Ask the Author: Gregory J. Wallance
Answered Questions (4)
Gregory J. Wallance
I came across a quote from Winston Churchill that aspiring writers should take to heart.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts, to believe in yourself and never give in.”
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts, to believe in yourself and never give in.”
Gregory J. Wallance
Creating worlds, story telling, and control (mostly). I enjoy bringing characters and settings, especially historical ones, to life. I like story telling and try find a compelling narrative line to keep the reader engaged. By control, I mean that the writer is in charge — it’s just the writer and a blank page facing off against each other. Of course, there’s an editorial process that engages at some point but until then the writer doesn’t have a boss, or even any one looking over his shoulder (although, I must admit, my wife reads my drafts and almost always has something to say about them).
Gregory J. Wallance
I really haven’t had a problem with writer’s block. I tend to get absorbed in writing, even to the point of losing track of time, so the act of sitting down (or in my case, standing up at a stand up desk) and putting words on paper isn’t a problem. In some respects the hardest part isn’t the writing but the editing, that is standing back and objectively, if not ruthlessly, assessing what I had written, and then rewriting it or even just cutting it out and starting again. And that has to be done again and again as the manuscript evolves.
Gregory J. Wallance
I have had a long standing interest in espionage and in World War I. Just browsing around after I finished my last book, America’s Soul in the Balance: The Holocaust, FDR’s State Department, and the Moral Disgrace of An American Aristocracy, I came across accounts of relatively unknown women spies in that war. The most compelling story was Sarah’s because in little over a year she went from being an unhappy housewife to running a spy ring behind enemy lines that made a real difference in Britain’s victory over the Ottoman Empire, which created the modern Middle East. It came down to: I had to tell the story of this courageous, daring and committed woman.
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