Ask the Author: Mary Brock Jones
Answered Questions (6)
Mary Brock Jones
Right now, not very well. The words are being dragged kicking and screaming from my head. For me, the easiest way to kick start a writing blitz is to go to a cafe, put my headphones in and listen to music, then start writing, pen on paper. For some reason, that just starts the words going best for me.
Everyone has their own trick. Find a kick start mechanism that works for for you, but don't stop trying to write in the meantime. Sit in that chair, put fingers to keyboards or pen to paper, and add the words, one at a time. It's that simple, and that hard, as so many writers before me have said, although I think it was Neil Gaiman who came up with this wonderfully succinct version of it. Put down words, and hopefully one day they will come together. And remember, a first draft is only for you, so make mistakes, go down blind corners, write the most awful of sentences. It doesn't matter; just get that story out.
Everyone has their own trick. Find a kick start mechanism that works for for you, but don't stop trying to write in the meantime. Sit in that chair, put fingers to keyboards or pen to paper, and add the words, one at a time. It's that simple, and that hard, as so many writers before me have said, although I think it was Neil Gaiman who came up with this wonderfully succinct version of it. Put down words, and hopefully one day they will come together. And remember, a first draft is only for you, so make mistakes, go down blind corners, write the most awful of sentences. It doesn't matter; just get that story out.
Mary Brock Jones
Finding out what happens in the stories in my head. They always surprise me.
Mary Brock Jones
Keep writing - and writing and writing. There are no short cuts. Also, join a writers' group, both physical and online. Nobody understands you quite like another writer, and as a bunch, writers are incredibly supportive of those starting out. I am a member of SpecFicNZ, Romance Writers of New Zealand and Romance Writers of Australia, plus a heap of Facebook groups. I was at a meeting recently, and the overwhelming theme in the room was 'I just can't get into writing at the moment". It's been raining lots here lately, with far too many gloomy, dank days, and I think we were all suffering from the lack of daylight. Well, guess what, after that, I didn't feel such a failure at my miserable word counts, and am back into my story.
Mary Brock Jones
I'm in the very early stages of the second book in my Arcadia series - mostly research and writing snippets. This one is about Ethan Winter, brother of Caleb Winter (Torn - Arcadia book 1). Ethan has never wanted to do anything but run the family business. It fascinates him, how to make all the parts of it work better. But then Winter Solaris becomes the target of an unscrupulous cabal of power brokers, Ethan and his family are falsely imprisoned and only saved from execution by Caleb and his wife Fee's actions. The cabal are overthrown, but how does Ethan keep alive the business he loves while negotiating the new rules his world now lives under. Then he meets a feisty union leader, equally determined to protect the jobs and lives of the people under her care. Jobs she thinks Ethan has threatened.
Mary Brock Jones
Aftermath: Hathe Book Three grew out of the first two Hathe books. What happens to a planet once a war is over and everyone supposedly goes back to normal. Is that possible.
The idea of the carpetbaggers who flocked in to the US southern states after the civil war gave me some starters for this book. Also, by taking the situation at the end of the 2nd Hathe Book, and working back to what this meant for those on the planet Hathe itself. A population split in two, now expected to work together again. No, never going to be that easy.
The idea of the carpetbaggers who flocked in to the US southern states after the civil war gave me some starters for this book. Also, by taking the situation at the end of the 2nd Hathe Book, and working back to what this meant for those on the planet Hathe itself. A population split in two, now expected to work together again. No, never going to be that easy.
Mary Brock Jones
So many ways! A read something, in an article, an old book, the newspaper, see an old photo, come across an interesting place. Inspiration really is all around, every day. But stories come from multiple starts, all coming together. And how I use that initial idea spark is quite random - it may start up a train of thought, or look like something else, or set of a series of mental images. Looking at a red hot poker flower once set off an SF story about a captured prince and the woman who comes to rescue him.
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