Ask the Author: Michael Don Anderson
Answered Questions (6)
Michael Don Anderson
I've heard of this thing people call writer's block. For me, it only happens when I start a new novel and the ideas in my head are beginning to form. I get maybe fifty pages onto paper then leave it too long. My subconscious, so good at formulating patterns out of people's behavior and motivations suddenly loses the thread. I come back to the work and the fifty pages are interesting. I sort of know what I was writing. But the heart of the story is gone and I can't recall where I was going. Otherwise, I never EVER run out of things to write. But I'd suggest if you do experience a blockage of any sort, re-read what you've written (unless it's at the beginning of a book), walk away and do something unrelated for awhile then come back to it. Sometimes resolution to a thorny problem in a scene in the book will pop into your head. At least it does mine.
Michael Don Anderson
For me, it's no choice. Some people have to dance. Some people must grow things in their gardens or bake or do any of a thousand other things in order to feel fulfilled. Since I was a child, I've wanted to be and been a writer. I can't not write. It spills out of me when I least expect it. Ideas bubble and percolate and demand to see the page (or monitor, as the case has been for some years). To identify the best thing is hard, other than I get to share my characters and their hardships, their adventures with other people who tell me they love my work. Strangers who express their thanks for saying aloud things they've felt or thought. Putting their experiences as victims or champions into a context that made it okay. People are the best thing for me. People of all types. From all over the world. Every color, religion and culture. They make everything worthwhile.
Michael Don Anderson
A couple of things, really. First, you have to write for yourself. Because an idea or story is powerful enough that it wants to be heard. Writing with any other purpose in mind will lead to less interesting or at least, less impassioned work in my opinion. And while you must be honest and self-aware about your own talent, you have to understand that even the best writers out there have people who simply find their works unpalatable. Boring. Not their cup of tea. That doesn't mean the writing isn't loved by so many others. But it's easy to think your work's not good enough when even one person posts a negative comment. That being said, just because your friends and family love your writing doesn't mean it's any good. They may be being kind. You have to accept weaknesses and bad writings, figure out why they're weak and bad, in order to improve. And writing like any art requires practice to get your brain used to generating structure a certain way. To develop characters with enough detail and who are interesting. There are times, when I first started writing a lot, but before I'd reached the level where I was producing several novels a year, that I'd write stuff that I thought was interesting, would set it aside and discovered it months or years later again. Some of it, I was like, that's brilliant! I wrote that? Other stuff, occasionally, was like, ugh! This is awful! I wrote that? Noooo! But the more I wrote. The more constructive feedback I got from people I trusted to be honest (and sometimes it's hard, but you can't make it personal), the better I honed my style and eliminated the patchy stuff. One last example as a piece of advice, I have a dear older friend, who has been quite embedded within the fantasy/science fiction genre as a fan since the original Star Trek (she even used to party with Doohan and Nimoy). She decided that as a fan, with so many ideas in her head, she should write. She asked me to read her writing and give feedback. So few people are willing to do this and there is a reason for it. I read her stuff, which was full of her own notions of clever and bits of intellectual dialogue and stories which, for her own amusement, were fine. But the stories/novels were two dimensional. The characters were barely touched upon. Some of her witty banter had nothing to do with the story, but she was just so in love with it that she refused to eliminate it from the writing. I spent a couple of years trying to help her flesh it out and clean it up, but she hated every moment of it. She wanted it to be like the fanfiction she grew up loving to read and write. Rough. Unpolished. Intellectual for the sake of being intellectual. Appealing to people already in love with the characters instead of creating her own. Making them solid. Describing sights and sounds. In the end, she didn't appreciate my weeks and weeks of time reading, editing, making suggestions. Truthfully, she didn't want to be a writer, she just wanted to be part of the genre she loved. We are still friends, but I learned a valuable lesson. Some people don't want to know the truth about their work. They don't want to get better and they definitely don't want to acknowledge they have no natural talent for writing. Intellectual ideas or not. Passion for the genre or not.
Michael Don Anderson
Currently, I've got several projects underway. Revision-wise, I'm getting Devon Mosteller's fourth book, Clean Kills cleaned up for submission to my publisher. Devon is finally back home in the USA and wants to stay here, without dealing with Werewolves or the Fey. Not gonna happen! He's a magnet for trouble and men. As for new works, I am slowly fleshing out a new fantasy novel of political intrigue along the oceans of a medieval world whose survival depends on Turtlemasters. A group of people bonded with giant sea turtles, reminiscent of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern. I have my next book in the Werewolf Incorporated series in progress, along with ideas for a couple of Robyn Chum novels and I'm slowly getting the long awaited sequel to the Pride of Pard done, hopefully by summertime! So many things, but I focus on one at a time after the initial ideas pop into my head.
Michael Don Anderson
I'm afraid my brain is so full of ideas it's more about choosing which ideas to focus on. Everything and anything triggers a character moment and that leads to an entire novel. I find people to be very interesting, each of us unique and worthy of entire novels. Maybe it's a dialogue heard on the bus or at the airport. Maybe an interaction between a mother and her children in the supermarket. Or something in the news. But always about people. I always start with a vignette of some character feeling or doing something like a movie clip in my brain and my subconscious runs off with it from there. Some longer motivation is fleshed out by bringing interesting characters and my own personal experiences into an evolving story.
Michael Don Anderson
My most recent book, The Billionaire's Heir, resulted from a combination of social and political influences. Aware of the #metoo movement. Having so many strong women in my life growing up. But it was something very ordinary that inspired me. My dental hygienist, Nicole, is a huge fan of fantasy stories/movies and was asking about my novels; and I realized that while I have strong female characters in my series, I didn't have a series with a woman as the lead. And I wanted her to be unique in the urban fantasy genre. So who better than a succubus with a strong moral compass? As for the kidnapping and other elements of the story, I watch a lot of British crime television and I'm sure ideas snuck into my subconscious from all manner of other places. Hopefully I answered the question, but feel free to ask more!
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