Ask the Author: S.M. Sigerson
Answered Questions (8)
S.M. Sigerson
That would be telling.
However I will admit that my own life provides plenty fodder for a good mystery thriller...which I hope to tease out some day.
However I will admit that my own life provides plenty fodder for a good mystery thriller...which I hope to tease out some day.
S.M. Sigerson
Amon, your very kind praise really made my day.
S.M. Sigerson
I've never suffered from writer's block myself. However, from helping some others with theirs, it seems to me to tend to stem from some past emotional experience which told you not to write; or made you afraid you might write something that is not good enough, not the right answer, etc.
It doesn't matter if the first thing you write is all wrong. The main thing is to get it out. Just spit it out, in any form at all, just to get started. You can always go back & find better ways of saying it later. The main thing is not to self-censor. Especially not before you've even written it! Great writing is not written ... It's re-written!
A friend of mine was greatly helped with his by concentrating on writing poetry for a while: because he knew that in poetry there are no right or wrong answers.
But generally I'd say don't worry too much about writer's block. It doesn't mean you're not a good or even potentially great writer. Henry Miller said that, after first deciding to be a writer, for months he sat staring at paper & pen for hours, without inditing a single word. (And the rest is history...)
It doesn't matter if the first thing you write is all wrong. The main thing is to get it out. Just spit it out, in any form at all, just to get started. You can always go back & find better ways of saying it later. The main thing is not to self-censor. Especially not before you've even written it! Great writing is not written ... It's re-written!
A friend of mine was greatly helped with his by concentrating on writing poetry for a while: because he knew that in poetry there are no right or wrong answers.
But generally I'd say don't worry too much about writer's block. It doesn't mean you're not a good or even potentially great writer. Henry Miller said that, after first deciding to be a writer, for months he sat staring at paper & pen for hours, without inditing a single word. (And the rest is history...)
S.M. Sigerson
The best thing about being a writer is ... that everyone is entitled to your opinion!
S.M. Sigerson
I can only pass on what seems to me the best advice on writing I ever heard. From Anthony Trollope (19th century popular novelist): "Write because you have a story to tell; not because you have to tell a story."
S.M. Sigerson
Working to get out the word on my current publication now consumes all my time.
S.M. Sigerson
I grew passionate about this historical topic (the death of Michael Collins); and became convinced that there existed a general need for it to be better understood by the public.
S.M. Sigerson
As happens to me from time to time, I was drawn into an obscure, unsolved riddle of history. (In this case, the mysterious shooting in 1922 of Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of newly-independent Ireland) In a while, I became obssessed with it. I was driven by a voracious compulsion to read everything I could find about it. Until (as sometimes happens) one day I woke up with some expertise on the topic; and my own analysis, which diverged from the conventional wisdom / past work that had been done on it.
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