I’m thrilled that Rachel from Creatopath has nominated me for the Blog Tour Award. I always love reading her stories for the weekly flash fiction challenges, and checking out the creative ventures on her blog, so thanks once again for the nomination Rachel! This award involves answering four questions about writing. The rules are:
- Compose a one-time post on a specific Monday (date given on your nomination – I was given Monday 27 April.
- Give your nominees the rules, and a specific Monday to post. My nominees can post on Monday 18 May.
- Pass the tour on to up to four other bloggers.
- Answer four questions about your creative process which lets other bloggers and visitors know what inspires you to do what you do.
Here are the four questions and my answers:
Q.1. What are you working on at the moment? At the moment I’m working on a paranormal/suspense novella (or novel, depending on how many words the story needs to be told) based on a flash fiction piece I wrote a while ago called White Manor. It’s about a woman who inherits her family estate and has to deal with some unexpected events involving the house, and learning a thing or two about herself along the way. I started it as part of CampNaNoWriMo this month but haven’t got a hope in hell of actually finishing it by the end of the month now so I’ll keep playing with it and use the next Camp in July to finish the first draft if I haven’t done so by then. I’m also finishing up two short stories that I’ve had sitting around since the start of the year.
Q.2. How does your work differ from others in your genre? My writing voice inevitably gravitates towards humour/satire because I find it difficult to take life too seriously, so even though my current project is quite a dark story, it’s probably going to be coloured with humour somehow. Also, my protagonists tend to be female because a) its easier for me to relate to a woman and b) I think that there are enough male characters out there saving the world/galaxy/universe already, so I see it as my duty to strive towards balancing the equation 🙂
Q.3. Why do you write or create what you do? I love all forms of creative expression, whether its art, photography or film. Writing just happens to be the form I feel most comfortable with because it allows you to create people and places and alternate realities without getting paint all over your hands or having to get wet/cold/hot/dirty to capture that perfect shot. In saying that, I’d happily get out there for the perfect shot if I didn’t have two young children to care for!
Q.4. How does your writing/creative process work? I’m not a very disciplined person by nature, and that combined with a cheeky toddler and 6 month old baby, create a challenging environment for a regular writing habit. The following tools and techniques are helpful:
- Limiting the use of social media. It would be very easy to wile away the hours socialising online, so I’ve purposefully broken my Facebook habit, and don’t have any other social media accounts. Blogging, and socialising with the WordPress community is enough for now.
- Limiting my blogging commitments. As much as I’d love to feed my addiction to flash fictioning and photography by participating in more challenges, I limit myself to two flash fiction challenges a week (Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers, Mondays Finish the Story, and the Daily Post Photography Challenge).
- I like to work on a few projects at the same time, usually of different genres, so that way when I start running out of steam with one story I switch to a different one for a few days.
- Even if I’m writing a story about transgender aliens planning an Elvis convention, I always make sure to research the subject area in order to give the story some level of plausibility.
- I like to start with an overall outline, and then a paragraph or so for each chapter to have some kind of structure to start with. Nothing too set in stone of course, as characters like to do their own thing most times don’t they?
- I use Scrivener, which makes it easy to move between chapters and scenes, and to shuffle things around.
- I’ve become a fan of writing sprints after being at CampNaNoWrimo, and find its a helpful way to quickly dump whatever’s lingering in the subconscious onto a page – its amazing how much you can write down in a 10 minute sprint, before treating yourself to a tea/coffee and bikkies!
- I also use the notes feature on my phone to jot down ideas and inspiration on the run, and then save them to Dropbox for later (I save everything in Dropbox now after suffering the horror of a crashed computer not long ago.)
Well, that’s enough about me – time to pass the baton on to some writers whose work I look forward to reading each week. Without further ado, my nominees for the Blog Tour Award are:
It’s great to find out more about how you transfer your ideas from your mind to the page 🙂
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thanks. its heavily filtered of course :p
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Congratulations on this award! It is lovely to learn something about you! I am happy that my site is one of the two flash fiction challenges that you write for! Be well… ^..^
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Thanks Barbara! 🙂
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Congratulations on this award, Az. I enjoyed reading your answers, and wish you every success with your writing.
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Thanks for your kind words Millie 🙂
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You’re very welcome. 🙂
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That was so interesting. Thanks for participating in the blog tour. Your paranormal/suspense novella sounds intriguing and it’s great that you’re getting lots of words written on the NaNoWriMo camps. I haven’t tried the camp yet but did NaNoWriMo last year. Your writing processes are great. I don’t know how you have enough time to do all those challenges as well as write your novel!! I’ve heard Scrivener is fantastic but haven’t yet given it a try. I like how you jot down notes on your phone too! Hope you get your first draft finished at the next camp!
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Thanks Rachel- and thanks once again for nominating me! You can try scrivener for free for 30 days if you want to give it a spin 🙂
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I should do that. Then how much is it to join/buy do you know?
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It worked out at around $50 Aussie dollars with a 20% discount (I used the nanowrimo code but if you google it there are various discount codes floating around online). It’s worth it 🙂
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That’s pretty good. Thanks for the info. Will do some investigating.
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Congratulations on your award 🙂 . Suspense novels especially those with humor are right up my alley, so I wish you all the very best in completing your novels.
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Thankyou 🙂 it’s a very slow process at the moment but I’m hoping to get it done by the end of the year- let’s see 🙂
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