Well, it only took me seven months to come back to this blog. I could go through a litany of reasons why I stopped writing the blog, but excuses won't serve anybody any good, so suffice it to say I was gone for a while and now I'm back - hopefully to write in this blog a lot more, just as hopefully I'll be writing a lot more, in general.
2010 was an interesting year for me, full of changes, and it's looking like 2011 is going to be much the same. Last year I wrote a novel, which, although it has been delayed for reasons out of my control, is still looking like it's going to get published sometime this year.
I moved out to Vancouver Island in May of 2010, which was a big change for me. Going back to school has been an interesting experience, and I learned that I'm a lot better at it than I originally thought...when I apply myself, that is. However I also learned that school is very expensive and the government doesn't like you when you move back in with your parents. Which means that I can't afford to keep going for now. The downsides are that I can't afford to keep going to school and have to get a full-time job again, but the upside is that I'll be doing a lot more writing again.
Key Publications is doing their Vicious Novel Writing Month contest again this year and I've opted to try and write another 50000 word mini-novel in January. If anything it'll keep my writing habits going and keep my mind sharp for February where I (hopefully) get started on the sequel to 'Hearts', unless I get wrapped up in this new story idea I have about psychics...
So that's the gist of 2010. My resolution is to write this blog at least once a week, not to mention all of the other resolutions I've stacked on there (most of them to do with writing, of course)! I'll let you know how my projects and ideas are going, and occasionally talk about my personal life, as well. You have to vent somewhere, right?
Well here's to 2011, everyone! It is my goal to maintain the same level of incurable optimism that I've held over the course of my life, especially when it comes to writing. Oh, and wish me luck with ViNoWriMo this year! I'm only 6000 words behind right now...shouldn't be a big deal, right?
Showing posts with label hearts of the betrothed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hearts of the betrothed. Show all posts
Monday, January 3, 2011
Thursday, July 29, 2010
On Collaboration
No man is an island, or so John Donne once surmised. Although the phrase is pretty general and can apply to nearly any aspect of the human experience, in this blog I would like to equate the phrase to the process of writing. In other words, collaboration and the sharing of ideas.
"Two heads are better than one" would be the other appropriate phrase to use.
I often think about what Hearts of the Betrothed would look like if I hadn't shared my ideas about the novel with anybody while it was still in the early parts of its development. Certainly it would look different than it does now, in the later stages of the second draft, but can I be certain that the story is better than it would have been if I'd kept it all a secret? Did conference with friends and colleagues improve the overall story, or just save me time in editing?
I'm sure there are writers out there who have the patience to finish an entire piece of work without sharing it with anybody, but I am not one of those writers. Whether it's a need for approval or a just a method of getting free feedback, I have to share pieces of my work with others before it's done. Sometimes they tell me it's good and to carry on.
Other times somebody will say something that makes me look at the story from a different angle.
The fact of the matter is that each of us thinks in a very specific kind of way, and they're all very different. If we all looked at the world through the exact same paradigm, reading would be a lot less interesting. Every narrative would sound the same, because we would all be looking at the world in the exact same way! Some writers focus on setting, others on characters and dialogue, others on action. An effective writer, of course, has a balance of all three in their stories but we all have strengths and weaknesses.
The importance of sharing your work with others is that sometimes somebody else will see a way in which a particular scene could have improved depth, or is lacking a detail or two that would paint a much clearer picture of what is going on, or improve the link between a scene and the overall theme of the story.
Of course if you don't agree with a suggestion, you don't have to use it. You're the writer, after all. Any story you write is your baby; your keystrokes are the Word of God.
A good example of what I'm talking about is the character of Eowyn in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Granted, this is an anecdote that was related to me so I have no way of knowing if it's true or not, but it illustrates my point.
