Kristina Mahr's Blog, page 2
February 19, 2018
On Dreams (Within Dreams)
If I know anything about writing books, it’s this: I know nothing about writing books.
I can do it. It’s something I can do. But each time I get to the end, I don’t know how it happened. It’s like I black out for a couple months, and when I wake up, there’s a story in a Google Doc where no story had been before.
[image error]
It’s a pleasant surprise!
But oh, wait, here’s what I should have led with: I finished the first draft of A Dream Within a Dream!
[image error]
As a brief refresher, this is the sequel to the boo...
December 30, 2017
2017: A Year in Review
What is there to say about 2017…
It made me better.
It yanked my insides out and rearranged them, stretched them, reexamined them, dragged them through the mud for good measure –
And it made me better.
Honestly, I will never look back upon this year fondly. It was difficult in a way I had not encountered before, in a way that I hope not to encounter again.
But in the midst of it all, there were the words.
The words saved me.
This year, I discovered that pain can be pulled from the body and mo...
December 3, 2017
On Revisions
The patient is still cut open on the table, so I should not be taking the time to write this, but here I am.
[image error]
You guys, revisions. Are a thing. A whole thing. At first I poked and prodded and tiptoed through my manuscript, not wanting to make any big incisions for fear of breaking the whole thing irreparably.
[image error]
And then I remembered that nothing is irreparable. I mean, I literally have saved versions of the completed manuscript in multiple places. It’s not like this is a handwritten copy that...
October 17, 2017
On First Drafts and Timing
“Writing a book is hard. It turns out, writing a second book is twice as hard.”
– Kami Garcia
I started the Google Document for The Weight of the Fire on September 29, 2016. As a reminder, it’s a novel based upon a short story I wrote in May of that year called Cade and Abram. I will have a better synopsis to give you at some point, but for now, think along the lines of… immortal twin brothers (to Abram, immortality is a curse, to Cade, it’s the BEST THING EVER), a kingdom divided between th...
August 22, 2017
In Which I Hand You Baseball Bats
Nobody knew I wrote for years. Literally, years. I was super stealth about it, and somewhere, there is an old Vaio laptop with some terrible attempts at novels saved on it. Nobody but me has ever (or will ever) see those.
Becoming an author was a pipe dream, completely and utterly. Something that didn’t or couldn’t happen to someone like me. It remained that for years, and so, there was no reason to ever show anyone my writing or let them into that side of me. I wrote entirely for myself. To...
July 30, 2017
On My Publishing Journey (So Far!)
You guys… All That We See or Seem is going to be a book. A real book. A book you can order on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or a number of other places, a book you can hold in your hands and flip through and bookmark and read. (Or download onto your Kindle and read the new-fashioned way!) It’s everything I wanted for this book. I adore this story and these characters, and I so badly wanted them to have a life out in the world.
How did I get here? Well. It’s been a journey. Total cliché, I know,...
November 18, 2016
It Takes a Village
Actually sitting down and writing a book is a fairly solitary pursuit. It’s me and my laptop, sitting in a room in silence, watching a cursor blink annoyingly back at me. It is a story that lives in my head, and my head alone, waiting for me to find the words – the right words – and get to typing. Nobody can do it for me, and for the most part, I can’t write with distractions. So it’s a solitary pursuit.
In that way only, though. In every other way, it takes a village.
Seriously.
The village...
October 11, 2016
Finding Time to Write
One of my greatest struggles – one of everyone’s greatest struggles – is the careful balancing act of making time for all of the things, all of the activities, all of the people you love the most. Not wanting to short-change any part of it. Not wanting to say no to people when they ask to see you, or ask a favor of you that will take up time.
But, as I discovered when I was in the gory depths of my second draft of ATWSOS, it is absolutely essential. I had to say no, and I had to say it often....
September 28, 2016
The Opening Line
To me, as a reader, the very best part of opening a new book is reading that first line. It sets the tone for me, tells me what to expect from this book. Is it heavily descriptive, setting-based? Is it some kind of punchy bit of dialogue? Is it a short, *bam* kind of sentence that sucks you right in? And the books I love the most… I can recite their opening lines from memory.
He nearly called you again last night. Can you imagine that, after all this time? He can.
It’s been a few years since...
September 22, 2016
Short Stories are Writing Playgrounds
I could spend hours, days, weeks talking your ear off about the wonderfulness of the retreat I went on this past March, the inaugural Aspiring Writers Workshop hosted by Madcap Retreats, but for right now, I’m going to focus on one piece of the wonderfulness: the creation of Band of Dreamers.
Inspired by The Merry Sisters of Fate, my writing partner Jenna and I decided to write a weekly short story based on a long list of prompts we created. I had never written a short story before, and the i...
