Creative Writing Archives - Page 46 of 56 - Trisha Sugarek, Author, Playwright & Poet

Conclusion…an Interview with author, Michael Saad

Part III My interview with Canadian author, Michael Saad

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?

MS. Yes, absolutely. I know exactly what that means. A few of my fictional stories have literally ‘written themselves.’ It’s hard to explain, but I think many experienced fiction writers can identify with that. I can think of two stories in particular that I’ve published where I’ve looked back and asked ‘did I really write that?’ and ‘where the heck did that come from?’

Q. Who or what is your “Muse” at the moment?

MS. I have many. Right now I am totally into musical artists like Hozier, Rachel Platten, and Virgina to Vegas. Their lyrics and sounds speak to me in their various messages of hope and optimism or, in Hozier’s case, the exact opposite. In the past year these artists have been an inspiration not only to my writing but also for my teaching, as I see how many of our young people today have had to be resilient in the face of adversity. Exploring the natural world is certainly another muse. Many stories and ideas have come to me just standing in the outdoors, on a mountaintop, in a stream, or watching a bull moose feed in a pond.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

MS. Probably 18 years ago (in 1998), when I first started my teaching career. I knew I needed a bonafide hobby. I had been playing a lot of sports and going to the gym, but I felt I needed a constructive interest that exercise couldn’t quite fulfill. I need to create, and I had always had in the back of my head that I wanted to write stories and articles, so that was the direction I decided to go.

Q. How long after that were you published?

MS. I was published two years after that. I have had many short stories, novellas, and historical articles published since then. Incidentally, I’ve also had hundreds of rejection letters in that time. Only a fellow writer would appreciate that last statistic!

Q. What makes a writer great?

MS. I may have a different answer for you 20 years from now, but today I would say having the ability to display resonance with your reader. Only the very best writers can do this with as many readers as possible. Notice I state ‘with as many readers as possible’ and not ‘every, single reader who’s ever read their work.’ There’s a reason for that, and it’s the very reason why you’ll hear many people praise the Stephen Kings and Shakespeares of the world as literary geniuses, while others condemn them as laughable and boring. Some writers connect with certain people and others don’t. It’s that way with all art, not just literature. It’s all about resonance for me, and for every reader that’s different.

Q. …and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?

MS. Well, for All the Devils Are Here it was a step-by-step journey in the truest sense. It started off as a short story assignment I did 25 years ago in a class called Writing 11. My English teacher at the time, whom I dedicated the novel to, gave me good feedback on it, but told me it was incomplete, and challenged me to delve more into the main characters’ story lines. This soon became one of my ‘back-burner’ projects while I ventured into other pursuits like university, history, teaching, and sport. About 10 years ago, I encountered my English teacher again in a chance meeting, and we conversed and he asked me about my story. I decided to turn it into a novella, taking his advice from 25 years ago to heart. From there, I still found myself with unanswered questions about the main characters, and so then turned it into a full-fledged novel, which I now realize was what my teacher was steering me towards all along.

Q. How has your life experiences influenced your writing?

MS. I have encountered drugs and drug use in my time, and have seen and experienced the cycle, agony, and destruction that addiction can bring. That subject has been a big part of my fiction writing now and in the past. Life experiences are very much an influence for my writing – I would best describe them as the thread that weaves in-and-out of the fabric of my work. All of my characters and plots are imaginary, but there are elements of them that are reflective of various experiences I’ve encountered in my trials and tribulations of life. Like everyone, I am not perfect and have my fair-share of demons in the closet. Every now and then I turn some of them loose in my writing.

Q. Have you? Or do you want to write in another genre`?

MS. Yes, I have written science fiction and horror stories. My science fiction carries explicit warnings and themes, whereas my horror stories are more subtle in their message. I have always been drawn to the serious stuff, and that includes all other types of media – video games, movies, television, theatre.

Q. Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?

MS. Yes. [Haley Joel Osment] I see dead people. Kidding… 😉 See, I can be funny−or maybe not.

Did you miss any of this in-depth interview? Click here

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Motivational Moments for a Writer! #5

One of my most challenging skills, as a writer, was to understand and implement POV. Point-of-view. My editor pointed out a lot of ‘head hopping’ (the expression for telling your reader what everyone is thinking and feeling) when in each chapter the writer should try to stick to one point of view. But, even very successful, best seller authors like Nora Roberts is guilty of this.

Action, thoughts, & dialogue establishes the character’s POV.

I’ll be candid here….the jury is still out for me on strict POV writing. When I’m reading (and I do a lot of reading) and become aware of an author ‘head hopping’, it doesn’t distract or annoy me. When I catch myself doing it, as I write, I don’t see where it detracts from my storytelling.

