Rachel Alexander's Blog, page 333
April 19, 2018
How did you begin to write The Receiver of Many? How did you do your research? It's amazing!
That’s a good question, and thanks!
Before Receiver of Many, I had written primarily free-to-the-public Regency and Georgian era stories on Literotica and people had asked for sequels to both. I was slogging through them and nothing sounded or felt right to me. While the stories were good by themselves, they just didn’t need sequels and anything I wrote felt forced. On top of that, my focus was diverted.
And it was because I had the beginnings of what would become Receiver of Many gnawing at the back of my mind for almost two years. It just became something I couldn’t stop or put off any longer. Every time I tried to write something else, there They would be saying ‘tell our story. Now’. I’ve never written as fervently or with as much ease as I did while writing Receiver of Many and sometimes I worry I never will again.
But it just came out. And kept going. I had the basics of the plot by the time I reached the second chapter, and after that it was just a long drive of writing, editing, writing some more, putting a concrete synopsis together so I wouldn’t loose my way, and the story ended up twice to three times as long as I’d originally intended because what is brevity.
Research started almost as soon as I finished the rough draft of the first chapter. I pulled out my copy of the Iliad and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, I got onto Theoi.com to start connecting and intertwining other stories, I re-read a few books and read excerpts from The Narcissus and the Pomegranate by Ann Suter which convinced me to immediately buy the book. Once I did, I think I got more confident in the ideas I’d been tentatively, formatively trying to say since I’d started writing.
Could you describe your writing process? (Or perhaps direct me to a link to the answer to this question if you've answered it before.) I have a terrible time overcoming writing blocks, and would greatly appreciate a bit of guidance from someone who has acc
Of course!
In my experience, it is SO SO helpful to use a framework for my story. It helps keep me on track and lets me avoid pitfalls like plot cul-de-sacs, getting lost, repeating myself, or forgetting to hint at major plot points.
If you are having a difficult time overcoming a writers block, try analyzing why it exists in the first place. Do you feel that what you’re writing isn’t good enough for anyone to see, especially you?
After college, I was convinced that I couldn’t write anything. I was so mono-focused on thinking about crafting The Great American Novel that I forgot that the purpose of telling a story is just that— to tell a story. My education, though incredibly valuable, had frozen my creativity, making me afraid to write anything. It didn’t help that one of my main points of focus in college was poetry, and I completely suck at writing poetry.
I had my self-esteem and my confidence in my ability to create anything worthwhile destroyed after college (a story for another day) and spent a long time just simply not writing anything. The play I had co-written in high school that won awards from the University of Southern California and PBS was in my rear view mirror, and the first novel I ever wrote was lost in a computer crash. I had deadened myself to creative impulse for a while with a cocktail of alcohol and drugs that I thought would make me more creative or at least loosen me up so I could relax and write, but they ended up doing just the opposite.
When I finally sorted my life out and landed on my feet, I wanted to write, but was still afraid of what I should write. So I decided to write the one thing I’d been told never to write, the thing that scholarly opinion dictated was taboo for “good writers”: smut. Pure, unadulterated erotica.
It was then that I remembered an essay I read in college by Anne Lamott called “Shitty First Drafts“ and resolved to do what she suggested. Fuck it, I thought. I want to write. If it’s shit, then it will be judged as shit, but let it at least see the light of day first.
I used erotica as my writing exercises. I didn’t want to lift the full weight of a novel without exercise, and I wanted to at least get words on paper and start flexing my muscles. And then I got the brilliant idea to publish my work for all to see. I figured that if it was truly shit, someone anonymous would tell me so and I would have my excuse to give this whole thing up and go back to business as usual confident in the fact that I was a terrible writer.
What was going to become my excuse to quit eventually became my impetus to continue. when one of those writing exercises turned into a story that got a fair amount of acclaim on one website, top of its category for months, and tied with another story for Story of the Month on that site. It wasn’t my best work, still isn’t, but is a fairly solid novella. I got emails. I got devoted fans. Those fans then requested more of what I’d written. Asked me to write sequels and continue the stories of the characters I’d written.
