Competition?

Good morning!

It's been a while. I've been torn between living and writing and this blog suffered in consequence because of the struggle. I won't bore you with what has been going on, it can only matter to the people involved and has nothing to do with writing except that it prevented me from indulging myself. I will say that in the past week I had two fairly productive days and that I wish I could be more productive.

The reason is that I've decided to enter one of my novels in a competition and I need to prepare the submission materials. Writing a synopsis, blurbs, an excerpt and etc.; you know, the usual thing. And speaking of usual; I usually don't even think of entering my work in any sort of competition. Having it published and placed where people can purchase it is competition enough for me. But it's time to take the next step in my evolution as a writer and get my work into the hands of people who can make a (hopefully) objective evaluation of it and learn if it is worthy of wider distribution.

You see, networking and getting your work where influential people can see it is part of the game, and I've not taken the steps necessary to do those things. I am not an especially social person and find myself standing on the edges of any group, looking in. I know this about myself and while I worked at altering my personality to help further my career before I was retired, I gratefully relapsed when I began writing.

I don't expect to set the world on fire with my work and never did. I don't believe that anything will come of my entry into this competition and while I will do my best to present my work in the best light, it is unlikely that I will be making any trips to the venue of the awards ceremony. Some people may see that as defeatism and self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, but I am being realistic. Aside from the things I learned in school, I am a self-taught writer and couple that with my lack of networking skills and you can see that there is little chance that I will succeed in winning anything in this competition. I will do the best that I can and hope for the best. If anything comes of it, then that will be good. If not, then I've lost nothing.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Congruencies, Questionable Interests and others.
Available on Kindle

What!?

Good Afternoon!

The title of this post pretty much says it all for me today. I've watched one of my novels climb into the Top 100 Kindle Genre Novels nearly every day this past week and I wonder why I've not received as much attention from critics, producers and even Big Publishing, if it sells so well.

Let's put the rankings into perspective. Out of the hundreds of thousands of books that Amazon sells in its Kindle Store, they are all broken up into genres; sub-groups. While my novels may work themselves into the Top 100, or even Top 10 in their genres, they may only rank several hundred out of the Top 100 overall. Or, even several thousand out of the rankings overall. There. That explains it. While my novels receive attention from readers, those people have the time and inclination to browse the Kindle Store looking for something worth their while to read. The critics, producers and publishers aren't looking for something worthwhile to read. They are looking for something worthwhile to review, convert into a movie or TV show, or to publish. They're looking for something that will make them some money. Something that they believe has a ready-made audience who will pay a few bucks to read or watch. With my limited efforts at promoting myself and my work, they just aren't ever going to see my stuff.

But, I am still writing and still feeding my addiction to producing stories that people might like to read and find entertaining. If I ever get the breaks needed to reach a wider audience, then that will be great. I'm not going to hold my breath.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Congruencies, A Taste For Blood and others.
Available on Kindle

Explanations in the "Afterwords"

Good evening!

Well, it's been a couple of days since I posted on this blog and I thought that today might be a good time to let people know that I was still alive.

Ah! The title of the post. I read recently that some authors consider an explanation after the story has wrapped up to be 'bad art'. I agree that an afterword isn't an idea that I can get behind, but I take exception to the reference to art. I'm not an artist. I write. Maybe poorly, maybe okay. I can't exactly be objective regarding my own work, so I only have an idea that I write well. But it isn't art. I don't think that my work sends anyone into rapturous admiration of the way my phrases turn and trip lightly off the tongue. Nor do I believe that my work makes people sit and think about the enormity of any inferences I may have made in my work. I write stories for people to read and, hopefully, enjoy.

Why do I think an afterword is a bad idea? Because if you have to explain what you have just spent 75,000 to 100,000 words laying out for them, then you didn't get your idea across. If you want to write an afterword to explain why you wrote what you wrote, then you are only craving attention and the writing isn't filling some need that you have. Maybe some writers dislike the anonymity of sitting at a pc and cranking out word after word with no cheerleaders to spur them on. I don't know. I write, I proofread, I edit, I copyright, I publish, I get paid for my work. Sometimes. What more is there? Oh, I admit that awards and recognition would be nice, but if I write well enough, then the recognition will come in time. I might be dead by that time, but who really cares? I have met my need to write and that is what really matters to me. I've never had cheerleaders, so I don't miss them.

