Ask Eibmoz!

As The Third Face's publication date draws ever closer, I'd like to announce a very special video event, coming March 28th--one week before the book comes out.

One of the most pivotal, and well-liked, characters in The Third Face is Eibmoz. Eibmoz is a dead guy who's made his way from the Underworld back to the realm of the living. He's really out of his mind, and he loves being silly and making everyone around him uncomfortable. In essence, he brings humor to an otherwise dark and depressing world.

Eibmoz also seems to be very powerful, as he leads the organization, Redhand, that eventually takes Rasuke in. He works to free those seen as evil from the oppression of the ones who call themselves good. How he manages to band together an entire army, with his odd personality and quirks, is anyone's guess.

In fact, there are a lot of mysteries about him, in part because he prefers to just say silly things rather than actually explain anything properly. So, I'd like to give everyone in the audience the chance to solve those mysteries... if they don't give away too much, that is.

Comment or otherwise contact me in order to give me your questions for Eibmoz. Then, we'll take the questions and have an interview with him, which will air on March 28th.

Looking forward to all the silly shenanigans that will surely ensue!

Nothing

There have been times when I had so many things to say that sometimes I had to hold back, so I wouldn't overwhelm everyone. Things probably got lost at those points as I waited for the right time to bring up a new subject.

In all that, I've said my piece over and over again, and probably some other people's pieces too. And today, since it's been a few days since I last did so, I wanted to say another piece. Well, it turns out that I'm out of pieces. Yup. Nothing to say.

I talked to a couple of friends about it, and here's how that went: "Blog about that."

Now, obviously I ended up listening to this advice, or you wouldn't be reading this right now. But at first it seemed silly: Hey, I don't know what to write. The end!

It's a form of writer's block, I suppose. I don't normally get this type during my fiction work--there are a million other kinds of writer's block and I get one or a few of those--but it kind of came back to hit me this time. I guess I always had a feeling that if I kept blogging, eventually there would just be nothing left to say.

So, here's my next blogging mission: how does one go about finding a subject for these entries, day after day? It's obviously an important one, because many people don't find a topic for weeks at a time.

First, though, I want to ask you, readers: What do you do when you have nothing left to say?

Learning

I spend a lot of time looking for more tips about writing. In fact, out of the books I've read each week this year, three of them were just that.

Of course, not everything you read is worthwhile. The three books I bought caught my eye because of their descriptions on Amazon, and I looked through the reviews to see if they were actually as good as they were played up to be. It turned out that just about every book on the subject that I could find got really good reviews, but I couldn't just spend all my time and money on every single one. I had to go with my gut.

What follows is a quick look at each of the books I read, and how I feel about them. A mini-review, if you will, but an honest one, based on my overall experience with writing materials. I've already reviewed one book on writing here in the course of all my other book reviews, but I decided to make this sort of a separate realm.

So, without further ado, let's see what I've got.

Progress

Lately, I've been talking a lot about the ebb and tide of emotions--the ability to keep moving. I've risen past both doubts and exhaustion, so now it's about time that I really got to work.

That's why I'm getting started on my final offensive, as it were, on The Third Face. After this work, there shouldn't be much left to do on it. I'm not rewriting it again (thank goodness), but some scenes definitely did need to have some big changes made to them in order to get them working in the context of the big plot. I may have to add and delete a few, too.

In other words, you can definitely look forward to things picking up here. April 5th is about a month and a half away, so the excitement is about to start building. Expect me to start bringing it up more often, talking a bit more about what the book is exactly, and throwing more and more tidbits out there.

It's even safe to say that I have a cover artist lined up. I had made a big deal about a cover art contest before, but I had very few entries and nothing really jumped out at me. So I finally decided to be active about it and actually look for a specific artist. Negotiations are going on right now, but I have a feeling the work of that is going to begin very soon. Once that's done, you'll know, because I'm probably going to start showing it off everywhere--this artist is a winner.

But, in the meantime, I can't celebrate until I've actually done the work of it. Every chapter needs to be looked at, both by itself and as part of the whole. I wouldn't be able to do this without a great group of friends and editors backing me up, of course. With their help, this novel is finally going to get done right.

Rest

When you meet resistance, you can either force your way through, or back off until you get your energy back.

If you're the type of person that pays close attention, you might have noticed that even though I've been pretty consistent about posting a lot lately, this is the first one I put up since last Friday. Why is that? Well, it has to do with vacations.

Actually, having three days off in a row from my job was just a happy coincidence of scheduling. On Sunday I set out to read an entire book, not to mention beta read about 20 pages, and to follow up on my hunt for a cover artist. I e-mailed one artist, got halfway through the book, and didn't beta read anything. On Monday, my goal was to finish the things I wanted to do on Sunday. I managed to read another quarter of the book, but that was it.

