How It All Began

Today, we host a short Q&A with Randy Lindsay, "Not Fragile", and Edorado Albert, "Time Hoppers". Both talented authors and their work appeared in the November issue of Penumbra eMag.

Randy, when did you first realize you wanted to pursue writing as a career rather than a hobby?

It’s entirely possible that I live in a fantasy world of my own devising. Whenever a great idea pops into my head, I am convinced that there is a market for it – somewhere. So, it isn’t as much a matter of when I decided to pursue a writing career as it is a question of when I decided to start writing.

That happened while I was reading a book. I happened to disagree with many of the story telling decisions that the author made and discussed with one of my friends how I would have written it. When I finished, I thought I had a pretty good alternate story going on and started my journey as an author.

Several years of learning the craft and dozens of failed stories later I decided it was time to get serious about writing as a career. That would have been about three years ago. I started attending conferences to network within the industry. I started my blog so it could serve as a media platform once my stories started to be published. And I started submitting my stories.

What I find most interesting is that while it took a while to get here, things are really popping for me now. Right on the heels of my sale to Penumbra I had three more stories accepted for publication and will be coming out in 2013. I appreciate Penumbra opening the flood gates for writing career.

Edoardo, when did you first realize you wanted to pursue writing as a career rather than a hobby?

The first thing I can remember wanting to be was a paleontologist. When I realised that, unfortunately and despite the hopes raised by Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, all the dinosaurs really were dead, I switched to zoology. Then, an astronaut, a physicist, the President of the United States (abandoned when I found out that, not being American, I couldn't actually be president), an engineer and various other ideas in a rather dizzying succession. However, the only constant through all of this was reading.

I read - all the time. I even got told off as a seven-year-old for sneaking a book into a lesson and reading it under the desk because I couldn't wait to find out what happened (it was one of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books and to this day I will hear no calumny against her). So, in the end, I realised there was a thread through my life: words. And I began to pursue them. It has, though, been a long, slow slog - some thirty (30!) years of learning, being rejected, learning some more, making connections, getting rejected, and, hopefully, learning even more.

Randy Lindsay worked in the Hobby-Game industry for several years as a game designer and is now a stay-at-home dad looking to establish himself as an author. He writes Fantasy, SF, and is working on a Murder-Comedy. His short fiction has appeared in City of the Gods anthology and now Penumbra with upcoming stories in the Once Upon An Apocalypse anthology and the second City of the Gods anthology.

Learn more about Randy on his website and blog where he also writes on topics related to the craft of writing and offers movie reviews.

The responses to Edoardo Albert’s work rather prove what he argues. The stories, the books, the articles, have drawn some compliments, but the best response ever, which saw a friend rolling on the ground, helpless with laughter, was a lonely-hearts ad. It was probably the bit about tickling the belly of a wolf that did it.

Find Edoardo Albert’s books (he’s particularly proud of Northumbria: The Lost Kingdom which has just been published) and stories via his website although the lonely-hearts ad will not be making an appearance in the foreseeable future). Connect with him through his blog, Twitter or Facebook.

MINING CREATIVITY

by Randy Lindsay

Maybe it’s because I’m not a famous author – yet. I want to know what happened to all the questions about how I come up with ideas for my stories. You see it in movies all the time; actors who are playing authors are invariably asked about the source of their creative process.

Well, I don’t want to wait. I’m not going to sit around hoping to be asked, like some nerdish wallflower waiting at the back of the gym during the high school Spring Fling. I’m just going to tell you.

Everything is a story to me. Songs, movies, ads in magazines are all grist for the creative mill. My wife laughs at the way a trip to the grocery store becomes the plot for a four-part mini-series whenever she asks how my day went.

Think I’m making it up? Just ask her. And if you really want to see some serious eye-rolling action, ask her what it’s like to be married to a creative genius. Yeah, I’m still waiting for people to start asking that question too.

For the most part, stories are blocks of reality that are strung together in an interesting and often unusual fashion. The purpose of using writing prompts to spur the creative effort is to provide starting blocks so you can jump right to the interesting part of the story. It allows you to leap past the dreary work of establishing the mundane elements that can bog down your imagination.

Why is this relevant to me, or my story? Not Fragile is the end result of my playing around with a writing prompt. In this case, I had listed the titles of 100 songs and took a few moments to look at each of them to see if they sparked my imagination. All I had to do was ask myself: What would a story with this title be about?

The words "Not Fragile" intrigued me. Immediately, my mind focused on the phrasing itself. Why would anyone choose to describe something in that particular way? Why not just list it as being durable or tough? And most importantly was what could be described as being "Not Fragile?"

Once I had the what and why of the story, I just needed to follow my normal plotting methods to fill in the rest. That included determining who was telling the story, where they were, and when it happened. The end result was a Science-Fiction tale about the crew of a space ship who make an incredible discovery on an alien planet. If that description sounds rather vague, then I guess you’ll have to read the story to find out what’s Not Fragile and why it’s not.

Writing prompts are sort of like playing connect the dots. You connect one, or more, pieces of a story together when you successfully answer the questions of who, what, why, where, and when. The prompts are really just a different method of getting you to focus on the story questions. You still have to do the difficult work of connecting them all together.

If this particular prompt doesn’t cause any bells to ring in the old story cabinet upstairs, then try a different one. Listen to the lyrics of a song and put a different spin on the message it gives. Take a headline from today’s newspaper and try to tell the story behind the story. Mix the plot from your two favorite novels to come up with a completely different story line. And if none of these suggestions work for you, stop over at my blog and check out the rest of the prompts I explore each Monday.

Now everyone knows where I get my story ideas from. Where do you get yours?

Randy Lindsay worked in the Hobby-Game industry for several years as a game designer and is now a stay-at-home dad looking to establish himself as an author. He writes Fantasy, SF, and is working on a Murder-Comedy. His short fiction has appeared in City of the Gods anthology and now Penumbra with upcoming stories in the Once Upon An Apocalypse anthology and the second City of the Gods anthology.

Learn more about Randy on his website and blog where he also writes on topics related to the craft of writing and offers movie reviews.