Tag: writing Q&A

  • Substack: How to Protect Your Writing Time

    Substack: How to Protect Your Writing Time

    I’m now on Substack!

    You can follow me at: http://lizwritesbooks.substack.com

    Todays’s post is a flashback to July 2014, but the question and answer still holds today: How do you make people respect your writing time?

    If you’re like me, and you have a problem overcommitting, saying yes when your to-do list screams no, volunteering for shifts on off days, or setting boundaries that pop like bubbles, this Q&A is for you.

    You can find the post here: Q&A: How to make people respect your writing time

    Subscribe, comment, and share!

    Substack FAQ

    Does this mean the blog is going away?

    No! The blog will still be around for regular blog posts.

    Monthly updates, weekly Q&A, and polls are moving to the Substack.

    Do I have to pay to read your Substack?

    Absolutely not. And you never will.

    How often will the Substack/blog be updated?

    I plan on doing monthly posts for the blog and twice-weekly posts for the Substack.

    The main difference between the two is that the Substack is for writers and the blog will be more for writers and readers who may not be as interested in how the literary sausage is made.

    I have a Q, where can I send it?

    You can send questions to me directly at lizwritesbooks@gmail.com. If you want to ask anonymously, you can still use my Tumblr ask box: https://lizwritesbooks.tumblr.com/ask

  • Q&A: What’s the most you’ve ever written in a day?

    Anonymous asked:

    What’s the most you’ve ever written in a day?

    I’m going to tell you a little story about The Perfect Day.

    It was in December 2005. I was home sick with the flu, or at least that’s what I’d told my boss. I don’t actually remember if I was sick or not, only that I’d called in sick, and given my work ethic in 2005, it could go either way.

    (Oh, who am I kidding? It was more like 60/40, in favor of lazy over sick.)

    Anyway, I was home and in pajamas and I managed to crank out something like 45 pages. 

    It was kind of awesome.

    But of course when you have a day like that, you kind of start using it as a stick by which to measure all other days. And so, almost ten years later, I find myself thinking back to that day and wonder what I did right then and what I’m doing wrong now.

    The answer, of course, is that I did nothing “right’ then and I’m doing nothing “wrong” now. There are so many factors involved in that freakshow of a day, factors that will probably never align again. But still my subconscious won’t let it go. 

    So there’s your answer. Most words in a day: 45 pages. 

    But it’s also worth noting that those 45 pages? Complete and utterly useless. They got deleted on a first pass edit. I’m sure there was something I learned from those 45 pages that eventually found its way into the book. But the pages themselves? Not so perfect after all. 

  • Q&A: Do you find your’e drawn to the same colors/visuals/themes when you’re writing?

    Anonymous asked:

    Do you find your’e drawn to the same colors/visuals/themes when you’re writing? I feel like I overuse the same things in different books. “Oh look a dragon, how original”. Do you think this is a bad thing?

    There are a lot of things that keep showing up in my work. I reckon this is because I, um, wrote them, and I am me, and there are things that I resonate with, and I use them. 

    And then there’s the part where every book I write is about a secret princess. So you know. There’s that.

    But I think every writer has one core story that they keep telling in everything they do. Mine happens to be secret princess. Yours has something to do with dragons. 

    I remember Jennifer Weiner once talked about her work and how all of her stories are basically variations on the same theme: “My parents split up and I’m sad about it.”

    If you’re at all familiar with her work, you can see clearly where that comes in. And while her books are all quite similar to one another, it isn’t like she’s writing the same book all the time. They’re their own book, too. They’re just part of the same family. Variations on the same theme.

    Even Joss Whedon has recurring themes in his work: strong female characters; mind-control assassins; robot girlfriends; musical episodes. You can see a direct line from the Buffy musical episode to Lorne (the demon karaoke bar host) in Angel to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. It’s not a bad thing.

    (OK, so the Buffy musical was kind of cheesy. But that’s beside the point.)

    What I’m saying is, only you know why the dragons keep showing up. Do they mean something to you? Is your subconscious using them in your stories to try and sort something out? Is it a cheat, an easy go-to, like a reptilian version of Kraft Easy Mac you keep throwing in to keep from having to think too hard? Or are you just overanalyzing your alleged over-use of dragons?

    Think on that for a while and see where it leads you.