Ask the Author: Richard Crofton
Answered Questions (9)
Richard Crofton
Middle Earth. I'd hang out in Hobbiton where there's plenty of ale to drink and Old Tobey to smoke from a pipe.
Richard Crofton
Crown of Delusion by Tanor Costa
Embellished by Karen Glista
Dystopia by D.J. Cooper
Finding Forever by Amanda J. Evans
Embellished by Karen Glista
Dystopia by D.J. Cooper
Finding Forever by Amanda J. Evans
Richard Crofton
This is a bit of a stretch, as I'm sure this mystery is not uncommon, but I'd bet I can make a book based on the mystery of the things that go missing and the messes that are made in my house. Many times I come home from work, and there is a mess all over the floor, or a lamp is broken, or my bottle of iced tea in the fridge that's labeled "Dad's Iced Tea; Don't Touch!" has been consumed. I then gather my five children together and ask "Who did this?" or "How did this happen?" and of course everyone answers "I don't know." I'm still perplexed how these things are occurring in my house without any of my five kids having knowledge or involvement. The only logical explanation is that there is a prankster spirit lurking about. Or it could be that I'm suffering from split personality disorder, and I'm causing these things to happen myself, but don't realize I'm doing it. But it can't be the kids...not a chance :-)
Richard Crofton
This is pretty easy. I stop writing. The brain is like every other muscle in your body. If you don't exercise it, it gets weak. If you work it too much, it gets sore.
So I stop. I take a break and do something physical. As I left teaching English in the public school for teaching Martial Arts in the dojo, I get plenty of opportunity to exercise and clear my head. I highly recommend to anyone who gets writer's block to do some physical exercise, especially one that gives you a sense of balance and focus. Yoga and Martial Arts, and Tai Chi are a few that I think are best for such things.
After I've taken a break, I go back to my computer and open up my manuscript to where I left off. I'll go back and read the previous chapter and up to where I've stopped. It may take a few minutes, but often, my fingers will start slowly punching one key at a time, and eventually pick up the pace again. Other times, I've still got nothing. So I turn off the computer and continue my vacation from it.
And sometimes you just need to shut your mind off completely. Go play a video game or watch your favorite movie or a baseball game. I for one enjoy playing with my kids. We'll go outside and have a catch, or play a card game. I also love backpacking, but I currently live in Florida where it's humid, flat and swampy where I prefer cool, mountainous and wooded, so my pack and gear haven't gotten out much. But if you live anywhere near woods with hiking trails, man, if anything recharges your writer's batteries, it's that!
One other tip, and this is during your vacation from writing: you have no idea when the writer's block will end and an idea on how to continue will pop in your head. It could be when you're driving home from work. It could be while you're cleaning your bathroom. So my advice is to make use of that digital recorder on your phone. When the idea hits you, pull that sucker out, hit "record" and start talking about the idea. It really bites when the idea hits you, and hours go by until you get to sit down at your computer and pull up your document, and you blink with a blank expression on your face thinking, "Crap! I HAD something earlier and now I can't remember what it was!"
So I stop. I take a break and do something physical. As I left teaching English in the public school for teaching Martial Arts in the dojo, I get plenty of opportunity to exercise and clear my head. I highly recommend to anyone who gets writer's block to do some physical exercise, especially one that gives you a sense of balance and focus. Yoga and Martial Arts, and Tai Chi are a few that I think are best for such things.
After I've taken a break, I go back to my computer and open up my manuscript to where I left off. I'll go back and read the previous chapter and up to where I've stopped. It may take a few minutes, but often, my fingers will start slowly punching one key at a time, and eventually pick up the pace again. Other times, I've still got nothing. So I turn off the computer and continue my vacation from it.
And sometimes you just need to shut your mind off completely. Go play a video game or watch your favorite movie or a baseball game. I for one enjoy playing with my kids. We'll go outside and have a catch, or play a card game. I also love backpacking, but I currently live in Florida where it's humid, flat and swampy where I prefer cool, mountainous and wooded, so my pack and gear haven't gotten out much. But if you live anywhere near woods with hiking trails, man, if anything recharges your writer's batteries, it's that!
