or 4 writers I am mentoring (pushing, prodding, abusing, critiquing,) at this time, the manuscripts I am asked to blurb, and the books I edit for a small publishing house. So yes, I read lot, but it isn’t for pleasure and education. Not at all. I only have time to read two books a month that fall under the Read-A-Lot writing-rule category. This month, those two books are Kim Harrison’s Black Magic Sanction, and AJ Hartley’s Mask of Atreus. Kim’s book blew my away. Her skills as a writer have grown richer, mellowed, and deepened in flavor, like really good red wine. Her ability to weave multiple plot lines into one whole, to make a rich, full bodied reading experience has gotten better over the years. A lot of writers with the intense deadline schedule she has, show a decrease in skills and attention to craft. Not Kim. She makes sure her fans have a wonderful experience, and I have no doubt that, when she moves from the Hollows series to something else, she will bring this depth of skill and passion for craft into the new projects. I finished Kim’s book on Sunday, and I recommend you read her Hollows series from start to finish to see how a skilled writer weaves a series arc, and develops a character into a multilayered whole. I’ll start AJ’s book tonight, if the lab is quiet. This will be my very first AJ book. (Like I said. I’m a bad writer. I should have read him long ago, but I admit to having a fear of reading AJ. No. I haven’t told him this. {Waves to AJ.} But his ability to skip between genres is daunting. I know full well that I’ll have writer’s envy {she says with a laugh}. And I hate about myself. Well, sorta.) Nor is writing every day possible. I am half asleep today, up from my day-sleep (which makes me sound very vampish) with the beginnings of a head cold. RL is getting in the way of my writing life. Again, I am not following the rules. I admit to being obstinate and contrary, by the way, so no need to point that out. However, even when I finish the rest of the day’s sleep, (to which I am heading momentarily) I will be editing a manuscript and rewriting my AKA’s (and her co-writer’s) outline. (I do detest outlines when they reach the point of tinkering rather than the creative stage, which can be fun.) RL needs me to pay attention to other’s creative endeavors rather than my own. Well, rather than Faith’s own. Gwen is another part of my schizoid self and lately she is a demanding, taxing, stress-inducing entity. No, I’m not! Yes you are. This is my blog. Hush. Go take a nap. You won’t get back in bed! Sigh… See what I mean? Yes, we all have RL. Some of us have more than one. So, what personal writing rules do you have? And how often do they get kicked in the tush by RL?
Faith
FaithHunter.Net
GwenHunter.Com posted by  Misty Massey read all posts by Misty Massey Today I want to talk about a writer. You never heard of her. She never sold a book to a commercial publisher, but she probably wrote the equivalent of twenty novels in her too-short life. She briefly joined our writing group about ten years ago, at which time she was working on a great story about redneck vampires in the backwoods of South Carolina, until Dead Until Dark hit bookstore shelves and took the wind out of my friend’s sails. At that point she turned to writing on the internet. She was well-read in her online communities, and for good reason. The woman could turn a phrase like nobody’s business. I used to beg her to try and sell some of her original work, but she wasn’t interested. She was an editor for the newspaper, which meant she saw her name in print all the time. That aspect of being a writer didn’t matter to her. The money also didn’t matter. Hunting for an agent, writing and polishing a book for an editor to buy, all of that seemed too much to her. She wasn’t writing for anyone else to read. She was writing for herself. There’s a quote – “Everyone has a novel inside them.” I don’t know if that’s really true. I do think everyone who wants to write should write, but should also know for certain why they want to do it. If you want to be a novelist because you want to appear on television and install gold-plated sinks in your bathrooms, you aren’t doing it for the right reasons. My friend knew long ago that she wrote only for the joy of seeing her own words come together to make stories. Writing made her happy, more than anything else she ever did. Her idea of a thrilling Saturday night was curling up on her couch with her laptop, and writing with her friends until they were all nodding off. She lost her battle with cancer a few days ago, so there won’t be any more words. Most of you will probably never run across any of her writing. It will fade over time as others join the communities she wrote in. But that’s okay, because she didn’t do it to be remembered. She didn’t want to be famous or wealthy. She just wrote. On days when I’m struggling with a scene, trying to beat it into submission so I can move on to the next, I’ll remember my friend, and how easily the words came for her. All because she wasn’t asking anything more of them than that they make her world a shinier place. posted by DavidBCoe read all posts by David B. Coe Jimmy Buffett has a song called “A Pirate Looks At Forty,” which is about an aging pirate trying to figure out where his life is headed as he slips into middle age. Great song, and one I’ve been humming to myself all day. See, I have a birthday coming up this week (Friday), and birthdays always make me contemplative. I also did my taxes yesterday, and there is something about dealing with those hard numbers that can force one to take stock. And so I thought I’d take another break from the “Writing Your Book” series to follow up on A.J.’s post from Friday (Wonderful news, A.J. — congrats again!). In the interests of full disclosure, let me begin by saying that 40 is a rapidly receding speck in my cosmic rear-view mirror, and I’m starting to see road signs for 50. I wouldn’t say that I’m getting old, but let’s just say that I see my father in the mirror a lot more than I used to, and I get called “Sir” by people who really don’t seem like they’re that much younger than I am. Last week I received an email inviting me to my 25th college reunion and I just knew that had to be a mistake. Until I realized that my older daughter will be starting college in a little more than three years. Continue reading Of Birthdays and Taxes… | |
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