Ask the Author: Christian Ellingsen
Answered Questions (4)
Christian Ellingsen
Given that I will be entering the world of parenthood over the summer period, I suspect my reading list will consist mainly of books like The Highway Rat and the new Mr Men/Doctor Who books.
Christian Ellingsen
I’m lucky, I don’t get full-on writer’s block *touches wood*. There are days and weeks where the words will come more slowly - painfully slow at times - but they never stop completely.
What’s been of benefit over the past few years has been working as a bid writer, where you’re often working to very tight deadlines that cannot be avoided or put back and people would likely get very upset if you were to miss them. It quickly trains you to just sit down and write regardless of whether the words are flowing or not. It’s useful to remind myself that all I have to do is write, it doesn’t have to be good, it’s allowed to be absolutely terrible, as I know I will get to edit it. Editing is a lot simpler than writing. With editing I’m dealing with something that exists. With writing I’m creating something from nothing.
A lot of the times when the words are coming more slowly it’s because I’m not quite sure where things are going or what should be happening in a scene. Having an outline or making notes as I’m going along can help with this. I don’t have to keep to it slavishly. If better ideas come along I can go with them. If I think of something that should be in a scene, I jot it down for later so when I reach it I’ll have a better sense of what it should be and where it is going. Also, again, just writing without any need for it to be good can help. It will often mean a scene is long and meandering and I don’t really get to the heart of it until I’ve written hundreds of words, but I know that later I’ll edit out all the stuff that isn’t really needed. It may not seem efficient, but neither is waiting to write until I’m hit with inspiration.
The final thing that helps is tea. There’s something in the process of making tea and then sitting down to drink it that is relaxing and reassuring and gives a moment of pause that helps the words flow again. There was actually a study back in around 2009 and that showed that tea and the process of making it helps reduce stress, especially for British people.
What’s been of benefit over the past few years has been working as a bid writer, where you’re often working to very tight deadlines that cannot be avoided or put back and people would likely get very upset if you were to miss them. It quickly trains you to just sit down and write regardless of whether the words are flowing or not. It’s useful to remind myself that all I have to do is write, it doesn’t have to be good, it’s allowed to be absolutely terrible, as I know I will get to edit it. Editing is a lot simpler than writing. With editing I’m dealing with something that exists. With writing I’m creating something from nothing.
A lot of the times when the words are coming more slowly it’s because I’m not quite sure where things are going or what should be happening in a scene. Having an outline or making notes as I’m going along can help with this. I don’t have to keep to it slavishly. If better ideas come along I can go with them. If I think of something that should be in a scene, I jot it down for later so when I reach it I’ll have a better sense of what it should be and where it is going. Also, again, just writing without any need for it to be good can help. It will often mean a scene is long and meandering and I don’t really get to the heart of it until I’ve written hundreds of words, but I know that later I’ll edit out all the stuff that isn’t really needed. It may not seem efficient, but neither is waiting to write until I’m hit with inspiration.
The final thing that helps is tea. There’s something in the process of making tea and then sitting down to drink it that is relaxing and reassuring and gives a moment of pause that helps the words flow again. There was actually a study back in around 2009 and that showed that tea and the process of making it helps reduce stress, especially for British people.
Christian Ellingsen
I’m currently editing a couple of shorter stories for publication later this year. There’s also a couple of stories set in Vasini that are sitting on my laptop waiting for editing, which I’ll hopefully be able to publish at some point next year. And of course there’s part two of The Vasini Chronicles.
Christian Ellingsen
My writing tends not to come from a single idea, rather lots of ideas gathering together and playing off each other over a time until they reach a sort of critical mass, at which point I can start writing.
One idea, though, that helped form The Silver Mask was: what would it be like if Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos was a mainstream, state endorsed religion rather than the realm of crackpots on the fringe of society?
Of course, there are real-life pantheistic religions with malevolent deities, but what if they were all malevolent, that there were no nominally good deities to offset the twisted ones?
In the end, as it played off other ideas, it became an original pantheon of malicious gods and goddesses and the setting became more focused around what it would be like two hundred years after those deities had been overthrown - short enough that the fallout of their destruction still marked the world but long enough that order had been re-established.
One idea, though, that helped form The Silver Mask was: what would it be like if Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos was a mainstream, state endorsed religion rather than the realm of crackpots on the fringe of society?
Of course, there are real-life pantheistic religions with malevolent deities, but what if they were all malevolent, that there were no nominally good deities to offset the twisted ones?
In the end, as it played off other ideas, it became an original pantheon of malicious gods and goddesses and the setting became more focused around what it would be like two hundred years after those deities had been overthrown - short enough that the fallout of their destruction still marked the world but long enough that order had been re-established.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more