When it's time to start writing, do you psych yourself up first?

Do you take a moment to get yourself excited, to try to get yourself in the mood?

Yyyyeah. I'm learning not to do that.

I'm finding that if I focus on getting in the mood for writing, and if I feel like I really have to get into it before I can start, I'm less likely to start at all.

If, however, I just start writing, I find it almost magically starts to flow. If I don't think about how good or bad it is, and just trust that whatever I put on the screen is OK and the wrinkles can be smoothed out during editing, and I just let the characters do what they want, the writing almost takes care of itself.

Do I have to think about what I'm writing? Sure. But more and more lately, I'm finding that it's a matter of getting out of my own way, and just trusting in my abilities and characters to be good enough and more.

What about you? When you're frozen by perfectionism, what do you do to get yourself started?

I love it when fiction practically writes itself.
 
I’d wholeheartedly intended to keep the scenes in Heroic Lies short. The story is told in medias res, with the scenes alternating between the present and the flashbacks of how the situation came to be, and I’d planned to keep both types of scene short, atmospheric, and to-the-point.
 
Then Zorei and Alexandra opened their mouths, and wouldn’t shut up.
 
Alexandra is the classic, spunky red-haired reporter, and Zorei is the strangely polite, enigmatic alien villain who repeatedly kidnaps her so he can use her as bait for her superhero boyfriend.

I’d known that Alexandra was going to be saucy, cheeky, and borderline fearless in her dealings with Zorei; I just hadn’t foreseen the sheer degree of chemistry and momentum the two of them could generate. Once they start bantering, they just don’t stop.
 
There are times when I have to regretfully cut the conversation short, as gracefully as I can, even though they could have easily kept playing verbal tennis until I’d written an encyclopedia.

​I just love the chemistry between them; Zorei is so calm, patient and practical that he can handle Alexandra’s zaniness (to a certain degree), and Alexandra is one of the few people who can be as playful with him as she is.
 
...Huh. I hadn’t thought of this until about 5 seconds ago, but suddenly those two almost remind me of Scorpius and John Crichton. One’s the calm, patient alien antagonist, and the other’s a human who just can’t stop cracking jokes and mock-flirting at him.
 
I just can’t seem to get off this Farscape tangent, can I? Well, it’s their fault for making the series so darn good. But back to Alexandra and Zorei.
 
Of course, there’s a lot more to the dynamic between those two than cheerful, snarky remarks, though the banter certainly amplifies and underscores those hidden depths, and hints at revelations to come in a way that would probably only be truly appreciated during a second reading. I like things like that in fiction, where a scene or theme is good in and of itself, but later plot twists add a whole new meaning and put everything in a different light.
 
I suppose I could try harder to tone the banter down, cut it short - but why? If it’s half as fun to read as it is to write, every word will be well worth keeping in.

This blog post is for my fellow Farscape fans, and it’s dedicated to a weird realization I recently had. So...
 
What’s black and white and black and white and black and white?

I’ll give you a few hints...
 
He’s a bit taller than average, and very physically strong.
 
He’s exceptionally polite, but will keep pushing ruthlessly toward his goals... politely.
 
He’s hard to drive to violence, and will usually snarl long before he does any actual harm... but you don’t want to be the one to push him too far.

He suffers from chronic health problems, which leads him to walk stiffly, require regular medical attention, and, on occasion, randomly vomit foam.
 
He has a high-pitched voice, and while using it, will sometimes make deep purring noises.
 
He wears a black mask, which does little to conceal the fact that his life has left him with a few physical deformities.
 
His daunting appearance notwithstanding, he’s very physically affectionate, and likes licking people. Either because of this, or despite it, he has a penchant for surrounding himself with beautiful women.
 
If you withhold something he wants from him, he WILL follow you around, nagging you for it. For as long as it takes.
 
All of this leads me to conclude...

He’s big and gentle, he'll purr at you while you wash his muddy paws (yet keep trying to walk out of the bathtub the whole time), and if there’s a sufficiently flimsy door between him and what he wants, he WILL punch a hole in it. (Based on a true case of vandalism.)
 
He’ll put up with both regular injections and me forcing a variety of medicines down his throat to combat his kidney problems, and even when he does eventually start to thrash and snarl, he never takes swing at me. (He reserves his violence for times when other cats get persistent about pissing him off.)
 
Over the years, he’s accumulated a torn ear, an abbreviated tail, and one pupil that doesn’t dilate properly, lending him a positively brutish and psychotic appearance when he’s annoyed. Despite this, he has a posse of loving fangirls both at home and at the vet’s office, and seeks as much physical affection as he can possibly elicit from both humans and his fellow cats, including individuals he chases around and who don’t want him to touch them.
 
So, there we go. My sweet, loving, affectionate cat is a sci-fi antagonist. Who happens to love climbing into bed with me at night.

