Friday, July 1, 2016
GUEST BLOG: Turning it on Like a Faucet by Victor Milán (The Dinosaur Knights Blog Tour Stop)
Victor Milán's novel The Dinosaur Lords, which was released
last year, was well received by readers. It was being talked about as a
combination of Jurassic Park and Game of Thrones. Now, on July 5, 2016 The
Dinosaur Knights, the sequel to The Dinosaur Lords, is set to be released by
Tor Publishing.
Summary of The Dinosaur Knights:
Paradise is a
sprawling, diverse, often cruel world. There are humans on Paradise but dinosaurs
predominate: wildlife, monsters, beasts of burden, and of war. Armored knights
ride dinosaurs to battle legions of war-trained Triceratops and their upstart
peasant crews.
Karyl Bogomirsky is one such knight who has chosen to rally those who seek a way from the path of war and madness. The fact that the Empire has announced a religious crusade against this peaceful kingdom, the people who just wish to live in peace anathema, and they all are to be converted or destroyed doesn't help him one bit.
Things really turn to mud when the dreaded Grey Angels, fabled ancient weapons of the Gods who created Paradise in the first place come on the scene after almost a millennia. Everyone thought that they were fables used to scare children. They are very much real.
And they have come to rid the world of sin...including all the humans who manifest those vices.
Karyl Bogomirsky is one such knight who has chosen to rally those who seek a way from the path of war and madness. The fact that the Empire has announced a religious crusade against this peaceful kingdom, the people who just wish to live in peace anathema, and they all are to be converted or destroyed doesn't help him one bit.
Things really turn to mud when the dreaded Grey Angels, fabled ancient weapons of the Gods who created Paradise in the first place come on the scene after almost a millennia. Everyone thought that they were fables used to scare children. They are very much real.
And they have come to rid the world of sin...including all the humans who manifest those vices.
Fantasy Book Critic is the first stop on the blog tour for
The Dinosaur Knights. Future stops include:
Kitten Speaks Geek and A Reading Machine – July 4
Suvudu – July 5
Nerdophiles – July 6
JADBB – July 7
Mighty Thor Jrs – July 8
Please welcome Victor Milán and feel free to stop by the
other blog stops on this blog tour.
*****************************************************************************
Turning it On Like a Faucet by Victor Milan
I can’t tell you how to write well. I can’t tell you how to sell your writing.
But I can tell you some things that might help you to write. Which we all agree is an important first step to those other things, I hope.
I want to talk about inspiration.
When
I was back in high school, we creative kids had a cliché: "you can't
turn inspiration off and on like a faucet." And then, after decades of
writing, and working daily to make myself a better writer, I discovered
something shocking.
Oh, yes, you can. That is how it works.
Except,
it’s not so much a matter of turning it on. In my experience(which is
the only one I can vouch for), inspiration is exactly like the water
pressure in, yes, your faucet. Water’s always there. And as you know
too well if you’ve ever blown a leak in your water lines, it always
wants to come out.
It works the same with inspiration.
The
reason water doesn’t gush out constantly from that faucet is that
something’s stopping it. That something is the valve which you use the
faucet to open and close. So more than turning the water on and off,
it’s a matter of letting the water flow – or of choking it off.
That’s how inspiration works, too.
The good news is, it’s inexhaustible. Inspiration is not only always available, it never runs out.
So
what am I talking about? Inspiration is creativity: where cool stuff
comes from. It’s where you get the heart and soul of stories and songs
and beautiful pictures.
You can’t reason
your way to a good story. That's not what reason does. Your rational
mind is great for planning out story structure, say. For me, it’s most
powerful use is figuring out the right questions for inspiration to
answer. It’s a modifier of creativity, not its source.
What do we do to shut off the flow? I’ve spotted a couple of ways I do it.
You
know that little voice in your head? The one that tells you you're
doing it wrong. That you're not good enough. That you can't do it.
It's your doubts, your fears. Sometimes it's even common sense – like
fear, and doubt, and reason, common sense has vital uses. But not when
it's telling you, you can't.
Another twist on this is constantly asking yourself, Is this the right scene? The right paragraph? The right character? The right sentence? The right word?
Yeah, that one’s lethal. At least to me. When I find myself worrying about that – and worrying
is a poor thing to find yourself doing in general – it’s like trying to
drive with the emergency brake on. Either I stall out completely, or I
force myself by sheer will power to slowly grind words out. Which
turns the most joyous thing I do (well, it’s tied) into one of the most
painful.
I
have a personal touchstone: if it’s not fun for me to write, how can
it be fun for you to read? The stuff that comes out when I’m constantly
squeezing hard on looking for the right this or that … really bears that out.
And
you want to know something ironic about what I grind out like that?
Within a couple days, I damn near always throw it out – because inspiration provides me a beautiful way to do it.
Here’s where you ask for a simple, easy way to stop turning off your creative flow. And here’s where I wish I had one.
I
do have some things you can try. One quick trick that I find useful,
as I gather many authors have throughout history, is taking a walk.
It’s fun for me, especially now that I have a dog again. And I find I
do some of my most productive thinking on our walks: on what I’m
writing, how I write, and how to overcome my tendency to stop the flow
of inspiration.
Look
for and learn the ways you block yourself. Then work out ways to stop
doing that. For instance, I’ve taught myself to be on the lookout for
the “right” this and that perfectionism. When I catch myself doing it,
as I so often still do, I literally tell myself to knock it off, let go
of that concern, and drive on. Which is a strong way to break a habit:
break the spasm (here, perfectionism), and then overwrite the habit
with a more useful one (write freely) and then get on with it.
I
find the currently popular concept of “zero draft” immensely helpful at
overcoming my deadly, blocking perfectionism. My basic criterion for a
zero draft is simple: done = good. And that’s it.
Please
note this absolutely does not mean I don’t try to craft the best piece
of writing I possibly can; indeed, this is the only reliable way I can do that. Grinding it out
produces the opposite. And I know from experience that I do not really
know the landscape of a tale – character, incident, structure – until
I’ve walked over it once. It takes me a draft to know my story, and how
to tell it.
So I leave “good” for the rewrite, and just get it done.
Ideally.
I am still struggling to overcome decades of unwittingly instilling
this habit of crippling perfectionism in myself. That’s something I can’t switch off like a faucet.
But
teaching myself the discipline of the zero draft is helping me learn to
stop shutting off my inspiration. So I recommend it to you.
And good luck at stopping stopping yourself. Let the inspiration flow. And have fun!
1:15 AM | 
Posted by
Cindy |
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1 comments:
It doesn't matter what sort of style you prefer to express your ideas, what matters is expressing it. I am not an avid reader nor do I possess any good writing skills but I feel that it's just a thought. You can do whatever you believe is a good work. Few websites like http://readaddict.com/ https://www.goodreads.com/ helped me to find the right book, thus much of time!!!