The Questioning Librarian

This morning, I watched a short TED talk on crafting realistic worlds, given by author Kate Messner. I'd never heard of her before, but her thoughts on the subject are close to others I've read, and to some of my own thoughts on the matter. The talk is worth watching for anyone interested in writing, whether or not they entertain ideas about writing fantasy or science-fiction. I've been writing in some form or other since I was in fifth grade, almost all of it science fiction or fantasy. While continually trying to improve my writing is a struggle, world-building is and always has been one of the true joys for me, more entertaining by far than trying to craft realistic dialogue. Call it the historian in me, but I love crafting a fictional history for the stories I write, drawing deeply from the real-world history I know. Nothing that happens today takes place in a vacuum, and similarly no fictional story can exist absent a history. Good writers know this intuitiv...

Why do I write? Why do I take the time to write things down that a handful of people will read...and in the case of my writing outside of this blog, at best one or two other people will read? Some days when the writing is hard, when the words just won't come and even a sentence is a struggle to piece together, it seems better just to give up and go read. But I always come back. So why do I do it? A few years ago I read a book about our need to tell stories, The Storytelling Animal  by Jonathan Gottschall. It was a fascinating read, other than a completely unwarranted and baseless attack on the Sherlock Holmes stories. To tell stories, in Gottshall's rendering, is to be human. It's what we do. Everything in our lives is based around telling stories. A little thought on our history is enough to support his thesis; from cave paintings and oral storytelling to Shakespeare, Wilde, and YouTube web series and social gatherings, our lives revolve around telling and hearing sto...

Some days you sit down to write, and nothing comes. I think that this must happen to every writer at some point or other, even prolific ones like R.A. Salvatore and Ray Bradbury. They too must have looked at a blank page and sighed at the lack of words on it, going to the well of inspiration only to find that it is dry. I wonder how they wiled away the time, what they did to distract themselves from the fact that the muse is being stingy with her gifts of an exciting plot and the right words to bring it to life? Did Bradbury play with his toys (he famously enjoyed getting toys as gifts throughout his life)? Did Hemingway have another drink? Did Tolkien work at translating some Old English text? I wonder what Debbie Macomber or Nora Roberts do when they have writer's block. They may write several books a year, but it must happen to them too, every once in a while. Just like every writer has to deal with writer's block, surely every writer has their own way of coping with it a...

I've been thinking a fair bit lately about writing. Given that I blog, review, and work on projects that have yet to see the light of day, this isn't exactly a surprise. What I mean to say is that I've been thinking lately about writing and my own future. I'm now in my twenties, and what I do now will help set the stage for where I am and what I am doing in my thirties, forties, and beyond, though I truly hate to think about anything beyond thirty-five at this point. I have been writing in some form or other since I was in 5th grade, and I have always dreamed of someday seeing my work published. Ah, publication, the dream of nearly all writers--we imagine great reviews from Booklist and Kirkus , movie deals with prominent appearances by the author on the red carpet and the interview circuit, millions of book sales and book tours packed with fans who adore our work.  For most writers this dream is just that; it is, in fact, an impossible dream for most published wr...

One afternoon last week I was reading an article in Publishers Weekly that I found deeply unsettling in many ways. The column, written by author Mark Sullivan, detailed advice on writing distilled from his experience working with best-selling novelist James Patterson.  As someone who has written on and off for well over a decade, the article gave me a lot to think about, especially after having read other ideas on writing, coming from writers as diverse as Stephen King , Terry Brooks , and the late Brian Jacques (the latter memorably said that to write well one must "paint pictures with words"). I've never read anything by James Patterson, honestly, though I used to read a number of books in that genre, but his status as a constant best seller makes him a force to be reckoned with. Sullivan, one of Patterson's seemingly endless series of co-authors, does give some advice which is valid (advice that other writers would surely be quick to agree with). Characters must b...