5000-Word Days—Part Inspiration, Part Determination

There's a lot I find interesting about fellow author Tielle St. Clare.  She's the author of more than 20 novels and novellas.  She writes hot and sexy romances, typically involving werewolves or dragons. She has lived in Alaska for 38 years.  And Recently she wrote 5,000 words of fiction in one day!  I asked her how one manages to do that, and she was kind enough to send an answer for my blog.  Take it away, Tielle!

I know there are some people who can sit down and pound out 5,000 words of wonderful text in a day and still be smiling when they finish.

Not me. Oh, I can make it—5,000 is such a nice round number, isn’t it?—but to get me there I need a mix of inspiration and determination.

Like many authors, I work two jobs—writing and the 40-hour-a-week day job that gives me benefits. Writing is more flexible, time-wise, so it often gets squeezed around my day job.

I’ve learned that when the day-job starts to take over my life, I get crabby. The voices in my head get louder and to release them, I need a solid, nothing gets in my way, writing day. 

Most days, I try to put down about 1,000 words. Not monumental but it keeps me moving forward.  For me, 1,000 words equals about an hour of writing—though it tends to run a bit long because I’m easily distracted by bright shiny objects like online Scrabble and hunting down book reviews.

Recently, I hadn’t been giving my writing enough attention. I cleared the decks I found a day to devote to writing.

I sat down with the intent to make some decent progress on my WIP.  I was focused on about 2,000 words. It wasn’t a goal, just a number in the back of my head. This was the determination portion of my day. It took me almost three hours to reach 2,000 (remember, easily distracted and there was free wireless at the coffee shop). In the end, I’d made decent progress, filled out some scenes and felt pretty good.

I could have stopped there but I had a bit of time in the evening and decided to spend it writing.

This is when inspiration hit. Nothing specific, no revelations, but the scene started flowing. Words tripped out of my fingers. I was happy. The story was moving, characters were behaving (or misbehaving in my case). I did a quick word count and I was at 4300 for the day.

Determination returned. I was that close?  I was going for it. I remained at the computer determined hit what had now become my goal. The last three hundred words were a bit of drudgery and might not make it in the final version but by that point, I just wanted to reach the goal. 

For me to write 5,000 words in one day is part inspiration, part determination.  Of course, that’s most of my writing days.  Determination gets me to the keyboard and I hope that inspiration comes to visit.

Learn more about Tielle St. Clare's writing at http://www.tiellestclare.com/

Life of a Happy Ficton Writer

Bryan Davis is the author of three series filled with fantasy, adventure, and mystery! He’s also one of the most dedicated authors I’ve come across. I am very pleased that I was able to get him to take a moment out of his busy schedule to tell us about his love of writing, his approach to creating, and his unusual relationship with dragons.

I am often asked what it’s like to be a writer, and I wonder if describing my life would create a false perception. Based on what I hear from others, I’m an anomaly.

Okay, that’s too formal. Actually, I’m a freak. I’m a possessed writing/promoting machine. If I’m not actually at my keyboard pounding out my third or fourth novel in a calendar year, I’m thinking about my story while driving to one of the two hundred speaking engagements I have lined up for the year.

I love doing this writing thing. It’s such a great adventure. I get to write about my passions, and people actually want to read what I wrote. And to top that off, readers write to me saying how much my books have changed their lives. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Another aspect I love is being with my family, getting their feedback, and traveling with them across the country and across the ocean as we conduct research and promote our books.

For example, with every story that takes place in our world, I have traveled to the specific locations and explored, including taking fifteen-mile hikes in the snow and walking the streets of Glastonbury, England. And I often take virtual tours through the Internet by browsing photos and reading interviews. Whenever I need expert information, I find an expert and send an email. It’s wonderful how so many people are willing to help a novelist.

One of the most rewarding aspects of writing is being able to create characters. In my mind, they come to life, and people often ask how I make fictional people seem so real. I think the secret is to write a character’s normal way of life before the story crisis strikes. Get to know the character through his or her typical activities. I might eventually cut out a lot of what I have written, but this is what helps me to learn how a character ticks.

Then, when the crisis comes, the character will react the way I have built him, and he will guide the story arc. This is why I never outline a story beforehand. I have a basic premise and an idea about where a story will go, but once I create the main character, I then sit and go on the adventure with him. This makes the story organic and alive, and the character will always feel realistic, because he is doing what his characteristics dictate, not what the preconceived story dictates.

