WELCOME BACK and HAPPY FEBRUARY!
I can’t be more specific than that. I never know when I’m going to get around to posting these things. Such is life. I’m busy with my outside, real-world job, so my writing muse has been squeezed into a tinier corner of my schedule. She’s not happy about it but that’s just the way it goes.
Somebody asked me the other day what do I enjoy most, writing blogs, articles, or books? Without a doubt I love writing novels most. I love the free-flow of creativity. I love giving birth to new characters and allowing them to grow on their own. I love that magical moment when I’ll see something, or hear something, or smell something, and my muse taps me on the shoulder and whispers “it’s time to write.”
So I’ve been bitten by the creativity bug and I don’t imagine it going away anytime soon.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Ray Bradbury
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
This relates to another question I was asked recently. Someone wanted to know if I planned my short story series….and the answer is no, and the same answer applies for my novels. For me, it almost always (99% of the time) comes from a random idea. The idea will come to me and I’ll write a paragraph, or a “chapter” about that idea. Then I sit back and turn things over to my muse and the characters in that paragraph. Every novel I’ve written and every short story series I’ve written has begun the same way.
For me, planning is obstructionism. It’s why I don’t outline a novel before writing it. I have no clue where the novel is going when I start writing. I let the characters take me there. Usually, about ¼ of the way through, I see the ending….then the rest just flows.
Please note that I have nothing against the concept of outlining….it just doesn’t work for me.
TIP OF THE DAY
I have none on this topic. Creativity comes from different sources and in different ways for all of us. Find your way and follow it.
RANDOMNESS
As I write this the incubator is humming. There are forty-eight quail eggs inside of it, the temperature is ninety-nine degrees and the humidity at fifty-six percent. It will continue to do its thing for seventeen days at which point, hopefully, forty-eight baby quail chicks will be hatched.
For me it’s the perfect metaphor for the creative process. I shove an idea into my personal creativity incubator and then wait patiently for the idea to hatch and grow.
JUST ABOUT DONE ON TWO FRONTS
The second publication of my first novel, The 12/59 Shuttle from Yesterday to Today,” should be released next week. Hot on its heels will be my first pulp-fiction, the Billy the Kid Chronicles,” which I’m expecting to release by the end of this month. Write, publish, repeat….my mantra.
TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING VS SELF-PUBLISHING
Another question asked of me last week, one most writers debate from time to time…which is better, traditional or self-publishing?
It’s not a matter of which is better…it’s a matter, these days of practicality. The odds of securing a traditional publisher and/or agent are practically non-existent. That’s the fact of the matter. Statistics bear it out.
So, should you try it? Be my guest, but don’t bet the farm on it. My suggestion, and it’s just my suggestion and nothing more….self-publish and market like a mad man on speed.
CHECK THIS GUY OUT
Say hello to Eldon! One hell of a writer, he is…stop by and find out for yourself.
GOTTA RUN
Have a great week of writing. I’ll catch you down the road eventually.
Thanks, as always, for stopping by.
Bill
“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”
Billybuc
Artistry With Words 