I’ve been invited to participate in the Writing Process Blog Tour. This traveling tour occurs every Monday on multiple blogs and is an opportunity for writers to share a little about what, how, and why they write. Since I’m pretty much always blathering on about my writing process, participating in this blog hop was a no-brainer.
I was invited to participate by the illustrious Monica Enderle Pierce. Monica writes books that entail elements of fantasy or science fiction, often include historical settings, and have been described as lyrical, powerful, and sensual. Her debut novel, Girl Under Glass, was a 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semi-finalist and a sci-fi bestseller on Amazon. I just started reading her latest novel, Famine, and I cannot put it down. Seriously, I had to pull myself away in order to write this blog. Buy one of her books and start reading it today! You will not be disappointed.
What am I working on?
Right now, I’m up to my elbows in an ever growing epic fantasy series, Dreams of QaiMaj. If anyone reading this is a fan of Robert Jordan, you might know that when he first sold The Wheel of Time to Tor, it was supposed to be a trilogy. It ended up a fourteen book series. That’s a bit what this project feels like. Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern was supposed to be one book, but after getting feedback from early readers, I realized that it needed to be expanded into at least three. Now it’s looking to be a five or six book series, but based on the track record of epic fantasy, I’d be surprised if it clocks in at fewer than ten books. Fortunately, I love the storyworld and the characters, so being in it for the long haul isn’t as scary as it sounds. Book I: Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern took five years from start to finish, and Book II: Dream of a City of Ruin is looking to take about two years, so if my writing pace continues to improve at this rate, I should have the whole thing done by the time I’m forty.
How does my work differ from others in its genre?
Even though I think of my work as epic fantasy, and it definitely classifies as epic fantasy, it’s not trying to be epic fantasy. I’m not writing to the genre. I’m not putting magic and elves and wizards in my book because that’s what epic fantasy should have in it. The storyworld is uniquely imagined, with a completely unique set of creatures from any other fantasy. The magic, while central to the story, is not the primary focus of the story. Rather, characters and their relationships are the focus. So it’s a very character driven fantasy.
Why do I write what I do?
I write what I want to read. When I write, I’m immersed in my story world, just like when I read my favorite fiction. I have loved long fantasy epics ever since I started reading them as a teenager. I like the complexity of the stories, the twisting plots, and looking at a story through many different points of view. I love the awe and wonder of magic in these stories. I love the high stakes–there is never anything less than the fate of the entire world at stake in epic fantasy. When I spend time in the world of QaiMaj, whether it’s purely imagining it, composing, revising what I’ve written, or re-reading my finished works, I enjoy that time every bit as much as when I’m reading my favorite epic fantasy series.
How does my writing process work?
It’s taken me over 15 years to settle into a process that is comfortable for me, and I’m still working out the kinks. I suppose if it were perfect, I’d get bored. I used to use a hybrid of discovery writing (writing off the cuff) and outlining. Neither one worked well for me; discovery writing was too disorganized, outlining too hard to stick with. Last year I had an epiphany: what if I told the story before I started writing it, in a summary format? Sort of like an artist sketching a scene before filling in the details. I start with a pretty general summary, it could be just a few sentences for a whole book. I slowly add in more details. Then I take the summary and run it past my writing group; they can usually sus out plot holes or things that don’t make sense just from that summary. Once I have a summary I’m happy with, I draft the book. Then comes revision. I used this process on Book II: Dream of a City of Ruin, and the result was a faster, cleaner first draft than I have ever produced before. My goal is to get to the point where I’m drafting a very clean version and doing as little re-writing as possible, but I’m not quite there yet.
I’ve invited Amanda June Hagarty to continue the travelling writer’s process blog next week. Amanda is the author of Clean Slate, a novelette. She is currently writing a fantasy novel serially on Wattpad called Little Lacey, you can follow her progress as she writes it! She was also a contributing author to a post-apocalyptic series in The Bellingham Herald, Memories of Light.
