Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

I'm re-writing a story of the future I drafted some 30 years ago, then forgot. An old friend brought the manuscript over from England recently. The title is "Cod's Roe". The idea seems good, but the style pedestrian. However, as I type it up, hoping to reinvigorate it as I go along, I'm not changing very much: mostly from past tense to present. Appropriate, huh?

The author Marta Merajver-Kurlat (http://www.martamerajver.com.ar/marta...), author of Just Toss the Ashes and Why Can't I Make Money? among other works, kindly invited me to participate in this blog hop tour and answer four questions about my writing process.

1) What am I working on?

I’m working on a novel, set in Portugal in the 1970s. It’s my first novel – usually I write short stories or poems. And usually I write about the future, in order to write about the present.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Well, in the novel, I’m using the past, for once, to write about both the present and the future. I don’t read enough historical fiction to know how different that makes it. Most of my work, though, is speculative fiction. It’s really too low-tech to be true science fiction, though it tends to be set in the future, the near future. Perhaps a better descriptor is social science fiction. Wherever and whenever it is set, I aim to write literature first and genre fiction second.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I like to set my stories in places where I have lived and worked, like England, Italy, Portugal and China, but to move away from the present in order to get a clearer perspective on them.

4) How does my writing process work?

Writing a novel has changed this. Before, I would write the story or poem on paper. Then I would type it on to the computer, print it out and revise it (several times) using pen on paper, before keying in the changes to leave a final version on the computer. Now, the first version of each chapter goes straight on to the computer. It saves time and speeds me towards the goal of a completed first draft. I’m hoping to reach that particular target by the end of this year, after which I’m prepared to spend another year turning it from a finished novel into a good novel, if I can.

Three fine authors will be taking up the baton next week and explaining their writing process: Jacob Singer, Leigh M. Lane and David Whippman.
Here are their bios and links.

LEIGH M. LANE

Leigh M. Lane has been writing for over twenty years. She has ten published novels and twelve published short stories divided among different genre-specific pseudonyms. She is married to editor Thomas B. Lane, Jr. and has recently returned to the hustle and bustle of Las Vegas after a three-year stay in the beautiful but desolate mountains of western Montana.

Her traditional Gothic horror novel, Finding Poe, was a 2013 EPIC Awards finalist in horror. Her other novels include the supernatural thriller, The Hidden Valley Horror, inspired by Barker, Bradbury, and King; World-Mart, a tribute to Orwell, Serling, and Vonnegut; and the dark allegorical tale, Myths of Gods.

http://www.cerebralwriter.com
http://www.cerebralwriter.com/blog.html


DAVID WHIPPMAN

David Whippman was born and raised in Bristol, then lived in Devon and is currently based in Lancashire, England. He spent most of his working life in healthcare. Now retired, David is a poet, storyteller and essayist. He also devotes time to art, chess and music. His blog on his writing process will appear at http://on.fb.me/1fOYs3Z


JACOB SINGER

Jacob Singer was born in Potchefstroom South Africa. After he matriculated, he studied Pharmacy at the Chelsea Polytechnic in London, England. Five years later he returned to South Africa, met and married Evelyn Jackson, and opened a pharmacy in Potchefstroom.
In 1985 he retired and in December 1992, with his family, he emigrated to Canada. His family had been threatened by the South African Security Police because of his work against the apartheid Government.
In 1995 he started writing his first book, BRAKENSTROOM, self-publishing it in 1999. In 2006 he started writing his second book, The VASE with the MANY COLOURED MARBLES, a story about a mother and daughter he knew when he was a boy, a story that explains in detail the horror of being classified a second class citizen in apartheid South Africa.
He is presently working on a third book, a true story about three friends.
You may visit his website at www.jacobashersinger.com
You can find his blog here: http://patroosp.blogspot.ca/

Join them next Sunday!

I guess I’m not the only person here working on their first novel. In terms of the target I set for completing a first draft, I’m well ahead of schedule. Now, here’s the strange thing. Because I have a background in psychology and linguistics, I imagined my characters would be deep and my language scintillating, even if I sometimes lost the plot. Yet the opposite is happening. My inner critic tells me that the characters are shallow and the language ordinary, though the plot skips along nicely. It turns out I am primarily a storyteller. Should I be happy or distraught?

My friend Marta Merajver-Kurlat (http://www.martamerajver.com.ar/marta...), author of Just Toss the Ashes and Why Can't I Make Money?, among other works, kindly invited me to participate in this blog hop tour and answer four questions about my writing process.

1) What am I working on?

