Aminah Iman's Blog - Posts Tagged "aination"
Writing together works... Or something like that.
Hello Loves, welcome to this week’s Inside the Nations blog. As most of you know we at RedInk Pub are all coming together to write a book, Order From Chaos. This wonderful compilation has several heroes and villains from the RedInk universe and we are so excited to share it with you. Believe it or not, that isn’t what this blog is about. It’s about working with other authors on the same project. There are a lot of pros and cons to doing a project with other great writers that you love and respect and I will try to hit the ones nearest and dearest to me.
Let’s list the pros first shall we. One of my favorite things about working with my fellow ‘Queens of Horror’ is coming up with the concept of the book. When Omega first came to me with the idea I thought she was insane. We all have different writing styles, our characters are so different, etc. But after I stopped shooting it down long enough for her to actually tell me about it, I realized she was right. The concept was amazing! Once we ran it past the other girls, everyone agreed. We talked about it, tweaked it, and came up with something truly epic.
The other awesome thing about writing a compilation book is having other writers on the ready to bounce things off of. If you are in a rut and don’t know quite where to go, the others can pitch in and help out. This particular project has a lot of character change where I may have to write for Jaqueline’s character or Neffi may have to write for Omega’s, but we are always ready to lend a hand or a voice.
My most favorite part of working on this project with my girls is reading what they write immediately after it is written. You can’t get much better than that. To read some of your favorite authors work while they are writing it is an amazing thing!
Now, the cons… Not that there are many, but there are a few. One of my least fav things is waiting for another person to finish their respective chapter. I may have an idea for Micha or Sari, but Liam’s chapter isn’t finished yet and I can’t move on until it is. This doesn’t happen much in our case, but when it does you can literally see the flames coming out of my ears.
On the flip side of that, say you are chugging along with your chapter and another author calls and asks if you’re done yet. ‘Have I sent it to you…’ is the response I want to say, but you can’t because they are simply asking if it’s their turn yet. Patience is definitely a virtue.
Another con is agreeing on how a chapter should go. Everyone has their own ideas and styles of writing so you may not see eye to eye. I may want a battle scene in chapter five, but Neffi thinks it’s a bad idea… Who’s right?
The point is, if you decide to write a book with other authors there will be ups and downs, but if you want it to work you will take the good with the bad. It boils down to compromising and doing what is best for the book. I hope this helped and as always, I wish you Happy Reading!
Let’s list the pros first shall we. One of my favorite things about working with my fellow ‘Queens of Horror’ is coming up with the concept of the book. When Omega first came to me with the idea I thought she was insane. We all have different writing styles, our characters are so different, etc. But after I stopped shooting it down long enough for her to actually tell me about it, I realized she was right. The concept was amazing! Once we ran it past the other girls, everyone agreed. We talked about it, tweaked it, and came up with something truly epic.
The other awesome thing about writing a compilation book is having other writers on the ready to bounce things off of. If you are in a rut and don’t know quite where to go, the others can pitch in and help out. This particular project has a lot of character change where I may have to write for Jaqueline’s character or Neffi may have to write for Omega’s, but we are always ready to lend a hand or a voice.
My most favorite part of working on this project with my girls is reading what they write immediately after it is written. You can’t get much better than that. To read some of your favorite authors work while they are writing it is an amazing thing!
Now, the cons… Not that there are many, but there are a few. One of my least fav things is waiting for another person to finish their respective chapter. I may have an idea for Micha or Sari, but Liam’s chapter isn’t finished yet and I can’t move on until it is. This doesn’t happen much in our case, but when it does you can literally see the flames coming out of my ears.
On the flip side of that, say you are chugging along with your chapter and another author calls and asks if you’re done yet. ‘Have I sent it to you…’ is the response I want to say, but you can’t because they are simply asking if it’s their turn yet. Patience is definitely a virtue.
Another con is agreeing on how a chapter should go. Everyone has their own ideas and styles of writing so you may not see eye to eye. I may want a battle scene in chapter five, but Neffi thinks it’s a bad idea… Who’s right?