‘The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.’ Dorothy Parker

‘The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.’ Charles Du Bos

‘I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.’ Michael J. Fox

‘As a writer, I marinate, speculate and hibernate.’ Trisha Sugarek

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Interview with Canadian writer, Michael Saad

An Interview with………Michael Saad has been writing almost his entire life. He is about to release his first full length novel, All the Devils Are Here. He lives in Lethbridge, Alberta. A teacher by day, a writer by night, this is a fascinating journey of how Mike fits it all into 24 hours.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.

MS. I write in my ‘man-cave’ as my family so affectionately calls it. It is my own, customized room in the house filled with items that fuel my imagination. Everything from Star Wars posters & memorabilia (yes, I’m a wannabe Jedi – I’m totally a child of the 1980s…), historical paintings, nature portraits, my favorite books, and hockey artifacts. Every writer needs his or her own, customized work space, whatever that is, and it needs to be tailor-made by the writer, and for each writer that’s different, but it’s so important.

I didn’t always have my man-cave. In the past, as a university student, my writing was best done in a little cubicle in the basement of my old university library. It wasn’t customized and was quite drab, but it was my space and I did my best writing there. Continue reading “Interview with Canadian writer, Michael Saad”

Motivational Moments….for Writers! #4

Writers! Jump-start your day with more Motivational Moments!

If you are a relatively new writer, start by writing about something you know. Maybe a family story. Talk to your grandparents about their life experiences. My mother and her 12 siblings have been an endless reservoir of stories for me. The length doesn’t matter when you first begin to write. Be a good storyteller.

“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a
good children’s story in the slightest.” ~C.S. Lewis

If I hear an adult chuckle when reading my children’s books, I know I’ve done a good job.

“I dream my paintings, then I paint my dreams.” ~ Van Gogh Dream your story and then write it!

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” ~ e e cummings

‘As a writer, I marinate, speculate and hibernate.’ Trisha Sugarek
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Motivational Moments….for Writers! #3

Oh, so you think you will just write all day and wonderful things will happen? Think again, grasshopper. If you’re a one-man-band like myself and most other indie authors, you will have to wear an editor, publicist, marketing and publishing hat, just to name a few.
It takes hard work and then some more hard work. But here’s the payoff: After four years…yep..you heard me right…of consistent blogging with relevant content, supporting other writers, and interviewing authors so much more famous than I am (well, I’m not famous at all) my posts (blog) are on page ONE of Google search and my books are selling. This year a traditional publisher picked up my true crime series of books. Don’t misunderstand, when you get a publisher DO NOT stop publishing your indie books. And most important of all: KEEP WRITING!

“If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust.” Alan Rickman, actor

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” John Wayne

‘As a writer, I marinate, speculate and hibernate.’ Trisha Sugarek
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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! In April, a long awaited interview with Kathleen Grissom (The Kitchen House) May’s author was Jordan Rosenfeld. Michael Saad, Canadian author, will be June’s author. Robyn Carr is July’s author.

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Motivational Moments… for Writers! #1

Writers! Start your day with a little writer’s jump-start. You can do it!

Procrastination is just a word. Write one new word, one new sentence. Breath! That sentence should make you want to write another.

What? Why? When? How? Where does that sentence lead you? Breathe. It doesn’t have to be perfect…it’s the first draft. That’s what re-writes are for.

‘Writers aren’t exactly people, they’re a whole lot of people trying to be one person.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

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‘As a writer, I marinate, speculate and hibernate.’ Trisha Sugarek

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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! In April, a long awaited interview with Kathleen Grissom (The Kitchen House) May’s author is Jordan Rosenfeld. Michael Saad, Canadian author, will be June’s author. Robyn Carr is July’s author.

To receive my posts sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!

Writers! Leave Yourself Open To Stories!

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know that I am a proponent of keeping yourself open to life, stories, and snippets of tales.

I recently heard this question asked of a West African chef, “How did you feel when you heard a fat, rich, white woman (cooking show) claim that her recipe had been handed down from generation to generation in her family? When actually the dish (Shrimp and grits) has been cooked on the west coast of Africa for hundreds of years?”
The answer?
The chef/host who was giving an intimate dinner party in his home in Dakar, Senegal, West Africa (each syllable drips with mystery, doesn’t it?) smiled and said, “Gratitude that our cuisine lives on and is enjoyed in the United States.”

And Gumbo is another example. Louisiana claims it originated there. A poor man’s dish. Ingredients: Fish/seafood from the river out back, tomatoes and other veggies from the garden, a roux from pork drippings,(from the pig pen out back) butter and flour. Again, Africa via France and brought to the south with the Cajuns.