These are my thoughts on the matter and they don't really matter to anyone but me. Take from them what you will.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Congruencies and others.
Available on Kindle

Inspiration

Good morning!

What is inspiration, how do you get it and what can you do with it?

It can be something as simple as hearing a song and feeling an emotion well up in you that you never considered before. Maybe you did consider it, but it never really stuck with you. Write about it. Write about how it makes you feel, how it moves you to take some action in your life or, how it has affected your life. Transfer those feelings and experiences to a fictitious character and you've got the makings of a story.

Many people experience inspiration but don't know what to do with it. Or, they shunt it aside as having nothing to do with what they are involved in at the time. I file mine away for later use. Cue the file to open with the advent of a song, a scent, a sensation, and you will have it available at will.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Behind the Stone, Eggs of Empire and others.
Available on Kindle

Working with stereotypes

Good morning!

Do we work with stereotypes? Yes...we...do! We avoid using real people in our stories so that we won't be sued; but what does that leave us? We can either build a character from 'whole cloth', or we can use stereotypes.

Stereotypes are wonderful things to work with; think of a ready-made template that you can shuffle the parts around here and there and you've got a character. I keep a variety of templates (stereotypes) on hand that I can remove from the box and alter in any number of ways. There's the 'self-absorbed celebrity' that I can make do almost anything. I mean, you take him or her out of the box, dust it off, and I can change its sex, make it a rock-star, a movie star, dress it up in pretty clothes and a not so pretty personality, or put it into a dire situation and show the growth in its personality as it slowly turns into someone who is handy to have around.

Then there's the good-ol'-boy redneck that can only think of getting drunk, laid, or both, in no particular order. I can show him as a stand-up kind of guy, or he can be the lowest of the low and become a not so bright villain. I can change his sex and make him the dirtiest kind of slattern, or a diamond in the rough.

Look around you. There are any number of people that you encounter every day that could be classified as stereotypes, if you don't look too close, and with a little imagination, they can be dressed up, dressed down, or left as they are. Keep in mind the level of their importance to the story. It's possible to invest too much effort into their personalities and wind up with a major character when you intended them to be simply a spear-carrier.

There is an interesting story about an author who became much better known after his death than he was in life, and his best known character became the subject of a couple of movies. The author intended the character to be no more than a secondary character, but he invested so much time and energy in him that he became not just a major character, but the main character of the story he was writing. It was a fortunate happenstance, but could prove to be a cautionary tale. What if the character didn't strike a chord with the readers? All that effort wasted.

So, as a writer, I keep my stereotyped characters close at all times. They provide versatile templates that I can use however I want. It's even possible to use the same template in a story in several different ways and arrive at not just one character, but an entire cast.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Questionable Interests and others.
Available on Kindle

That pesky thing called continuity

Good morning!

When writing a novel, there is no way to sit and write the entire thing from start to finish without a break. At least, not unless you are superhuman. People need to do things periodically, like eat, sleep, work, shop for necessities, those kinds of things. So, what happens if it has been several days since you worked on your novel? Well, you sit down, open the file, read where you left off and begin composing. And, let's say that you have forgotten a small part of what you wrote a week, or even a month earlier. If you go ahead with the piece and find later that you have written something rather important to the story that isn't consistent with an earlier passage; what are your remedies?

Well, you may feel that the earlier passage was particularly well-written and hate the idea of scrapping it. Besides which, it may be so deeply woven into the fabric of the story that there is no way to totally expunge it without adversely affecting the story. If that happens, there is no remedy except to rewrite a significant portion of the story. So, what is the best way to avoid experiencing such a catastrophe?

