My Writing Process Blog Tour

Today is Blog Tour Day. This blog tour is where writers and authors answer questions about their writing process and I am happy to be a part of this cross promotion. My friend Jay Scott posted his last week. You can check out his writing process here: Jay Scott 

On with the questions…

What am I working on?
At present, I am focussing on reworking my epic novel The Legacy, the first book in a trilogy. If everything goes according to schedule (I can hear you snickering), I plan to publish it October 2014. I also have a few ideas for another short story collection in a similar vein as Accursed Women, which is due out very soon! 30th November.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?
In the case of the short story collection Accursed Women I wanted to tell the story from the point of view of the women and give their version of events. In essence, I took the mythologies and gave them a new plausible twist. With regards to the trilogy Eternal Quest, I was inspired by Homer’s Iliad and how the gods played an integral part in the story. As in Homer’s tale, the gods in Eternal Quest manipulate and try to change the outcome of their situation using mortals to carry out their directives.

Why do I write what I do?
I have always read Fantasy and still do, but after reading about Atlantis it propelled me into wanting to know more about the story. It soon evolved into reading Greek Mythology and subsequently ancient history. I am not a historian nor an expert in ancient history, it was a subject I wanted to learn more about in my own time and way. So I did. It was reading Homer’s epics which inspired me to write, weaving mythology with historical nuances.

How does your writing process work?
When I have an idea for a story, I first brainstorm characters, plot and setting, then I put it away for a few days and let the brain stew over it. Afterwards I set the ideas out into scenes, generally dot points. I try not to make it too detailed and tend to use the points as a guide in the storyline. The scenes are not chapters. Some scenes will have 1, 2, 3 or 4 chapters others will have more and some even less. It depends on where the characters take me. They do dictate a lot of the direction of the story and if they don’t like what I’m writing, they can be very stubborn and refuse to participate!

The type of stories I write require research, lots of research. If there is a place or event, even clothing of the period, I will spend time researching and reading. I want to make the reader feel as if they are there with the characters, in that time and place and it’s important for me to include relevant details. Though I may play around with the timeline, a little bit. ;D

I try to aim and write about 500 words a day, some days writing is harder than others and when I have those sorts of days, I spend time researching. Each of the short stories in Accursed Women took about four weeks to write. Morning is the best time for me to write, mind is fresher and generally more productive. I leave editing to the end, go through the manuscript, make changes, put it away for a few weeks and start on a new story. I’ll edit it a few more times before I give to my beta readers.

Thank you for visiting and reading my post. You can check out the writing processes of my wonderful and talented friends Ana Calin, Jackson Arthur and Adam Haviaras, 11 November.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

NEXT WEEK

Ana Calin—Ana Calin was born in 1984 in Constanta, Romania. Avid for fairy tales and stories as a child, her mother taught her to read at the age of four and, discovering the girl’s love for foreign languages, hired an English teacher when Ana was eight. By the age of ten she had read Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations in the original language. Ana studied English and German Language and Literature in high school and later on in university.
In 2006 she received a scholarship for one year in Bielefeld, Germany, and met her husband, also Romanian, upon her return to her hometown in 2007. Following her wedding in 2009 she returned to Germany with her husband and has been working ever since as a translator and interpreter of English, German and Romanian.
Her area of expertise covers not only fiction but also psychology and science, which inspires her writing and allowed her to craft her first novel, The Blacksmith, as grounded fantasy relying on concepts that are feasible at least in theory. She currently lives in Berlin.

Jackson Arthur–Jackson Arthur writes Science Fiction stories set in the current world or in the near future. Most of his books are set perhaps 50 to 250 years from the present day in the fictional universe of the Alliance of North American States, known as ANAS.  Each novel and novelette in the series examines an important event in the rise and fall of this fictional alliance.  In this sense the books are literally portals into the fictional world.

Adam Haviaras–Adam Alexander Haviaras is an author and publisher of historical fiction/fantasy set in the ancient world. He has studied ancient and medieval history and archaeology in Canada and the United Kingdom and is the founder of Eagles and Dragons Publishing. Adam blogs weekly on his website, Writing the Past, about ancient and medieval history and historical fiction.