Tag Archives: Writing

Why the worst book I ever read inspired me to write.

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If I gave you its name, you wouldn’t know it.

I discovered it in the only English bookshop in Nice. Buying it was an absolute act of desperation. I read mostly SF and fantasy, and this was the only book in the shop I hadn’t read before. That’s not due to my encyclopedic reading but the sparsity of choice.

I have a problem with books. It is a stupid kink in my character. If I start a book, I must finish it, no matter how brain-rottingly bad it is.

It was a typical fantasy – the size of a brick and nearly as heavy.

The world made no sense. The characters’ actions made no sense. I remember the hero’s spirit was transferred to the body of a dead girl to hide him from pursuing villains. I remember thinking that was a bit of an extreme reaction.

There was an underlying seediness to what happened to some of the minor female characters that turned my stomach.

To this day, the phrase “beautiful cornflower blue eyes” affects me like rubbing bits of polystyrene together. It was repeated so many times, it had a mesmeric quality, draining my will to live.

The only good thing I learned from it was the use of cliffhangers at the end of each chapter to draw the reader on. The problem was that the cliffhangers did not move the plot forward. They worked like this:

Chapter 10

…Something pushed her face down in the water.

Chapter 11

She stood up in the pool. The water was just up to her ankles. “Why did you push me?”

I actually gave the book to friends for Christmas as a joke (having already made my feelings about it loud and clear). The joke kind of backfired as they reciprocated with another book by the same author. I still have it. Unread.

Anyway, at the time, I had kind of given up on writing. I had been writing the first page of the same novel since I was fourteen (that’s a story for another post). But this book inspired me to start tapping on the keyboard.

I wanted to write something different. Something better. Something that didn’t make me cringe.

The Ten Steps To Being A Really Slow Writer

Often writers post about how to write faster. However, someone who knows I am a slow writer asked for advice on how to emulate my speed. “Why are you such a slow writer?” he said.

Most writers cite distraction as the primary cause of slowness. Antisocial media together with the daily grind of work and household chores can all swallow up your writing time. But that is too easy. Anyone can do that. You never even have to sit in front of your word processor to never sit in front of your word processor.

The true master can be slow without any distraction whatsoever.

The answer isn’t found in the technology of writing either. Unless you use a quill…and you prepare quills one at a time…plucking each feather from a live fowl after chasing it to exhaustion. Technology is all about speed. It wants to record your thoughts before you ever have them. A bad workman blames his tools. A slow workman cannot depend on his tools for his slowness.

A writer must find his slowness in his own soul.

These are my steps for slow writing.

1) Stare at the blank screen till your mind is empty, and you have become one with the blankness.

2) Try to think of the best sentence ever written. Feel the impossible burden of such a lofty goal.

3) Write sentence. Obsess over every word. Check spelling of every word. Check grammar.

4) Delete line because it isn’t the best line ever.

5) Repeat steps 2-4 till your goal naturally slips to the best line you can write. Then do Step 3 and skip on to Step 6.

6) Reread what you have already written.

7) Write new sentence. Obsess over every word. Check spelling of every word. Check grammar.

8) Reread what you have already written.

9) Compare new line to your old stuff. If it is not as good, delete.

10) Repeat Steps 6-9.

Of course, you may fear that you will still make too much progress. It might take less than a decade to write your book. Don’t panic!

In effect, this is exactly like a painter painting one dot at a time, working across the canvas over and over from the top right hand corner to the bottom left hand corner, obsessing about every detail but never looking at the bigger picture. While each individual part might sparkle, the sum of the parts might be a little wonky. So time to revise. Plenty of opportunity to delete all those perfect sentences and replace them with new lines that you can obsess over!

Cover & Blurb Reveal – A Bright Power Rising

The cover was designed by Marek Purzycki. You can find more examples of his work at http://igreeny.deviantart.com/.

The release date for the book will be announced very soon.

As for the story…

To the Ors, history and memory are indivisible.

Since the bloody birth of the cosmos, the death of their god, the Golden Light, has haunted them. The coming of a great darkness portends his return.

His would-be prophet, the Harbinger of the Dawn, was a pariah, but now few remain who would dare to challenge his authority. He is slowly reshaping a peaceful society into a genocidal war machine.

Grael Erol and the other inhabitants of the village of Pigsknuckle are unaware of this bright power rising beyond their mountains. However, an unlikely ally strives to protect them. For generations, the Gilt Spider has scourged their mountains and terrorized their dreams. Now, he may hold the only chance for their survival.

A BRIGHT POWER RISING is the first volume of THE GOLDEN RULE duology.