I call this productivity

I haven’t been posting regularly lately and for that I blame the Holidays. Too much was going on for me to reflect on my writing in addition to everything else that’s been going on. I’ll try to do better in the new year. That sounds like a resolution to me… more blogging and more um submitting…

Ok, so Christmas has come and gone and you can see down at the bottom I still haven’t submitted anything. Shame on me. But I am close. I am satisfied with the structure, the language and the pace of my story, usually my biggest weaknesses. But something is holding me up. I am incredibly dissatisfied with the end. So I’m working on that exclusively. Well maybe not exclusively to ALL else…

I’ve been doing lots of reading online lately, blogs, web zines and the like, pertaining to SFF and the writing of it. I feel like this immersing myself in the business is paying off.

What I read tonight as I put off coming up with the end of my story was very interesting. I read two interviews, one with Steven Erikson and one with Glen Cook over on Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist. Part of what makes this interesting is that they are two authors with similar work, from the same generation and both of whom I’ve read recently.

What provoked me to write this up here tonight were the similarities in their responses to similar questions.

Both authors claimed that there is a “generational difference” between when they started writing and now. Both are aged 50 + and launched their careers in the 80’s/90’s heyday of Fantasy. The differences they spoke of in each of their interviews revolved around the internet as a tool for self promotion and author/reader interaction. Both nearly verbatim to each other agreed that (paraphrased) books are the most-whole author/reader interaction. This in itself is a direct effect of the previously mentioned generational difference. What makes this interesting too is that these interviews occurred a twelve months apart from each other.

The second interesting bit my intellectual hooks clamped onto what that both authors hedged on answering queries about their own writing, evolution or strengths or weaknesses. I wonder if this is also a generational difference? I’ve heard authors praise their editors or books they’ve read since starting their writing… but not these two. ‘What are you talking about?’ or ‘I do what I want’ is about all I got from it. Cook admits to being what we call a “pantser.” I wonder what he would say to that term, or the fact that there is a term for it now.

My favorite line from Erikson’s answers: “What begins as balls ends up as confidence.”

I didn’t have a favorite line from, Cook but his punchy answers had me chuckling quite a bit.

Currently Reading:
Fantasy: Chronicles of the Black Company - Glen Cook
Scholarly: The Mabinogi - Patrick K. Ford
Writing:(I'm slacking here)

Submissions out:
Flash: 0
Short: 0
Agent: 0