Authors Answer 21 – The Ultimate Goal

The four-day weekend is nearly over, unfortunately, and I have been blissfully lazy. Back to the grind tomorrow, which leads neatly to this week’s question: What is your ultimate goal with your writing? Fame? Fortune? Changing the world?

Friends of mine will not be surprised to hear that it certainly is not the latter. I’m a very selfish person, and while I won’t go out of my way to make the world a worse place, neither am I the kind of person who volunteers at soup kitchens and knits blankets for the homeless.

Spotlight -What’s in a Name?

This is an idea I’ve been playing around with for a while, and hope to turn into a regular (weekly?) feature. For all I know this may be the first and only post, but I like the general idea, so I’m going to try and run with it.

The idea is to take one thing per week that’s grabbed my attention for whatever reason, and devote a blog post to it. Often these things will be relating to books, languages and other generic writery kind of things, but I don’t really want to limit myself to that. As I said, I’ll just try and run with it.

Authors Answer 20 – Writing is Challenging

I never know how to start these stupid posts. When it comes to witty or insightful intros, I’ve long ago reached the bottom of the well. Or the spring has dried, or whatever metaphor you want to come up with.

That intro is rather apt for this week’s question, which is What element of writing (setting, characterisation, plot development, etc.) do you find most challenging?

Authors Answer 19 – Writing Beginnings

Another week, another question to ponder. This week’s one is pretty straightforward: How did you get into writing and how did you select your genre of choice?

It is probably a subject I have touched on at some point in some of my early blog posts, but maybe not comprehensively. That said, the answer to both aspects of the question is pretty similar – it kind of just happened.

Authors Answer 18 – Rewriting a Famous Ending

I feel only slightly better than last week, and I’ve lost count of the amount of hot toddies I’ve drunk, but I suppose I am very slowly on the mend. Just as well, because this week is a pretty interesting question! The title gives it away, of course, but the full question is Have you ever wanted to rewrite the ending of another author’s published book? How would you change it?

Warning: major spoilers ahead for both the Hunger Games and Forty Thousand in Gehenna.

Authors Answer 17 – Writing Influences

I like this series, but a lot of the questions are either very similar to things I have already done before, or to another question in the Authors Answer line-up. This week’s question is What authors, styles or intellectual movements have most influenced your writing?