Rediscovering discovery.

I sat down last night after having not done any writing for a while and started plunking away. It was not long before I rediscovered why I love this.

It's been a few months since I finished writing A Ghost of Fire, my first novel (but my third book), and I started in again on chapter two of "A Ghost of Water." To be honest I had a fair bit of anxiety over starting the sequel. I had the first chapter done a while ago and it's available as a preview at the end of A Ghost of Fire, but I began to wonder: can I really do this? I was afraid I'd exhausted everything I had to say about these characters. As it turns out that's not the case.

Because writing (fiction or otherwise) isn't always about putting things on paper which you already know that you know. In large part it's about the art of discovery. Stephen King in his fantastic book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, explains that for him writing is a bit like archaeology. It's more about uncovering things, sweeping away the dirt to discover things you were unaware were there.

So in a way I'm rediscovering discovery.

I'm discovering that, for me at least, the writing process is just as much about learning something about these strange characters as it is about teaching these characters to the audience. There are moments when I'll write something...and be surprised by it.

Now, I do work from an outline. I have a basic idea where the story is headed but sometimes things crop up which may change that. As I wrote last night I discovered one of the sub-themes of the story I didn't know I was going to have to help the characters wrestle through. And I'm excited to see where it goes.

So as you write (or create whatever it is you create), don't get stuck on just getting the characters or ideas from A to B. Let them live a little. Let them have some run around time. Let them play in the mud and see what happens. You may be pleasantly surprised.
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Website: http://samwhittaker.webstarts.com/
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"A Ghost of Fire" NOW AVAILABLE!

My new novel, A Ghost of Fire, is now available in print and several electronic formats.


Kindle, Nook, other Ebook formats (ALL only $0.99!) are available Here.

Paperback ($14.99) available Here.

Hardcover special ($22.95) available Here.

Free Sample Chapters (1-5) of "A Ghost of Fire"

To help with the wait, here are Chapters 1-5 of "A Ghost of Fire," the new Paranormal Thriller coming out in September. They are free to read/download: Here.

Description.

Steve Nicholas wasn't looking for drama. He was just looking for a job. But when he lands a position as a Janitor at a respectable data processing company strange things begin to happen. There's the smell of smoke and the echoes of childlike laughter. But these inexplicable things may only be the beginning of something much more menacing.

He soon begins to have increasingly terrifying nightmares and to experience ghostly encounters while awake. It won't be long until Steve finds himself caught between warring supernatural forces.

If he isn't careful he might get burned...or worse.

List Prce: $14.99
5.5" x 8.5"
328 pages
Coming: September 2011

The Narcissitic-yet-Humble act of Publishing

Arguing with Myself



I sometimes wonder if every author goes through the same internal argument I do when getting ready to publish a new work.

It goes something like this: I say something to myself like, "This is the most brilliant thing I've ever done -- how can it fail?" Then about three seconds later I reply, "This junk is never going to go anywhere, is it you loser?"

I feel like Gollum in that scene from The Two Towers film where he's arguing with himself. It's kind of messed up.

It's true what they say, we can be our own worst critics. But at the same time we can be our own highest praisers. I doubt whether either of these options is healthy.

Not even the praise of close friends or loved ones can always change the course of this mental melodrama. "Oh, this was brilliant!" Someone says. then you respond, "Thanks... are you just saying that because your my mom?"

A Touch of Reality Helps

I think the key here is not to be too hard on ourselves while at the same time not to think too highly of ourselves either. I mean, you know how annoying it can be to be around people who can either  say nothing positive about themselves ... or who are so in love with themselves that you wish they would take a long walk off a short pier. Why be either of those people? Or worse, both?

In our own analysis of our work we must neither be too afraid to let our written work out into the open nor be too narcissitic with our work that it gets set loose before it is ready, before we have had a chance to cut and/or strengthen its weaknesses.

Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own

Find honest people who will read what you've written, analyze it and tell you what they liked and what they didn't, what worked and what didn't. And LISTEN to them for the love of all that's holy.

All three of my books (The Exiles Next Door, The New Book of Acts, and A Ghost of Fire) have had at least four different people proofread and edit. They brought four different perspectives and gave four different sets of observations. And that's what you want. You want variety in review.

I hope that helps.
Does it my Precious?
It does, it does...Gollum.

To read more of my writing:

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Purchase print books: The New Book of Acts & The Exiles Next Door.

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Fear & Fiction

So...a ghost story, huh? Occasionally that's the sort of reaction I get when I tell people about the new book. What I get from this is a question: "Why would you want to write about that?" There's probably an underlying assumption about the value of the horror genre (among other assumptions). I want to explore briefly here the place fear has in our culture and the horror genre as a means to express that fear.

Real Bad Stuff

Let's make no mistake: there are fearful and terrible things in our world. The recent tragedy in Norway is a clear-faced example. A deranged person goes on a rampage and ends over 90 lives. There is radical evil at work.

The scary thing is that "evil" is not completely "out there" somewhere but also "in here," in us, in me. I/we share responsibility for the very real, very bad stuff that happens in our world. We make choices every day about how we interact with people face to face, on a message board and when someone we're talking about isn't around at all. And not all of these choices contribute to the wellness of others. Do they?

And it's not just people. I am one among many who believe there are real and dark spiritual forces at work in the world. evil must be understood holistically (in both it's visible & invisible forms) if it is truly to be reckoned with.

When contact with this sort of terror sits inside us should we be surprised that it seeks to come out somehow?

