Why Write: #3 – Inspiration

Okay, so we’ve talked about having that little spark of something other to put into your book, and about knowing when to stop.

Today, we’re going to talk about getting started.  Primarily by way of “inspiration”.

To be honest, if you haven’t got inspiration, you’re not really going to get anywhere.  If you weren’t inspired by something, you wouldn’t be wanting to write a book.  So if you have no inspiration, go and get some.

Inspiration can come from anywhere.  I know people who are inspired by songs, weird animals, pictures, films, books, you name it.  Among my own inspirations, I include conversations, unusual names and a large red sarcophagus sitting in the Vatican Museum that contained the remains of Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helen.  I know.  I’m weird.

There are several important things to do with the inspiration you get.

      1)      Make sure that you don’t write a carbon copy of whatever “inspired” you.  That’s not inspiration.  That’s plagiarism.

      2)      Make sure you can actually go somewhere with it.  As in, sit and have a think, and ask yourself whether you can really turn Aunt Hilda’s hilarious reaction to an unwanted birthday present into a forty-two-book-long epic saga.

      3)      Sit on it and wait.

      4)      Go and get some more inspiration.  From anywhere.

      5)      See if you can combine this inspiration in different ways or merge them or something.

Last time I did 5), I ended up with an epic fantasy five-book series with eight main characters and the most complicated plot I’ve ever thought out.  I was fourteen back then.  And I don’t do simple plots.

Oh, and 6) If you think it’s worth it, don’t let the inspiration fade away.  But know the difference between a good idea to write and something that sounds cool but isn’t.

If you’re stuck for inspiration, just look at the world around you.  What might be an interesting story behind the whorl in that tree?  Was it really that girl’s boyfriend dumping her that made her sing a sad song, or is it something else?  Uncle Gerard insists he has a birthmark, but what if it was a mark for something else?

Whatever you see, as the question WHAT IF.  You might be surprised at the response.

Oh, this was a short one!  Aren’t we lucky?

Until next time….

TBG <3

Top Hat, Old Chap!/Meet the Island: #2 -- Period Dramas

I really can't help myself on this one.  I was going to do something on the Olympics, or possibly the Paralympics, but I wasn't really on my computer for most of those, and when I was, I wasn't in blogging mode.  (I know.  I'm a terrible blogger.)  Instead, why don't we have something on something that's perhaps not quintessentially British, but that, well, is fairly British?  Let's talk about period dramas.

I saw an American actor in the newspaper saying recently that the Brits are the best at putting on period dramas.  Thank you, whoever you are.  We're flattered.  And we try.  There have been some brilliant ones -- Blackadder did a few, though they were also satirical, and then you get other ones like Upstairs, Downstairs which our parents remember from when they were young, and so on.

Okay, now I'm going to stop pretending to talk about the entire range of period dramas, because there's only really one I want to talk about.  Downtown Abbey's first episode for Season Three aired last Sunday night in the UK.  Sorry to all you guys who have to wait.  And it was awesome.  Matthew and Mary are finally getting married!  Of course, there are other problems along the way, and I have a feeling there is possibly something nasty lying in wait for Bates (his new cell mate doesn't get on with him).  And of course, a new disaster has struck Downtown.  I'm not saying what, though.

In short, I absolutely love this series.  So does my entire family.  I've never seen my mum so excited to watch TV.  The actors are fantastic; the plot is brilliant; the setting, costumes, research... everything is just fantastic. Obviously, the show's not for everyone, but there's no denying that it's really good.  The writer, Julian Fellowes, is an OB from my school.  Apparently he found an exchange of letters from around that time period between various relatives of his, and he used them for inspiration.  If you've never watched Downtown Abbey, I highly recommend you do.  It's fantastic.  And I'm just really annoyed that I won't be able to watch episode two on Sunday, because I'm not going to be in the UK.

The Random Corner: #1 -- Totally Awesome Film Music

I was originally going to do a Random Corner post on the Olympics, but because there was a tiny corner of that that would have turned into a rant (don't get me wrong -- I love the Olympics, but the French and the Americans both did things that annoyed me with their channels and I don't want to annoy anybody with that... yet, at any rate), I didn't.  Then I didn't have my computer for most of the Olympics, and then I went on a family holiday without my laptop, then my laptop died, and now I finally have a new one.  And the Olympics are over.  I might do the Paralympics next week.  If I do Random Corner next week.  Or I might do the ten most brilliant generals of all time.  Or something else.  I don't know yet.