My first novel. Its provisional title is Revolution Number One. Usually I write short stories, which I set in an imagined future in order to write more freely about the present. The novel, in contrast, is set in Portugal back in the 1970s, where a young English businessman struggles to survive and thrive during the world’s coolest Revolution. I’ve just finished the first draft, so I guess that the real work is about to start.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Well, in the novel, I use the past to write essentially about the present and the future. I don’t read enough historical fiction to know how different that makes it.
Most of my work, though, is set in the near future. It’s really too low-tech to be true science fiction. My philosophy is that the problems of the near past, the present and the near future are similar: what is important is how we deal with them, irrespective of technology. Perhaps a better descriptor is social science fiction.
Whatever the setting, I hope to write literature first and genre fiction second.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I like to set my stories in places where I have lived and worked, like England, Italy, Portugal and China, but to move away from the present in order to get a clearer perspective on it. I have always been future-oriented, but advancing age has successfully tempted me to look backwards as well.

4) How does my writing process work?

Writing a novel changed this. Before, I would write a short story or poem on paper. Then I would type it on to the computer, print it out and revise it several times using pen on paper, before keying in the changes to leave a final version on the computer.
For the novel, the first version of each chapter went straight on to the computer, and so did some of the revisions. That saved time and sped me towards the goal of a completed first draft. I have reached that particular target way ahead of schedule, so I’m prepared to spend a great deal of time turning it from a finished novel into a good novel - if I can.


The wonderful Andea Buginsky is taking up the baton next week and explaining her writing process, on Monday 7 July.

Andrea Buginsky is a freelance writer with a BA in Mass Communication-Journalism from the University of South Florida. She has always wanted to be a published writer, and decided to try to write children's fantasy books a few years ago. The Chosen is her first book, and was released on December 14, 2010, to her delight.
Andrea has written three more books since:
• My Open Heart, an autobiography of growing up with heart disease.
• Nature's Unbalance: The Chosen, Book 2
• Destiny: New Avalon, book 1, a YA fantasy

She is currently writing the second book in the New Avalon series and editing the third book of The Chosen series.

Andrea lives in Kansas with her family, which includes her two precious puppies.
You can visit Andrea on her website or Google+. Her blog is at: http://www.andreabuginsky.com/.

Do you remember when you received the first proof copy of one of your books? Do you still remember how you felt?
The proof of my novella "Goodbye, Padania", has just arrived from across the Atlantic and sits beside me now.
Seeing the glossy cover is a treat: the e-book is already out, so I’m used to seeing it in icon size. The name on the cover boosts the ego, of course, but also reminds you that you’re supposed to be doing something to justify its professional look, namely making sure that the inside looks professional, too.
It does, at first glance. Then you look closer and see things that you have got to change, like inconsistent chapter title formats. You’ve concentrated on the content, but now you realize that if you want the content to be treated seriously, you have to make it look serious, too.
Next time, if there is one, maybe you could bear that in mind from the start, and save yourself time and trouble in the long run.
Meanwhile, you can enjoy flashing the cover at friends, without inviting them to look too closely inside.

Daria is now in print! You can buy her here: http://amzn.to/1yksd7e (USA) or here: http://amzn.to/1uUaSQ9 (UK) Handle with care, she’s dangerous. For lovers of Italy and the future.

This week, I have the honour of being interviewed by Bulgaria’s top sports journalist, author Ognian Georgiev: http://ogigeorgiev.wordpress.com/2014...

You’re a writer. Your novel has a protagonist. Let’s call him or her “Chris”. You can’t let Chris die before the end, or your novel ends prematurely. If you write genre fiction, you may not even be able to allow Chris a cosy or bitter retirement. I’ve had fun with this trope here: http://www.thewriteroomblog.com/the-o...
The traditional answer is to invent ghosts, haunting and other flights of fancy. In his latest novel, “4 3 2 1”, Paul Auster, who rejects supernatural slight-of-hand, hits on an effective writerly solution. He has four chronological sections, and one chapter in each section is devoted to a specific protagonist,, in the same order. When Auster bumps off one of his protagonists, he nevertheless keeps his place in the next section, but his chapter consists only of the heading and a blank text – a stark reminder of the character’s death and all the unfulfilled potential that has died with it.
It is a masterful ploy, even when Auster repeats it, though it has less impact the second time. When he kills his third protagonist, he uses a contrasting strategy, letting you imagine him merely falling asleep, until, in the final pages of the novel, the authorial voice tells you the character had died in his sleep. This leaves you just with the fourth, most Austerial protagonist, who is, to me, the stodgiest and least interesting of the quartet.
You can see a brilliant visual way of refusing to forget the dead in Richard Lester’s satirical film “How I Won The War”. You may remember it for featuring John Lennon as a non-singing actor. It shows a bedraggled band of British soldiers on a mission toward the end of WWII. Every time one of them is killed, a wraith-like version of him, not intended as a ghost and not haunting anyone, still appears in the line-up, reminding us of his premature death and its enduring importance.