Category Archives: Guest Posts

A Guest Post by C Stuart Hardwick

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how infirm! In action how like a potato!

My first stories were played out in childhood, in the badlands and ghost towns of South Dakota, in tree forts and sandboxes, woods and bicycle trails, onto magnetic tape and 8mm movie film. We did not stop to create stories, we left them behind like breadcrumb trails leading back to alternate worlds.

Flash forward a few decades to when I finally decided to get serious about writing stories down. I was already married, with kids and a white-collar job. I was already suffering from a life of too much TV, too much office work, and too little sun. The last thing I needed was another few hours a week sitting in a chair, but that’s just what you need to do to be a writer. What to do?

First, I set up a standing desk. I figured, standing’s better than sitting, right? For two years, I did most of my writing at a laptop perched atop a high chest of drawers in my bedroom. I had to buy a rubber mat to keep from wearing holes through the carpet. I wrote half a million words that way. I went through my creative writing courses at Berkeley that way. I didn’t loose any weight, but at least I didn’t gain any.

Then in late 2012 several studies came out warning of the health effects of sitting. It turns out, not only do those cushy middle class office jobs make us fat, they cause potentially irreversible spinal curvature and stiffening, reduce hip flexibility, cause insulin overproduction, soften bones, obliterate posture, and cause deep vein thromboses and varicose veins. Oh, and they make us stupid.

See, humans didn’t evolve in office buildings. We evolved on the African savanna, where we were marathon hunters. Sure, it’s nice to have a comfy pad under our backside with a cup of jo and an air conditioner. It’s comfortable. But it’s not good for us. These studies were proposing something radical—we should get up and walk.

American’s should ditch the office chair and switch to a treadmill desk they said. We could loose a few pounds a week just by walking instead of sitting, and address all the other health impacts at the same time. We are not evolved to sit around, nor to stand around, but to hike.

So okay, I decided to give it a try. Treadmill desks are stupid expensive, though, so I made my own. I put a laptop and $10 worth of wire shelving on a $600 Horizon T101 treadmill. I learned to touch type while walking at 2.2 MPH on an incline—just enough to barely crack a sweat. I started loosing weight.

After two months, I was so impressed, I decided to splurge on an upgrade.

I bought a dedicated workstation and bolted it to the treadmill with a monitor arm and a theatrical clamp (I blogged about it here: https://cstuarthardwick.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/upgraded-treadmill-desk-2/). My weight kept falling. In addition to the treadmill, I also started spending time on the exercycle as well, and I used MyFitnessPal to track my net calories. In six months, I lost 45 pounds.

But? There is no but. I felt great. I looked great. I thought great. Walking on the treadmill takes a certain amount of brainpower and I usually stop when working on something really mentally taxing, but it’s highly conducive to writing, especially to finding and maintaining “the flow.”

And then I went and hurt my leg and had to take an extended break. Now that I’ve started back up, I’ve worn out the tread and broken a siderail (stepping off to drink coffee), but that’s okay. New parts are on order. While I wait, I’m taking advantage of the springtime weather, taking to the neighbor hood trails, and taking Kevin J Anderson’s advice and giving mobile dictation a fair chance.

And that’s good, because some new papers have come out suggesting that many of the ailments of modern Western society may stem from inadequate exposure to sunlight…

Take care of your body. The writing muscle can’t work if the other muscles keep flopping over. We only get one stab at this life thing.

C Stuart Hardwick:

C Stuart Hardwick is an L Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future winner and a Jim Baen Award finalist. He writes scifi and fantasy, lives in Houston, and is married to an Aquanaut. You can follow him at www.cStuartHardwick.com, or on Twitter, Quora, or Facebook.

Make it Happen

March 11, 2016

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Choice Day Jobs Family Ghost Writing Interacting With Professionals Joy Dawn Johnson Networking Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life No Comments

A Guest Post by Joy Dawn Johnson

I work best in complete silence with no distractions.

Insert pacifier in crying infant

The slightest movement can distract me and completely erase the perfect sentence I had just formed in my head. A sentence that I swear will never come together quite the same again.

Fix lunch for toddler
Make a second pot of coffee

Now it’s gone and my fingers stop. I tell myself, “Just keep writing.” I’ve always loved this advice. I give the same advice to new writers but it’s also the hardest thing to do when your time is not your own.

Take crying infant to bed and pray he takes a nap
Clean Cheerios up after toddler “made it rain”

I want to “keep writing.” The last thing I want to do is stop working on something right when it’s coming together.