Anyway, this one is on totally awesome film composers.

As a writer, and, in particular, a fantasy writer, I listen to a lot of film music.  And when I say "a lot", I mean that most of my iTunes is taken up by film music.  When I'm writing something that's not fantasy-based, I'll usually listen to pop or alternative music.  But I just find film music that much more emotive to write to than anything else (okay, I grant you, some music from the Romantic and Classical era is extremely emotive too). Come on, I mean, what's more inspiring to write a battle scene to than The Battle theme from Hans Zimmer's soundtrack for Gladiator?  Is there anything that puts you in more of a mushy romantic frame of mind than the sweeping string theme for the romance in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Seriously, soundtrack composers are amazing.  They make or break films with their music.  Not just that, but often, they don't get that much time to write a soundtrack, and then a director will come along when it's all perfected and say, "oh, we've cut five seconds out of this scene here; could you alter the score?"  Apparently John Williams -- though others must be like him -- will just stand there at the conductor's podium for a few seconds, then say something like, "Okay, trumpets: take out bar thirty-five and make bar thirty-four a three-two time bar.  Repeat the long note.  Flutes, double the strings.  Percussion, let's have something more like this *demonstrates*, and oboes, why don't we change that particular bit to *whistles what he wants it to change to*?"  And it's all back on track.  Literally within seconds.

So now I'm going to single out my five favourite film composers, because their stuff is well worth listening to, even if you don't watch the films.

5.  Ron Goodwin.  This guy can't fail to be on the list.  Composer of the soundtracks of many of the best war films, such as 633 Squadron, Battle of Britain and Where Eagles Dare (by far my favourite -- watch the opening part with the fight on the cable car and just listen to that music), alongside other films (e.g. Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and the Miss Marple movies), I don't think there's anybody that beats this guy for his soundtracks for war films.  Many of those films themselves are fantastic.  Apparently he was also unfailingly nice.  He died aged 77 in 2003.  But he's still the best of the war film generation composers.  We were fortunate enough to play some of his stuff in the school orchestra.  Did I mention how awesome Where Eagles Dare is?  That raises the hairs on the back of your neck when you're playing it.

4.  Howard Shore.  This man is probably most famous for his Lord of the Rings scores.  I know he's scored other things (...like the third Twilight movie...), and I have to admit I haven't really listened to those, but his Lord of the Rings scores are just so fabulous it's hardly true.  I remember watching the first twenty minutes of the first film in silence because the speakers were malfunctioning, and boy, was it so different without the music.  (For those of you who don't know me, I'm an absolute Lord of the Rings boffin and know the soundtrack backwards.)  We used to listen to the CDs of the soundtracks during the school runs.  Even my mother didn't get bored of hearing them on repeat.  He's still going strong, and I want to see him scoring for another fantasy movie, because that would be awesome.

3.  Hans Zimmer, what can I say about Hans Zimmer?  His compositions are often very percussive for strings, which can be hell to play (and yes, I've played some of his stuff), but sounds amazing.  He's most famous for the Pirates of the Caribbean scores and the Gladiator soundtrack, although he also did the soundtrack for The Da Vinci Code, which was so different from the other two I thought my CD was lying to me.  I love, love, love the Gladiator soundtrack.  Particularly the number entitled "The Battle".  We wanted to play it at school, but it was vetoed by our conductor and we did Pirates of the Caribbean instead.  (Life's not all bad.)  Seriously, if any of my books were published and subsequently turned into films, I would most definitely not be complaining if this guy composed the soundtracks (although the likelihood of all this happening is sadly very slim).  He just nails music for adventure and battle scenes.  In my opinion, he'll probably be the one who takes over as the next-generation (if you get what I mean by that) film composer.  And by that, I mean, the main composer for the next generation of films.

2.  Ennio Morricone.  Wow, now, this guy was just a film-composer genius.  Probably the original amazing film composer that everybody knew about, although we're now a generation on.  Even if you think you haven't heard of this guy, you are bound to know some of his music, whether it's the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly or something from one of the Westerns he did.  My favourite track of his is the theme from For a Few Dollars More.  (Go youtube it.)