Stop what you are doing and actually read your work. Sure, you can skim over it quickly. Sometimes there is no other choice, especially if the work has gotten long and unwieldy. But you must be familiar at all times with the circumstances and occurrences in the story. So, you must read your work several times while you are writing. By the time you are finished with the piece, you will be heartily sick of it and ready to pitch it into the nearest oubliette, but you will know your work forward, backward and be able to drop into it at any page and know what is going to happen next as well as what has happened up to that point.

Other writers may have other ways of achieving continuity, but this is the method I use and it works very well for me. Whatever method you arrive at, use it well and it will not disappoint you.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of A Taste For Blood, Questionable Interests and others.
Available on Kindle

Stumbling block

Good morning!

Let's return to yesterday's topic, shall we? I spoke about learning the things necessary to produce a published novel and one of those things was copyrighting. Before I copyrighted my first novel, I had delayed the process, finding one reason or another to put it off just one more day because I was intimidated by it. I knew nothing about copyrighting and was afraid that being so close to achieving my goal, I would find that the cost was too high, or there would be a variety of hoops to jump through, each one more difficult than the last. Can you imagine my surprise when I bit the bullet and found the website?

The government office responsible for the website has a tutorial that is easily downloaded and points the way toward copyrighting your work. Once in the process, you must be careful and deliberate so that you don't make any costly mistakes, but the process itself is fairly simple. And, inexpensive. The cost can be as small as $35.00, or as high as a thousand or more. Unless you are a big-time publisher or author, you DON'T want to use the option with the higher cost. You may be tempted to do so if you are paranoid and believe that a multitude of publishers, authors or illicit business interests are just waiting for you to upload your work so they can steal it, but don't give in to those feelings. Just go the inexpensive route and trust that Bigtime Publishing isn't out to steal your idea. They move so slowly anyway that your work will be out and selling before they would be able to bring it to market. And if they do, well, you have a copyright, which means that you can sue them for copyright infringement.

This is just an example of the many things that may be holding you back from publishing your work. There are many other things that can frighten and intimidate you, and I say, "Get on with it!" Stand up to your fears and go right ahead. You will make mistakes, of course. Everybody does, but they aren't insurmountable. Consider it a learning process and keep each of them in mind.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Eggs of Empire, Taken Apart, It Happens Every Day and others.
Available on Kindle

Fear of failure

Good morning!

It's time to talk about that thing that no one ever wants to talk about. Are you afraid of failure? Do you think that if you put your work out in the world for others to have a look at, they won't like it and you'll get negative feedback? Of course you are. Many people are. That makes you like everybody else.

Okay, you say, "If everybody else is afraid of failure, then how do so many people succeed?"

The answer is simple. They choke back their fear and take the steps necessary to get things done. I've had to do that, and while I am not a raging success, I can at least hold my head up, look the world in the eye and spit. I've put my work out into the world and while a few people have turned away, many more have purchased my novels and come back for more.

My biggest failing is that I've had to learn how to write, proofread, edit, copyright, publish, produce acceptable cover art and market my work. With so many things to learn, there is always going to be something that has been overlooked. I accept responsibility for that failing and plug on ahead. As the saying goes, "Winners never quit and quitters never win."

With all that said, I will leave you today and hope that you manage to reach the amount of success that you would like to have.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Congruencies, It Happens Every Day and others.
Available on Kindle

Frame of mind to write

Good morning!

Yes, sometimes I'm not in the right frame of mind to write. It happens to everybody, and if there are any writers out there who say it has never happened to them, then I say, "Wait a while; it'll happen."

As I've said before, during blank periods and such, I just sit down and write almost anything until I've passed the line between writing and not writing, and then edit when I am in the proper frame of mind. Sometimes heavily. Entire passages, paragraphs or chapters may be deleted, but what I can use then or at a later date gets saved.

Perhaps it is outside influences that prevent a person from writing; in that case, work your way through the barrens and try again. If it is worry that interferes with you, address the problem you are dealing with until you can once again sit down and write. I see the problem as a matter or ordering priorities. I do what I can about whatever is bothering me and then sit down to decompress by writing.

