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Ask the Author!

This is an occasional post - prompted by a question asked by a reader which seems to deserve more than a short reply. The reader who asks such a good question will be rewarded with a share of Steem Basic Income (SBI) as a thank you.

Today's question(s):
@macchiata asks:

I wonder, how do you get inspiration to write stories?
I also wonder, How many hours do you spend to draft a story?
What are the struggles as being a writer? I am pretty sure writing block is one but is there anything other than writing block?
I appreciate if you can answers my curiosity.
Cheers,
Macchiata

Initially, I gave a short reply to the comment, but decided to take it a bit further.

Inspiration

My first response was:

Inspiration is a weird thing... sometimes, it hits you from out of the blue, sometimes it develops slowly.

@macchiata has already quoted me in a post, which I think is cool. (You know, we all get more traffic – probably – when we refer to each other!)

Inspiration happens in many different ways.
The original inspiration for Terrenden and A’mara Books came from Star Wars and the realization that they “don’t take new authors” - at all. Policy. So, we had to make it our own. “We” includes my sons – with whom I was brainstorming at the time. So, I created a world with a timeline that could (hopefully) handle (almost) everything I could ever want to write. With the portals between worlds (see the story that I’ve restarted on Whaleshares today), I can even handle many Earth situations…

But that’s only the beginning. Or is it the middle? Because many of my stories originate from before I created Terrenden – and some even before I started on the Star Wars fan fic kick…

Anyway, sources of inspiration include:

personal fantasies required to cope with an unhappy, abusive marriage (this is a recurring theme in my books.)
things that happened to friends/family/people I’ve heard of.
thinking about “what happens next” in my world, or how someone came to be a certain way in a later book – advantages of working on multiple points of a single timeline. (Sometimes, those are expletive-worthy moments when I suddenly know what happened…)
Ah ha moments (as mentioned above) are probably the biggest source though – those moments when characters whisper in your ear – or a lightning bolt strikes…

That’s why I said that first quote… inspiration is funny like that.

Hours for a book...

It’s impossible to measure when a lot of time is spent just thinking. I try to actively sit at the computer around 4 hours daily. It’s often more, sometimes less. My daily goal (5 days a week) is to hit 1500 new words. I often exceed that, but am working harder at making myself stop when I hit my weekly goal – now 7500 words.

Then, I have other aspects of writing – mapping, keeping my encyclopedia updated, editing/proofreading including the all-important read-aloud edit which catches most of the mistakes my brain had skipped over when reading silently.

When I have a pressing (albeit self-imposed) deadline, I will put in more time – such as right now when I’ve been fighting the plot for the book needed to be completed by the end of July, really… It’s almost there, but that takes me to the next question…

Writer’s block and other obstacles

My biggest obstacle to writing is the fact that I still have a life outside of Terrenden (my world). I am still raising children, keeping a house (sorta), I try to do gardening, painting, music, photography – some of these things you get to see on the blogging sites now. But you mean things like writer’s block...

I did run into a difference of opinion on Twitter, where other writers felt that anything that prevents writing is a writer’s block, but to me it’s more about a problem in the actual writing… You have the time, are sitting there in front of the screen (these days) and the words aren’t flowing. It’s a fight…

To me, that’s a sign that there’s something majorly wrong with my plot. The best cure – for me – is:

Admit you have a problem – like with most things.
Step back. Maybe hours, or days or weeks… until you figure out what the problem is, and your solution for it.
Buckle up because it may be a bumpy ride fixing it!

I have a story that I’m trying to finish right now that has had to be torn apart more than once now. I was doing too many things, trying to weave in too many plotlines. So, I had to stop and tear out a thread or two – and put it back together again. More than once now. But I think it’s going to be finished in the next week or two – at last.
The good thing is that all those other threads are still saved somewhere, waiting to come back when the time is right. One of those will be a game changer in terms of Terrenden mythos – that’s why it grew too big for the book to begin with – it wanted to become its own book!

Anyway, I think that will be it today. I’ve just registered a share of SBI for your reward @macchiata. Thanks so much for your question.

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Crossposted on Steem, Whaleshares, WeKu
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(Just for @popcornexpress...)

Previous issues of Ask the Author

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Image credits

This is the cover scene from Building on Promise and features Yewan Avicent and Tirry Jelham on the beach in Loxos, Gaskarii.

Figures posed in Daz 3D studio using Genesis and other free bits of clothing and hair.
Background image taken with my Samsung NX11 in Seaside, Oregon.
Editing done in Gimp and Photoscape.
All image work done by the author.

Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
verified author on Goodreads
find me on Twitter
blogging on: Steem, Whaleshares, WeKu, Hyperspace, Publish0x

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Ask the Author issue # 5 - A'mara Books