This technique works for all my characters … even dragons. It also allows me to explore the human psyche. By allowing the story to bend to the character’s actions, the character feels truly alive, and the story isn’t harmed, because it is, after all, the character’s story. I breathe into them, and they, in turn, inspire me with their sometimes surprising decisions.

So that’s what this writer’s world is like. I bring fantasy to life in a way that allows a reader to do what I do—go on an adventure with a character who feels real, thereby becoming infused with the same passion that I infuse into the story.

In a way, since we feed each other with inspiration, my characters and I are symbiotic. And since I am symbiotic with dragon characters, I guess I really am a freak. :-)


Get deeper into the world of Bryan Davis at - http://www.facebook.com/l/87953nNtTMftx3YiZ_pGTO3khCw;www.daviscrossing.com

Silent Moments: Expressing Non-Action in Writing

I bumped into Tim Handorf on the web site for accredited online colleges where he had posted a well-researched list of search engines for serious writers. As it turns out he is a serious writer himself and has submitted this every thought-provoking guest spot reminding us that even action stories can't be action all the time.


Think about what you do every day. You probably wake up, engage in some sort of hygienic routine, eat, go to work or school, eat again, hang out with friends, maybe read or watch a bit of TV. Whatever it is that you do on a daily basis, whether it's humdrum or more exciting, you probably perform repeated actions that you don't really think twice about anymore.

When we are asked by friends or family members what we did during the day, we either gloss over these routines or describe events that were more out of the ordinary--the break-up of a relationship, a boss giving you a difficult time out work, a flat tire, or whatever. The one thing common to communicating life's events to others is that we are always describing action.

As fiction writers, especially if we are writing novels, we are charged with the task of recreating life as it is actually lived. Although we don't often really think about it, life is not simply always doing. Whether or not we realize it, we spend a lot of time not doing anything, no matter how busy we are. We spend a lot of time thinking and processing information about our surroundings. And these moments are difficult to pin down because they are often short, fractious, and they occur in silence.

Charles Baxter, a renowned novelist, essayist, and critic, described this quality in an essay entitled "Stillness", which was included in his collection, "Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction Writing". In the essay, Baxter noted that contemporary writers, whether published or not, have begun to avoid these moments of non-action. He explains that this phenomenon may have much to do with the fact that we live in a hyper-connected, attention-deficit age in which doing or saying nothing is considered almost sinful.

Baxter warns, “If, however, we have truly lost the ability to be interested in stillness, we will have lost the capacity to be accurate about an entire dimension of our experiences.” I think that this is very wise assessment, and since reading “Stillness,” I've begun to watch out for those moments in which nothing much is going on to take note of my surroundings―the sound of a brewing coffee dripping into the pot, the way a particular room smells, what's going through my mind when a friend I haven't seen in awhile rings the doorbell.

Observing these details, however, is only the beginning. While it's not all that difficult to become aware of these moments if you try, it is difficult to be able to describe these moments in writing. One way to do that is to see how other writers have fashioned silence with the written word. In my own reading, Marcel Proust is particularly adept at recreating stillness. It's not only the words he uses when putting silence on paper that I find remarkable, but also the places he chooses to insert these stillnesses. Stilness, as Baxter explains, if placed correctly, can serve to make those moments of action that propels our stories along much more intense and meaningful.

For more information on Baxter's conception of stillness, check out his essay collection or read this recent Rumpus interview.


Tim Handorf regularly writes on the topics of online colleges and universities. He welcomes your comments at his email Id: tim.handorf.20@googlemail.com.

Who has the Rights?

By now I’m sure you’ve heard about Andrew Wylie, the literary agent who decided to start his own publishing company to produce e-book editions on Amazon.com. He started with 20 books which were published before e-books were even thought of. Despite that fact, Random House thought IT had the electronic rights to. This prompted Random House to declare it would no long do business with Wylie’s agency. This was potentially bad news for Wylie’s 700-plus clients, among whom are the estates of such literary giants as Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Ralph and John Updike.

The real question is obvious: who owns the rights to publish the e-book versions of books that were bought by publishers before e-books existed? Wylie was saying that those rights have not been sold and so belong to the author. And if a publisher holds those rights, what kind of royalty should authors get? These days 25% is common for e-books, although if you do it yourself on Amazon you can get 70%.

