Ask the Author: Brock Adams
Answered Questions (6)
Brock Adams
Time off. I've found that trying to pound away at something that you know isn't working doesn't do much good. I take time away from writing entirely, or I'll work on a different project--maybe some nonfiction. When I've stepped away long enough (sometimes a few days, sometimes months), I can view the work with fresh eyes and see what's not working. That often leads to new ideas that push past the block. Occasionally, though, there just are no ideas. I'm not afraid to abandon something that just refuses to come together. Don't throw it away, though! Much of Ember was a completely different book that I abandoned, but the writing found its way--with some heavy revision--into the final draft of the new novel.
Brock Adams
Seeing people enjoy your work. Your characters, at first, are nothing more than vague shapes in your imagination. They grow real to you as you write them, but they still don't seem to truly live since no one cares about them but you. When your work gets into the hands of strangers, and they grow to care about these characters and worlds you've created, it feels as though you've contributed something to the world. Your writing comes to life in the hands of the readers.
Brock Adams
Be ready for rejection and don't give up. I saw rejections at every level: short stories rejected before finally publishing one; un-agented novels rejected, then agents rejecting me, then finally getting an agent and getting tons of agented submissions rejected. Then, finally, a win. The rejections are discouraging, but every time I learned something, and my writing got better. If you keep working and improving, and keep putting your work out there, eventually you'll get good enough (and lucky enough) to find a home for your writing.
Brock Adams
I've got a post-zombie-apocalypse idea I'm trying to flesh out. Zombie movies and books often end with a victory by the humans or the zombies, but I want to see what happens after the fact (assuming the humans win). How do people rebuild? How do they return to normalcy? And what happens to the people who were at their best when they were fighting the zombies?
Brock Adams
Reading is the obvious answer. The more I read, the more ideas I have. I don't read as much as I should, so sometimes the ideas come slowly, but when I do come across a book that really hooks me, it gets me thinking about how I can try my own take on an author's subject, or theme, or even writing style.
Brock Adams
Ember started as a weird sort of half-dream. I woke up at four in the morning, when it was still pitch black outside, but I was convinced it was around ten and the sun had just failed to come up. I soon woke up enough to come to my senses, but I was left with a question: what if this thing we rely on so much that it's a cliche--if nothing else, the sun will come up tomorrow--suddenly failed on us? The slow death of the sun would be the catalyst for so much conflict and struggle on Earth that it seemed like a great starting point for a novel.
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