Jamie Ferguson's Blog, page 22
July 4, 2015
For fun or matrimony
One of the short stories I’m polishing up is about a mail-order bride in the Old West. Researching this story was a lot of fun.
The high number of mail-order brides in the Old West was due to two main factors. The first was that an awful lot of single men had headed west to seek their fortunes, but most of the women who went west were married, so there was a disproportionate number of single men out west. The second reason was the Civil War, which had not only taken a toll on the male populat...
June 27, 2015
Keep them doggies movin’
My first introduction to the American Old West was when my family briefly lived in Kansas. I don’t know exactly how long we lived there – I was three when we arrived and four when we moved away. The most important things that happened during our time there was I got a baby sister (who, to my surprise, was not up for playing games with me), I learned how much fun Slip ‘N Slides can be, and we took a trip to Abilene where I got a cowgirl hat and my first toy horse.
Like most girls I knew at the...
June 21, 2015
Making things up
I spent last weekend in San Francisco and Napa Valley. It was beautiful, fun, and I learned that sharing wine tastings is a good idea if you’re going to visit a lot of wineries in one day.
The Golden Gate Bridge peeking through the fog.
I didn’t come up with any new stories, but I did get some glimmers that might turn into a story later on. I put things like this in my idea file, and occasionally I’ll find a sentence or two I jotted down years ago has become a story I want to write. Here’s a...
June 6, 2015
Integrity and ideas
As a beginning writer, I would occasionally think silly things like “I don’t have any ideas for what to write next! Maybe I’ll never have another story idea, ever!” That’s in the same category as when I broke up with a guy at age 18, and thought “I’ll never find anyone else to date, ever!”
While there are certainly plenty of positive things about being single, thinking that I would never find anyone to date again was ridiculous – kind of like thinking that any story idea is the very last one...
May 30, 2015
The best laid plans
The urban fantasy novel I’m working on started as a short story (ha) I wrote for a writing workshop taught by Dean Wesley Smith. The assignment was to write an urban fantasy story having something to do with “many worlds.” I was stumped. I kept thinking: urban fantasy means vampires, werewolves, zombies … creatures I’m not opposed to (as long as I don’t meet any personally), but I’ve never written about them, nor had writing that type of story ever even occurred to me. My mind was a blank. On...
May 23, 2015
Formalized curiosity
I love this quote by Zora Neale Hurston:
“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
Researching is one of the most enjoyable things about writing for me, but it’s also one of the most dangerous. It doesn’t sound dangerous, does it? Who wouldn’t want to research how mail order brides were ordered in American West in the late 1880s? Types of pottery found on the Aeolian Islands dating to 1500 BC? Mythology relating to black dogs? Magical properties of herbs? Aba...
Formalized Curiosity
I love this quote by Zora Neale Hurston:
“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
Researching is one of the most enjoyable things about writing for me, but it’s also one of the most dangerous. It doesn’t sound dangerous, does it? Who wouldn’t want to research how mail order brides were ordered in American West in the late 1880s? Types of pottery found on the Aeolian Islands dating to 1500 BC? Mythology relating to black dogs? Magical properties of herbs? Aba...
May 16, 2015
Entitled
The title for my first novel, With Perfect Clarity, was there from the start. The main character is Emma, a ghost who believes she remembers her murder down to the last detail … but she actually doesn’t. This concept – and the phrase “with perfect clarity” – was part of the original story idea, so the title was clear from the very beginning.
This is not always the case …
Right now I have three in progress novels, as well as seven short stories that I am polishing and having edited by the wond...
May 9, 2015
Tunnel vision
So far this year I’ve only had one short story turn into a novel … I have actually managed to force all the others to stay short! Yay!!!
The disobedient story has no title yet – the codename is ‘Pond Girl,’ which I know sounds ridiculous. Let’s hope I come up with a decent title by the time I’m done… It started as an urban fantasy assignment for a writing workshop I took a few months ago. I tried and tried, but simply could not come up with a single story idea I liked.
One day at work I told...
May 2, 2015
Dog Birthdays!!!
What better way to return to my writing blog than with a post entirely about dogs???
Jasper turned five (give or take a year) on April 21st. Rosie and I celebrated by taking him on a hike up Mt. Sanitas.
Rosie posed in the foreground even though it wasn’t her birthday.
And here’s the Birthday Boy at the top! He was windblown but happy.
The Birthday Boy!
Rosie turned three (give or take six months) today, May 2nd. We hiked Dakota Ridge this time.
The Birthday Girl with Mr. Muddy Paws.
The dogs...
