Tag Archives: inspiration for writers

This month, the Fictorians and a slew of guest authors are going to share their successes, failures, lessons learned, and insights to the writing journey that we’ve experienced this year. December is usually a time of reflection for everyone as the calendar winds down. Looking back on our year is often a measurement of how far we’ve come as writers and human beings. To that end, this month’s theme is “2016 in Review.”

Each of us will share memorable events from the last twelve months and maybe a few lessons learned. A lot can happen in a year, even one that passes as quickly as 2016 seems to have gone. For me, 2016 has been a watershed year and as it comes to a close, I’m a bit humbled by what’s happened and, if possible, more excited about my journey as a writer than I’ve ever been. A tremendous amount of wonderful things have happened this year for me, and yet as I write this I’m slogging through a work in progress that I don’t want to write, but must finish (damn you, Heinlein!). As a firm believer in perspective, especially at the end of the calendar year, I wanted to coordinate this month for my fellow Fictorians and get all of thinking about the good, the bad, and even the ugly from the last twelve months.

I’ve already talked about my ugly, but I’ll define it. I’m working on an alternate history novel that’s kicking me in the pants every day. I have a solid story, a great outline, and good characters, but I’m constantly chickening out of actually writing the damned thing. I’m 20,000 words in (90,000 projected) and it’s tough to just write. Granted, I’ve started a new job and been taking care of my spouse after a complicated food surgery (which involves the care, feeding, and parenting of two munchkins), but I’m way behind where I wanted to be on this book. And it’s due in February. Sigh. I’d feel terrible about this except that I know I can write fast, and especially write clean and fast. I think I’ll make my deadline, but I’ve got to settle a few other things in my head. Among all that stuff is dealing with the good things that have happened so I can celebrate but not rest on my laurels.

Before I retired from the Army, there was a wide-reaching movement for leaders to consider their “work/life balance.” If anything, mine’s way skewed to the work side right now and not unlike it was when I wrote the first drafts of SLEEPER PROTOCOL in 2012-2013. I was still able to write then, and I can now, it just takes a little self-discipline and determination. When I need that extra motivation, all I have to do is turn my head to the right and a shelf over my desk. This year is framed beautifully by that image and it’s been the kind of year we dream of having.

SLEEPER PROTOCOL was published in January, was reviewed by Publisher’s Weekly, and has sold way more copies than I would have imagined. Just a week later, another publisher released my military science fiction novel RUNS IN THE FAMILY. That book also sold incredibly well, but the small press who published it shuttered just last week. I have a couple of options working right now to get it back into publication (though the audiobook is still available!). I also had short fiction published in several different venues including the DRAGON WRITERS anthology alongside Brandon Sanderson, Jody Lynn Nye, Todd McCaffrey, and David Farland to name a few. I qualified as an Active Member in the Science Fiction Writers of America. The sequel to SLEEPER PROTOCOL is in the final stages of content editing right now. It’s been an incredible year, but I’ll share my own personal highlight at the end of the month.

The stories you’ll see this month will highlight the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is what we writers deal with on a daily basis. Sometimes our efforts culminate in great years, and others not so much. The key is perseverance and determination – we’re sharing our successes and challenges in the hopes they’ll help you and each other out. I hope this month’s posts do exactly that for all of us.

The Truth About Dark Fiction

October 29, 2016

Kevin Ikenberry

Authorial Trust Believability Character Conflict Craft & Skills Ideas & Plotting Narrative Voice Setting and Milieu Social Combat Suspension of Disbelief The Writing Life The Writing Process World-building No Comments

The truth about dark fiction is very simple. It’s all about us.

I’ve always thought of myself, as a science fiction writer, clearly on the side of optimism versus doom and dystopia. As a kid, I was certainly a fan of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica and their themes of human conflict, but I remember watching Star Trek with a different set of eyes. I only really appreciated Star Wars after traveling halfway around the world during high school. Star Trek pulled me in because it portrayed our current terribly flawed and imperfect society at its absolute theoretical pinnacle in the very near future. Even with the latest movies, in the alternate “Kelvin” timeline, that future world is a darker place than before, but that relentless optimism is there. If you look across the plethora of recent popular books and movies, there is a very strong lean towards darkness and dystopia. Why is that?

It’s very simple. We see the worst of the world every night when we turn on the news. Even the newscasts that end with that thirty-second “water skiing squirrel-type” video are full of dark, depressing themes. It’s no wonder that it calls to us as writers. Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic dystopias are easy to imagine because all we have to do is turn the creative knobs to eleven or twelve and our worst fears are easy to explore. The truth of dark fiction is very simple. It’s a reflection of our society, and in some cases, how we view our future selves in the worst way possible. And as writers, it’s pretty damned easy to wrap it around us like a blanket.

Let’s be clear, I’m not disrespecting dystopian, apocalyptic, or post-apocalyptic fiction. Nor am I saying it’s easy to write and build these worlds. I’m discussing something that writers sometimes fail to notice – our own attitudes seep into our writings. When we’re convinced the world is a terrible place, it’s a little easier to write dark fiction. When we’re happy, writing happy subjects is a little easier as well. Our own personal attitudes and emotions often come with us to the keyboard and until we understand it, there’s nothing we can do to mitigate their effects.

