Ask the Author: Mark Joseph Young
Answered Questions (10)
Mark Joseph Young
I pondered this intermittently for the past month, but it seems that in any interesting mystery in my life someone identifiable winds up looking stupid or cruel or both, so I think it's not my place to tell those stories.
Mark Joseph Young
Honestly, my initial reaction to this was, is there anything good about being a writer? I think most of us write not because there's any benefit to it but because we are compelled to do so; we have to write.
But there are benefits, and perhaps the best of these is credibility. It's not undeserved, in the main. After all, most writers do a lot of research, most are very intelligent and reasonably well educated, and most think deeply about a wide range of subjects, so it's not surprising that we are well informed broadly. We also practice expressing ourselves, so we are generally articulate. We thus get a lot of respect for our answers, and people ask us questions expecting something intelligent in response. That might be the best benefit.
But there are benefits, and perhaps the best of these is credibility. It's not undeserved, in the main. After all, most writers do a lot of research, most are very intelligent and reasonably well educated, and most think deeply about a wide range of subjects, so it's not surprising that we are well informed broadly. We also practice expressing ourselves, so we are generally articulate. We thus get a lot of respect for our answers, and people ask us questions expecting something intelligent in response. That might be the best benefit.
Mark Joseph Young
I thought about this for a while, and ultimately decided on Perelandra. I would swim in the warm fresh oceans and sleep on the floating islands. It is a fascinating world, and ultimately fairly safe.
Mark Joseph Young
I suppose the short answer is, no.
To write horror, you have to get the reader invested in some person or object which you then threaten. Mood, plot, character are all secondary to that.
I discussed this in the mark Joseph "young" web log #132: Writing Horror http://www.mjyoung.net/weblog/index.p... (republished by the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be) some time back, still worth reading.
To write horror, you have to get the reader invested in some person or object which you then threaten. Mood, plot, character are all secondary to that.
I discussed this in the mark Joseph "young" web log #132: Writing Horror http://www.mjyoung.net/weblog/index.p... (republished by the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be) some time back, still worth reading.
Mark Joseph Young
Taking that to be Why I Believe, a family friend asked me a question that was going to take more than a minute to answer, so I started writing the answer for him. One thing I learned from fielding time travel questions by e-mail was that if one person asks something, someone else wants the answer, too, so if it's a complicated answer it's best to write it somewhere others can read it. So it became a published book.
Mark Joseph Young
In part it depends on what I'm writing. For a lot of the stuff--the political pieces, the songs, the Bible stuff--I find I have something to say, so I say it. Often I will go back and read something I wrote before, sometimes years before, and realize that I have something to add to that. Sometimes it's because someone asks me a question. For the fiction, I'm usually looking for what the character can do next to move the story forward.
Mark Joseph Young
I'm putting the finishing touches on a much-requested temporal anomalies book--I think the publisher is naming it The Essential Guide to Time Travel. I'm waiting for some feedback from a couple of early edition readers before I do the next edit sweep.
Mark Joseph Young
Write, and publish what you're writing. It's still pretty easy to get a web log space, which is easier to use than building a web site, which is how I started publishing. And contact web sites which publish the kind of stuff you write--they're often eager to have contributions.
Also, http://christian-gamers-guild.org/wp/... start a journal, explained in that link.
Also, http://christian-gamers-guild.org/wp/... start a journal, explained in that link.
Mark Joseph Young
I always have several irons in the fire, so if I hit a block on one project I shift to another for a while.
Also, when I'm writing fiction and I don't know what my characters should do next, I often start a chapter with them thinking about what to do next, and let them tell me their options and make their choices. These often make it into the finished work, but not always.
Also, when I'm writing fiction and I don't know what my characters should do next, I often start a chapter with them thinking about what to do next, and let them tell me their options and make their choices. These often make it into the finished work, but not always.
Mark Joseph Young
I've been proofreading some novels for a friend. I'm not sure what I'll be reading after that, although I've promised to do a review of a book that's not yet published.
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