Category Archives: Writing

Questioner's Shadow, Writing

Questioner’s Shadow Soundtrack

Sometimes when I write, I listen to music. Other times, I turn it off. I’ve never really been a playlist creator, generally listening to whatever I feel like at the time.

However, on Questioner’s Shadow, I decided to make a playlist. It contains a couple unsigned bands (Whitcomb and Iron Thrones). The Whitcomb album can be found on Amazon (like the rest). I don’t know about the Iron Thrones albums, so I linked to them. Here’s the list (not in any particular order), band first, and then album(s).

Hurt – Goodbye To The Machine, The Re-Consumation, Vol. 1, Vol II
Opeth – Black Water Park, Damnation, Deliverance, Ghost Reveries, My Arms Your Hearse, Watershed
Iron Thrones – Visions of Light, The Wretched Sun
Dream Theater – Systematic Chaos
Katatonia – Viva Emptiness
Whitcomb – Crown Park
The Sword – Age of Winters, Gods of the Earth, Warp Riders
Mushroomhead – XIII, XX
Fair To Midland – Fables From A Mayfly
Mastadon – Crack The Skye

Shattered, Writing

Today I Worked On: AWW Book Two!

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Or, more accurately, a “proposal” for A Wizard’s Work Book Two. What? A proposal?

One of the things I enjoyed about the Marketing Workshop I went to at the end of March was how writing a proposal forced me to consider the whole story. While I don’t need to write proposals for my books, the exercise of writing it allows me to think through the whole thing, and perhaps find a theme, characters, setting, and the major plot points before writing the story.

A proposal will also help me decide if that particular version of the story is worth writing, or if I should “try again” and see what comes out. During the workshop, on a couple days, we had to write different versions of the same proposal. This ended up showing to me the opportunities for creating multiple stories out of the same idea, allowing me to choose the best one to spend months of effort on.

I don’t know if this particular proposal will be the basis of the book, but I’m already sure writing it was a useful exercise.

Questioner's Shadow, Writing

Questioner’s Shadow Progress

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I made some decent progress on Questioner’s Shadow today. It may not really look like much, but I cut a few hundred words before tacking on new ones.

I’ve had a couple issues with making progress on it. First, the workshop interrupted it. I’d hoped to have it done before the workshop, but couldn’t make that happen. Then, when I came back, I had Shattered to get out the door. I’m going to need to do some better planning around the publishing part. I really can’t seem to edit one book and write on another at the same time. Or maybe it was just hangover from the workshop. I have no idea.

Eventually, I realized I’d left it in a spot that would have been difficult to get through if I hadn’t interrupted the work on it. I feared being able to do the scene justice (I still do). But in the absence, that fear had grown debilitating. So last night, while lying in bed, I told myself, “Mark, you are going to write something on QS tomorrow, even if it’s crap.”

So I did. And I think it’s better than crap, which is a bonus.

Now, the current plan is to finish Questioner’s Shadow, and then immediately get to work on Fragments, the second book in A Wizard’s Work.

I am going to make the attempt to edit QS while writing Fragments, but if push comes to shove, the edits will wait until the first draft of Fragments is complete. I’m not going to interrupt a draft in the middle again, if I can help it.