One other tip, and this is during your vacation from writing: you have no idea when the writer's block will end and an idea on how to continue will pop in your head. It could be when you're driving home from work. It could be while you're cleaning your bathroom. So my advice is to make use of that digital recorder on your phone. When the idea hits you, pull that sucker out, hit "record" and start talking about the idea. It really bites when the idea hits you, and hours go by until you get to sit down at your computer and pull up your document, and you blink with a blank expression on your face thinking, "Crap! I HAD something earlier and now I can't remember what it was!"
Richard Crofton
Oh God, it's not easy to answer this right now. Since I've published my first novel a little more than a month ago, I have dealt with serious anxiety and depression as I've become obsessed with just getting people to notice my book. With about 30 sales total and only three reviews (most of the initial sales were friends of mine: I can't believe it's so hard to get my own friends tor write a damn review!), and with the knowledge that both sales and reviews are the things to boost you up that intimidating sales rank, it can feel like such an uphill struggle trying to acquire those two things.
But oh yeah, I'm supposed to answer what's BEST about being a writer! So with a deep breath, I am reflecting back on the time BEFORE I published. When it was just writing to get my story on the computer screen. It was just me and my characters following the plot where it took us. It was quite fun as I sometimes had a general idea of where the story was going, but then sometimes my characters disagreed with my idea and took the story a different way. This is why the advice I can give to aspiring writers is to just write for the sake of writing. If you're writing only because you're good at it and want to make a lot of money, you may succeed, but you won't enjoy doing it one bit. But if you just write for the hell of it, it can be quite an adventure.
But oh yeah, I'm supposed to answer what's BEST about being a writer! So with a deep breath, I am reflecting back on the time BEFORE I published. When it was just writing to get my story on the computer screen. It was just me and my characters following the plot where it took us. It was quite fun as I sometimes had a general idea of where the story was going, but then sometimes my characters disagreed with my idea and took the story a different way. This is why the advice I can give to aspiring writers is to just write for the sake of writing. If you're writing only because you're good at it and want to make a lot of money, you may succeed, but you won't enjoy doing it one bit. But if you just write for the hell of it, it can be quite an adventure.
Richard Crofton
Don't give up. It's that simple. There are a lot of things that are out of your control: how popular your stories will be, others' reviews, how much money you can make. I mean, SOME of it you can control as a self-published author, but there's still quite a bit that's out of your control. But what you always have 100% control over are your stories that you write. If nothing else, even if you don't publish a damn word, just keep writing. Oh, and backup your work often (have two thumb drives with your files saved and keep them in two different places: I can't say I'm anything of an expert on advising other writers, but trust me on that one! I'll post a personal experience that teaches quite a lesson about this when I create a blog.
Richard Crofton
Two things at once, actually. I've only published the first book in my series, but I've finished writing three. So I'm currently going through the edits and revisions to prepare the publication of the second book (The Keepers of White Book II: The Paladin's Message), while also writing the first draft of the fourth book. At least three more books of this series are in my head still, so I've got a lot more writing to do!
Richard Crofton
Getting in the mood to write takes a little bit of discipline. I try to write for at least an hour each night, whether I want to or not. But I feel that what gets me motivated is by reading other books, usually in the same genre, but also from talking with other local authors, or those in the social media groups I joined. It's a shared empathy to hear of their own struggles, and how they relate to my own, but it's also a pleasure when a fellow author has a success, even a minor victory. I am happy for them when this happens, but it also recharges my own batteries because it reminds me: "Hey, this IS possible!" It's one thing when a new book by Stephen King or Dean Koontz comes out on the shelf. But there's something more uplifting and inspiring when it's a local person you know.
Richard Crofton
This is one of the strangest occurrences for me, as this is my first book I've ever completed and published. I've always written stories, but never finished either because I looked back and thought it was corny or ridiculous, or just had nowhere to go with it. And all those stories I had tried to plan and brainstorm. The Keepers of White series was totally different, and it happened out of the blue...