The point is, if you decide to write a book with other authors there will be ups and downs, but if you want it to work you will take the good with the bad. It boils down to compromising and doing what is best for the book. I hope this helped and as always, I wish you Happy Reading!
Great minds do NOT write alike...
Hello, Loves and welcome to another Inside the Nation. Seeing as our 8-series cross-over book, Order From Chaos, is just weeks away, I thought I’d talk about the experience I had when it came to writing another person’s character. Let me be clear, we all wrote for our own character in their individual chapters, but they had to interact with one another. So, if my character Sari and Omega’s character Liam were having a conversation I had to write for Liam if it was in my chapter… Get it? That happened more times than not and in the beginning, it was difficult. There was a lot of ‘Acaleus wouldn’t speak that way.’ Or, ‘Sari doesn’t dress like that.’ So, we had to change it. One good thing we did was go back and read all of the books included in this cross-over, it took a while, but we wanted all the main characters fresh in our minds as well as the villains they were facing. During this wonderful journey, I learned a few things.
One of the first things I learned was, although all of the ladies in Red Ink write about the supernatural, we all have very different writing styles. Let’s take my Sari, for example, she is crass and unpredictable, she has a big heart and a bigger mouth, and she is a great hunter, but she is vulnerable when it comes to her family. I write her extremely gritty and personable with a hint of insecurity. One the other hand Jacqueline’s Gabriel is an 18-year-old half demon and half angel with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He has a smart mouth and can be very aggravating, but his heart is golden. In my opinion, Jacqueline writes him perfect, me on the other hand, would probably write him too mature for his age, or too cocky. When it was my time to ‘speak’ for Gabriel, I had to do it in the manner in which Jacqueline would. You’re probably thinking that would be easy, but believe me, it isn’t. If you want to do it right, you have to write like the author.
Another thing I learned was every author has a signature style. Each and every one of us has something familiar in every one of our books. If you’ve read one of my books and turn around and read another, but my name isn’t on it, you’d think, ‘This reminds me of an Aminah Iman book’. With that being said, while writing this book, we had to stay true to each authors signature. I had to continuously remember that I had to write these characters the way their authors would, not how I would. It was challenging but well worth it.
We had so many obstacles in using 8 different series in this book. It was an idea that I was against in the beginning, but so glad I agreed to in the end. We clashed and complained, I probably yelled and screamed, but in the end, we came out Epic. I cannot wait for you all to read this on 10/31/17 but until then, as always, I wish you all Happy Reading.
One of the first things I learned was, although all of the ladies in Red Ink write about the supernatural, we all have very different writing styles. Let’s take my Sari, for example, she is crass and unpredictable, she has a big heart and a bigger mouth, and she is a great hunter, but she is vulnerable when it comes to her family. I write her extremely gritty and personable with a hint of insecurity. One the other hand Jacqueline’s Gabriel is an 18-year-old half demon and half angel with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He has a smart mouth and can be very aggravating, but his heart is golden. In my opinion, Jacqueline writes him perfect, me on the other hand, would probably write him too mature for his age, or too cocky. When it was my time to ‘speak’ for Gabriel, I had to do it in the manner in which Jacqueline would. You’re probably thinking that would be easy, but believe me, it isn’t. If you want to do it right, you have to write like the author.
Another thing I learned was every author has a signature style. Each and every one of us has something familiar in every one of our books. If you’ve read one of my books and turn around and read another, but my name isn’t on it, you’d think, ‘This reminds me of an Aminah Iman book’. With that being said, while writing this book, we had to stay true to each authors signature. I had to continuously remember that I had to write these characters the way their authors would, not how I would. It was challenging but well worth it.
We had so many obstacles in using 8 different series in this book. It was an idea that I was against in the beginning, but so glad I agreed to in the end. We clashed and complained, I probably yelled and screamed, but in the end, we came out Epic. I cannot wait for you all to read this on 10/31/17 but until then, as always, I wish you all Happy Reading.