When Tolkien was penning The Two Towers, his daughter complained to him that he never put any women in his stories. Now before somebody mentions Arwen, I will remind everyone that the movies deviated quite a bit from the original story. Arwen was just a shotgun-wedding character thrown in at the end to marry Aragorn. In fact, Eowyn was originally supposed to marry Aragorn in the early drafts...so it's interesting how things can change that way, in this case based on the suggestion of a young woman who wanted to see more than just a bunch of boring old dudes in her father's work. Eowyn became a rather powerful feminine character considering how misogynistic Tolkien's work tended to be.
I know that my own work would not feel as complete if I had not received feedback and suggestions from my friends and colleagues. The collective consciousness is far more powerful than any one individual's imagination. What if Byron, Shelley and Shelley hadn't challenged each other to write horror stories? Frankenstein never would have existed!
On to collaboration. I was recently involved in a collaborative project (still a work in progress as far as editing is concerned) and was discussing other collaborative possibilities with a friend of mine last week, and it got me to thinking about other collaborative works that I've encountered over the years.
One huge thing that I've noticed is that collaborative works seem to require more effort than if you're just writing something on your own. Sure, you've got two or more people motivating each other to stay focused (like a gym group, etc.) but your work is not entirely your own...and that can make it hard to feel like you're putting in your full creative potential.
However, I've noticed some amazing literature come out of collaboration. Anne McCaffrey? Not a huge fan. Her collaborative works? Much better, in my opinion. I've also never been that big on David Eddings, but when he collaborated with his wife on The Redemption of Althalus, the improvement in quality leaps off of the page at you. All it takes is that second pair of eyes and voice added to a project to really give it some depth, sometimes.
An example from my own life would be Dimensions. For those of you who don't know me very well, Dimensions is the table-top role-playing game that I started to develop in high school. At around 15 to 16 I was playing a lot of RPGs with friends, but found myself dissatisfied with the rules systems for one reason or another. As a result, I decided to develop my own. It started as a project in my basement, written out on looseleaf paper. I borrowed the elements of rules that I liked from various systems, and made up the rest. A lot of my ideas I shared with my best friends Travis and Vic during physics class, which got the ball rolling even further.
We started to play the system, to test it out. Needless to say, early forays quickly pointed out the glaring inequities in the system. As a result, I went back and tweaked a little, then tried it again. The system got better, more fair for all players.
Eventually people started playing Dimensions on their own, without me around to 'supervise'. Travis, especially, loved the system and started tweaking it in his own way. We lost touch for a while, but once we reconnected (which had a lot to do with Dimensions, actually) we began to compile the system and hash out a complete rules system. It's still a work in progress, but what was once a casual idea became, with some collaboration, something that has the potential to be published one day. At first it was hard for me to give up complete creative control, but I never could have gotten Dimensions this far without Travis and the other contributors to the system.
When you release an idea into the collective consciousness, it is no longer entirely your own. When you collaborate on an idea, every imagination improves the finished product as a whole.
What does everyone else think? Is it better to collaborate, or hold firm to your own creative ideas until you have a finished product, untainted by the opinions of others?
Collaboration can create unexpected ideas that never would have been conceived otherwise...at least, that's what I believe. I was brought up to believe in the idea of sharing. It hasn't failed me so far.
-James Funfer
"Two heads are better than one" would be the other appropriate phrase to use.
I often think about what Hearts of the Betrothed would look like if I hadn't shared my ideas about the novel with anybody while it was still in the early parts of its development. Certainly it would look different than it does now, in the later stages of the second draft, but can I be certain that the story is better than it would have been if I'd kept it all a secret? Did conference with friends and colleagues improve the overall story, or just save me time in editing?
I'm sure there are writers out there who have the patience to finish an entire piece of work without sharing it with anybody, but I am not one of those writers. Whether it's a need for approval or a just a method of getting free feedback, I have to share pieces of my work with others before it's done. Sometimes they tell me it's good and to carry on.
Other times somebody will say something that makes me look at the story from a different angle.
The fact of the matter is that each of us thinks in a very specific kind of way, and they're all very different. If we all looked at the world through the exact same paradigm, reading would be a lot less interesting. Every narrative would sound the same, because we would all be looking at the world in the exact same way! Some writers focus on setting, others on characters and dialogue, others on action. An effective writer, of course, has a balance of all three in their stories but we all have strengths and weaknesses.