1.  And last, but most certainly not least, because he's my favourite of the lot, John Williams.  If film music is recognisable for its triplets and perfect fifths, then this guy's music is the epitome of that.  Just listen to the opening of the Star Wars theme, Superman, Raiders March... and those are his most famous.  This guy has been going strong since the sixties(well, technically, 1959) -- and wow, what amazing music.  He's just turned eighty, and apparently he intends to keep going with his amazing music rather than retiring.  (Go JW!  Go JW!)  One of his most recent famous compositions has got to be the soundtrack for the first three Harry Potter movies, but he's done so many films it's hardly true.  He has a good working relationship with Stephen Spielberg and has scored almost every single one of the guy's films (I think there are only two he hasn't done, actually).  But boy, are those scores beautiful.  He would be my dream composer for a film score if my books ever got published and turned into films, but sadly, I don't think that dream would come true.  He recently did the score for War Horse and the new Tintin movie, but my favourite score of his is from The Witches of Eastwick.  The film is little known, but the soundtrack... words cannot describe its awesomeness.  (I just wish we'd had a chance to play more of his stuff at school.)

A Brit Abroad: #3 -- Coming Back Home

You can't really talk about going abroad without referring to coming back home somewhere along the line.  In my experience, there's usually a stage abroad where somebody starts complaining "but it's not like this in [home country]!" and then, when they get back home, it's "but in [visited country], it's so much cooler because they do it like this".

If you're abroad long enough, you get used to the various things of the country you're visiting and they sort of programme themselves into your system.  The usual thing to watch out for is time difference, which can make you seem like an unsociable zombie if you have to go to school or work the day after you get back and you've had to try to factor in a six-hour time difference.  Then there's the food.  And, well, probably the most important one for a British person travelling abroad, the traffic.

In many countries in the world, cars go round on the right side of the road.  In Great Britain, Japan and a few other countries, we like driving on the left.  There's one theory that this is because people on the European continent (and others, although it was also transfer by way of conquest) used to drive on the right because they had teams of horses pulling their carriages around, and since most people were right-handed, it was a lot easier to flick the whip over all the horses from the right side or something like that.  In England, it was more common practice just to have one horse or one pair of horses, so we stuck with the left.  Dunno how this explains the other countries.

Personally, my favourite explanation for this weird quirk in circulation bears no historical sense whatsoever, since Napoleon came long after traffic was established.  Napoleon, being left-handed and of a rather greedy nature when it came to acquiring land, used to ride down the right side of the road so that he could attack people riding in the other direction.  I'm not totally sure how this works since you'd think they'd clash head to head rather than a right-handed person happily switching to his left hand in order to get thrashed (or maybe that's how Napoleon's conquests got so far -- who knows?).  Anyway, of course, the French army and then the conquered peoples began to take after the grand empereur and trot along the right side of the road (the right hand side, not the right side).  This then spread to all the countries involved in European empires and whatnot.  And, of course, the reason the British remain happily on the left side of the road -- or the right side, if you're British, patriotic and biased -- is because Napoleon never conquered us and we felt like being British and not Napoleonic-European and refused to switch.

Of course, this causes probablems for people swapping sides of the Channel.  If you take your car with you and the driver isn't paying attention, your journey might well dissolve into screams of "Dad!  You're on the wrong side of the road!"  If you're just wandering around on foot, think twice before crossing the road.  If you're in Paris, just don't cross the road anyway:  Find a subway if you value your life.  I once nearly got run over by motorbikes jumping the lights from both directions, and I'm not the only one.  (Paris, I love you really.)

Then live abroad for a year and come back to England.  Yes, it's an absolute relief to be home, but I've found it poses two problems:

1) I still expect to speak in French to people in shops and restaurants.  (So embarrassing....)

2) I think my friends have saved my life around twenty times in the space of a couple of days by dragging me off a road because I looked the wrong way and then stepped off the pavement into oncoming traffic.  I've been told I'm not allowed out on my own until I'm cured.  *escapes to Scotland*

The upside of being home is that THIS COUNTRY SELLS FRUIT PASTILLES AND HULA HOOPS.  CONTINENTAL EUROPE, WHY DON'T YOU HAVE THESE THINGS?  Somebody would make a killing out of importing them, I'm sure.