Output

Now, humanity is designed, engineered to be creative. We seek multiple forms of expression. We generate new ways of communicating our emotions, experiences, rationalizations, thoughts ... including the fearful ones.

"Horror," "Supernatural Thriller," "Paranormal Fiction" or whatever category you want to use are valid expressions of the fear which sits on a cultural throne. And this fear must be expressed.

Why? Because if we are not honest about fear and simply supress it we will find that farther down the road our fears will have grown and it will be much harder to cope with them.

Healing always requires honesty. The truth must be named and called out before it can be fully played out in us.

Separating the Good Bad from the Bad Bad.

Are there ways of expressing this that are unhealthy? You bet. As in any form of expression, any use of a genre of storytelling or poetry or whatever there are excesses which are just un-helpful.

What is the goal? Is it to get as much atrocious activity on the screen or on the page? Does there need to be buckets of blood and gore? See, I don't think so. As a matter of fact when we inundate ourselves with these they lose their meaning, their power to express fear.

When I started writing "A Ghost of Fire" and to plan for the subsequent volumes I chose to write in such a way that relied more on tension and suspense rather than on simple atrocity. Is there blood in the book? Yes, but it's strategically used. It's not, "Oh, we've gone two more pages, let's get some gore in there."

The Fate of Fear

Will fear always reign? No. Fear has had its dark night to do what it wants. But remember this. Never forget this: "There is no love in fear. Perfect love drives out fear" (1 John 4:18).

Take that, fear.







Open your Eyes

Where do you get your ideas? That's a strange question, because it appears to assume a single source of ideas. I really don't think there is one. I think inspiration for writing or any other creative endeavor comes in many different shapes and it keeps no schedule. Sometimes it's clear and in your face, sometimes it creeps up on you  and pounces when you least expect.

Here's an example from personal experience. A few years ago while I was writing my first book, The Exiles Next Door, I had basically finished the thing...or so I thought. Then as I lay in bed one night, trying to get to sleep an idea seemed to drop out of nowhere. It was a simple line I'd heard a fellow classmate say in my Hebrew class in college that had stuck in my brain like popcorn kernels stick in your teeth. I couldn't get to sleep until I got up and wrote the idea down. It became an entire chapter of the book.

Sometimes inspiration develops like a diamond: slowly, over a long period of time. You see something like a billboard or somebody do something at the mall or whatever. You say to yourself, "I have no idea why, but that's important and I'm going to hold onto it until I figure out why." It's sort of like a grain of sand in an oyster which over time becomes a pearl.

Here's another example. My second book, The New Book of Acts, has a chapter which is based on a conversation between myself, my wife and another person in the first church I pastored in Michigan. We had this conversation where we talked about new churches and how some had picked non-traditional names. I wondered out loud if a new church could start and never pick a name. The idea met with opposition. it then became the basis for Chapter 3: A Church with no Name. But it took a while for that idea to take shape into a chapter.

The point is this: When it comes to ideas for creative projects ALWAYS keep your eyes OPEN. You never know when you're going to strike gold. Even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant incident can blossom into a core concept for a story, a chapter, a song, a scene, a play... anything.

Maybe keep a small pad of paper with you to jot down an idea. I've used this before. It can be helpful but its not necessary.

To read more of my writing:

sample/purchase ebooks: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/samwhittaker

Purchase print books: The New Book of Acts & The Exiles Next Door.

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Expectations and the "let down" effect of sequels

It's happened to all of us. We've seen a movie sequel or read a book sequel because we thought the first one or previous ones in the series were so brilliant that we just HAD to check out the next one. And then...the fizzle. It wasn't what we hoped for. Or film Franchises get "rebooted" and the fanboys and fangirls get all up in arms because "It won't be the same."

What is it with all this?? Is it the fault of studios and authors/publishers who don't know what they're doing? Are these people completely incompetent? Or is there more going on here?

Because consumer products of any kind are a two-way street (Lane 1 - Producers, Lane 2 - Consumer) I suggest there's a shared responsibility. Producers (Books, Movies, Music, blah-blah-blah) have responsibility to thoughtfully create worthwhile product and not merely seek a buck. Consumers (the rest of us) have a responsibility to thoughtfully select what we want with understanding of just what it is we're getting into without too high expectations.

While there are definitely "sequel" Producers who screw this up by not being in touch with their consumer base there are also Consumers who sabotage the process by bringing Great Expectations with them to the sequel product. (Interesting side note: Charles Dickens wrote "Great Expectations" as a serial. When the final of the serialized book was published people didn't like it because it wasn't what they expected so he wrote a different ending and published it. Ironic, considering the title isn't it?)

Sometimes a studio announces a franchise will be rebooted, meaning a different take and probably a different cast will be used in future movies of that franchise. Then people get on message boards and get all snarky. "New?" they say, "why does it have to be new? We liked it the way it was!" Are we saying we want the same old thing over and over? Peanutbutter and Jelly for lunch ... EVERY miserable day of our lives? Aren't we bigger and more creative than this? Do our sequels have to be like a McDonald's Big Mac: Fast, full of junk and it tastes EXACTLY the same no matter how many time and how many places we've had it? Have our imaginations really shrunk that much?

As one who is writing a sequel to my novel, A Ghost of Fire, this concerns me. because I don't want to do excatly the same plot with exactly the same kinds of things happening over and over. That would be a let down for me and my audience.

So, dear reader, I leave you with a few question: "As a consumer of sequels, what is your responsibility?" and "What expectations do you bring with you to the Sequel?"