The importance of sharing your work with others is that sometimes somebody else will see a way in which a particular scene could have improved depth, or is lacking a detail or two that would paint a much clearer picture of what is going on, or improve the link between a scene and the overall theme of the story.
Of course if you don't agree with a suggestion, you don't have to use it. You're the writer, after all. Any story you write is your baby; your keystrokes are the Word of God.
A good example of what I'm talking about is the character of Eowyn in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Granted, this is an anecdote that was related to me so I have no way of knowing if it's true or not, but it illustrates my point.
When Tolkien was penning The Two Towers, his daughter complained to him that he never put any women in his stories. Now before somebody mentions Arwen, I will remind everyone that the movies deviated quite a bit from the original story. Arwen was just a shotgun-wedding character thrown in at the end to marry Aragorn. In fact, Eowyn was originally supposed to marry Aragorn in the early drafts...so it's interesting how things can change that way, in this case based on the suggestion of a young woman who wanted to see more than just a bunch of boring old dudes in her father's work. Eowyn became a rather powerful feminine character considering how misogynistic Tolkien's work tended to be.
I know that my own work would not feel as complete if I had not received feedback and suggestions from my friends and colleagues. The collective consciousness is far more powerful than any one individual's imagination. What if Byron, Shelley and Shelley hadn't challenged each other to write horror stories? Frankenstein never would have existed!
On to collaboration. I was recently involved in a collaborative project (still a work in progress as far as editing is concerned) and was discussing other collaborative possibilities with a friend of mine last week, and it got me to thinking about other collaborative works that I've encountered over the years.
One huge thing that I've noticed is that collaborative works seem to require more effort than if you're just writing something on your own. Sure, you've got two or more people motivating each other to stay focused (like a gym group, etc.) but your work is not entirely your own...and that can make it hard to feel like you're putting in your full creative potential.
However, I've noticed some amazing literature come out of collaboration. Anne McCaffrey? Not a huge fan. Her collaborative works? Much better, in my opinion. I've also never been that big on David Eddings, but when he collaborated with his wife on The Redemption of Althalus, the improvement in quality leaps off of the page at you. All it takes is that second pair of eyes and voice added to a project to really give it some depth, sometimes.
An example from my own life would be Dimensions. For those of you who don't know me very well, Dimensions is the table-top role-playing game that I started to develop in high school. At around 15 to 16 I was playing a lot of RPGs with friends, but found myself dissatisfied with the rules systems for one reason or another. As a result, I decided to develop my own. It started as a project in my basement, written out on looseleaf paper. I borrowed the elements of rules that I liked from various systems, and made up the rest. A lot of my ideas I shared with my best friends Travis and Vic during physics class, which got the ball rolling even further.
We started to play the system, to test it out. Needless to say, early forays quickly pointed out the glaring inequities in the system. As a result, I went back and tweaked a little, then tried it again. The system got better, more fair for all players.
Eventually people started playing Dimensions on their own, without me around to 'supervise'. Travis, especially, loved the system and started tweaking it in his own way. We lost touch for a while, but once we reconnected (which had a lot to do with Dimensions, actually) we began to compile the system and hash out a complete rules system. It's still a work in progress, but what was once a casual idea became, with some collaboration, something that has the potential to be published one day. At first it was hard for me to give up complete creative control, but I never could have gotten Dimensions this far without Travis and the other contributors to the system.
When you release an idea into the collective consciousness, it is no longer entirely your own. When you collaborate on an idea, every imagination improves the finished product as a whole.
What does everyone else think? Is it better to collaborate, or hold firm to your own creative ideas until you have a finished product, untainted by the opinions of others?
Collaboration can create unexpected ideas that never would have been conceived otherwise...at least, that's what I believe. I was brought up to believe in the idea of sharing. It hasn't failed me so far.
-James Funfer
Monday, June 21, 2010
A first post (that few will likely read)
I always struggle with denial.
