POSTS FROM MY FACEBOOK AUTHOR AND BOOK PAGES
General – Why I Write
The big advantage of a wet Sunday afternoon? Staying in and reading without feeling guilty about it instead of rushing about trying to get odd jobs done ahead of the coming week!
Am looking forward to my writing this week as I will be sharing a fantastic interview (a two-parter) with a historical fiction writer on Chandler’s Ford Today with Part 1 to come on Friday. More details later in the week.
I love reading and writing in my own genre (fairy tale/fantasy) but I enjoy reading outside of it more. Why? I’m expanding my horizons for one thing.
For another, it is so important not to lose sight of why you write at all. For me, it is because I love words and stories and want to share my tales in the hope people will like what I write as I like the way other people write. It is an ongoing virtuous circle I think. We all build on what has gone before and try to leave something behind that others in their turn can build on.
If you can make a living out of writing, even better, but because you can’t know that you will, there has to be this basic, deep down reason to write at all to keep you going during those times when all you receive in the inbox/post are rejections. Ironically you do need those rejections to help you learn to improve what you do and increase your chances of acceptances but it is never something that writers face with any great joy!
Reading outside my own genre reminds me directly of that fundamental love.
FROM LIGHT TO DARK AND BACK AGAIN
Many of my flash fiction pieces in From Light to Dark and Back Again are what I think of as “circle” stories. You can see how the openings lead to what are the inevitable (to me anyway) endings.
I am also fond of the “eyewitness” kind of tale and I often use this for different takes on standard fairy tales. For example in The Outcome, my narrator is Cinderella’s fairy godmother. My first story in print, A Helping Hand in Bridge House Publishing’s Alternative Renditions anthology, took the same fairy tale but told it from the perspective of the younger ugly sister. Same events, very different views on it, two very different stories despite the powerful link between them.
I’ve also found this technique useful for getting into different kinds of characters’ heads and working out their motivations and what REALLY drives them. Knowing that makes my writing for them more effective and you may find this too. Certainly worth a go if you are trying to work out just why someone is acting in a way other characters would consider perverse, villainous etc.
Books are wonderful – whether in print or electronic, whether as audio stories or told by a storyteller. Image via Pixabay.
Where some of my earliest works appeared in print. Image taken by Allison Symes