At such times, I may seem distracted and bland of personality, but that's because I'm living a life inside my head. It's not my life, but that of a character. The show goes on within my mind and I am sitting back and watching it as I go about my life. When I have the time to sit and write, then the story has worked itself out in my head. For those who regiment their writing day by working on an outline and 'coloring between the lines', I can simply shrug and say that this is what works for me.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Eggs of Empire, It Happens Every Day, Questionable Interests and others.
Available on Kindle

Current Events, or not?

Good morning!

How many of us are prompted to write a story based on current events? A show of hands, please? Okay, a few, but not as many as I thought there would be.

It seems that the 'ripped from the headlines' school of thought isn't as prevalent as I thought it was. I know the news stories I've read for the past few years seem incomplete; the new breed of reporter seems to have forgotten the 'who, what, where, when and why' precepts of yesteryear, opting instead for the shrillest, most irritating way of reporting possible. Now, people are sent scurrying off to other news media for more information, making the reporter no more than the little boy standing at the city wall yelling, "Hey, look at that!"

And, that method of reporting gives us pause. We're left to fill in the blanks and that can lead to a lot of supposition, which in turn, spurs those creative writers among us to immediately follow the possible storylines that crop up in our heads. We think we can make it more interesting, more challenging, more gripping, more...well, you get the idea.

But, if we go in the wrong direction, we are not doing justice to what really happened. Maybe a minor character in the story was, in fact, the hero of the piece and was simply being modest. Or, the reporter didn't perform due diligence when writing the story and neglected to ferret out the facts. We can stir up a great deal of animosity if we don't get the facts of the story right. We can even create a false hero. I may be old-fashioned, but I believe in truth in all things. Sure, we're writing a piece of fiction, and we have some leeway in what we write, but let's get the facts straight. If we don't, we may as well have created the story from within our own minds in the first place. So, I steer clear of true stories, preferring to use my imagination to create what happened and who was there.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Congruencies, It Happens Every Day and others.
Avalaible on Kindle

Getting words on 'paper'

Good morning!

Why is it so difficult to get words on paper? Of course, this is a phrase dating back to the days before people used computers to write. Some people still use typewriters, but the great majority of writers use computers. Still, the phrase lingers on. Which brings us back to the title of the post.

Sometimes, I sit down to work on a piece and my mind is a blank. I may have left a character in a tight spot and need to find a resolution for the problem facing him or her, but be unable to think of anything. In those situations, I simply write. Anything, everything. I let the words warp themselves in my mind and on the 'page' and after a while, I have a glimmering of which way the story should go. Then I examine what I have written to discover if any of it is salvageable, and if so, work it into the story. If not, it is deleted and I continue on with the thought that has wormed its way into my brain.

Other times, I will sit down with an idea of what I want to write, but be undecided as to what form it should take. The first line, the first paragraph, the first page or two, or three, should grab the reader so that he or she will keep reading. I like to have some action, either active or passive to keep the reader's interest, but there are times when it seems important to me to get some character development going immediately. Of course, this can go hand in hand with the action, and I like to do that, but I also like to show the character's thought processes. What better way for the reader to identify with the character than to show him or her to be an average, run-of-the-mill person?

So, when you sit down to write, and the words just won't come; remember that a lot of the time, it doesn't matter what you write in the short term, so long as you craft it into something that someone wants to read before you publish it. Which brings me to a thought that crossed my mind while I was writing this.

Is what we do art? Or, is it simply a craft project? My poor abilities to weave words into a spell that makes people want to keep reading and reading though the clock has already struck two, is limited. I don't think of myself as an artist. I don't use high-falutin' words to describe what I do, or look into space with a dreamy expression on my face. (People would probably just think I was 'slow', or constipated.) No. I simply write. I tell stories. I take random thoughts from my mind and put them together in a (hopefully) coherent pattern that people might want to read.

