Month: February 2015

Worldbuilding 101- Let’s Build a World Together

On By Robert EvenhouseIn Writing Tips9 Comments

One of the best parts about living in a city with several bookstores and publishers is that there are a lot of readers and writers. I was connected with a group that loved to write and from our writers group the Wealkings Jot – the free one night writer’s conference, complete with presenters and workshops – was born.

Jot 5 is Friday, March 13th from 7-11pm follow this link for details.

Every time this event comes around I am equally thankful and thrilled that we have such a vibrant community of writers in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I get incredibly charged up (nearly bursting with energy, literally) and my well of creativity is filled to the brim and over.

This Jot I will be leading a workshop on Worldbuilding.World Building

For those of you unfamiliar with the term worldbuilding, it’s exactly like it sounds – laying a foundation for a story.

Worldbuilding is about the climate not the weather. It’s about your character’s clothes and why they dress a certain way. It’s the reason your character has his or her job, or why they don’t have one. It’s the history, the accents, and how their community came to be. It is different from a setting as it is constantly interacting with the characters that are traversing your pages.

For some, this might sound like a horrible nerdy topic but it’s essential to any work of fiction. If you do not know about the age, values, and traditions which reach deeply into the people we are creating, we lose the richness. It’s about depth and this vastness is essential to writing believable stories.

I plan on a micro introduction to worldbuilding and then working together with those who attend my workshop to build a world from the bottom up. I’m sure I’ll write more about this as Jot 5 gets closer but until then please save the date.

Cheers,

Bob

Learning to Write Again

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life3 Comments

I made an elementary writing mistake these past two months, one that many writers make from time to time. I was entirely drained after work (December and January are horribly demanding) and I didn’t feel inspired to write, so I didn’t. This lull led to suffocating self-doubt and a thousand questions.

I started to question my art and ability to write.

Then the questions left and a certainty filled me.

I am not good.

I cannot do this.

It’s over.

The absurd thing about all of this was that I doubted something I no longer practiced.

I’m an avid hockey fan and I know that when a player suffers a leg fracture or broken foot it can take months to get back to “game speed”. They’ve been off for a bit and need to undergo proper conditioning to attain “game speed” once again. In other words, they have to put in the work to get to a place where skating and playing the game feels natural.

Conditioning is the key word there. It means to break in. Ever run a 5K on a new pair of shoes? Ouch.

This is where I am at now. Learning to walk again. Learning the writing drive again.

Now comes the hard part. Now comes the march onward to becoming an everydayer.

There were times in the past when I could not stop myself from writing. The thrill of it filled me enough that I cast sleep aside and was lost in what I was doing. About the time I finished this post I felt that again. A small flicker of it anyway. A spark. Now I need to figure out how to give it more fuel.

That is what becoming great at anything is. Before you can be great, you must put in the work.

Let’s roll up our sleeves today.

Cheers,

Bob