Category Archives: Frank Morin

Only The Best – A Challenge

This month we’ve had a lot of great posts with tons of concrete advice on how to break through a wall or break out of a plateau where we might be stuck.  But what about life in general?  Do we ever feel stuck, unmotivated?

Breaking out of those ruts can be harder than overcoming writer’s block.  One of the keys is to try to identify what motivates us.  What makes us smile or laugh or cry, helps renew our enthusiasm, or drive?

Something that dives deep, strikes a chord, resonates with our deepest held beliefs.  Something that inspires hope or love.

The bestThe greatest books and movies are those that touch such a chord, that drive us to tears when they connect with our reality.  Think Rocky, Gone With The Wind, Titanic, and It’s a Wonderful Life.  Think The Help, or Pride and Prejudice.

It might be a romance, like An Affair To Remember, or it might be a heroic drama like The Dirty Dozen (I love the scene in Sleepless in Seattle where the men and women get emotional over these two different films – watch the clip here).

Whatever the story, the truth is someone put together the right sequence to touch your heart deeply.  Those kind of stories can inspire us to be better people, help us break out of an unproductive rut, or change our lives at a fundamental level.  That’s one of the reasons I love good stories so much, and why I work so hard to write them.

I want to try an experiment.  What is one movie or book that touched you in a deep, meaningful way?  It’s useless to put together a top 50 best books or best movies of all times because different stories touch different people.  It’s too subjective.  But each one of us has a personal list.

So what book or movie moved you the most?

It’s all too easy to find works that speak to me.  When I read a book or watch a movie, I deep dive.  I get sucked in completely.  For me it’s a vivid, powerful experience, and so I find myself responding emotionally all the time.  Whenever the hero faces the ultimate test and risks all to achieve their goal, I find myself choking up and responding to the stakes that they’re feeling because I feel them too.

In movies, I get sucked in almost too easy.  From Wreck-It Ralph to The Avengers to October Sky, I’m fighting tears at the end of all of them.  In books, most of my favorite authors trigger a powerful emotional response.  From Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson to Hard Magic by Larry Correia to The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

But even so, some works stand out and make a deeper impact.  In books, both Enders Game by Orson Scott Card and The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson impacted me greatly with their fantastic twists at the ends.  But one of the stories that I found even more powerful was The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.  Kal, one of the main characters, pushes himself to the utter brink to save others, and that heroism demands a reaction from any reader.

In movies, a couple of my all-time favorites are Star Wars and Avatar.  But I was also powerfully moved by The Shawshank Redemption and Remember the Titans.

There are many others, but that’s enough for today.  This is not an easy question, but taking the time to find an answer can give you a clue as to what motivates you, what themes or qualities you respond to.  In life, perhaps you’ve just identified qualities you want to emulate more every day.  In writing, perhaps you’ve just identified what element you need to add to our own work to make it really shine.

Please add your comments, and then share the challenge with friends on Facebook or Google+ or whatever other media you use to connect.  See if they’re willing to share an example too.

I think we’ll find some common themes, and a few surprises.

Let’s find out.

Saving Face – ebook

As Fictorians, we are all writers, so regularly we get to celebrate the release of a story through the various types of publishing channels.

Saving FaceToday, I am celebrating the release of Saving Face, released as an ebook in late August.  Although not my first completed novel, Saving Face is the first published.  Since we’re discussing meaningful plateaus this month, it’s a perfect time to announce this big milestone.

Saving Face:  In a near future where human bodies are rented, Sarah is one of the top-ten most requested models.  But when her employer tries to force her to sell her body permanently, she has to fight to escape before becoming the ultimate orphan.

The sci-fi/fantasy novella is the prequel to an alternate history trilogy expected to be released starting in 2014, and is available for only $0.99 on both Amazon and B&N.  Also available on my web site as a free download is a related short story – Face Lift.

You can find Saving Face and the free short story, along with links to other books and movies that resonate with the story at:  http://www.frankmorin.org/books/savingface/

I hope you enjoy it.  I’d love to hear what you think of it.

 

 

When to get Stubborn . . . And when to get Smart

LightbulbJust this month, NYT Bestselling Author, and well-known author mentor David Farland wrote an excellent post titled “A Question of Balance”.  He opens by saying, “How do you develop as a writer? It requires a balance of study and practice.”

That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about this month as I prepared this post, and I highly recommend you read his blog.  If you’re not signed up to receive his Daily Kicks, you should consider it.  His wisdom and advice is one of several factors I point to in helping me break through obstacles in my writing.

