Christy English

Technology and the Modern Writer

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010 | The Writing Life, Writing Process | No Comments

Does anyone else have this problem? You get up early, ready to work on the latest project, but before you start, you think, “Oh, I’ll just check my email.” Two hours later you look up and realize that you are no longer setting out to work on your novel/short story/poem early at all.

God knows, I love my computer. I love that I do not need to kill a goose, clean it’s quills, and make my own ink before I can even sit down to write. I also find technology a distraction. I love being in touch with other readers and writers around the world, but the tools of communication available to me also take me away from the work of creating.

I love both: being a member of an online community of readers and writers and creating new work.  I suppose the trick is balance between the two…blogging and checking email and Facebook and Twitter, then turning everything off, and getting back to work with my characters. Ultimately, that’s why I’m here…to listen to their stories, and then to pass those stories along to others. I just have to turn off all the other fun stuff first…

Quote from The Book of Air and Shadows

Monday, September 27th, 2010 | Quotes, The Writing Life | 2 Comments

I have happily discovered Michael Gruber, the author of The Book of Air and Shadows, as well as other thrillers looking back into the past…In his bestseller, Mr. Gruber writes, “…there are three kinds of history. The first is what really happened, and that is forever lost. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened, and that is 90 % of the history written in books.”

Tags: Quotes

The Cave: A Place to Write

Friday, September 24th, 2010 | The Writing Life, Writing Process | No Comments

I think writers need not just physical space in which to work…a desk, a chair, a table, a computer, hopefully a quiet room…we also need space in our own minds to clear the path for our stories to come to us. How we clear room in our lives for that space is different for everyone. Some writers, like Richard Bach, author of The Bridge Across Forever, find space in everyday life, listening for the shower fairy, the garden fairy, the walk fairy. Though the Muse is generous with me in daily life, I find that a writer’s retreat is the best way for me to work on a new idea, a time when I am alone in a quiet place for a few days. Retreats allow me to enter the cave so that I can work on whatever ideas are waiting for me. A few days alone in a quiet space is a luxury, one I am always grateful for.

Out of the Darkness

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Writing Life, Writing Process | No Comments

As much as I love quotes from Eleanor, like Monday’s blog, today I find myself delving into a new world brought by characters I do not know very well yet. It is fascinating, because when I started working with Eleanor, she had been a character in my novels for years. So I already knew a great deal about her when she joined The Queen’s Pawn as the second narrative voice. And after writing To Be Queen, I feel that I know her that much better. So many layers of complicated emotion and thought…Eleanor is someone that I could write about for the rest of my life and never see all there is to know about her.

And now, for the first time in years, I am beginning to work with four new characters, none based on real people in history, just chracters who came to me with their story, hoping I can write it for them.  I have no idea whether these new characters will stay long enough to write a novel…novel writing is an odyssey in itself, and the characters always have to be willing to work as long and as hard as I do. If we manage to write enough to begin another book, I hope to do them justice. When the dead come to us out of the darkness of the past, the least we can do is try to hear them.

Eleanor Quote: God & Death

Monday, September 20th, 2010 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, To Be Queen | No Comments

Eleanor is a very quotable woman. In TO BE QUEEN, when reassuring her sister that she is well, she says:

“I am too strong for even God to kill.”