Get coffee

Whether it’s flowing or I’m constantly interrupted, writing reminds me of rowing.

Add forgotten creamer to coffee after burning tongue

When I was on the crew team in college, I led two boats. First, the one that won nearly every race we entered. Second, a boat of rookies that managed to tip over before our first race. The boat trapped me beneath the water and it took me over a minute free myself. I nearly drowned that day.

Reinsert pacifier into infant
Hope the mobile twirls long enough to put him to sleep

When I get my time to write. When all is quiet and I can actually hear my own thoughts and my characters start talking to me, it feels like that first boat. I’m in the zone. My fingers race and I feel alive.

But I almost never get this.

Restroom break for me and the dog
File down broken fingernail before there’s nothing left of my digit but a nub

I’m constantly pulled in so many directions that I can’t catch a good rhythm even with a short blog post. With every sentence—like every stroke of an oar in that second boat—I’m off balance and I feel like I’m about to go under again. So often, I feel like I’m drifting in the water, wanting to row, but I have no oars, no boat. I’m doing the whole treading water thing with no hope of getting to shore. I’m not going to die if I don’t hit my word goal for the day but sometimes I get so frustrated that when the stars align just right and I actually get my perfect peace and silence, I’m so overwhelmed and exhausted that my fingers won’t move. I want to write, am ready to write, but most days it feels that everything and everyone around me (yes, even my dog) has conspired to keep me from it (even though I know that’s not the case).

Change diaper
Take toddler to bed

Part of my frustration comes from my situation and wanting to make it better. Growing up, the one thing I knew I would never be was a stay-at-home mom. For years, I was the primary breadwinner of my family. Then my first son was born, and due to circumstances, I left my incredibly stressful corporate job to take care of my kiddo and give a go at writing. Now with two children under the age of two, writing has become a bit of a challenge.

My plan for this blog was to come up with a list of things I have to do every day and talk about how I overcome them. Then I realized after having to stop on the very first line of this post that I really don’t need to “come up” with anything. Instead, I added each task that made me have to stop writing. Some were more necessary than others.

Get new box of tissue from garage because I go through them like candy when I’m sick
View slideshow of “Robert Downey, Jr.’s Face on Pin-Up Girls’ Bodies”
Spend an indeterminate amount of time scrubbing my eyeballs

The balancing act: time vs. money vs. kiddos vs. my sanity.

I knew when I left my corporate job that my family would face major financial stressors. Being at home for my children has been a blessing but as you can see, it makes it nearly impossible to write.

During Superstars this year, I made the decision to find my writing time because if I never got it, I’d be forced to do the one thing I didn’t want to ever do again: go back to a cubical. For my family, it comes down to the balance of to two things: time and money. My husband and I talked about putting the kiddos in daycare a couple days a week but that would cost far more than we could afford.

I knew what I needed to do to make it happen. I started keeping my eye out for creative writing opportunities. A few weeks later, one of my Facebook writer friends (whom I will be forever grateful to) posted that her best client was looking for more ghostwriters. Even though it was for a genre and category I’d never even considered before…I went for it (because I don’t ever say “no” to something I know I can do). The author loved my samples and I just signed the contract. I worked things out with my husband to hire a babysitter a few times a week. I’ll get my writing in and still have way more time with the kiddos than I would working full-time. I’m not going to make what I did in the corporate world, but if everything pans out, I’ll be able to work on my own novels while making enough to not ever have to go back to a cubical again.

I’m always on the lookout for new opportunities and sometimes they show up when you least expect it. Earlier this week I was asked to start instructing strength training and kickboxing at my gym. Get paid to workout? Done!

Watch live webinar on submitting for freelance jobs

I’m still figuring out what works for me. Like a good plot twist, I didn’t go for the easiest solution but I’ve found my boat and oars and I’m setting off down the river. It might take time to find my zone but I’ll make it happen.

What keeps you from finding your “zone”?

What can you do to find time in your day to make it happen?

Joy Dawn Johnson:

Shortly after receiving her BFA and MBA, Joy Dawn Johnson worked as a project manager for more than ten years, including a stint in Baghdad, Iraq, as a government contractor. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and was the 2015 recipient of the Superstars Writing scholarship. Joy typically writes middle grade and young adult Sci-fi and fantasy and now ghostwrites for a USA Today bestselling author. She will begin to query agents later this year with her current work in progress, Smooth.

