Ksenia Anske's Blog, page 22
May 15, 2017
25 things I learned from writing full-time for 5 years
It's been 5 years already since I started writing. Wow. I can't believe it. I have started writing my first trilogy, Siren Suicides, on May 15th 2012. Since then I've written and self-published the before-mentioned trilogy (and republished it later as one book, Siren Suicides: Second Edition), stand-alone novels Rosehead, Irkadura and The Badlings, and two books of tweets, Blue Sparrow and Blue Sparrow 2. I'm currently in the process of finishing my new novel TUBE (the one I started writing d...
May 14, 2017
10 tips on turning your book writing into a business
After writing full-time for five years and making intermittent sales (they would happen randomly, without my understanding of why at that particular moment, and why that particular book), I finally got fed up with being poor and have told you (or rather, screamed at you from various Internet roofs) that I'll be treating my book writing as a business from now on. Starting tomorrow, to be exact. Because tomorrow, on May 15th, it will be exactly five years since I...
May 11, 2017
Wyatt's fantasy novel: A BREATH OF JUSTICE
It seems we're breeding writing talent here, in our Loony Bin (it's how we like to call our house). Royce's 19-year-old son Wyatt, who is graduating from high school this summer, has started writing his first fantasy novel, and it's got everything to become big and epic, dwarves and elves and magic and murder and...well, here is the opening of the first chapter, and Wyatt said he's cool with you commenting on his Google Doc and giving him feedback. He wants to finish it. At t...
May 5, 2017
A very angry post: Am I making enough of a difference?
I'm angry because it doesn't seem like I'm doing enough, for myself and for those whom I love and for the world (which is actually a step-up from feeling miserable, as anger usually spurs me to action). Why am I feeling this way? Because of two things.
One, I just finished reading When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone, and two, I got on Twitter and got sucked into reading news about GOP's vote on replacing Obamacare with the new healthcare law which will neglect those...
May 1, 2017
I'm embarking on a new crusade: SELLING MORE BOOKS
That is my armor. Imma red, bloody bird. Fear me! *cackles*
Well, actually, this whole crusade thing is not new but rather forgotten. I've gone full circle from firmly believing that to make money writing books you have to sell them (when I started writing five years ago, fresh from working on my start-up and surviving by selling my product to everyone left and right) to believing that well-written books will sell themselves (when about two years ago I retreate...
April 23, 2017
The quest for the perfect jacket
This sounds silly but it actually isn't. I have embarked on a quest for the perfect spring jacket a few months ago, and have encountered such monsters as the brainwashing to conform to consumerism, the lies of the marketing and the advertisement, the objectifying of women, the dogma of beauty, the discrimination according to body size, boob shape, ass shape, etc., poor craftsmanship, bad design, careless customer service, and finally, no notion that women migh...
April 18, 2017
TUBE cover reveal!
It's here! It's done! It's ready for you to feast your eyes on and wonder what hellish hilarity it has inside! Because it has. I'm into revising Act 2 of TUBE, and I think by end of May I should be done with the whole thing.
I suppose I should ask you if you want your words to appear on the back of the back cover, as quotes. So I'm asking you. Let me know if you want to beta read the final draft and send me a quote or two. I don't guarantee that I'll pick your quot...
April 12, 2017
Finding a writing mentor and working together
I never actually looked for a writing mentor (who wants to stay anonymous, because, as he explained to me, he doesn't like to be bothered by people and prefers to live a quiet life—so I shall call him Basil Bee, or Vasya Pchelkin in Russian). We somehow found each other (on Twitter, of all places) and over time fell into the roles of a student (me) and a teacher (Pchelkin), and then it kind of went developing from there (we meet once a month or so, occasionally...
April 7, 2017
My new writing process: I think I know what I'm doing
Illustration by Nadine Redlich
Lately writing feels more and more like a job. I get up, get my coffee, and sit down to do my job that I know how to do. It feels weird. It's new. I used to just wake up and start writing. You know, gleefully banging at the keys, hoping I know what I'm doing. Now it's different.
I plot every scene ahead of time, I read a chapter from a book on plotting, I decide on the conflict, on the scene goal, on the scene conflict, on the scene disaster, then I read my no...
March 27, 2017
Things I read every day before writing
Photo from Scene and Structure by Jack M. Bickham
I have compiled a sort of a little help-guide for myself which I read every day before diving into writing. Then I thought, this would be cool to share with you, in case you were looking for a list like that. Or maybe you have a list of your own and could share it with me. I have pulled this from a ton of books I had read, so ask me questions if some of the terms sound unfamiliar. Depending on where you are in your writing career, you will...
