I’m happy to announce to you all that a short story of mine is appearing in an upcoming Christmas anthology by Mystic Publishers, Inc. this year!
The story is called “The Red House,” and has its origins in my high school years of writing. Like pretty much all of my writing attempts from back then, I’d thought it lost, until one day when I discovered a printed copy of it along with some other pieces (including what would become “Crossing the Estuary” in the Fae Corps anthology Fae Dreams).
Change happens all the time. As someone who suffers from Asperger syndrome, I can tell you that change to routines and patterns, stepping outside of my comfort zone, has never been easy. Change, especially when it occurs outside of my control, sends my mind spiraling, and I feel trepidation.
But change can lead to benefits. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been making efforts to cut back on social media time, but I’m also seeking to change my online habits, too. During the COVID shutdown I spent more time online, especially Twitter. I did get the word out about my work more and made some new connections, but now the hashtags I followed haven’t helped with book sales. The same’s been happening with tweets asking for book recommendations. These habits and the time spent on them and other sites feel more like a hindrance. To counter them, I’ve tried walking more, and for that, I’m glad.
With most sites, I’ve gotten down to generally 1-2 logins per day. Nevertheless, that is also something that could change in the future. Sometimes, I’ve found myself going up again if I need to do something specific, like website maintenance. I’ve felt if I can limit myself with those moments, I’m fine.
Nevertheless, the temptation is still there, and it can eat time. Plus, I’m aware these efforts could turn into new patterns that could become just as constrictive and worrisome. I need to curb the scrolling, searching, and that addictive, time-eating cycle that can result, but simultaneously, I also shouldn’t try to control everything, because anxiety always comes from not being perfect. It’s been said that with reviews, quantity over quality. With online time and content, it’s the opposite. Now I need to put it into practice.
Likewise, I’ve tried getting back into the writing routine I’ve mentioned before. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, and other times I do not get the word count I’d like, but I need to remind myself that progress is progress, no matter how small. I need to see the fun in writing again, as author Nour Zikra put it. This year, I hope to be more positive about my writing, my online/social media time, my habits, and, most of all, myself.
I realized through prayer that I need to think more positively. Then, at the beginning of Advent, when I was feeling low and anxious again, after an earnest prayer to God, I opened my copy of the Bible without any specific section in mind. It opened to Psalm 77, and as I read it, I knew my prayer had been answered. Even if you’re not Christian or religious, I hope you too will remember all the good that’s been in your life when distressed. If I need to make changes to meet new circumstances, I will have to do so.
P.S. Enjoy these videos of my readings from last year’s open mics!
Many thanks to author Jamie Adams for this opportunity to discuss the appeal of reading fantasy and science fiction stories. I enjoyed his work The Fathers, The Sons, and The Anxious Ghost.
This has been said a lot of times, and it is logical. You’re pretty much guaranteed to do well with ideas you are knowledgeable about. The situations and experiences from your own life can help provide a far more solid base upon which to build a story. Such examples can include professional experiences (Jeremy Lloyd drew on his experiences working in a department store for Are You Being Served?) or places you have visited or lived (Stephen King’s stories are often set in his home state of Maine or in Colorado, where he went on vacation once he was financially able to do so). Then there are personal hobbies and interests, which leads to the next point.
Write about what interests you.
Writing about what you know won’t be enough if passion isn’t in it. It will show in your writing if passion was absent. Interests and hobbies are a great source of ideas because the writer can share those passions through stories and perhaps spark interest in readers. Plus, your passion can compensate because you will compel yourself to drive and learn more about your passions/interests in order to write a better story. Bram Stoker spent seven years writing and developing Dracula, and he never visited Romania, where a good portion of his book his set. He drew on research and his own imagination.
So perhaps in the end, perhaps you need to draw on a combination in order to make a blend. And in my case, certainly, I need to remind myself to not stress over it, which I admit is still hard to do. I must keep hope that ideas will come, especially when I’m not looking for them.
Time is a curious thing. I’ve found when we focus on time, it seems to drag on at a snail’s pace. Yet when we do not pay attention to it, it flies right past. When it comes to fiction, time can play an interesting function. Stories and novels can take place from anywhere to the course of a single day (or less) with a few characters, to several years, decades even, covering generations of people. At other times, a story can seem to go by slower or faster than it really does. Simply put, in stories, as in life, time and how much we pay attention to it can affect how things play out.
A story that takes place in a short amount of time by drawing it out, such as chapters and sections being either specified by time (like a subtitle) or within the text (such as a character mentioning the time). The constant mention of time helps to make the shorter time feel longer. With a story set out over a long period of time, I usually have found there isn’t as many references to the time, which can make the time go faster. Interesting paradox, isn’t it?
