 A J Hartley
read all posts by A J HartleyThis might take a while. It’s a recurrent theme here at MW but not one we’ve addressed much recently so I thought I’d come at it from a slightly different perspective.
Different conversations with friends over the last few days got me thinking about the various forms of crap that gets thrown at writers. Some instances:
bitter, hostile or otherwise unhelpful beta readers/critique partners
snide remarks from friends and colleagues about your literary “hobby” (these don’t go away after you’ve hit the NY Times
Bestseller list, by the way)
rejections from agents, editors and their minions, the tone of which range from the bland to the brutal
blistering, mean-spirited unfair or ill-informed reviews of your published work everywhere from legitimate newspapers and websites
[...]
Continue reading Dealing with the Negative
A J Hartley
read all posts by A J HartleyMost of my posts this year have been either craft oriented or driven by larger ideas about why we write, so I thought I’d say something about the business end of writing today. As some of you may know, last week my fantasy adventure Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact was named both one of the nine finalists for the North Carolina Young Adult book of the year for 2012 in the middle grades category, and one of the four finalists for the young adult book of the year by SIBA. The winners will be announced in the next few months. (It should be said that one of the other 3 nominees for the SIBA award is our very own Carrie Ryan, so MW has snagged HALF the YA nominations for the year!). I have no idea who will win, but this really is one of those “it’s an honor [...]
Continue reading A love letter to teachers, librarians and independent stores.
A J Hartley
read all posts by A J HartleyI got a request the other day for an interview from a newspaper in Montenegro, a country which—I’m ashamed to say–I would struggle to find on a map. More surprising still than their location was that they wanted to talk to me about The Mask of Atreus, a novel which came out over 6 years ago in the states, and is now pretty hard to find except on e-readers.
The interview got me thinking about the curious persistence of published books, the way they hang around long after things seem to have moved on. They pop up in new countries and new markets, fresh and exciting, oblivious to the fact that their moment in the lime light is supposed to be over. They crop up in second hand book stores, and beach front exchanges, dog-eared and battered, but still legible, still able to do whatever it was they did first [...]
Continue reading On the Longevity of Books
A J Hartley
read all posts by A J HartleyI’m at Ravencon today and doing a school visit so I won’t have much opportunity to respond to comments, but I wanted to do something a little different today. Forgive me if it seems overly self-indulgent.
You are no doubt wondering who Harry Oldcorn was. He wasn’t a writer, artist, or critic. In fact he had nothing to do with the kinds of things this site is devoted to. He worked for British Aerospace in my home town, and he was a local Labour party Councilor. He was also my uncle.
It wasn’t the easiest thing growing up bookish in a working class northern industrial town and as a teenager I never felt like I fit in. Of course, most adolescents feel that and they are probably right. If asked who of my fourteen year old peers did fit in to our grey, unemployment-ravaged landscape of terraced houses and derelict factories [...]
Continue reading Harry Oldcorn, died April 2012.
A J Hartley
read all posts by A J HartleyThis may be one of the more counterintuitive posts ever made on this site, but bear with me. There’s method to my madness.
I love writing for Magical Words. I really do. Sometimes I struggle to come up with good subject matter for a post (apologies, world, for that) and sometimes my comments are dull, self-evident or overly dry, but I’m committed to the site and its purposes and I genuinely believe that writers find it useful at least occasionally. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be part of the team.
But I also know that writers’ sites like MW present such a wealth of information (some of it different in approach, even contradictory) that it can be overwhelming, that the sheer abundance of thoughtful takes on any number of writerly issues can become daunting, can become—in fact—the opposite of what it was intended to be. Sometimes advice to writers doesn’t [...]
Continue reading Taking a break from writerly advice
A J Hartley
read all posts by A J HartleySo lately it seems I’ve been lobbing grenades at Conventional Writerly Wisdom (CWW) so I figured I’d persist, if only out of my usual impulse to be perverse, by taking a shot at one of the great sacred cows of CWW: that all serious authors must Write Every Day.
Actually it’s usually phrased more as an utterance from within a pillar of fire and framed by heavenly hosts with trumpets, and it goes more like “Thou shalt not miss a single day of writing, and yes, we’re talking Thanksgiving and Christmas too here, slacker, so get on it lest thou be smited.”
Great writers (and great writers on writing, including one of my favorites, Stephen King) concur. Serious writers, they say, writers who really mean it, professionals or those determined to become so, write every day and So Should You.
To which I say, bollocks.
You don’t need to write [...]
Continue reading Write Every Day? No.
A J Hartley
read all posts by A J HartleyWell, it’s my own fault. I asked for suggestions and someone said World Building so here I am. Building worlds.
Except that I don’t. Not really. Of all the regular contributors to this site I’m probably the one who thinks least about world building, or tries to. The truth is that of all the elements of a book, world building interests me least both as a writer and as a reader. Give me character, give me story, give me an emotional punch, an intellectual treat, a well-turned phrase… I’ll take all of these over the world of the story, no matter how brilliantly it is painted.
So why am I posting on this today?
Well, partly, it’s my opportunity to stand up before the world and say “Hi world, I’m a fantasy writer and I hate world building.”
Partly it’s too articulate my feelings for others who may (if they [...]
Continue reading Yet another World Building Post. Only not.
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