BLOG TOUR: MY WRITING PROCESS
Thank you Lisa at Cornerstone Home Learning and Mirkwood Reflections for inviting me to participate in this blog tour.
Lisa is an unpublished writer who began writing during National Novel Writing Month 2007. She has participated in NaNoWriMo (and won!) each year since then. Lisa’s four kids, now ages 12-19, are educated at home and have all written NaNoNovels as well. Before homeschooling, Lisa taught in an unusual multi-grade classroom for several years and she has worked as a tutor, a lay reader, and a GED instructor. Currently, she teaches composition classes to homeschoolers and works online for a linguistics technology company. Lisa has written five unpublished (so far!) novels and one novella and is looking for a publisher. Her current works-in-progress are a book club guide to the works of Jane Austen and a fantasy novel. She blogs occasionally at Mirkwood Reflections and Cornerstone Home Learning.
http://mirkwoodreflections.blogspot.com/
http://cornerstonehomelearning.blogspot.com/
WHAT AM I WORKING ON:
Warriors: Part V of I Bring the Fire, and The Slip and Other Short Stories (also part of the I Bring the Fire universe — an urban fantasy/sword and sorcery epic).
HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS OF ITS GENRE
Oh, this is hard. Everything in our modern culture is essentially derivative. I don’t think my work is unique in its elements, but maybe the collective elements are unique?
I write about Loki, Norse God of Mischief and Chaos (the God of Lies moniker didn’t happen until the 13th century, when Christians were trying to cement Christianity in Iceland. In many of the traditional myths, Sif’s hair for instance, the problem with Loki wasn’t lies, it was him telling the truth too freely). I’m not trying to redeem Loki, or make him sympathetic, I’m trying to redeem chaos itself. Chaos is about transformation—and my series deals heavily with this theme.
Like Once Upon a Time, I combine myths modern and ancient in my stories. There are cheeky winks at Marvel, Little Red Riding Hood, W. W. Jacobs (author of The Monkey’s Paw), Star Wars, Firefly and others.
One way the series is very different is that the humans aren’t helpless bystanders. They are orchestrators of their own fates. They don’t have magic like the Frost Giants, Asgardians, Elves, Dwarves, or Fire Giants, but they are trying to make up with their lack of magic with technology. To a certain extent, succeeding (and it is making some magic users very, very, nervous).
WHY DO I WRITE?
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?
HOW DOES MY WRITING PROCESS WORK
I come up with a “big idea”. I tell my beta Kay about it, drawing up a loose outline in the process. She tells me why it’s not a good idea, or she says, “I like it!” I tighten up the outline for the particular segment I’m working on—I should note, my outlines are never as tight as some people’s. I leave room for happy accidents. As I write Kay, and my brother, Thomas, review the story. This lets me rewrite scenes as problems arise, rather than waiting for the end to do all the rewrites. When I’m done, Kay rereads the whole story, I do more rewrites, and then I send it out to my betas (generally four people). After that it goes to the editor, and I perform grammar edits as necessary.
SEE OTHER WRITERS’ PROCESSES
Here are a few more blogs on the tour:
http://www.hobobone.wordpress.com
