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Tag: behind the scenes

A Question To Authors.

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How do you feel about making up new words to suit the world you’ve built (should you write Science Fiction and/or Fantasy). Do you ever get push back from your editors to try an use existing words instead? Does it depend on your fame level/readership base, just how much they would let that sort of thing slide? For example – should George R R Martin decide to create a bunch of new words, (being a very successfully selling author) would he have an easier time of it with his editors/publishers, than say a new body on the scene with their first ever book to be published & no copies sold as of yet. I would be most interested to know.

Also – how connected do you get/feel to the characters, places, events that you create. Potentially applicable to historical researchers and biographers too, as they expend tremendous amounts of energy and time researching all facets of a time period/event/people. Like, do you cry when you kill them off, or they die, because that makes the story better, or is the basis for another event. I’m getting wordy here. Veering off track. I could pull a full tangent right now! How attached are you to characters, reoccurring or otherwise? Conversely, do you chuckle when you do heinous shit to those characters you made that you don’t like – especially if based off of people in your own life – like a former bully, or ex of some sort. I’d love to know!

I’m nearing another full calendar year in between writing a full book of short stories – again. Not that I intend to go for a round three, but…. maybe? Hard to say. Work has been busier this year. Lids are older now. Wife has the year off. Kids are enrolled in way too many extracurriculars that require driving to & from locations. So unlikely I’d write much any time soon. But I get flashes of story lines I’d like to tackle every now & again. I feel like the Covid brain fog from March added some hard breaking to my desire to write a cohesive narrative. I just couldn’t hold it all in my head with enough clarity to put pen to paper. Brain damage on a vascular level, it be like that sometimes. Bet.

Anatomy of a scene.

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It came to me yesterday almost exactly how it played out in real life beat for beat. I followed my FIL to his shop in an open side by side in minus twenty six degree Celsius weather, to go and get the Bobcat. The seat was ice cold, the controls were frigid to the touch, and the engine struggled to start without the engine block heater having run, or the prime pump heater turning on. As I was wiping down the front window to be able to see through it from inside the dark shop. Frost was building up on the inside of the glass as I sat there breathing in the bitterly cold air. I thought, this is a good experience to capture as is, and show some of the hardship and grit the black ops folks go through living in perpetual darkness and cold out by Pluto. The rodent issue was a real problem for us when we renovated our house several years ago. You rush around working focusing on big stuff, only to later take a closer look and start to see signs of the pests along the edges of base boards and under objects you haven’t moved in a while.

That is the sort of day dream, lived experience I need in order to write something that feels worth while. Since I’m no rocket buff, and don’t follow math and such, I try to focus my science-fiction on the people involved rather than the actual science of living and working, and fighting in outer space.

That’s a little insight into my writing and let us say “research” for any given chapter in my interconnected series. Thanks for following along.