When I was growing up it took me years to consciously accept the fact that I didn't believe in god even though deep down I already knew it to be true. I was in denial about being an adult for a good five years, although I think a lot of my generation struggle with that one. In some ways I'm still in denial about it. I was in denial about my first grey hair. I plucked it from my arm, actually. Out of sight out of mind. Until the grey hairs outnumber the white I think I can get away with that one.
A great showcase of personal denial for me was that strange and uncomfortable feeling you get when you realize that you are no longer as quick to understand technology as you used to be. A new cellular device like a blackberry or internet concept like RSS feeds is presented to you and you actually have to concentrate to understand how it works. Gone are the days when I can simply 'figure something out' by looking at it or fiddling around with it. I'm sure many people my age, or perhaps even most of them can still pick up a new piece of technology and understand it without much of a problem, but it's a matter of proximity and exposure in my mind. I've been out of touch for years, and after a certain age your mind is no longer as mutable as it once was. Now I RTFM all the time now, or use 'wikihows', etc. to understand how technology is out-pacing my understanding of things on a regular basis.
I was in denial about the internet surpassing my capacity for understanding for years. However, I will not take this one lying down. All it takes is a little effort, which I was not until recently willing to give. This is one of the reasons that I have started a new blog and consolidated my internet content into google reader for easier access.
The other reason is to promote myself as a writer.
I am soon to be published through Key Publications (keypub.net for those of you who are interested - best site around for aspiring writers) and it occurred to me that promotion and networking are paramount for a new writer. My objective is to start a blog that people will eventually follow; a blog chronicling my writing process as I finish my first novel and beyond. I also plan on including posts about various writing ideas I have along the way, which may or may not be used at some point.
In case anybody is curious, the book is slated to be called 'Hearts of the Betrothed'. The series will likely be titled the 'Shattered Crystal' trilogy.
For anybody who reads this, I would love to answer more questions about the novel if you leave a comment.
In a nutshell, that's the intent of this blog, in any case.
-James
When I was growing up it took me years to consciously accept the fact that I didn't believe in god even though deep down I already knew it to be true. I was in denial about being an adult for a good five years, although I think a lot of my generation struggle with that one. In some ways I'm still in denial about it. I was in denial about my first grey hair. I plucked it from my arm, actually. Out of sight out of mind. Until the grey hairs outnumber the white I think I can get away with that one.
A great showcase of personal denial for me was that strange and uncomfortable feeling you get when you realize that you are no longer as quick to understand technology as you used to be. A new cellular device like a blackberry or internet concept like RSS feeds is presented to you and you actually have to concentrate to understand how it works. Gone are the days when I can simply 'figure something out' by looking at it or fiddling around with it. I'm sure many people my age, or perhaps even most of them can still pick up a new piece of technology and understand it without much of a problem, but it's a matter of proximity and exposure in my mind. I've been out of touch for years, and after a certain age your mind is no longer as mutable as it once was. Now I RTFM all the time now, or use 'wikihows', etc. to understand how technology is out-pacing my understanding of things on a regular basis.
I was in denial about the internet surpassing my capacity for understanding for years. However, I will not take this one lying down. All it takes is a little effort, which I was not until recently willing to give. This is one of the reasons that I have started a new blog and consolidated my internet content into google reader for easier access.
The other reason is to promote myself as a writer.
I am soon to be published through Key Publications (keypub.net for those of you who are interested - best site around for aspiring writers) and it occurred to me that promotion and networking are paramount for a new writer. My objective is to start a blog that people will eventually follow; a blog chronicling my writing process as I finish my first novel and beyond. I also plan on including posts about various writing ideas I have along the way, which may or may not be used at some point.
In case anybody is curious, the book is slated to be called 'Hearts of the Betrothed'. The series will likely be titled the 'Shattered Crystal' trilogy.
For anybody who reads this, I would love to answer more questions about the novel if you leave a comment.
In a nutshell, that's the intent of this blog, in any case.
-James
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