Ask the Author: Stanley D. Williams
Answered Questions (6)
Stanley D. Williams
This is simple. I take my own advice as outlined in The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success. I claim, and my followers support my claim, that if you follow the guidance of that book, workshops, and blog you will never, ever suffer from writer's block. The objective reason has to do with why you're writing: you must have a moral purpose to it. Next all good writing is about the battle between good and evil, or the struggle between vice and virtue. How is hope bestowed and fear vanquished in the physical realm? Write about that and you're off to a good start.
Stanley D. Williams
I'm not sure there's a "best" thing. If my books were very popular perhaps I'd say it would be the royalty checks. But I'm not in that category. I get royalty checks, they're just not enough to live on. Perhaps writing is best by being good therapy for what mentally ales you. Jordan Peterson recommends keeping a journal in an effort to give your life purpose. I have journaled in a "prayer diary" for the past 55 years. I'm 75 and still do it. I write every day, for therapy, as I'm doing right now as I answer this question. I want to be productive and contribute to civilization and society. It makes me feel good that I helped someone, somewhere....hopefully...maybe. But it's very hard work.
Stanley D. Williams
Investigate topics that you're passionate about and want to know more about. There has to be a crevasse of discovery for you to explore to keep you motivated. When writing a novel, for instance, you must not outline it so deeply that you know everything about what is going to happen. If you do that, you'll bore yourself to tears in writing it. Outline enough to leave things undiscovered by the characters that speak to you from the page. A key to having something to write is research and a vivid imagination that asks, "What if...?" Finally, structure the story first so you know where you're going. My book, Storycraft on-line workshop, and blog on story structure will help: https://moralpremise.com
Stanley D. Williams
I am currently marketing my latest book, The Wizard Clip Haunting. When I tire of marketing I am writing a philosophical memoir of a friend who died last year of ALS. He was an arm-chair philosopher and design engineer. The book is titled: Shadowboxing Reality. There is also a television documentary about the seven in-line monasteries of St. Michael's Sword. I spent 3 weeks in Europe and Israel in 2022 recording video and conducing interviews. Now, I have to write the script.
Stanley D. Williams
I pray a lot, and I read a lot (both fiction and non-fiction). I have always been deeply interested in a wide range of topics and disciplines that range from physics to philosophy. As a consequence ideas and projects come to me that I cannot resist diving into. I'm a workaholic my nature, which helps.
Stanley D. Williams
The Wizard Clip Haunting (TWCH): A True Early American Ghost Story was recommended to me as a possible motion picture. I'm a filmmaker and screenplay consultant. I wrote the screenplay, got some interest in Hollywood, but not enough to make the movie. Curiosity got the better of me and I made two research trips to the locale where the Wizard Clip story occurred. The events of the haunting are well documented. I returned with a box full of subplots about the lives of the real people in involved, and thus decided to start the novel, which I knew from the onset would be long but interesting, at least to me. Altogether it took 10 years due to the interruption of many other projects, but I released TWCH in January 2023.
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