Read the first chapters of Smooth: JoyDawnJohnson
Website: joydawnjohnson.com
Twitter: JoyDawnJohnson
Follow and chat with Joy live on Twitch: Joylovin.

Why Finding Balance is Impossible.

March 9, 2016

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Author's Perspective Doing Good in the World Ghost Writing Jen Greyson LTUE Professional Behavior Starting a Career Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life Work-Life Balance 1 Comment

A Guest Post by Jen Greyson

I’ve recently returned from two weeks immersed in writing conferences—the Superstars Writing Seminar and LTUE—with many of my writing mentors and peers, people I admire both professionally and personally. They’re both phenomenal and I always come away with lots of great nuggets about the business and industry. But this year I came away with something a little different.

While my professional life has been on a solid upward trajectory, my personal life has been headed in the other direction. The day before I left for Superstars, my husband asked for a divorce. It’s been a long time coming for lots of reasons, and I’ve asked for one prior to that day, but it still left me trying to find my feet as I showed up on the first day of the seminar.

For the days that I interacted with the people of my tribe, I was emotionally unable to stay upright. There was no balance in my life. In the same hours I was riding a professional high, my personal life was crumbling beneath my feet, making balance impossible. The juxtaposition had me leaning on the emotional strength of the people around me in an effort to find my footing (something that’s incredibly difficult for me).

The struggle to find balance is a common theme in every life, especially for artists as we often get to add our passions in the “extra” hours of our days after work and family take up the rest.

During the days of the seminar, I realized that I’d been looking at the balance of my personal and professional life through the wrong set of lenses; I’ve always thought balance was a set of scales, but I was wrong.

The balance we seek isn’t finding a way to make the scales weigh the same; the balance is finding our equilibrium.

One of my favorite life lessons came from the last line of Glennon Doyle Melton’s Carry On, Warrior. She said (I’m completely paraphrasing), “Stress creates pressure and we all know the feeling of it pressing in so hard on us that we think we can’t bear another second. We’ve been taught that pressure is bad and painful and uncomfortable, but what if it’s not? Maybe that pressure is what holds us up. It would be a great tragedy to have nothing important pressing in at all.”

Without that pressure, perhaps we’d fall over.

It’s the same with balance. Balance is finding your equilibrium in the middle of a storm standing in raging seas, dealing with the loss of support groups, or support at home, or a job, or financial support, or one of the many forms that support comes in. Our support needs shift and change just like everything else in our life and we are constantly relearning how to find our equilibrium. I think the secret to blending a writing life with a normal life is finding our equilibrium and doing it not by thinking we have to stand on our own two feet 100% of the time, but rather by not being afraid of leaning on the people in our lives when we must.

On the last day, I heard the perfect thing that summed up so much of what I’d misunderstood about how I’d been feeling for the days leading up to the end of the most favorite week of my year. Lisa Mangum (from Shadow Mountain Publishing), when asked about finding balance between a writer life and a normal life, said, “We think the two lines of our lives run parallel to each other when in fact they’re completely interwoven. They criss and they cross and zig and zag, some times they’re very far apart, sometimes they’re very close together, sometimes they’re overlapping so closely that you cannot see one from the other.”

Again, I’m paraphrasing what she said, but within the imagery that came as she spoke was a clarity that there is no way to separate writing from normal life because as writers—probably true for all artists—we see beauty and art in everything we do, whether we’re driving a car, or help our kids get dressed in the morning, or listening to a news story. There’s always a what if, there’s always a story idea that comes from everything we touch and see and smell. Switching out one life for the other isn’t as simple as changing hats or closing our computers and walking out of our office. Being a writer is not something we do—even for those who’ve been able to turn it into a business and treat books like products and not babies—but no matter what kind of writer you are, it is still who we are inasmuch as it’s what we do.

Storytellers were the community builders, they were the ones who drew people together to share common emotions, whether they were telling a thrilling story of a hunt, or a scary story about the woods, or a legend about two lovers. All those stories held one thing in common, emotion and connection. That’s who we are as storytellers, but we must not forget both sides of the story. Too often we focus on the emotion that comes in the telling of the story and we forget about the connection that comes in the creating of the story.

Balance (equilibrium) comes when we search out—and accept—the connection during the creation.

