Ask the Author: Gregory Grayson
Answered Questions (6)
Gregory Grayson
Thankfully I don't suffer much from writer's block. I attribute this to two things:
1. Discipline. Being a husband and father I don't have a lot of time at home (really, none) to get my writing done. Therefore, I've had to find the time elsewhere to be productive. I take public transportation to work. In the beginning this was my time to write, just 20 short minutes per session. Hard to get a lot of words down in that time, but it forced me to get right to the point each day I started writing. Once I expanded my writing time to the second half of my lunch hour, I soon found I was able to bang out decent content without much "warm up".
2. Habits. I used to be a smoker, and I was really good at it. What I mean by this is I hit upwards of two packs at day at my peak. Then I inadvertently went a whole day once without having a cigarette. It wasn't a conscious decision, I had just gotten really busy and distracted from the desire to light one up. This got me thinking about how far I could take it. So the next day I resisted, and if the urge to smoke came on I tried distracting myself until the feeling passed. This continued until, one day, I had officially quit smoking cold-turkey. These days the smell of smoke actually bothers me.
What does this have to do with writing? Well, instead of writer's block per se, I would often get a feeling of anxiety right before my fingers hit the keyboard, that sense of procrastination which started feeding my brain all the little excuses to not write:
"I'm too busy."
"I don't know what I'm going to write."
"I don't feel like it."
Instead of giving in to these little demons, I found the best thing was just to push past them and start typing. Even if it was just for five seconds, it was enough to distract myself from the anxiety and get into the flow of writing. I did this often enough that my habit of making excuses finally went away entirely, and now I don't have to fight to put words on the page.
1. Discipline. Being a husband and father I don't have a lot of time at home (really, none) to get my writing done. Therefore, I've had to find the time elsewhere to be productive. I take public transportation to work. In the beginning this was my time to write, just 20 short minutes per session. Hard to get a lot of words down in that time, but it forced me to get right to the point each day I started writing. Once I expanded my writing time to the second half of my lunch hour, I soon found I was able to bang out decent content without much "warm up".
2. Habits. I used to be a smoker, and I was really good at it. What I mean by this is I hit upwards of two packs at day at my peak. Then I inadvertently went a whole day once without having a cigarette. It wasn't a conscious decision, I had just gotten really busy and distracted from the desire to light one up. This got me thinking about how far I could take it. So the next day I resisted, and if the urge to smoke came on I tried distracting myself until the feeling passed. This continued until, one day, I had officially quit smoking cold-turkey. These days the smell of smoke actually bothers me.
What does this have to do with writing? Well, instead of writer's block per se, I would often get a feeling of anxiety right before my fingers hit the keyboard, that sense of procrastination which started feeding my brain all the little excuses to not write:
"I'm too busy."
"I don't know what I'm going to write."
"I don't feel like it."
Instead of giving in to these little demons, I found the best thing was just to push past them and start typing. Even if it was just for five seconds, it was enough to distract myself from the anxiety and get into the flow of writing. I did this often enough that my habit of making excuses finally went away entirely, and now I don't have to fight to put words on the page.
Gregory Grayson
For me, being a writer is the ultimate channel into "what if?" It's a way to express all the hidden little ideas which crop up in my brain throughout the day, things that I could probably never get out eloquently by just speaking to another person. It's a way of figuring out the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything by going down deep and looking at the minutiae details, the tiny little creatures which hold us up in our lives, who have all the answers but still expect us to figure it out on our own.
Gregory Grayson
In my experience, there are three things you have to do:
1. Read the works of great authors. Always be reading something.
2. Try to emulate them in your own writing. Never stop learning. Keep your mind open.
3. Find other writers you mesh with really well. The advice they give you will kick open the doors in your mind and set you on a path of personal success.
1. Read the works of great authors. Always be reading something.
2. Try to emulate them in your own writing. Never stop learning. Keep your mind open.
3. Find other writers you mesh with really well. The advice they give you will kick open the doors in your mind and set you on a path of personal success.
Gregory Grayson
Just yesterday I reached first-draft status on my newest book "Fireflight", first of the "EarthCrossing" trilogy, a contemporary fantasy tale in which mythological creatures have returned to Earth and brought with them world-shattering changes. A teenage boy and his father travel across America on a mission to rescue his mother, who has been trapped in the world of Elves, if she is alive at all. Fantastic creatures, magic, and modern-day sensibilities combine for a truly emotional tale of being forced to grow up in a world where everything has changed.
Gregory Grayson
The inspiration is always there. I love the actual act of writing, of carving out and painting a jigsaw puzzle one piece at a time, seeing how the whole ultimately fits together. It's a definite rush, a high. Sometimes I have no idea what I'm going to write, but by sticking to a schedule (for me, a word-count goal of 500 words a day, minimum) I've conditioned myself to not worry about it. Just write, even if you produce trash and throw it away later. The act of writing itself is always progress.
Gregory Grayson
I read a lot of fantasy, and the one thing I've noticed with most of it was the tendency to set the tale in a medieval world of the "past". I wanted to take our modern-day world and inject it with many of the common elements found in our best fantasy tales, mashing the two together. However, I also didn't want to do a typical dystopian or urban setting, so making it a road story in a world without our familiar technological advances became the linchpin.
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