Ksenia Anske's Blog, page 61

Complex non-perfect characters vs perfect stereotypes

Photo by Emma Katka

I'm chipping away at the long list of blog topics people asked me to write about, and this is one that I'm afraid to write about, as I don't think I have written enough to chime in on it. But when I voiced my doubt, my readers shouted at me that, yes, I can, I've written great characters. Well then, you guys know better, I suppose, as we writers are always too hard on ourselves. Let me spill here what I think, and you tell me what you think or if this was helpful to you...

On novel structure

Photo by Brooke Shaden

First, let me apologize for this blog post being late. I have successfully moved to the Moon, but have lost a bit of time to a black hole, it seems. Am I forgiven? Yes? Excellent. Let us proceed with the curious topic of novel structure. I got this question from a reader in the email:

"I'm writing my first novel, and it's based on a true story that I experienced, but of course it is fiction so I can tell it better. I'm struggling with the structure. At first I thought...

How do you overcome depression to write?

Photo by Alex Stoddard

Since I'm one of those weird crowd-loving people and I love asking people what they want me to blog about next, I'll blog this time on the unsightly topic of pulling yourself out of depression to write. Asked by one of my fellow writers. I suppose I have enough credit to talk about this, as writing happened to pull me out of suicidal thoughts and healed me to the point of giving me enough courage to quit my career and start writing full time. I'm even writing my four...

Writer's confidence, or where the fuck do you find that beast?

Photo by trini61

Well, let's see here. The last couple of days were interesting as I happened to have invited the very first online troll (sorry Herbert, but you are a troll, aren't you?) to my blog, specifically, to the post HOW TO WRITE A BAD BOOK, whose glorious comments you may read at your leisure. As a side note, traffic to my site doubled since the troll's comment, so thank you dear troll, err, pardon, Herbert, I love you.How does this relate to write's confidence? Oh, big time. Bec...

How to write a bad book

Photo by Lara Zankoul

This has been requested by one of myblog readers, so here you have it.Let's indulge in this fabuloustopic of how one would write a bad book. I mean, enough talking about writing good books, excellent books, perfect books. What exactly would you have to do to write something that would be completely and utterly horrible? I will employ my entire arsenal of knowledge to see if I can come up with a list of things to make your novel the worst possible book EVER.

Write a lon...

When is it time to choose a title for your novel?

Photo by Kyle Thompson

So I got this question via email, and I will attempt to answer it here to the best of my knowledge, which is a hodgepodge of 8 years of marketing experience, reading a bunch of Seth Godin's books, reading a ton of novels in general (and their titles, of course) and 1.5 years of writing full time (hey, next May it will be 2!). Oh, andself-publishing since last year, so not much, if you look at it. Anyway. Here we go:

Question: "A big one that has been troubling me and...

Starting and ending chapters, or where the hell am I supposed to cut it?

Photo by Amy Spanos

By popular request, I shall devulge on this topic. But before I do, let me preface it with an important statement. Everything I'm writing here is NOT the truth, like, I willrepeat, it's not, people!I'm a very very green writer, only started writing last year full time, so the things I share here are the things that work for me. They might be completely off the wall and totally immature and very much against the grainof big important writers. There are a gazillion more w...

On balancing dialogue, descriptions, action and the rest

Photo by Lara Zankoul

I have blogged before on balancing pairs of these wonderful things, like descriptions versus commentary and transitions from dialogue to descriptions and back. I even blogged about the danger of long descriptions, but I haven't yet written on the subject of all three, or however many elements there are. And now that I think about it, there really are only three things. People talk shit - dialogue. People look like shit (or not like shit, if you're writing romance) - d...

Write from the heart. The rest doesn't matter.

Photo by Joel Robison

People keep asking me smart questions, about my books, about my writing, about my methods, thinking that I know it all, that I have developed some strategy for everything and am now implementing it. But I don't. I swear, I didn't. The only thing I know is, when I write, I'm happy. There is another thing I know too. The more I write, the faster I write, the easier it is for me to write, because I build up a routine and stop being scared. I also know that when I stop wr...

About nails, mustaches, pants, unicorns, farts, ice cream, and relationships

Photo by Royce Daniel

I'm not kidding. I haven't gone cuckoo. No. I'm riding the wave of excitement of everyone doing NaNoWriMo. Everyone, but me. Well, there are a bunch of other folks who don't do it either (they told me). Why? People ask me. Why aren't you participating? Well, call me weird, but I like writing according to my own schedule. I can't just jump around and write several books at the same time like other people do, and I'm green with envy, of course. But I can't, simply can't....