Balance is impossible because we can’t weigh the tasks and pressures, taking one kilogram from this scale and adding it to that. Equilibrium is possible. Equilibrium comes from setting our feet, and looking ahead, and being okay with the people who come alongside us and shore us up in those moments when a sneaker wave crashes against the boat and makes us lose our footing.

Jen Greyson:

Jen Greyson was first published by the international publishing house that launched the blockbuster, Fifty Shades of Grey. She has written over 45 published books and her ghostwritten works have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. She writes new adult fantasy and science fiction along with NA and adult contemporary romances. Sign up to receive alerts about her next release: http://eepurl.com/5pAE5

Will Build Worlds for Spare Change

March 6, 2016

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Guest Posts The Writing Process World-building 7 Comments

A Guest Post by Sonia Orin Lyris

In this month’s theme of work-life-balance, author Sonia Orin Lyris tells us how a real-life encounter with an historian influenced the details in her novel. Sometimes it’s the people we meet in real life who have the most profound influence on our stories. Watch for my interview with Sonia next month on her new novel, The Seer.

Ace Jordyn

***

“I’m a historian”, she said darkly. “I don’t read fantasy novels. They get the details all wrong.”

I don’t typically beg first readers for comments, but this one was special. It was the early days of my world-building on THE SEER and I needed all the help I could get.

I asked again, very politely, and it’s possible a bit of high-end dark chocolate changed hands. Never underestimate the power of a quality bribe.

World-building trade secret, folks: if you can get a historian to read your story and tell you their pet peeves, every one of them is going to be world-building gold. Whether you make use of their complaints or not, you’ll know something about the why of them, and that’s the path to creating a world that feels real.

I had already done my research, and plenty of it, but no matter how much you study, you’re still responsible for creating the world from scratch, and if it doesn’t hang together right, the reader can feel it. You-the-author are responsible for every detail. Every detail! Consider the world around you, the one in which you’re reading these words. How many millennia did it take to assemble? How many people — in this very moment — are busy making our planet what it is, right now?

A lot. Very, very many.

But to create your book’s world?

Just one. With a little help from first readers, if you’re lucky.

The historian finally agreed. She’d take a look. But she wasn’t making any promises.

I said thank you. (Always be appreciative for the time your advisers give you.) With trepidation, I sent her the first few chapters.

The next week my inbox was filled with indignant treasures, among them this: “No, no, no! This is NOT a D&D game. Coins have names! Coins have histories!”

I instantly knew how right she was. Knew it like the contents of my own pocket.

Pennies. Nickels. Dimes. Not “coppers.” Not “large silvers.”

I dove back into my research and emerged soaked in currency-related facts, from minting to metals, from Greece to China. The facts went on and on, as did the likeness of people and horses and birds and insects, of ships and buildings, of angels and flowers, of myths and monarchs.

So many coins, each symbolizing their culture’s prosperity and priorities. Its very self-image.

I now understood that not only did coins have names and histories, but they were keys to wealth and power, to trade and politics. Coins affected everyone, from rulers to merchants to the poorest of the poor. Coins mattered, and mattered quite a bit.

Coins had names and histories. They had faces. Coins traveled.

That’s when it hit me: Coins are stories.

I felt chills.

Armed with this new insight, along with an overview of thousands of years of currency history, I went back into my world’s empire and made money, and a lot of it. I emerged with sketches of coins and knew what I could buy with each one. I could feel in my hand the weight of the coins and hear the sound they’d make clinking together. I understood how each had come into being, how they were manufactured, and the politics and symbolism behind them.

I already had money in my world, but now I wove it more tightly into the story, and the repercussions of this affected the plotline, and the plotline in turn affected the currency. A circle, much like the coins themselves.

When I came out the other side, my story and its setting had a new shine and hard solidity that had not been there before.

I can tell you, for example, that the most common imperial coin of the Arunkel empire can be broken into quarters, and pieced back together like a puzzle, so you can see the picture of the dog, moon, and queen. Not just any queen, either — the Grandmother queen, a powerful monarch. Well-respected. Perhaps a little feared.

I named the queen and the coin after my historian first reader.

When I told her, she seemed pleased. She might even have smiled a little.

Sonia Orin Lyris is the author of The Seer (http://bit.ly/seersaga), a high fantasy novel from Baen Books (http://www.baen.com/). Her published fiction includes fantasy, science fiction, horror, mainstream, and more, and may be found at lyris.org/fiction . Follow her on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/authorlyris/) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/slyris). You can also read her blog at Noise and Signal.