When I heard this conversation (above) what this writer’s ears heard was: “MamaBelle, cook up some of your shrimp and grits as a side dish for my guests!” The fine lady, from the mansion on the hill, had walked down to the kitchen house to talk about the menu for her dinner party. MamaBelle had been the head cook on the plantation for decades but still had knife-sharp memories of arriving in Georgia, bound in shackles, barely surviving the trip on the slave ship from West Africa. Put on the block for auction, teeth examined, hips examined (for breeding) stripped naked. Being marched miles and miles to the plantation. Working the fields until it was discovered that she was of better use in the kitchen. Living through the horror of her children being sold off when the Masta’ needed ready cash. Continue reading “Writers! Leave Yourself Open To Stories!”

Time For More Famous Quotes

It’s been quite some time since I gave my readers some of my favorite quotes from famous writers…those people that inspire me to be a better one. Maybe this weekend, after reading these, YOU will write something new or go back and rewrite something old or write a piece of poetry that you were afraid to lay down on paper.

Or maybe these quotes will just make you smile…

‘I keep six honest serving men. (They taught me all I know); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.- Rudyard Kipling (I can’t let this go by without commenting on Kipling’s colloquial term of ‘honest serving men’. He spent decades in India.)

‘I have this feeling of wending my way or plundering through a mysterious jungle of possibilities when I am writing. This jungle has not been explored by previous writers. It never will be explored. It’s endlessly varying as we progress through the experience of time. These words that occur to me come out of my relation to the language which is developing even as I am using it.’- William Stafford (I am particularly fond of this quote.)

‘In Ireland, a writer is looked upon as a failed conversationalist.’- Anonymous

‘Make ’em laugh; make ’em cry; make ’em wait.’- Charles Reade

‘No tears and the writer, no tears and the reader.’– Robert Frost

take a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the beginning. ~Charles Bukowski

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‘Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones.’- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

‘This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.’- Oscar Wilde

‘Thought flies and words go on foot.’- Julien Green (this is why I type 80 words a minute)

‘What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.’- Logan Pearsall Smith

‘Writers aren’t exactly people, they’re a whole lot of people trying to be one person.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

‘The truth is, we’ve not really developed a fiction that can accommodate the full tumult, the zaniness and crazed quality of modern experience.’- Saul Bellow

‘Writing is one of the easiest things: erasing is one of the hardest.’- Rabbi Israel Salanter

‘The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.’ – Charles Bukowski

1.Creative.Write.BookCoverImage — Journal/Handbook by Trisha Sugarek

and I’ll finish with a not-so-famous quote:
‘As a writer, I marinate, speculate and hibernate.’   Trisha Sugarek
……that is, when I’m not beating up the writer in me with a large stick in the shape of a pencil.
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DON’T MISS BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS!   In April, a long awaited interview with Kathleen Grissom (The Kitchen House) May’s author is Jordan Rosenfeld. Michael Saad, Canadian author, will be June’s author.

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An Interview * Author, Kathleen Grissom

TS. It took me awhile but, with a little perseverance, I finally caught Kathleen Grissom with a few free moments and she gave me the interview I have been nagging her for. Grin! Glory Over Everything, the sequel to The Kitchen House has just been released so this is perfect timing to visit Kathleen while she writes.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?

KG. I have a writing room above my garage, separate from the house. It is a wonderful space with lots of light, desks and bulletin boards galore. There, along with pertinent reminders, I post pictures of my research that shed light on my work in progress.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

KG. For my first draft I always begin with a stack of fresh legal pads from Staples and a stash of Paper Mate mechanical pencils – my favorite. A glass of water is always at my side.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

KG. I once raised Cashmere goats. I meant to spin the cashmere, but I had no idea how difficult and time consuming that was to do. After we sold the farm, the goats went to live on another farm with my goat mentor, a woman who knew more about goats than anyone else I have ever known. But I still have some fiber stored away in bags.

Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?

KG. I would not write a word if I waited for the creative spark to strike. Continue reading “An Interview * Author, Kathleen Grissom”

Glory Over Everything by Kathleen Grissom ** A Review

5 out of 5 quills A REVIEW
Glory Over Everything by Kathleen Grissom

Volumes have been written about America’s Civil War and we have been led to believe it was ALL about slavery. In this writer’s opinion, when it comes to politics it’s never that simple or pure. Power, economics, global presence also played a part in our civil war.

Little has been written about the southern states and slavery that is so profoundly beautiful as The Kitchen House and now, the long awaited, Glory Over Everything.

We join Jamie Pyke again and watch his struggle with ‘living white’. The natural son of a plantation owner and his kitchen slave. How does one conciliate oneself to the deception when all about them is the horror of slavery? It all comes tumbling down when Jamie is compelled to keep a promise and travels back to the South that he had once escaped from. Will he be so lucky a second time?

Recently, as I prepared my interview (coming later this month, April) with this stellar writer, I commented to Kathleen that her writing was pure prose. She replied, “Thank you. My mentor was a poet.” Continue reading “Glory Over Everything by Kathleen Grissom ** A Review”

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Writers! Start your day with a little writer’s jump-start. You can do it!

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