Some friends have asked me, \u201cWhat\u2019s it like to write a book?\u201d\u00a0 I find that to be an odd question, because like any human achievement it really comes down to a lot of hard work, plus a certain amount of ability, concentrated towards a goal.\u00a0 For instance, I know a Master Mechanic, who I swear can fix any car problem know to man.\u00a0 I once took a car to him that the dealership couldn\u2019t diagnose and before I had even finished describing the symptoms he told me what the problem was \u2013 and was right!\u00a0 Move over Click and Klack!\u00a0 How\u2019d he get that way?\u00a0 Lots of hours reading every automotive trouble report posted anywhere, and lots of hours under the hood of a car.\u00a0 Writing a book is lots of hours thinking the story through, and lots of hours over a keyboard.<\/p>\n
The writer is, of course, more like an artist who has a vision and forms it with paint and canvas, or stone, or ceramic, or whatever medium (but again, my friend is a mechanical artist because his vision is the solution and he creates it through his skill).\u00a0 The writer forms a vision with words.<\/p>\n
I guess the biggest difference is where the ideas come from.\u00a0 All ideas come from the cauldron of experience we call our lives.\u00a0 At its most basic the idea for \u201cAgony of the Gods\u201d came from a small bit of back ground in the writing of my favorite science fiction writer when I was a child\u00a0 – Alice Mary Norton aka Andre Norton.\u00a0 In at least one of her books (and no, I don\u2019t remember which) the main character came from a place called \u201cThe Dipple\u201d (if I remember correctly) which was a world inhabited by refugees following an interstellar conflict.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think Norton\u2019s description ever exceeded a few lines, and it might have been somewhat clich\u00e9d (the hero rising above his or her unfair and lowly beginnings) but it had an impact on me.\u00a0 Years later I started thinking through a possible story about a world of such refugees where the main livelihood (if you could call it that) was re-enacting various conflicts for the enjoyment of the Mega-rich.\u00a0 The downside would be that death was real for all but the person paying for the re-enactment.\u00a0 Consider the opening battle scene from the movie \u201cGladiator.\u201d\u00a0 Imagine a world where some super-rich person could be Marcus Aurelius. He or she could order and direct the attack, even take part, but without fear of personal danger.\u00a0 Yet all those taking part would actually be fighting and dying.\u00a0 This was the seed that grew into the idea of the Originals (the \u201cGods\u201d) having their own worlds in \u201cAgony of the Gods.\u201d From such small beginnings do stories grow!<\/p>\n
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Some friends have asked me, \u201cWhat\u2019s it like to write a book?\u201d\u00a0 I find that to be an odd question, because like any human achievement it really comes down to a lot of hard work, plus a certain amount of ability, concentrated towards a goal.\u00a0 For instance, I know a Master Mechanic, who I swear…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[7,8,6,12],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-photophoosk100","post-230","format-standard","category-jotting-and-stray-thoughts","category-uncategorized","post_tag-getting-published","post_tag-novel","post_tag-writing","post_tag-writing-inspiration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwolosz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}