TBG <3

Minor Update

Yeah... I've been AWOL for a while.  Sorry!  Life got busy this summer and I actually spent over a month without internet, so....  My laptop is also on its last legs.  I'm waiting for a new one to arrive, but in the meantime, I don't dare use this one too much.  It has a tendency to freeze the screen, which is extremely frustrating when trying to type something.

That apart, I'm hoping that I'll be blogging on a fairly regular basis throughout September.  Alongside preparing for university, sorting out finances for university, reviewing everything I've done over the past eight years in Latin and Greek, rewriting a book for a competition and getting a TEFL qualification.  (It might all be on my to-do list, but the likelihood of getting all that done is... not great.)  The upside is that I'll at least be home for that, and I'm unlikely to be thinking in French.

I'm currently in Scotland.  The weather is appalling, which is only to be expected, but everybody here is extremely friendly and Hadrian's Wall and a load of old Roman forts aren't all that far off, so there's lots of interesting stuff around.

And just because I'm nice like this and have an obsession with unusual words (and etymology), here's something to add to your vocabulary:

nomophobia

Google chrome is telling me it doesn't recognise this word, which really doesn't surprise me.  If you don't recognise it either, nomophobia is apparently the word for a fear of being separated from your mobile phone (or cell phone, as I believe you Americans say).  "No" -- self explanatory; "mo" -- for "mobile"; "phobia" -- from the Greek word for fear.

I'll try and have something up for next week.  And I'll start working on the grammar part of the blog soon.  It's just rather difficult to do without it turning into a text-book style thing that only academics or grammar Nazis would find interesting to read.

Toodle pip!

(No, we don't normally say that.)

A Brit Abroad: #2 -- How Safe is Brussels?

This is something I often wonder.  It's something I asked plenty of people before I came and it's something I get asked quite a lot by people who've never come here.  In fact, I recently asked it of a friend of mine.  He said that Brussels ranks within the top ten safest capital cities in the world.

Then again, he's Belgian and doesn't actually live in Brussels, so I think he's very biased and quite possibly wrong.  I'd be lying if I said Brussels was totally safe.  No capital city is.  I mean, during my first few weeks, I used to get on the bus and find myself facing a poster of a missing child.  That said, I don't usually feel my life is in danger when I'm trying to cross the road and I so far haven't been mugged.

On the other hand, I have been stalked a few times -- five at the last count -- and I've been cornered on or near the metro four times by people 'asking for my phone number'.  When I told another friend of mine, this time one who actually lives in Brussels, she looked at me like an alien and demanded to know what part of Brussels I'd gone to to get myself stalked.

If you're a female under the age of thirty and are walking alone, even if you're wearing high-waisted trousers and a hand-knitted sweatshirt, there are probably going to be some strange guys who will honk their horns at you as they drive past.  I have felt threatened in Brussels, but it's only been on those nine stalking/cornering occasions.  By far the worst of these was on a Sunday morning when I was jetlagged after a flight back from the Middle East and I'd forgotten to charge my phone before coming out.  I should probably say that Brussels is completely dead on Sundays.  All the shops are closed and there's usually not a cat in sight.  My phone was as dead as a dodo and I was on the metro with maybe two other people.  This guy came on and sat down opposite me, trapping my way out because he had really long legs, and initially started asking me quite innocent questions, like "can you tell me where the Gare du Midi is?" and "to get to here, what's the best route", so I figured he was a tourist.  Unfortunately, he'd been living in Brussels for a long time (or so he told me), and he recognised a slight English twinge in my French accent, so he started speaking to me in English.

Even though everybody understands English (or a little bit, anyway), nobody is ever going to butt in unless you're obviously being harassed in French or Flemish.  Even then, it's not common, as people tend to mind their own business on the metro.  He started hassling me, saying we could meet up, asking for my phone number, insisting for it again even when I said no, saying he'd give me his, asking if we could meet up for dinner at his place and if I fancied spending a night out, etc., etc.  I couldn't get off the train in case he followed me; everybody else in the carriage s'en fichaient; I couldn't ring anybody... and the last thing I wanted to do was stay on the train.  Trust me, if it hadn't been a Sunday, I would have tried to get out like a half-starved dog after meat.  Crowds, shops -- anywhere to lose myself in would have been fine... except it was a Sunday, so there was none of that.

