Ksenia Anske's Blog, page 60

Dealing with negative book reviews and negative people in general

Photo by Laura Zalenga

The topic of negativity came up in some recent Twitter discussions, in particular in regards to negative people who frown upon you creating, like they tell you to stop writing (or painting, filming, sculpting, dancing, singing, insert whatever art you make here) because: 1) You suck at it. 2) You will never get good at it. 3) You can't make money doing it. 4) You're not doing real work like all respectable serious people should do. 5) You need to grow up and stop dream...

IRKADURA excerpt, draft 1

Well, as is my custom, and by popular demand (many of you have been asking me for this) I'm posting the excerpt from Irkadura, my 3rd (wait, already?!?) novel, a literary novel this time, based on my experiences growing up in Soviet Union and being a teenager right on the cusp of it falling apart and becoming Russia. It will be dark, very dark, perhaps darker in some ways than Siren Suicides. You be the judge. Please, bear in mind though, this is only 1st draft, and all 1st drafts are shit. S...

Happy New Year, and THANK YOU!

Photo by Ksenia Anske

I've been procrastinating in writing this post by trying on dresses for the New Year's Eve party, until I couldn't procrastinate anymore. Then I realized I was scared to write this, that's why I've been avoiding it. Because the year 2013 was huge for me. I self-published my 1st trilogy SIREN SUICIDES, self-published by little book of tweets BLUE SPARROW, wrote my 2nd novel ROSEHEAD, went to Russia and helped my mom to recover from a stroke and a heart-attack, saw my a...

On hamsters, fake plastic trees, and marketing yourself as an author

Photo by Amy Spanos

Please pardon the jittering jumble of topics above, because I'm about to add more. See, it's you who do it to me. You asked me to blog about: hamsters, fake plastic trees (and karma police too, both obviously sung about by Radiohead), communism (well, actually, about how socialism is merely an appetizer for communism), dancing, how to pick an editor (will save for later), how to pick an idea (will save for later), and, of course, how to market yourself as an author and...

How to pee your name in the snow... as a woman

Photo by Sarah Ann Wright

Merry Christmas! Or merry whatever it is you're celebrating. The following is probably for those of you who want to start writing but for some reason haven't yet. Before I dive into the meat of this very interesting topic, let me preface it a little. First of all, it's not me who thought about writing it, okay? So don't look at me like this. And it's not me who even started the whole conversation. It began at Christmas dinner a few nights ago at the house of my de...

ROSEHEAD excerpt, draft 3

I have finished writing ROSEHEAD, my 2nd novel! I have finished it, I have finished it! It took me 7 months, with 2 interruptions (traveling to Russia) and 3 drafts. Final draft came at 85K words. As is my tradition, I'm posting an excerpt from the final draft. You can download the whole thing for free to beta read, if you want. The manuscript is off to my awesome editor Colleen M. Albert.I think I will get it back maybe around January, depending on Colleen's schedule, so to those of you who...

ART VERSUS SANITY

Photo by Brooke Shaden

Once more my brain was blank from writing all day, so I asked my lovely Twitter followers for blog topic suggestions. There were many, like LOVE and DETAILS and MYSTERY and PLOT and HOW TO MARKET YOURSELF AS AN AUTHOR. By many votes ART VS SANITY won! (By the way, how to market yourself came second, so I will blog about it too.) I walked around the house for a long time after that, chewing on an orange, thinking.

What exactly is art and what exactly is sanity and why...

Tying up loose ends of your novel via Post-it Notes

Photo by Ksenia Anske

Everyone gloriously blogs about Christmas and gifts, and here I am, blogging about novel writing. I have scratched my head a lot on this, but so many of you asked me about my post-it notes board from this picture, and since I'm finishing 3rd draft of ROSEHEAD next week (can you believe it?!?!?), I'm tying up loose ends via using my post-it notes on my board, and I thought I'd share with you my process in detail, because it helps me keep my sanity. It's only my 2nd novel...

Injecting humor into your writing

Photo by Amy Andress

I've been indulging lately in humorizing ROSEHEAD in its 3rd draft to the point of my boyfriend reading it to me aloud and me laughing to tears. I mean, that's me laughing at my own writing. That's crazy, right? It's supposed to be a good thing though, correct? I think it is. I've also realized something else. No matter what your genre is or what kind of a book you're writing, one of the things you have to do is make your reader laugh. Chuck Palahniuk said it at one of...

On the importance of reading

Photo by Joel Robison

I've been asked to blog more about reading but have been blissfully ignoring this request, and I don't know for what reason. But I must blog about it because reading is such an integral part of writing, that without reading writing is more of a limping thing that can live but will eventually fall apart, if not mended by the imagination and style of others. Precisely why I'm writing this right now is due to the inspiration I got from rereading THE HOBBIT. The 2nd movie...