I also want to talk about time in a different sense. Perhaps all writers think about what shall become of their work as time goes on. This became more apparent to me because I recently learned that my novel’s publisher, Mockingbird Lane Press, has sadly had to close. No doubt writers want their work to outlive them, to still be read and assessed long after they’re gone. It does seem that any work defined as a literary classic these days is one that has withstood the test of time, to still be printed and sold years, centuries, after it was first published. There are many writers who are remembered for a single thing out of their entire literary output.
Sometimes I think writers wish they could see where their work goes in the future, similar to how in an episode of the Spanish TV drama El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time), a cynical and suicidal Miguel de Cervantes was shown by the protagonists the impact Don Quixote would have on Spain and the world in the centuries after his time (their goal was to ensure its publication, as they’d faced a threat it might not be, thus changing the course of history and literature). Their efforts gave Cervantes the courage and drive to finish Don Quixote (specifically the first half, as the book was actually in two parts with more than a decade in between being published), and go on with his life, thus ensuring he and his magnum opus would make history. In the end, I suppose, what matters is hope: hope that something creative will someday reach that level.
Time is indeed a curious thing. But it keeps going on, as must we. And don’t worry, I do intend to republish my novel.
P.S. I’ll be giving my Importance of Names presentation once more, at the Cumberland Chapter of the Maryland Writers’ Association on the 20th at 7:00 PM EST via Zoom. If you haven’t seen it yet and still want to, register online! It’s on Facebook, too! It will also be a hybrid meeting for those who want to be at the chapter in person (my Events page has the address). Though I will be on Zoom, I hope to see you all there either way!
Once when I was at the gym, a gym buddy told me how he felt young children these days aren’t as engrossed with reading as they used to be, that nowadays they are in essence glued to technological escapes rather than literary ones. In many respects I think he isn’t wrong. Technology is constantly changing, and certainly isn’t what it once was. In many ways it has improved our lives, but in others it seems to have taken over our lives as well.
Reading is a great way to escape all that, just as walking or exercising is, because it’s good to unplug and recharge, if you take my meaning. For young children, studies have said it’s important for them to not get glued to technology, because what they really need is that connection and interaction with their parents.
Certainly one of the best ways, if not the best, to get a child to love reading is for parents to read to them from an early age, and it establishes that necessary connection. I remember my own parents reading to me many books when I was little, especially before bed. It’s a great way not only to get children to love reading and spark their imagination, but to forge a bond between parent and child.
Once I was a volunteer for a library that had a special annex. The books there—all children’s books—couldn’t be checked out, just read, and I had to watch over the annex for a few hours. Once in a while, I would offer to read to a child, and even though it didn’t happen often, I loved it.
Some of the best children’s stories began with people telling stories and/or playing with children. A. A. Milne was inspired to create Winnie-the-Pooh by watching his son Christopher play with his stuffed toys. When Reverend Wilbert Awdry’s son (coincidentally also named Christopher) was sick, he told him a story about a sad little steam engine named Edward, which was the beginning of his Railway Series (yes, Edward came before Thomas, as did Gordon and Henry). Lewis Carroll and J. M. Barrie also interacted with children, through which they were inspired to write their respective masterpieces, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
I have no children of my own (yet), but I do hope to be a father someday. I definitely would read to them my favorite books and series from when I was a child, but I would also encourage them to find their own favorites. Parents have tried to keep children from reading certain titles, even going so far as to ask for books to be banned. While parents seek to protect, I feel they need to let their children make their own decisions too, and teach them to approach reading with an open mind.
The important thing is whether a book entices a child to keep reading. I remember how on an Amazon Prime documentary about Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a single father raising a daughter said that he knew little about R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, which his daughter read, but knew if they were banned, his daughter might lose the drive to keep reading because those books specifically were what motivated her to keep reading.
Anyone who’s an ardent Star Wars fan will know of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and how it influenced George Lucas. He outlines similar steps within what is known as the hero’s journey, which has been found in ancient myths, folktales, and modern fantasy/science-fiction stories. I received my copy one Christmas and poured over it, understanding these points. It’s among my recommended reads for writers! Whilst editing Mystical Greenwood, I tried thinking of the plot I was forming in terms of what Campbell outlined. In the end, I came to see the book as the Departure Phase, which consists of the Call to Adventure, Rejecting the Call, the Threshold Crossing, and the Belly of the Whale.
In my own observations of other fantasy works, I’ve seen two kinds of heroes who receive the Call to Adventure. The first is the protagonist dissatisfied with life and yearning for something more. The other is essentially the opposite, perfectly content. When creating the two brothers at the heart of this story I tried envisioning them as such. But in the end, I had to pick one to be the central hero, and that was Dermot, the one who was dissatisfied with life.