The other occasions were marginally better.  I've discovered that it's best to pretend I'm Swedish and that I don't understand French or English whenever I get accosted like that now.  As soon as they realise they can't communicate with you, they tend to leave you alone.  And then you run.  You run far away as fast as you can.

So, yeah, Brussels isn't totally safe.  However, I feel a lot safer here than I do in, say, Paris or London.  Brussels is a lot safer than both of them.  To be honest, it's unlikely anything bad will happen to you in Brussels, although there are some dodgy areas that are worth avoiding.  As in, they're the kind of areas you don't go in after dark.  Definitely not without considerable powers of self-defence.  And I have to go through four of them every single time I want to go into the town centre, or return home.  There are six or seven really bad ones (four of which I traverse every day): Bockstael, Delacroix, Clemenceau, Gare du Midi, Gare Centrale, Mollenbeek... and Scaerbeek, which you don't want to go into in any time of day.  I think it's got a nickname to do with pick-pocketing and thieves.  So Scaerbeek is to be avoided.  The two stations might be a little hard to avoid sometimes.

When you take into account that I've lived here nearly a year, it's not surprising I've had one or two bad experiences.  If you're coming to live in Brussels, you can probably expect to have one or two too.  If you're coming for a visit, you don't need to worry at all.

TBG <3

Why Write? #2 -- The Most Important Thing to Know BEFORE You Start

Last time, I talked about the Spark of Something Other.  I just got back from the Queen Elisabeth music competition.  Admittedly, most of you won't know what it is even though it's famous worldwide and well over half of this year's competitors weren't even European.  This year, it was a competition for violinists, and dear lord were they astonishing.  I saw two of finalists performing and discussed a lot with the two people sitting next to me about the way that the pieces would be judged.  Something we all concluded was that, no matter how technically good the violinists were, what made the real difference to the pieces they played and the standard of their music was the Spark of Something Other -- the fact that they put their hearts and souls into what they were playing, and some visibly more so than others.  Out of the two competitors tonight, I know which one is more likely to walk away with the victor's crown because he was obviously throwing himself so completely into the music.  Anyway.  Enough of that.

This time, I'm bringing up something that, to be honest, I think is almost more essential to an author than imagination.  And believe me, without imagination, you'll get nowhere as an author.  Originally, I was going to leave this post until last, but I was told by a friend I ought to do it now (and that was two weeks ago).  Quite apart from anything else, I don't actually know how long this series of posts will continue, so I'm taking her up on her advice.

Looking around at a number of books (and films, for that matter) that we see/read nowadays, there are plenty that we at least think: "Oh, no.  Not another one in that series.  The first one/few were bearable, but seriously...?"  Or we scream up at the skies: "PLEASE!  NO!  NOT ANOTHER ONE!  WHY ARE THEY PERSECUTING US?!"  I see a lot of comments like "the Alex Rider series should have stopped after Scorpia", or "the Twilight series would have been bearable if SMeyer had stopped after the first book" (I disagree: the first one was bad enough), or "The Hunger Games was good, but the others were such a let-down".  There are people (I hold my hands up as one of them) who would have preferred it if the Mortal Instruments series had stayed as a trilogy.  It would have had so much more of an impact.  There are others who think that Pirates of the Caribbean should have stayed as one film.

Okay, my point: you need to know when to stop.  I can't even begin to stress how important this is.  Knowing when to stop is what will give you the maximum impact in a series, in a party, in a song, in social tact, in anything.  I was once told that the best parties are the ones that are cut off in full swing.  Why?  Because that's when everybody's enjoying themselves, so they go home with good memories.  How many of you have stayed right until the end of the party when most people have left and everybody who's drunk is throwing up everywhere?  It taints the good memories.  In fact, every party I've been to where I've stayed until an ending like that, I've always wished I'd left at one in the morning rather than waiting until three.  And all my friends say the same.  Same thing with a book.  There's no point spinning the story out just to get more money or what have you.  Maximum impact.  Who here's read Bakuman (it's a Japanese manga, for those of you who don't know)?  Ashirogi Muto, the mangaka pair that the story focusses on, come into conflict with the editorial department of the magazine they draw/write manga for, because their series Reversi becomes extremely popular and the editorial department want the story to be spun out and to continue for as long as possible.  However, the mangakas stick to their guns and insist on finishing it their own way in their own time at their own speed for the maximum impact.  They want to be the flagship for the magazine Jump, not by having something mediocre that continues for years and is popular because it's ongoing, but by having something so powerful that it's impossible to forget.  If you want an analogy, it's like the difference between throwing yourself at a door to smash it open and attempting to smash it open by leaning on it.  Bakuman itself is relatively short as a popular series go, but the manga series that made the mangakas of Bakuman famous, and by far the best manga I've ever read, is Death Note.