When I first started writing almost eight years ago, I took the stubborn approach that all I had to do was write, and write and write, and eventually I’d get there.

And so I tried.

Working pretty much in a vacuum of my own little world, I plowed ahead and wrote my half million throw-away words.  Sure I improved many skills related to the actual craft of writing words on a page that make sense and, not knowing any better, figured I was at the top of my game.

The only problem was, no agent wanted my 300,000 word ginormous epic novel, and I couldn’t figure out why.

That was my first big obstacle, and I could not overcome it by just writing more – which I continued to do anyway.  Just like David Farland said in his blog, I needed a better balance – some training to go along with the writing – to learn to work smarter instead of just harder.

That’s when I reached one of those milestone events in my writing career:  I took David Farland’s Professional Writer’s Workshop.  I found out about it by listening to Brandon Sanderson’s weekly podcast Writing Excuses, which I also highly recommend.

It was only with the knowledge I gained at that writing workshop that I recognized the flaws in my first book (weaknesses in the plot, waaaay too long, etc).

That’s when I faced the second challenge:  What to do next?

StubbornHere, stubbornness kicked in again and provided the answer.  Time to get to work.  I threw away all that initial work, that entire novel, mined some pieces that were salvageable, and totally re-designed the novel from the ground up.  That new novel, now titled The Sentinel’s Call, is in the hands of my agent, who will hopefully find a home for it.

In the meantime, I’ve since written 3 other novels.  In each project, I’ve faced additional hurdles.  Sometimes the answer was to get stubborn, plant butt in chair, and write like mad – like last November when I had to re-write 80% of my YA novel.  In six weeks, I pounded out over 75,000 new words, and edited another 50,000.

Other times I had to get smarter, like when I signed up for the Superstars Writing Seminar– again, highly recommended.  It’s the best place to Relaxlearn the nuts and bolts of being a professional author – the business side of writing.  Or, when I studied other writing books – like Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, which I found extremely helpful.

Over the past eight years, I’ve found the best way to overcome the regular obstacles we face as we strive to become professional writers is a balance of stubbornness – just sit down and write; and an ever-increasing foundation of knowledge gained by studying, attending seminars and workshops and by networking with other writers.

I just wish I’d started the focused learning aspect sooner.

Depending on what stage we are at with our projects, or where we stand in our writing career, we’ll need a different answer to break through whatever obstacle we’re facing.  What is your biggest challenge right now?  Do you know yet if you need more stubbornness, or more learning to overcome it?

Breaking Into The Next Level Of Craft

MountainWe all know the journey to becoming a professional writer is a long one.  It takes a while to “Break In”, and no two writers ever seem to take the exact same path to get there.  New writers are told to keep working, be persistent, and they’ll get there.

It’s like dropping off an inexperienced climber at the base of a challenging mountain and telling them to just start climbing, and eventually they’ll make it to the top.

But there are trails on a mountain, easier paths marked by those who have gone on before.  True, but someone who knows next to nothing about mountain climbing can still easily get lost.  Same for writers.  There is lots of help available, but sometimes we don’t know enough to know what’s missing when we get stuck.

Climbing a mountain is done in stages, and one thing that comes as a shock to some new writers is that becoming a professional writer is similar.  We don’t Break In just once.  There are levels to craft, plateaus we reach on our journey.  Sometimes we get stuck there, unable to Break In to the next level and resume the climb up toward the ultimate goal.

Throughout the month of September, we are going to explore some of these writing plateaus where we’ve been stuck, and ways we’ve found to pass the barrier and Break In to the next level of craft.

Sometimes we need a mentor, a writing group, or an unusually honest loved one to tell us we can do better.  When I decided to pick up writing several years ago, I pounded out 70 pages in one weekend and thought, “I’m on my way!” My wife read those initial chapters and said, “I don’t like your protagonist.”

She was right.  He didn’t work.  First obstacle.

Thankfully the answer to that one was straight-forward.  Swallow pride, throw away thousands of words of crap for the first (of many) time, and start again.

Sometimes we need a seminar or a conference or a book on writing to illuminate the shadows and show us a couple steps forward down the path.  We might need to arrange our schedule better to find more time to write.

And sometimes we just need to write another hundred thousand words of crap before we get it.

In the end, we all hit multiple plateaus, or ruts that block our forward progress.  But we don’t have to stay there.

This month the shared wisdom and experience of the entire group will help map out some possible routes to reach the next plateau.