Ask the Author: Amanda Cook
Answered Questions (8)
Amanda Cook
My current favorite fictional couple is Jane and Vincent in Mary Robinette Kowal's Glamourist Histories novels. They're a very real married couple in a slightly less real time period and setting. They love each other, they fight occasionally, they have a solid romance, and they deal with life's obstacles together. They are the model for any successful partnership.
Amanda Cook
My current favorite fictional couple is Jane and Vincent in Mary Robinette Kowal's Glamourist Histories novels. They're a very real married couple in a slightly less real time period and setting. They love each other, they fight occasionally, they have a solid romance, and they deal with life's obstacles together. They are the model for any successful partnership.
Amanda Cook
Normally, looking at the problem from a different angle or from a new perspective helps to break the block. I also find that doing menial tasks, like drying dishes or mowing the lawn, allows my mind to wander and opens it up to new insights and ideas. My best ideas come when I'm in or around water. I'm not sure why.
Amanda Cook
Inspiration comes from the weirdest places sometimes. It can be the color of the sky or the song of a bird outside my window or any mundane occurrence in life. I'll see or hear something, and suddenly, the words just pour into my skull. As I type this answer, I'm on vacation with my family on the East Coast. I love the ocean. The rolling waves are relaxing, comforting, meditative. They open my head to thinking and words. Although, to be honest, I haven't done much writing on this vacation.
Amanda Cook
I always give the same advice as every professional author I've read or heard give. Just. Keep. Writing. And finish what you write.
There. You're a writer.
There. You're a writer.
Amanda Cook
Writing can be done anywhere at any time. You don't even have to leave your bed, because you can pre-write in your head, just laying there and daydreaming ... or even actually dreaming.
However, I find it's best to sit up when I'm doing the thing known as writing. Particularly in a comfortable chair with my feet up.
However, I find it's best to sit up when I'm doing the thing known as writing. Particularly in a comfortable chair with my feet up.
Amanda Cook
I'm currently working on a science fiction novella set on the International Space Station in the years 2113 to 2115. Col. Chris Hadfield inspired me with his amazing photos, tweets, and videos from the ISS during his stint as the first Canadian commander of the Station. My protagonist's occupation is very similar to one of Hadfield's famous past times in space: taking images of the Earth from above to send to the ground below. I'm revising the first draft as I write this answer, and I've been sharing it chapter by chapter with my writing group. Since I plan on self-publishing again, I don't have an actual publishing date set in stone, but I hope to have it out some time next year.
Amanda Cook
It was my husband who suggested the setting of "The Golden Orb". After writing two science fiction novels and going nowhere with them, I decided to try writing fantasy, which should have been my genre from the beginning. National Novel Writing Month arrived in 2012, and my husband asked if he could collaborate with me, something he'd never requested or suggested before. I was a bit bewildered, but also delighted and asked him what he wanted to write. "Oh, you're the writer," he said. "I just thought I'd give you an idea for a setting or plot." And he did. The setting of "The Golden Orb" is very loosely based on a role-playing game we had played several years earlier, in which the world of fairy and the real world collide. Because I only had a setting, I decided to just run with it in sort of a stream of consciousness fashion, and the story evolved over the next two and a half years.
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