How do I mitigate those effects? Music. There are quite a few folks I know who couldn’t imagine listening to music while writing, but it really helps me leave things behind when I sit down to the keyboard. What music? Whatever fits the mood. For my novels, I usually create a playlist while I’m developing the early outline. Sometimes a song really captures the emotional vibe of a scene. Sometimes, I need a song (or three!) to get me into the mood to even look at the book again. Watching the blinking cursor of doom for a little while without music is almost certainly going to send me on a miserable writing time adventure. On those nights (when I do most of my writing), having that go-to playlist helps me put the day behind me and focus on the next 2,000 words I want to write. That focus, and understanding that the way negativity can crawl inside our heads, is critical.

But what about when I want to look into the darkness? Well, because of my own experiences, it’s even easier for me to capture that emotion than listening to music. I’ve blogged on Fictorians before about a life-threatening illness I faced in 2014. As I recovered, my own attitudes were dark and depressed and I wanted desperately to get back to polishing the draft of SLEEPER PROTOCOL, but I couldn’t. Writing just wasn’t a positive experience. Ironically, the two stories I wrote during my recovery were much darker pieces than I’d ever written before. When I need to get dark, remembering that experience and bringing that attitude to my writing is fairly easy. Experience, especially those that are dark and uncomfortable, helps us tap into dark fiction. I’d wager that our happy dreams and goals are equally powerful, but darkness tends to have a greater connection to us because we’ve lived through it or we are living through it at a given time.

But, we have to come up for air. Not everything is wine and roses in the real world, but we can’t let our miserable world drag us down on a daily basis. We have a choice to respond to every emotion, stimulus, and action we face daily. There are times it’s okay to delve into the darkness and craft the story that needs to be written. It’s human nature to explore the abyss, after all. Just don’t sit there staring for too long. The world needs you and your voice up here. Your characters need you. Dark fiction is all about us, but so is optimistic fiction. There’s no balance to it – it’s a continuum. We’re all out there somewhere. If you’re too far down the dark side and feel like you can’t slide back the other direction, please reach out. I’ll be happy to help.

Two Great Genres That Read Great Together

July 19, 2016

Kevin Ikenberry

Believability Character Craft & Skills Ideas & Plotting Kevin Ikenberry Narrative Voice Reader Investment & Empathy Suspension of Disbelief The Writing Process Tropes & Archetypes No Comments

Science Fiction and Horror – Two Great Genres That Read Great Together

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll get this.

Imagine a kid, tousled hair and freckles staring in horror at a book in his hand walking down the aisle of a library. From the other directions another kid, this one a girl with thick dark curls held up in two ponytails, as they peruse the aisles of their local library. They comically run into each other. The first boy recoils. “You got your science fiction in my horror!”

The girl looks equally aghast. “You got your horror in my science fiction!”

As an aspiring writer, I tried to write what I thought was purely science fiction while I wrote my first short stories. I knew that the novels developing in my head were more military science fiction and I was completely comfortable with that subject matter. I wanted to keep my learning curve within the bounds of “traditional” science fiction. In hindsight, I’m very glad for the opportunity to have had my mind changed for me.

In 2012, I joined the Colorado Springs Fiction Writers Group and became a regular member. While submitting short fiction for critique, analysis, and help, we had a contest to write a flash fiction story combining two dissimilar genres. To this day, I’m glad I did not draw Lovecraftian horror and “chick-lit.” Instead, I drew science fiction…and horror.

Horror was something I never expected to write. I’ve never been a huge fan of horror movies, and I very rarely watch them. Walking Dead? Nope. It’s just not my thing. So, faced with writing a 1,000-word story I panicked and wrote nothing until the weekend before it was due. I was hung up on two things. First, to paraphrase Ray Bradbury’s definition of science fiction – it is the art of the possible. Horror, to me, seemed like the art of the impossible. Granted, I’ve experienced a few crazy, unexplained things in my life, but horror seemed to be all about fear. How could fear and (at least to me) optimistic visions of the future be related?

The second thing standing in my way was failing to understand why we read horror. I am a dedicated Stephen King fan and I realized while I was trying to get past the blinking cursor of doom that I was not connecting the science fiction scenery to the emotional response from the reader. When that finally happened, I wrote the story in one sitting while waiting for a flight at the Salt Lake City airport. I submitted the story “Poultry” for critique and was told I should find a place for it. Eventually, I did find a magazine for it, but without pay. In the last six months, I sold it again to Digital Science Fiction, where it recently appeared in their Quickfic Anthology.

Writing a miniature space opera with a horror element (and admittedly, a dark humor, too) was easier than I thought because I realized I wanted to elicit a response from the audience. I wanted there to be a moment of revulsion and a head-shaking chuckle at the end of the story. I’m hopeful I achieved that because that was the lesson I learned while writing the story.

