Ask the Author: Patricia K. McCarthy
Answered Questions (6)
Patricia K. McCarthy
Just answering this question leaves me with writer's block. LOL I avoid writer's block altogether; that's my best strategy. So long as your fingers work, your mind is ticking, and your imagination is willing you should always be ready and able to write, even if it's just a short story or a two-line stanza of poetry. I've encountered novelists who tell me they've been dealing with writer's block for years and can't get started and I always give them the same answer: That's bullocks! Start with the first sentence even if all you are writing is your rage being poured out to express your frustration. That first sentence will lead to the second and so forth. Writer's block is a way of telling the world that I can't or won't write unless I know for sure that what I'm going to write will be brilliant. Admit it to yourself that your work in the beginning is nothing more than primordial ooze. That's why editors were invented to help transform the primordial ooze into a pile of excrement that is ultimately shaped into a beautiful thing.
Patricia K. McCarthy
The act of creating - there's is no better drug! Any artist who pours their heart and soul into their work can attest to that feeling when you've accomplished your goal. Sure there are times when self-doubt leaves you pulling your hair out. However, these times are eventually over-shadowed by the whole experience of getting it right, and setting out to do something that no one in the right mind should want to do. LOL
Patricia K. McCarthy
Don't get bogged down in plotting every single detail in your novel; work out a rough outline based on the number of events occurring in each chapter, e.g. an average novel ranges anywhere from 60,000 to 80,000 words so if the middle part represents 30,000 words (based on a 60,000-word novel) then the beginning and end will each have 15,000 words. If you decide to write 15 different events for the beginning, it means you have to conceive of each event using 1,000 words, which is not very many. Pair it down to an each number of events. Remind yourself too that you can only write one chapter at a time; novels are like snowmen... you have to build them one body part at a time, starting with the foundation, the middle, until you reach the top. And maintain familiarity with every chapter as you go along. I make it a point of re-reading from the beginning before I start to write new material for the same novel. Once I've completed my first draft, then I start all over again with shaping and revising; each time re-reading the preceding chapter in order that I stay connected. Of course it gets more complicated with a series! Years go by and you often lose sight of the details of the previous installments; this necessitates having to re-read your previous works. But it's all for the good.
Patricia K. McCarthy
Novel seven is a departure from the Crimson Series, in that the Crimson series is urban paranormal whereas my newest novel is classified as High Fantasy, though I intend on weaving tentacles in novel seven that will reach back to the series. I don't want to give away the new novel's title, either, save to say that I make a slight reference to it in novel six, without actually coming right out and admitting it. I have always believed that author's work better in a cloak and dagger environment; creative ideas need privacy to gestate properly.
Patricia K. McCarthy
The act of writing itself fuels my inspiration. Regrettably I have to avoid reading fiction when in the process of writing a new fiction novel, otherwise I am influenced by the author's prose. But I make it a point of reading non-fiction, poetry, magazines, blogs and newspapers to satisfy that desire to keep on reading. Music is also a great form of inspiration. When I work on a new novel, I listen to Peter Gabriel's Soundtrack to the Last Temptation of Christ as well as Arvo Parot's Tabuleh Rasa.. both are ethereal and haunting pieces of music in their own right (the perfect mood music for writing urban paranormal and fantasy fiction).
Patricia K. McCarthy
The Crimson Dream represents novel six in the Crimson Vampire Series, and supposedly the last in the series. I had to tie off some loose ends from the previous installments; the core plot revolves around a prison escape, which not so ironically I walk past the very same prison every day on my way to work. I could easily visualize the action.
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