Ask the Author: James Carmichael
Answered Questions (6)
James Carmichael
Hi Isalo! Sorry for my delay.
I wouldn't say _crazy talk_. Although I guess I'd wonder why you wanted to write in a genre that's not what you personally enjoy? I know some writers who do this -- I'm particularly thinking of some people who write in romance, very strategically, because apparently it's a good way to make an income -- and they're able to take a really clinical, analytic approach to those stories, like break them down to their elements and then try to apply those insights to their own efforts to write them.
But I personally couldn't do that. I find writing too hard not to be writing a thing that I know that _I'd_ love; I also think the absence of love would show up in the story, if that makes sense. This isn't how it works for everyone, I guess, but is how it works for me.
To answer your question really simply: I'd still say "read." It just might be with a different sensibility.
Thanks for asking!
I wouldn't say _crazy talk_. Although I guess I'd wonder why you wanted to write in a genre that's not what you personally enjoy? I know some writers who do this -- I'm particularly thinking of some people who write in romance, very strategically, because apparently it's a good way to make an income -- and they're able to take a really clinical, analytic approach to those stories, like break them down to their elements and then try to apply those insights to their own efforts to write them.
But I personally couldn't do that. I find writing too hard not to be writing a thing that I know that _I'd_ love; I also think the absence of love would show up in the story, if that makes sense. This isn't how it works for everyone, I guess, but is how it works for me.
To answer your question really simply: I'd still say "read." It just might be with a different sensibility.
Thanks for asking!
James Carmichael
For Erra's Throne, the ideas came from:
(1) being a gamer myself, and being inspired by the magic of glitches and "secret places" in MMORPGs in particular -- the idea of constructed secret corners of constructed worlds, and what might it mean if one of those corners actually led somewhere...
(2) My high school. I think it's special and strange and worthy of fiction. I didn't decide that it should be so integral, but once I started writing all the characterizations, the social setting, the milieu the language -- all of it flowed from the print that my high school left on my heart and mind.
(1) being a gamer myself, and being inspired by the magic of glitches and "secret places" in MMORPGs in particular -- the idea of constructed secret corners of constructed worlds, and what might it mean if one of those corners actually led somewhere...
(2) My high school. I think it's special and strange and worthy of fiction. I didn't decide that it should be so integral, but once I started writing all the characterizations, the social setting, the milieu the language -- all of it flowed from the print that my high school left on my heart and mind.
James Carmichael
I'm currently working on a post-apocalyptic robot sci-fi adventure with existential undertones, which is way way way more funny and jangly than that makes it sound.
James Carmichael
Write every day. Write words, lots of them, that go together into stories.
Read.
Finish projects. Even if they are bad. Finish them so you have finished them, so you have created a thing, and so you can now do the next.
Be really hard on yourself about the things above - writing, finishing - and then try not to be too hard on yourself about other stuff.
Read.
Finish projects. Even if they are bad. Finish them so you have finished them, so you have created a thing, and so you can now do the next.
Be really hard on yourself about the things above - writing, finishing - and then try not to be too hard on yourself about other stuff.
James Carmichael
Mrm.
For me, it's that I'm pretty unhappy if I'm not writing and then trying to find ways to get my writing in front of people. And that knowing that -- just knowing that people are reading my work or seeing the play or whatever -- resonates and makes me feel sort of settled and content in a way that nothing else ever has.
But really it's the cash. Obviously.
For me, it's that I'm pretty unhappy if I'm not writing and then trying to find ways to get my writing in front of people. And that knowing that -- just knowing that people are reading my work or seeing the play or whatever -- resonates and makes me feel sort of settled and content in a way that nothing else ever has.
But really it's the cash. Obviously.
James Carmichael
8/10 I write through it. Write whatever - dreck or junk or whatever comes that day. Sometimes I'm wrong and it's not junk; often, I'm correct and it is indeed junk; regardless, the habit and practice of it seems important, and it feels to me like getting the words out develops craft even if a given day's specific words turn out to be crappiest words ever.
2/10 I say this isn't happening, and just go do some submissions or something.
2/10 I say this isn't happening, and just go do some submissions or something.
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