Ask the Author: Michael Gray
Answered Questions (5)
Michael Gray
I always write something each day, and have no difficulth because I enjoy the opportunity to remind myself what I value about life. This may not go past writing in my daily journal on a particular day. But there is a special pleasure to entering a story that is not identiical to my own, especially once it has developed its own momentum. In my new book, I have not quite reached the point where I see the story has been taken over by characters living their own (fictional) lives.
Michael Gray
I'm working on a fourth book (third novel), provoked by my sense that large corporations have an unfair advantage over independent individuals who must buy their food, accept their wages, and suffer from their control over the lawmakers, the courts and wages. But to contervale this resentful take on modern society, I am trying to develop a way to give voice to the positive forces in our world--spirtual traditions, Mother Earth, and the lives of ordinary people doing their best.
Michael Gray
Just start writing and once you are working on something join a group so that you can get feedback on your stuff and also see what others are writing. On the otherhand, if a creative wind is filling your sails and you can't get it down fast enough, don't stop to ask for feedback. that can happen later when you read your story and find it isn't all you had hoped it was.
Michael Gray
Just as working with people and being part of a society gives me something to write about, working on a story adds a creative ingredient to all the regular activities of my daily life.
Michael Gray
I work on a spectrum of activities that roughly correspond to the first four steps in the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path: Vision, Intention, Speech, and Action. I have written a good hundred pages in my journel with ideas for a new novel (Vision) and reminding myself why this new book could be a worthwhile and needed reminder about the threats to the earth (intention). This is all speech in the sense of being a bridge between the impulse to write and the actual writing. It's only when I actually start writing a chapter from a character's perspective, that I enter the Action step. Having these four approaches available helps with writer's block, just as having four doors into a house gives you several ways to get in. And when I don't feel inspired to write (or write about) this new novel, I can read and research and still feel that I am moving along a path.
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