Author: A.C. Flory

Walking the Tightrope Between Work and Writing

tightropeI have always admired people who can write, hold down a job, care for children, do marketing and wield a vacuum cleaner while apparently staying sane and cheerful. Sadly, I’m not one of them. I may be female, but I’m no multi-tasker. I’m more like a serial monogamist who can only concentrate on one, maybe two things at a time.

For me, family has always been THE top priority, so twenty-odd years ago I’d do technical writing during my daughter’s naps, and when everyone else was asleep.

Juggling family and writing worked back then because I was writing about real things that could be approached in neat, logical chunks, all left-brain stuff. However when I began writing fiction, I discovered that the process of creating characters and worlds is very different. Creative writing is a right-brain activity, and I’m naturally a left-brain type of person. Continue reading “Walking the Tightrope Between Work and Writing”

A Look at BookTech: Booktrack

The book, as we know it, has been around for a very long time.

Here in the West we date printing from roughly 1440 when Gutenberg invented the printing press, however the Chinese invented movable clay type even earlier – in 1041. So that’s about 1000 years of print.

That long tradition of print on paper was broken long before the invention of the Kindle – think about reading, and writing, on personal computers – but mass market books that do not rely on paper most definitely date from the introduction of the Kindle.

None of this is news to us. One way or another, none of us would be self-publishing if not for the Kindle, and Amazon. But now that we’ve made the leap to non-paper books, we have to accept that the changes have only just begun. Print lasted for a thousand years. Ereaders are changing every year, and taking the whole idea of books along with them.

One new innovation I discovered recently is something called Booktrack. Continue reading “A Look at BookTech: Booktrack”

Busting the Pantster vs Plotter Myth

We humans seem to thrive on dichotomies. Descartes kick-started the mind/body dichotomy with his famous thought experiment in which he concluded ‘I think, therefore I am’.

In the last century, psychologists came up with the nature/nurture myth, and spent decades trying to work out what was more important to the development of a human being – nature, in the form of genetics, or nurture, in the form of social conditioning.

In recent years, science has busted both those myths. Human beings are neither mind, nor body, they are both, and their development depends on both their genetic heritage, and the effect of conditioning on that heritage.

Yet we, as authors, still insist on classifying our creative style as either pantster or plotter. And I have been as guilty of this as anyone. Ever since I first heard the term ‘pantster’ I’ve considered myself to be one. In fact, I couldn’t understand how anyone could sit down and outline a story from start to finish. Worse, I secretly felt that Plotters must create very predictable storylines.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

The truth is we are both Pantsters and Plotters, or at least we should be. Continue reading “Busting the Pantster vs Plotter Myth”

Milestones

Milestones are tricky beasts. Sometimes they nudge your life in a different direction through stealth, and you are not even aware of them until months, or even years, later. Others announce their presence with a trumpet voluntary and fireworks.

In the last two years I have sprinted past a number of milestones – first blog, first blog post, first submission, first publication, first review, first podcast, and now first rejection. Yet of all those firsts, the one that has made the least impact on my life was the last.

Being rejected by Harper Voyager [the science fiction imprint of Harper Collins] should leave me feeling gutted. It doesn’t. And no, I’m not just saying that to cover up some deep seated, intensely private pain. There is no pain. As milestones go, this one did not even make it to a whimper much less a bang. Continue reading “Milestones”