I’d had the idea for doing a story about Hades and Persephone kicking around in my head for a while, and two years went by with me trying to muster the plot for a sequel to the novella, and a sequel to another short story, neither of which felt like they were any good. Meanwhile, the Hades and Persephone story was rapping at the back of my consciousness, wanting to get out. So after two years of not writing anything, I finally just surrendered and started writing what would eventually become Receiver of Many.
About two months into writing I discovered that my story was going to be twice as long as I had planned, and I needed to get a framework for it. I wrote a synopsis which I stuck to for the most part, but also gave it the flexibility to change as more elements were introduced into the story.
I researched. I have spent a least a couple hundred dollars so far on academic texts, novels within and without the genre for critical analysis of what works and what doesn’t, I went deep into the culture, I went deep into the religions, archaeology, languages, tools, weapons… I had instances where a paragraph or two that took minutes to read was built upon hours of research. Something that most readers would just bypass or would fold into the story without mention but which needed to be of the time period and extraordinarily believable.
I set HARD deadlines for myself. Publish weekly. No matter what. It FORCED ME to stop obsessing about my Shitty First Draft. All of it would become a cohesive novel later. Just get it out there. Give it life. Get it out there. I was going to give it life come hell or high water or my great double-headed nemesis, procrastination and perfectionism.
The reason why I went into exhaustive detail on my process was to illustrate what my circumstances were and what worked for me. They may not me your circumstances, your hang ups and your sources of writers block, but then again, I’ve talked with many writers who suffer the same analysis paralysis from which I suffer. It’s possible to overcome that. When it comes down to it, my core advice is this:
Write. Just write.
Write shit if you have to, no one has to see it, you can figuratively or literally burn it when it’s written, but for gods sake, just WRITE.
So has the TV show been picked up or is it still being shopped around?
It’s being shopped, still. If it had been picked up I would like completely fucking let everyone know. Super subtly too, I’m sure.
Isn't the actual greek season for no plant growth the hot dry summer? Then why in persephone's abduction myth there comes winter when she's gone to underworld? Makes no sense.
Mostly because a bunch of Northern Europeans and Americans (including yours truly) got their hands on it and the interpretation placed the barren season in the middle of winter instead of in the summer.
April 18, 2018
April 16, 2018
April 15, 2018
Hello, and sorry to bother you! I heard a rumor there was a prequel to my favorite book "Receiver of Many," "The Thrice Plowed Field" and yet, I cannot find a copy of it anywhere though GoodReads has a review and three ratings of it. I was wondering if it
Yeah, re:reviews Goodreads is funny like that.
The truth is that I never published The Thrice Plowed Field (And should probably take it down from Goodreads {oops}) and the further truth is that even though I think there are elements of the story I love a lot and a lot of really well written bits, I cannot seem to get the whole story to gel together quite yet. So I’ve put it in the freezer for now and am working on The Good Counselor and the pending TV series based on my books
Just got done re-reading Receiver of Many and Destroyer of Light for the, oh... millionth time and I'm super excited for the Good Counselor! Any projected release date for it? And any further novels with our favorite rulers of the dead planned? (Oh please
I have a series at least 8 books long about them, of which The Good Counselor is the next in the series. I am in the middle of writing The Good Counselor and got waylaid for a bit because I was writing a Show Bible for the PENDING TV SERIES based on my novels.
I don’t have a release date yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.
April 11, 2018
therkalexander:Kata: Hey, Mom. So… My book is out. It’s up for preorder.Kata’s...
Kata: Hey, Mom. So… My book is out. It’s up for preorder.
Kata’s mom: AAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! I’m ordering five!
Kata: um, five?
Kata’s mom: Of course! One for me, one for your grandma, two for your sisters, one for the local library…
Kata: Uh…
Kata’s mom: what? I know it’s a romance. Ok, so what would it be rated??
Kata: Uh…
Kata’s mom: R.
Kata: Nope.
Kata’s mom: is it… X rated?
Kata: Well, there’s a lot of complex plot elements so, more NC-17, I guess? I mean, um, it’s not like strictly erotica, there's—
Kata’s mom: then you have nothing to worry about sweetie! Ok gotta go! Ooo I’m so excited! *hangs up*
Kata: …
Kata: …
Kata: * does quick search through the Receiver of Many manuscript for the word “cock” *
Kata: Yep, I’m doomed.