Others can be artists if they want. I'll just settle for trying to be a good writer. I've had some small success at that and hope to build on that success so that more people will want to read what I write. I know that I will never win any awards or achieve any critical acclaim, but if my readers close my books wanting to find another of my works, I'll be satisfied.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Stitch in Thyme, Congruencies and others.
Available on Kindle

Character development

Good morning!

How do you work on character development? It's not hard to do, but it is time-consuming and a lazy writer will skimp on the important stuff. First of all, you show the character reacting to things that happen to him or her in the course of the story. It's also possible to reveal what he or she is thinking and show that his or her outlook and opinion on the subject is not that far from the norm. Or, if you want the character to be truly memorable, reveal an unconventional attitude. If he or she is a 'bad guy', show a bad attitude. Show how despicable the character can be. Reveal that he or she doesn't give a damn about conventions, morals or even the concept of good and bad. You can even put the character in a situation where he or she is confronted with something that would evoke a sympathetic response from a normal person and show that the character just doesn't care. Skew that personality so far off the norm that it is plain that he or she is a 'bad-un'.

But, you ask, won't that make him or her appear one-dimensional? Of course, it will. You can also mitigate things a little by showing him or her to react normally about something that he or she does care about. After all, even villains have families. They like to pet cats and dogs. They move through our lives like anybody else and are often indistinguishable from those around you. How many times in our lives have we been betrayed by a supposed friend because doing so was advantageous for them?

What I have posted here isn't all a writer can do to show character development, but like I said a few posts back; I'm not teaching a course in creative writing.

Have a good day and whatever you do, put your best into it.
Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Eggs of Empire, Questionable Interests and others.
Available on Kindle

Ludicrous

Good morning!

Did you ever stop to consider the matter of cover letters when submitting a work to a publisher or an agent? When I still did that kind of thing, I came across an agent who had a questionaire for the author to complete and enclose with the cover letter and novel submission. As I read it, I discovered that it was very similar to a job application and one of the things he wanted prospective clients to do was to tell him why they were exclusively qualified to write the story that they were submitting.

The story I was submitting was one that I had sweated and agonized over because the primary impetus for my writing it was to achieve a cathartic release. I tapped the negative and painful emotions generated by my own situation to create the characters, give them depth and advance the story. How was I supposed to tell him that? How was I supposed to tell him that I used my personal connection to the very emotions the characters were feeling to write the story?

If I had been writing a fantasy, how would I have told him why I was qualified to write such a story? Or, any story? For example: "I have read fantasies all my life." Or, I suppose someone could have written something like: "My Journalism Professor in college made us write a fantasy as an exercise."

Maybe the guy planned on judging the writer's ability to generate some inventive story about why they were 'exclusively qualified' to write the story they had written. I don't know. I guess it was a way to weed through the submissions he received. But, why couldn't he approach it in the way the writer was forced to? The agent is selling a service and the writer needs that service. The agent would get paid for his work and the writer hoped to get paid for his or her work. If the agent did his job creditably, both parties would be satisfied. Why did the agent feel the need to play games with the writer?

Perhaps the agent was indulging a need to exercise his own negligible power. Oh, I'm sure the agent would say something like his time was valuable and a lot of the submissions he received were a load of 'crap'. What about the submissions he would have received if the author hadn't been repulsed by the game the agent played? Some of those may have been worth his while. Maybe the business model for agents and publishers needs to be changed. I believe it is changing at this very moment and the agents and publishers are too slow to take advantage of the current situation because they are locked into the frame of mind fostered by their past experience.

Digital publishing is the way of not just the future, but the present. Big publishing as we know it is taking a big hit. While it will not die, it will be horribly wounded if publishers and agents don't find a way to market their services to authors without having everything their own way. The business has been heavily weighted in the interests of the publishers and agents for so long that they don't want to give that up and in their denial, they hope to ignore their problem in the hope it will go away. That isn't working and will not work in the future. Everybody is too busy looking for the next blockbuster that they are overlooking steady work.

Okay. Time to get off my soapbox.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Taken Apart, Questionable Interests and others.
Available on Kindle