We tend to think of prose as painting a picture for the reader. That’s part of the equation. We need to visualize the reader’s response. Can we do that for every reader? No. But, if we have that “target” in mind, we can deliver an emotional punch to the reader’s gut. That’s what makes stories memorable.

And, for the record, science fiction and horror are two great genres that work great together. (Insert head-shaking chuckle here)

Do You Need to Write Every Day to be a Writer?

March 28, 2016

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn The Writing Life 5 Comments

Recently, I was at a writing retreat and I learned something very valuable that’s taken a lot of pressure off me. This tidbit of information has changed how I feel about my approach to writing a novel or a short story.

In the writing world, there is a mantra that we’re supposed to write every day. We’ve heard it over and over. It’s our albatross. And when we don’t, the feeling of failure, the feeling of not being a real writer, is all consuming.

We’re supposed to write a certain number of words per day. To write so many short stories a year or to write at least one or two novels a year so that we can fulfill reader expectations because the immediate nature of social media and technology dictates that we produce polished works quickly.

We’re also told that we are better writers if we always work at our craft.

It’s true that we always need to work at our craft. It’s true that we need to produce work so we have something to submit and sell. What’s not true is that we need to be hard at it every day. That may work for some, but for many of us, it doesn’t.

When I learned that, I realized that I don’t feel all the pressure to perform to someone else’s mantra any more.

Sure, I want to write at least one novel and/or five short stories per year. I can do that. But now I write without the expectation I’d learned, the one that states that I need to write every day in order to produce work. At the writing retreat, I learned to relax and accept my own writing schedule. How did that happen? I simply asked others about their approach to the craft.

And that was how I discovered that I don’t need to write every day to be a successful author.

The bottom line is that we all write differently, and we all approach our craft differently. Our personalities and how we process information differs. One writer I spoke with thinks about his novel for 6-8 months, and sometimes longer. He writes in a journal, makes notes about the world, and mulls about the plot and the characters. Another outlines and plots. Another is a pantster with the vaguest notions about the story before she begins writing. Another is part pantster, part outliner. Some write a little every day. Others may wait for 6 months until they’ve got the pieces together and then in 4 to 6 weeks, they write the entire novel. Not everyone writes every day. Some don’t write for months. Some take a lot of time to think and outline while others dig in. Everyone’s method of creating the world, characters, and plot differs as does how much and how often they write every day.

But there is one thing in common: At some point, everyone has to sit in the chair and put their fingers on the keyboard and write the story.

I think that’s why when we’re new to this game, we’re told to write a bit every day. It’s about creating a habit and getting the job done. Unless we’ve tried writing every day, how do we know that it isn’t what we need to do? Unless we’ve tried outlining and writing as pantsters, unless we explore and learn whether we write best after long periods of reflection, or if the muse is more willing on the fly, we’ll never really know which method works best. That’s what I learned from the pros on the retreat – everyone had written long enough to have discovered what works best for them.

Then, there are those other times when we’re not productive. Those times makes us wonder if we’re really cut out for this business. You know, when illness strikes either you or someone in your family. Or, when the job and family leave you too exhausted to be creative (it takes physical and mental energy to write). Or, when good things like vacations, promotions, moving to a new house, new babies, or other events happen. All these life circumstances threaten to derail our story telling if we keep the mantra in our head that there is only one way to be a writer and that is by writing every day.

That mantra, is simply not true.

You don’t need to write every day to be a writer. Yes, it works for many, but not for all and not always. Life happens. But also, our personality and approach to the craft determines what works best.

The good news is that even when we’re not writing, we’re observing, we’re learning, we’re putting things together in interesting ways. We’re watching people and trying to understand what makes them tick. We observe things in our environment and we see interesting combinations and juxtapositions. On a recent road trip, a writer friend noted a corral with a horse and a rusty Winnebago and she began to wonder how she could work those things into a story. Even when illness strikes, we intimately learn about compassion and patience, about the will to overcome and survive, about what it means to be human in those circumstances and it makes us take stock of what we value. And somehow, all that gets translated into the stories we write.

Everything we do and experience contributes to our stories. We need to realize that and give ourselves a break during those times when we aren’t writing. Equally important is for each of us to discover and understand which approach to the craft is most productive.

But the cardinal rule remains: you have to write. You have to get the story down whether it’s a bit every day, whether it’s in a month-long spell, or every weekend, or some other schedule. Find what works for you and do it.

What is my writing method? My goal is always to write at least one novel a year. I tend to research and ponder for a few weeks. This includes world building and character studies. I’ll make a vague outline, which means that I know the beginning and the climax, and sometimes the end. Then, I’ll and jump into the novel, and see what my characters have to say. I’d love if I could, at that point, write for 6 weeks straight, but that rarely happens.

Last year, family health problems and a death happened and that made it impossible to concentrate on my new novel. I could have beaten myself up for not meeting my goals, for not being able to write, but instead, I wrote 8 short stories because those were manageable pieces. I’m back at the novel and it’s being written.

So now I know, that my writing method allows me the time to ponder and create so when I do write, the time spent is productive and stories (novels included) are written fairly quickly.

Happy writing!