Well. That was hectic.
 
Once upon a time, I set myself a deadline. On Wednesday the 15th, I wanted to have my first webinar live and running.
 
On Saturday the 11th, when I planned to record the audio, I made a horrible discovery: the only headset in my household that doesn’t sound staticky was on the road with another member of my family, and wouldn’t be back until Monday night!
 
11-12-hour work days ensued.

On Monday, I spent pretty much the entire day creating slides. I’d already gotten about 90 of them done on Saturday, but there were still around five hundred and thirty left to go. I didn’t quite get all of them done on Monday.
 
On Tuesday, more frantic creation of slides ensued, as well as the recording of most of my 1.3 hours of audio. And then I had to transfer it all into Windows Movie Maker and start syncing the slides.
 
Whose idea was it to time the slides by their duration, as opposed to their start and end points, anyway?
 
In the end, I had to delay the webinar’s release by 1 day; I plan to have it live by the end of today. It was certainly a learning experience, both in terms of software, logistics and technology, and in the way I’ve been running my life.
 
What I learned from these very frantic few days was:
 
When you have an important project, set boundaries. Part of my problem was, I’d made too many commitments to too many people, and put those commitments ahead of what I needed to do. Because of this, I hadn’t prioritized my webinar until my deadline was far too close, so I ended up scrambling in vain to get it done in time.

​In the future, I need to put my important projects first, get them done far ahead of time, and not make any promises to anyone that would prevent me from achieving that goal.
 
If you can relate, or have a similar story to share, I’d love it if you’d share your experience in the comments section. I look forward to hearing from you.

You know what the strangest thing I’ve learned about writing fiction is?
 
It’s that I shouldn’t think of it as fiction.

So, why not think of the fiction I'm writing as fiction?

Because when I do that, it stops being a group of characters living through a series of events, and it starts being a product. A book I need to polish, perfect and control.

My old perfectionistic tendencies come to the surface, and I start to have the same worries that every author probably has.

Are the characters interesting enough? Good enough, flawed enough, changing enough, staying the same enough?

Is the plot intriguing enough, complex enough, easy enough to follow?

Enough, enough, enough?

Obviously, I haven't actually lost track of the difference between fiction and reality. Or I would need that straitjacket.

But sometimes, it's nice to just let the characters be as real as they want to be. To stop worrying about how their actions and personalities will affect the quality of the book, and just let them unfold as they will.

Perfection, or some delusional semblance of it, can come later. In the editing phase. In the meantime, sometimes it's better to just stop thinking of the book as a book that needs to be perfected or improved, and just treat it as if it's a group of people, creating and experiencing their own reality the way real people do.

In its own funny way, I suppose the result is more realistic that way, is it not?


So, what about you? When you're writing, what methods do you use to avoid falling into perfectionism and control, and let inspiration flow naturally?

Canadian authors who sell ebooks to Americans through Amazon, rejoice!

Finally! After months of trying to contact Amazon, the IRS (whose "international" numbers tend not to work in Canada), an American tax lawyer, and anyone else I could think of who might know how I can get my Amazon book-selling tax issues handled, I finally found a person who seems to know what he's doing.

He needs to do some research before he can firmly recommend the most applicable and cost-efficient way to go about getting the documentation I need to continue selling books to America, but at least when I explained my problem he knew what I was talking about (the other pros I contacted didn't).

If you're a Canadian who sells books on Amazon.com and doesn't have an ITIN, SSN, or any of those other collections of capital letters that you need to prevent Amazon from pulling your books out of KDP, be sure to follow my blog, as I'll be posting the solution once it's been hashed out.

In the meantime, don't worry; I don't plan to turn this into the Everything About Taxes blog. I have more entertaining things to write about. :) But after all the hassle this matter has caused me, I'd love it if I could spare some of my fellow authors the same frustration.

I love it when a character’s personality starts to form all by itself. When I was writing “Voice of a Silent Fugitive”, it took me a while to get into the main character’s head. I had to rewrite the early chapters a couple times.

But in my latest book, “His Heroic Lies”, it’s going so much easier. I had a bit of trouble with Alexandra’s first scene, but the antagonist, Zorei, almost feels like he simply stepped into the book, whole and fully formed. It’s like Alexandra’s an actress who took a scene or two to fully get in character, whereas Zorei is starring as himself.

I really enjoy writing him. His dignity, intelligence, and air of quiet, patient resignation practically carry him through the scenes. He’s unusual for a villain, and there’s just something about calm, elegant, intellectual, polite antagonists that always draws me to them and usually places them among my favorites.

(Hello, Itachi Uchiha and Scorpius)

I’m really looking forward to releasing this book to the world. In the meantime, I’m just going to keep enjoying writing Zorei, and grinning at the banter between him and Alexandra.