The truth? I was driving to work one morning (the school where I taught Language Arts was a good 45 minute drive, during which I often would get lost in my own thoughts), and though I usually have my I-pod hooked so I can listen to songs on my playlist, I happened to be in a rental car this particular morning because my car was damaged from an accident. Without my I-pod, I just turned on the radio (who listens to an FM radio station anymore?). I didn't set the station; just hit the power button. The song "Black Magic Woman" by Santana happened to be on. As I was listening to it, the character Diana Palmer just appeared in my head (I don't think the name came to me until later, just the character): the ruthless, malicious, yet stunningly seductive temptress in the Primary Circle of the Agency. During that entire song, this went through my head: "a woman who's so beautiful and dark at the same time. Someone who has terrible power that she uses to toy with and manipulate others for her own pleasure. Someone who ruins lives more deeply than one could fathom. A woman whose charms and black powers, no man can resist. No man except one: a man whose past has left him so torn and bitter, that such spells as hers take no hold over him. A man seeking vengeance. A man who is known as the Paladin." - Don't laugh. Not unless you're willing to reveal what goes through YOUR head on the way to work in the morning!
And somehow, that stayed in my head all day, until I got home from work, pulled out a binder with tons of loose-leaf paper inside, and began jotting notes. And more notes. And MORE notes. The next thing I knew, I ran out of loose leaf, having filled the entire pack (about 30 - 40 sheets) with what kept expanding and growing in my mind, all stemmed from that one character, inspired from that one song. That following summer, when school was out and I had no more papers to grade, I began typing my first chapter of Book I: Agents of Shadow.
Never before, and never since has anything just popped in my head, especially from a song. It's both frightening and wonderful to consider the impact that the Cause & Effect phenomenon can have on us. Had I not gotten into that car accident, I wouldn't have been driving a rental car, and I would have simply continued to listen to my own playlist on my own I-pod. I wouldn't have turned on the radio that morning to hear "Black Magic Woman," and the whole thing may never have come to me. All I can conclude is, thank God it wasn't a Barry White song ;-)
The truth? I was driving to work one morning (the school where I taught Language Arts was a good 45 minute drive, during which I often would get lost in my own thoughts), and though I usually have my I-pod hooked so I can listen to songs on my playlist, I happened to be in a rental car this particular morning because my car was damaged from an accident. Without my I-pod, I just turned on the radio (who listens to an FM radio station anymore?). I didn't set the station; just hit the power button. The song "Black Magic Woman" by Santana happened to be on. As I was listening to it, the character Diana Palmer just appeared in my head (I don't think the name came to me until later, just the character): the ruthless, malicious, yet stunningly seductive temptress in the Primary Circle of the Agency. During that entire song, this went through my head: "a woman who's so beautiful and dark at the same time. Someone who has terrible power that she uses to toy with and manipulate others for her own pleasure. Someone who ruins lives more deeply than one could fathom. A woman whose charms and black powers, no man can resist. No man except one: a man whose past has left him so torn and bitter, that such spells as hers take no hold over him. A man seeking vengeance. A man who is known as the Paladin." - Don't laugh. Not unless you're willing to reveal what goes through YOUR head on the way to work in the morning!
And somehow, that stayed in my head all day, until I got home from work, pulled out a binder with tons of loose-leaf paper inside, and began jotting notes. And more notes. And MORE notes. The next thing I knew, I ran out of loose leaf, having filled the entire pack (about 30 - 40 sheets) with what kept expanding and growing in my mind, all stemmed from that one character, inspired from that one song. That following summer, when school was out and I had no more papers to grade, I began typing my first chapter of Book I: Agents of Shadow.
Never before, and never since has anything just popped in my head, especially from a song. It's both frightening and wonderful to consider the impact that the Cause & Effect phenomenon can have on us. Had I not gotten into that car accident, I wouldn't have been driving a rental car, and I would have simply continued to listen to my own playlist on my own I-pod. I wouldn't have turned on the radio that morning to hear "Black Magic Woman," and the whole thing may never have come to me. All I can conclude is, thank God it wasn't a Barry White song ;-)
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