I hope to continue with the Hero’s Journey in the rest of the One with Nature series, with the next book being the Initiation Phase. This month marks four years since the paperback first came out (April will be the Kindle anniversary). Please read and rate/review if you haven’t yet!
Once again, it’s that time of year to reflect on the past and look toward the future. For me, I still feel like I’m in a state of limbo. I’ve talked about moving on to the next step, and posted about resolutions and updates, but I’m still not at the regular writing output that I want. I didn’t have the creative output that some other writers I know had had when everything was shut down. True, as I’ve said before, I spent more time online, and that didn’t do me good. Ever since Mystical Greenwood came out, everyone’s been asking when the sequel is coming out. Believe me when I say I don’t like having to keep telling them I don’t know.
So, I do have some goals/dreams for where to go next in my writing. The main objective, of course, is to be more consistent when it comes to writing. I’ve heard many writers talk about how they have a daily writing routine. Well, a few months after I first sought to balance the scales, I set about reducing the number of daily logins per social site, especially with the Big Five, from three to two, of which I’ve been successful and happy to do. So far, I haven’t been able to set about a daily routine as I’d like (aiming for the morning), but I know I must persevere. I’m going to try and see if I can do writing first thing when I turn on the computer in the morning.
Another thing I’m going to have to remind myself again is that first drafts/early words don’t have to be perfect. They just need to be done. After all, Mystical Greenwood wasn’t as it was when its first draft was completed. It’ll take time to get into the habit of working on writing every day, but I need to remember to believe in myself and my writing.
I also need to be more mindful of when on my sites of what I’m doing. As a result of the situation that had occurred with last month’s post, I duplicated it and deleted the original, so now in my stats I’ve got an “(unknown or deleted)”. A little annoying in its way, but still, I guess it’ll be a reminder that I need to be careful.
Another thing I would like to do in future is go on a writer’s retreat, once the COVID threat diminishes. It’d be nice to go somewhere unfamiliar and spend time on writing. I’ll need to save money and eventually set aside time for that. Like so many things when it comes to the world of writers, sometimes opportunities present themselves they’re not expected or being searched for.
And it would be nice to come up with a new writing presentation. I’ve done my importance of names one 3–4 times now, and I even expanded it to include pen names—for writers and for real people in memoir. It is time for something different.
Back when I did my first blog post, I talked about what I called the “Misery Complex” (in reference to Stephen King’s famous novel), and how writers’ and readers’ wants can clash. Granted, not all fans are crazy and obsessive about authors and fictional characters, like Annie Wilkes, but there is no denying that once a story is out there, it can touch so many people in individual ways in that they feel a special connection. And as they become attached to fictional characters, it’s still important to consider their feelings. Or isn’t it?
I’ve noticed this especially in drama and TV shows, like Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones, with fans theorizing and predicting where the story and subplots will go or could’ve gone, along with characters, and expressing their upset when things don’t happen in a certain way. The latter is especially true when characters die, don’t end up together, or character growth just vanishes. To be fair, with killing characters, writers cannot always be hated and blamed the way they have been, especially in drama, when actors decide they want to leave and pursue other projects. It’s not always easy to explain a character’s absence once the actor leaves. There may not be actors in books, but still, it’s easier to put unwarranted blame on writers.
It’s true not everyone has a happy ending, and sometimes one bad turn can in the end lead to a good one, but is there a line that ought not to be crossed? I certainly cannot argue how upsetting it is when a story seems to building something or someone up only to not lead there at the end. When there’s an anticlimax to anything from a story line to a character arc to a romance, it is usually disappointing. I sometimes find myself imagining (not always in great detail) where things could’ve gone in a story where I felt writing was lazy. That’s what’s lead to a number of fans writing fanfiction.
But at least there’s one point on which writers and readers can agree: stories and characters matter, as does what happens to them. Nevertheless, they originate with the writers. I said in my importance of names presentation characters are the children of an author’s imagination. Well, the same can be said of stories as a whole: an author sires them, and then they venture out into the world. That’s why I firmly feel the author should have the final say in what happens in his or her work, and I’d hope readers would respect that.
But I’m not unfeeling towards readers. After all, writers seek out the opinions of others in beta readers and critique groups while they are developing the story. So yes, readers can have input, and sometimes fans’ suggestions can ignite a spark in the writer’s imagination when they can’t figure out where to take the story next (even if it isn’t what readers specifically want), especially within a series. So, in conclusion, they both matter. Readers’ opinions should be considered, but the final decision belongs to the writer alone.
P.S. I want to apologize for the inconvenience for those who saw this post in advance a few days ago. I meant to schedule it at a different time and clicked the wrong button. This was not intentional, but given the post’s subject matter, I can’t help but feel the irony. Happy Holidays!
Andrew McDowell 