Now, I'm not saying stories can only have impact and be powerful if they're short, because that's not necessarily true.  I love a long book and I'm even happier if it's a series, but only if it's something of quality. Really.  Quality does not equal quantity.  If it did, we would have two different words and they wouldn't have two different meanings.

Knowing when to stop is what separates you from being an amateur writer and being somebody who packs the biggest punch.  This doesn't just apply finishing a book or series at the right time: it applies to finishing a scene at the right time.  Admittedly, it's less of a problem if the scene doesn't stop in the right place compared to if the book/series doesn't stop when it should, although being unable to control your scenes like that will probably lose you readers.  If you find yourself saying things like "my characters wanted the story to continue!" or "I realised that there was so much more of the story to tell..." -- wait.  Rewind.  "My characters wanted the story to continue!"  Er... who's capable of governing what you do in your life -- you or some fictional characters?  Get a grip and control them.  "I realised that there was so much more of the story to tell" -- er, sorry.  No, you didn't, and you probably need help.  Even a Pantser/Winger/Somebody-who-totally-wings-their-story-and-doesn't-plan-it of the highest order, and I'm one of these, can sense when the right place to end their story is.  And they'll know BEFORE THEY GET THERE.  If you're a Planner, there is absolutely no excuse.  You planned the story out.  Perhaps things didn't go entirely as planned, so you had to tweak the ending a bit, but that doesn't mean you suddenly decided you didn't even TELL half the story in the first place.  If you think you MIGHT want to continue your book/series, you have to leave enough loose ends to open up a plausible way to continue them.  And example of where this works, but where it was obviously back-written, is the Percy Jackson series after they start to incorporate the Roman half-bloods.  An example of where this works less well is The Hunger Games.  Now, I know there are major fans of the trilogy/first book/whatever, but I've spoken to a lot of people about these books, both in English and in French, and almost every single person has told me that it would have been so much better if the first book remained a standalone.  Actually, I've been told to read the first book but to avoid the others, especially the third, at all costs.

The other thing is that so few people seem to actually go back to their first book when they decide that their characters want to continue their story and actually check through the first book for a) a plausible link to the second that will maintain the power of the first book in the following ones and b) for details to make sure that there are no logical errors in the rest of the books (I can happily point you in the direction of Dana's excellent tumblr blog "Reasoning with Vampires", where you can see this in demonstration).  This doesn't happen with people who plan or know where to end their stories.

Also, as an author, particularly as a professional author, any writer ought to be able to keep themselves distanced from their piece of work.  If you're a writer, you can't edit properly until you've distanced yourself from your work (usually by leaving it alone for a few weeks before attacking it with a red pen).  If you're becoming emotionally attached to your characters to the point where you can't bear stopping to write about them and you feel the need to describe every day of their lives... well, let's just say that people are going to worry about you.  You need to be tough and clinical.  Don't let the characters rule what goes on in the book all the time.  And above all, don't let them ruin your lives.  If you feel yourself getting too attached to them, do something to stop that attachment.  Stick to your guns if you decide that the book's going to be a standalone, or if you build up drama for a huge fight, don't chicken out of the fight just because you don't want to even injure your characters.

I, personally, am terribly sadistic towards my characters.  As soon as I sense one getting more love than the others, or I feel myself getting attached, chances are said adored character will be killed off.  Now, I'm not saying everybody should do this, because quite apart from anything else it'll annoy the fans, but knowing when to stop and when you've gone too far is vitally important.  Continuing a series because you "realised" you "hadn't yet finished the story" or because "the characters wanted to keep going" is NOT an excuse.  It looks extremely unprofessional, batty and... to be honest, incredibly strange.  As an author, knowing your own story, being able to control the limits of your own story, and being able to control the characters you create is fundamentally important to writing a book or series for the maximum impact.

This post is getting long.  Until next time!

TBG <3