I can see how this can impact the survival of publishing companies. A lot of money is made from backlist books like Portnoy’s Complaint, The Invisible Man and the Rabbit books, and those books cost the publisher almost nothing to publish now. A couple of classics can make up for a new title that flops.

But as an author, I can’t accept a publisher making green off rights it didn’t pay for. And sometimes I think big publishers miss the point. They are no longer the only game in town. They don’t get to make all the rules as they did a couple of decades ago when the only way to get your book in front of buyers was to either invest tens of thousands of dollars to self publish or to accept whatever deal a publisher offered.

Regardless of how you feel about e-book rights, the unavoidable truth is that if publishers want to stay in business they have to attract good writers and if they hope to do that they will have to make a radical change. They will have to actually be NICE to authors and treat them with a little respect. They may even have to (gasp!) deal with them fairly.

The Big Kindle Price Experiment

The most successful author I know of in the world of ebooks is J.A. Konrath. Joe and I go way back, to the first Love is Murder conference I attended, and he blurbed my first novel in print. His blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing is a bottomless font of valuable information. And Joe is paying his bills with ebooks, mostly for the Kindle. So, yeah, I pay attention to what Joe says when it comes to selling novels.

Konrath has created an interesting model for ebooks sales: publish several titles, sell them cheap, and promote them like crazy online. Sounds like something someone like me should try.

So I did.

My five mystery novels and two thrillers were already available for the Kindle, but prices varied. The Intrigue Publishing titles sold for $6.99, while the Echelon Press book (Blood and Bone) was priced at $2.99. Each was moving at the rate of 2 or 3 each month, so price didn’t seem to matter. But I had not explored the third leg of Konrath’s plan, so I figured I would give it a shot.

Two mystery-writing pals of mine, Debbie Mack and Rob Walker, had had success chatting with readers on forums. Since both were on the Kindle Korner Yahoo group that seemed like a good place to start. But if you’re going to be there you need to have something to talk about. They don’t allow you to just pop up and start talking about your books. I needed a news hook.

Well, that seemed obvious. I dropped the price of my first novel (The Troubleshooter) to $2.99 to match Blood and Bone. And since the moderators wouldn’t let me start the conversation about the change, I asked a friend to mention it in a post. That got people asking questions, which it was then okay for me to answer. Here was an unexpected happy result of this sly marketing approach – I got to have serious, honest conversation with readers about my books and others. I gained priceless insights, received valuable feedback and became part of a community of people who love books! It was already worth the effort.

But, did it result in my book becoming a bestseller? Maybe not yet. But when I checked the stats yesterday I was stunned to see The Troubleshooter ranked #6901 of all Kindle books. With 690,419 titles available for the Kindle, that put my novel in the top ONE PERCENT of Kindle titles. If that wasn’t enough of an ego boost, Amazon breaks titles down by genre. In the hard-boiled mystery category The Troubleshooter was #88. I don’t know how many hard boiled mysteries there are on the Kindle, so I choose to believe there are tens of thousands. (If you happen to know there are only 90, please keep that knowledge to yourself.)

So one Kindle copy of the Troubleshooter sold last month, and 40 sold in the last week. I guess I have to declare the experiment a success. How long will it last? Who knows? But you can bet I’ll try the same approach with another book next month!

Have YOU had a moving Kindle experience? As a writer or a reader?

A Real Blockhead

Richard Gazala is NOT a blockhead. He IS a pal and the author of an excellent thriller entitled Blood of the Moon. When we talked about his writing a guest blog for me about the experience of being a writer he said he'd like to give a somewhat different view of that author nemesis, writer's block. The impressive bit of creative writing below is the result.

Call me Blockhead.

It’s not my real name. I don’t have a real name. I get called plenty of other names, always by frustrated writers thinking I’m the enemy I’m not. Just about all those other names are unprintable in a family-friendly blog like this one, though. So we’ll keep it clean, and go with Blockhead.

You can’t understand me, unless you understand writers. I understand writers. I spend a lot of time tormenting them. I torment them, because I respect them. Sure, I delight in agonizing writers, but I know without them I wouldn’t exist. And without me, they wouldn’t write as well they can. We need each other. Of course it’s twisted and codependent. However, unlike other spheres of human endeavor, in the arts twisted and codependent often produce stellar results.