Before long, I realized what was happening. I was trying to get things done on days that simply were meant to be lazy. For the rest of Monday, I just relaxed. Watched TV. Napped. Played games. Maybe it was a waste of time, but I felt like I was recovering from something. Yesterday I just did a little cleaning and then relaxed again, and then I was completely ready for today.

This morning I went back to work. Conditions were tougher than they've been in a while, but I pushed through. After that, I came home and got started on that beta reading after all. And, of course, I finally managed to get a blog post done.

I'll admit, I haven't exactly accomplished greatness in the last week. Still, the downward spiral of productivity has come back to an upward direction. It seems like the reason for that is the time I spent resting. It's fair to say that such patience is sometimes what we need to balance ourselves.

Just don't take this advice as a license to be lazy all the time, please.

Rising Phoenix

Strength is in conquering things that have brought you down.

In a recent post I talked a lot about having doubts as an author. But like many other negative things in the world, as long as you don't give in to them, doubts clear up before too long.

The phoenix has always been a bit of a personal symbol of mine. If you don't believe me, look at the address of the page you're on right now--it starts with beyondphoenixian. I named it that because I originally wanted to call the world of my novels the Phoenixian Universe. (I later reconsidered because Phoenixian is really hard to spell and called it Ephix instead, but Ephix is still, in fact, the name of a phoenix.)

Of course, I don't need to tell you that the phoenix is all about rebirth, rising from the ashes and all that. I do, however, want to speak to how important that concept really is. Because when people who are defeated come back with renewed determination, they are always stronger than ever.

In fiction, this is true of a lot of characters right before the end, when they rise up to take the final victory. In real life, though, only some of us manage to parallel that experience. Why is that? Because we're allowed to give up. We're allowed to back down. Unlike fictional characters, who have to fight to the finish, real people don't have to finish what they started. And I think that's a shame. After all, it's only when we do finish that truly great things come out of it.

I'm not saying that I finish what I start all the time. Far from it. Outside the world of writing, my pile of unfinished projects is staggering. But within the writing world, the one that I care about most of all, I've learned over the last couple of years to keep going.

That's why my doubts, my second thoughts, are gone. It's been a hell of a week for me. But I know that this time, for once, I'm going to keep my promise. I'm going to fight to the finish. And you should too.

The Value of Feedback

I think every author that wants to have success with his or her work will have to get feedback at some point. In the face of the many drafts it can take to get a real, publishable winner, everyone needs a little help.

Some people go to their friends for advice, and inevitably get flowery words of kindness that don't really help improve anything. Others look up professional editors, forking over the cash for it. There are writer's workshops as well, but it's tough to get much on more than a piece of your work. What we really need is a fellow writer who's willing to give honest feedback from start to finish.

So, across the internet, there are many places where we can ask for this (my personal favorite being the Absolute Write forums). But the funny thing is, it's just as important the other way too--if you need this help, so do the rest of us. Offering to look through and give someone an honest, thorough opinion is a great way to make friends in the writing community.

One of my fellow authors, Kat Mellon, just made a blog post on some of the best ways to band together with other writers. It's packed full of great information. She gives at least six valuable tips--all I have is this one, but it's definitely my favorite way of interacting with other writers.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have quite a few projects to go read and comment on.

Second-Guessing

Let me put this up front: The Third Face might not be coming April 5th.

Now I know what you're thinking. I just spent the last two months rabidly rewriting it to make it great, then I released a portion of that to the general public. And I still have two more months to polish it. How can I be unsure that I'll be done with it in time?

Second-guessing. Doubt. That which afflicts every writer at some point or another. I'm just asking the same questions other authors ask themselves at certain stages in their writing. Is this going to be good enough? Will people really want to read what I'm writing? Can I even finish it like this? Should I just start over?

These hauntings affect us all differently. Some people give in to them immediately, and they really do start over, writing the beginning to the same story over and over. Or, they scrap it altogether and try another one, only to put that down, too. The worst victims are the ones that decide to end their writing careers and move on to some other dream.

Even when people do finish, they eventually look back at their work and scream in frustration: how could I not see it? This isn't going to cut it! These people often go through the same set of responses that in-progress authors do, rather than face the horror of revising.

I've started over countless times. I think part of it is that I was never truly sure of what I was doing, no matter how many times I wrote it and presented it to the world. When you read a book, it seems like that's the only way that the author could have told that same story, but the truth is, there are an infinite number of ways to "remix" the same characters with the same issues and the same inevitable confrontation. Out of these, only a handful are on a path to something that will be successful.

The question, then, that every author is really asking is: Have I found the right way to tell my story this time?

All our second-guessing and doubt comes from fearing that the answer to that question might be no. And, even after learning from the pros and writing more drafts than I care to count, I still have that fear, too. Until I can conquer that fear, either by confirming that this draft is the right one or by working the story to that point where it is, there's no guarantees that I can make.

Today's question might be a difficult one, but if you can, leave a comment: what doubts are you most afraid of?