Tag Archives: Muses

Summoning Your Muse with Ruth Harris

THIS BLOG POST IS FROM ANNE R ALLEN YOU CAN FIND THE LINK BELOW FOR MORE GREAT POSTS.

 

Writing and The Hidden Power Of The Subconscious:

Summoning Your Muse

http://annerallen.com/2018/03/summoning-your-muse/

 

The Journey of your Muse

The Journey of your Muse

Interfering buggers, they are at times. I have mine stepping into each other’s stories, trying to take control turning a book from a romance into a mystery romance. They really don’t play ball most of the time. If this isn’t enough the characters come crowding into my office and attack me because I’m not writing their story.

I’m not sure I know where I am or what I am doing – author wise. Not that I want them to go away either. The muses have already done that once when I was still in New Zealand. They all went for a Summer holiday in the Northern Hemisphere…Lazing around on their butts, ignoring me and my writing needs. Luckily, I had my publishing to do with various clients along with my Marketing Magazine.

 

I love working with people. Some of my favourites so far:

J C Christian whose muse was fickle to say the least. We got it in order in the long run with a journey through learning to write what was there at the time rather than trying to write and the brain blank of words. It was a great success to. Once all the chapters were done I put it in order and J C Christian started to edit her full fictional memoir manuscript.

Since that time the book has been re-edited and there will be a second edition sometime in the future. Meanwhile, life took over and the muses went back to been fickle once more and book two…is still been written.

I’ve actually enjoyed working with most of my clients. Another great experience was with Catherine Scythe was amazing to work with and also wrote a fictional memoir. This book was more of a thriller about her husband’s life. Catherine is a wonderful story-teller and during the writing of this book she was taking her Masters in English.  With another continual learning curve due to being a first-time author (like J C) it was great to be able to show them the ropes of how things worked.

The easy part is writing the book

I’ve seen this phrase a lot in my time as a writer and publisher. Though it may be true in the long run for most people, we need to think about what they all know. I suppose it is like people saying Write What You Know! Well to me I’m more like – If you don’t’ know then research it. Anyway, you will find many authors have other experience in life. Some may know Marketing, Editing, Graphic Design – as well as being authors and this is where the Sharing comes in. Grow your knowledge be it with your muses messing things up and not following the format (if you use one – I don’t) To travelling along your writing journey and becoming more knowledgeable in how things work.

It’s what I did and still do. One of my major learning curves last year was with Award Winning Author Wanda Luthman and how to produce a full colour picture book for Ingram Spark. This distributer is totally different from Createspace and Lulu. So different I could have become a nightmare. However, it didn’t and the book looks amazing. One of the things I had to learn was how to use InDesign. Well worth the buy and watching some tutorials. I’ll admit now I’ve still got a long way to go with this learning curve.

Now where did I put those muses…ruddy busybodies they are…never mind the characters making demands on my time!

The Need to Write

WRITING – Yep I do this sometimes.  Mainly when I am bored to tears or my fingers just take off and flow over the keyboard.  Why write?  Well there are several reasons. Here are mine:

To teach someone about something they have little knowledge about, if I know more about the subject

To research for information and take notes. Be it for fiction or family history and blogs.

To share an experience in life, work or anything else that comes to mind.

To share a story and engage readers.

To entertain children and adults with something which can take them away from reality for a short while.

Because it is fun and my teachers at High School wouldn’t put me forward for O’level English (yeah it still shows at times.)

I’ve never been one to prove a point when I don’t know the answer, though I do love a good debate and weaving stories through theories is amazing fun.  Could it really happen?  Well this is what fiction is all about MAKE BELIEVE.  It makes you think, dream and perhaps encourages you to try something new or find the answer.

WRITING is also about learning, listening and gaining knowledge.  Most of us know about the world today because we read, be it books or online.  However, we have to be careful not to get sucked into so much FAKE news which is a constant on many social media accounts today.

SADLY Writing is also exploited, used against us in many ways.  We read things into bible passages, taking them out of context.  Personally I won’t listen to anyone quoting bible phrases unless they have read the bible from the beginning to the end.  I know my grandfather did.  He was a Minister.  A lovely gentleman, who sadly I didn’t get to meet.  Politicans have also used the written word to their advantage, making us angry over things which really have no meaning.  Lawyers can complicate the language so we don’t understand and I am sure there are times people have signed away their rights without realising it – until it’s too late.  Journalists…News Media, Organisations who tell you something is wrong – many things cross out paths in life and it is up to US to work out what is true and what isn’t. 

HOW OPEN MINDED ARE YOU?  

 

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