A.J. Maguire

Tag: Writer

  • The Importance of Positive Reinforcement

    Dead Magic is officially in the hands of my publisher.  (Woo!  Happy confetti is getting tossed about my apartment right now!)  I’ve also started poking around review sites to see about getting the book out there … and there will probably be Giveaways and all that jazz when it’s time for the release.

    But as a special treat for myself for finishing the edits and meeting the deadline, I totally got my hair done.  First time getting it professionally highlighted and all that jazz.  It was definitely an experience.

    Is it morbid that the first thing I thought about when they put me under the dryer thing was that episode of Supernatural where the lady totally got fried under one?  (Relax, those machines can’t really do that to you.  The Winchester boy’s were hunting a witch at that point.)

    Anyway, that was my positive reinforcement for meeting the deadline.  Rewards are so very important for writers.  Yes, we love good reviews (and by that I mean our hearts flutter) and finishing a book in itself can be a reward, but physical rewards are important too.

    Let’s face it, the act of writing is a solitary event.  It requires that we agonize over verbs and nouns and fighting between active versus passive voice, and it’s really frigging hard.  And most of us never really think what we’ve written is worth the paper to print it out, even if the marketing people insist that we pretend it’s incredible.

    So after weeks and months of self-imposed solitary confinement, staring at words until they burn into our retinas, struggling to make a clear statement out of messy plot complications, and fighting tooth and nail to make a believable character arc appear on the page … we writers really do deserve a reward.

    It’s all about the positive reinforcement, people!

  • Books I Re-Read

    This morning was particularly dreary.  I woke up early because my son had crawled into bed with me at some point — he’s only four years old and he’s allowed to do that for a little while longer — but he managed to shove me off at 7:45AM.  I figured that was as good as it was going to get for sleep so I made my way to the living room, powered on my fake fireplace (Oh, how I love that little space heater) and rummaged through my bookshelves for a book.  

    I knew I should read one of my textbooks because … well … because I’m still in school and I’ll have to read them at some point, but it was 7:45AM and I simply was not going to exercise my brain like that before I’d even managed to have breakfast.  Now, normally at this point I’ve already re-arranged my bookshelves, dragging books out of storage to replace the ones that have been occupying shelf-space for the last six months — I do this twice a year and somehow still manage to surprise myself with a book I forgot I had.  However, it’s been nine months since the last purge/replace and I was a little bored with some of the titles I ran across.  

    But it got me thinking about the books that never go into storage.  These beloved volumes are the one’s I read and re-read and simply cannot go without.  As I was going through the shelves, I discovered that there are only eight of these books in my collection, and seven of them belong to a series.  They are the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, and Into the Wild, by Sara Donati.   

    These eight volumes are always on my shelves.  All the rest take their respective turns in storage each year.  As I started reading The Fiery Cross (one of the Gabaldon novels) I had to ask myself what it was about Gabaldon’s writing that had me coming back.  The story hasn’t changed.  The characters are the same.  Yet, there is a richness to the tales that beckons me back.  

    If you’ve never read any Gabaldon, I highly recommend that you do.  Her books are generally thick, so you’ll have to devote some time, but they are well worth it.  

    I was struck with the realization that many of the scenes I was reading today weren’t particularly necessary to the overall plot of the book.  As an author, I know that it has been pounded through my thick skull many times that if a scene doesn’t serve a purpose, you should cut it.  And yet, as I was reading, I couldn’t envision the book without that snippet, that detail, that moment.  

    In popular fiction today we’re taught to keep the writing tight, to let everything point toward that end goal or moment.  Gabaldon’s massive books seem to scoff in the face of that logic.  Maybe she’s found a niche or something.  Honestly, I’m just glad she wrote them in the first place.  There’s history, love, violence, and humanity written on every page and I absolutely love them. 

  • Goodreads Giveaway Starts in 1 Day!

     
    That’s right! This is my year of Giveaways — mainly because I won’t have anything new coming out this year since I’m hard at work with school and my writing is going a little slower than normal — but this is great news for some lucky winners out there. 

    The first Giveaway is for 2 copies of Sedition — my first book. 

    If you don’t win, don’t worry! I have two other completely different books that will be scheduled for Giveaway’s throughout the year. And! Somewhere, at some point, I’ll give away a package deal with both Sedition and Saboteur included. I’m not sure where — likely at Coffee Time Romance — but that won’t be until we’ve gotten through Witch-Born and Saboteur at Goodreads.