I understand writers, but they usually misunderstand me. There’s no number high enough to count the times I’ve been damned as an unfeeling and unyielding monster, content to sup on the misery of a writer stuck for a word or a plot twist or even an entire storyline. Unfairly cursed, I hasten to add. I do what I do out of love for literature, and the literate. All the bedeviling I do is with clearest conscience and purest heart.

Look, to me, writers are superheroes. They willingly confront a barren page and out of nothing more than their inherent creative powers concoct memorable characters and compelling stories in places familiar or strange to amuse, inform or shock us.

Think about it. Leaping over skyscrapers and running faster than a speeding bullet are astounding feats, no doubt. So is dressing like a giant bat and ridding our streets of psychopaths. Yet even those superpowers are unimpressive next to the indefinable creative brawn necessary to wrench Superman and Batman from sheer nothingness and propel them to global sociocultural immortality.

Still, what is Superman without Lex Luthor? What is Batman without the Joker? Inarguably detestable as Luthor and the Joker are, they are the indispensable nemeses that make Superman and Batman worth embracing. Without their supervillainous banes, these superheroes would have no reason to be either super, or heroic.

Enter Blockhead. My writers are superheroes. I am their supervillain. They struggle mightily to create. I use my power of writer’s block to stop them at every turn. True, I can be a tad sadistic from time to time, and I can’t recall ever being accused of understaying my welcome. To write their best my writers have to battle me knowing I never fight fair. When they persevere and overcome every obstacle I hurl at them, their writing is sharp, clear and far more worthy of reading than had I failed to make them suffer and sweat. I’m not their enemy. I’m their ally. I just don’t dress the part too well, and my P.R. team does an abysmal job trumpeting my invaluable contributions to authorial achievement.

Call me Blockhead. Or call me those other words unfound in respectable dictionaries. Sticks and stones. The only way a writer can hurt me, is to let me win.

You can see more of Richard Gazala’s creativity at www.richardgazala.com

Why I Blog

Author Ann Simon has recently become a regular blogger so I thought it would be nice to have her tell us how she feels about that. In the process I think she offers an interesting perspective on what makes a writer write anything.


Some time ago, I went to see my Perfect Grandchildren. I slept on the spare bed wedged next to my 18-month-old grandson’s crib. I was awakened in the middle of the night by Alan sitting straight up, singing to himself. I opened my eyes, and he grinned at me. I thought, “Oh, boy. Now he’s going to want to get up and play.” I shut my eyes quickly, but I needn’t have worried. He continued to babble happily and then, being almost two, practiced saying no in various pitches and inflections. Satisfied with his own performance, he lay down and returned to sleep.

The exact impulse that stoked Alan’s middle-of-the-night performance impels me to write. If there’s an audience, fantastic; if not, I still find myself up in the middle of the night putting on the show. In fact, the only way to get the stuff out of an endless loop in my head is to write it down.

The middle of the night show is just a metaphor (you knew it was, didn’t you?). There’s plenty of middle of the night rumination, but the show is often my Blog. I’ve been a technical writer and teacher for most of my professional life, and the “show” for my writing has been published as articles and poems. I’ve tried to get my book published, but its cross-genre world (modern-day thriller with Shamanic spirit animals racing around all over the place) seems too risky for agents and publishers despite their compliments on my writing.

I had a Blog a few years ago when we lived in Moscow (yes, Russia, although Idaho would have been pretty foreign to me, too). It was a great way to convey my experiences and observations to friends and relatives. Its purpose faded on our repatriation.

About couple of weeks ago, though, I was trying to drift off to sleep when I felt the old writer’s curse return: sentences, topics, phrases were racing through my mind, demanding to become real. I resisted the urge for at least three days – for me that’s the epitome of patience -- but I couldn’t quell it entirely. During those three days, I kept a list.

By the fourth day, I couldn’t contain myself. I chose my venue by the highly scientific method of asking a friend which site she thought was good. I set up the background, lay-out, etc., and narrowed my focus (retirement, aging and membership in the sandwich generation). I wrote in my first entry, a sort of general hello. Now I sign on, babble on my chosen topic until I’m satisfied and then hit “publish.”

“Publish”: is there a more satisfying word in the English language? Please, visit me at http://www.annsannotations.blogspot.com/, and maybe Austin will write something for me there, too.

That last bit I can guarantee. Keep an eye on Ann's blog...