#kodevas

[kmlaney]

3, 10, 14 - Writer Ask Meme

Answering this meme

3: Do you own any books on writing? If so, which is your favorite?

I have Strunk and White The Elements of Style rolling around somewhere. Writing with a Thesis: A Rhetoric and Reader (Skwire) was required for a college class and I never bothered selling it. I have a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing and borrowed Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew by Ursula LeGuin from my library. For writing references but not actually writing, I have Blood on the Page by Samantha Keel and The Storyteller’s Thesaurus by James M Ward and Anne Brown. I don’t know that I have a favorite, though I must say I really enjoyed Steering the Craft. I use the Thesaurus and Blood on the Page with fair regularity compared to the other books on writing, but then they're references, not guides.

10: If you had to write a novel about one of the side characters in your current WIP, which character would you choose?

Oh, toughie. There are several characters I could write about. Two characters that would be fun would be Maker Lewis, who starts on the side of the main antagonist and ends up an ally, and Marjorie Warren, who is a much younger incarnation of a close friend Phil left behind when they came to Mistlands, and who has no (conscious) memory of Phil’s world at all.

14: How long does it take you to write 500 words on a good day? On a bad one?

On a really good day I can churn out 500 words in 30 minutes or less. No interruptions, really flowing, got a great idea for a scene or hit the part I’ve been working toward, all the good stuff. On a bad day I won’t get 500 words at all. Not even close. I’ve gotten much better about reworking too much at the rough draft stage and just letting it go, but it still happens. Sometimes I get caught in researching stuff when I don’t need to or doomscrolling or any of the other myriad ways to avoid actually writing. Or opening up the doc and re-reading the last few sentences and just...nothing. Blergh.