It’s All About The Digging: Minecraft and Research.
The Main Stage. MineCon 2015
I spent a hectic, exhausting, fantastic weekend in London, at MineCon – the Minecraft Convention.
Minecraft is one of the most widely played games in the world, and seventy-three countries were represented at the convention.
My children play Minecraft on various platforms, including their laptops and the Xbox, and are huge fans of YouTubers – in this case people who have made a name for themselves making films centred on the game.
Ten thousand tickets only went on sale. The competition was fierce. The event was sold out in minutes. Whilst my daughter and I sat in a car park in Plymouth, eating our sandwiches before attending a Paloma Faith gig, Gajitman was at home, poised at the PC, waiting for the first batch of tickets to be released.
At six-fifteen, I received a text to say he had secured five tickets – one for me, two for our children and two for our children’s friends. My teen was absolutely delighted and couldn’t wait to phone her mate to tell him the good news.
So, having achieved what at first seemed like the impossible, we found ourselves at the ExCel Centre in London for a weekend of gaming, workshops, panels and meeting the young (to me) YouTubers.
This is exactly the sort of thing my new hero, Ash Carrington, would do, and so I found the research invaluable, especially as I learned how Minecraft is now being used as an educational tool and as a way to help build real life communities.
While the children played Minecraft tournaments and carried out virtual building and mining, I did some digging of my own and was impressed and motivated by what I learned.
In conjunction with one another, the creators of Minecraft, Mojang, and UN-Habitat are using the mining and building game to encourage young people to design urban spaces, which are then built in real life. I think the Block By Block initiative is fascinating. Please take the time to check out the site for more info.
This is the sort of project with which Ash, a well-known TV presenter, would be involved, carrying out his work anonymously, and I have returned home full of ideas as to how to develop his character.
On a personal level, it was an absolute joy to see the pleasure and excitement on the children’s faces. I say children, but they are young adults, who paid for their own tickets, carried their own rucksacks, and planned their two days to take full advantage of everything on offer.
The icing on the cake for them was a private meet and greet with a group of Minecraft YouTubers known as The Pack. The equivalent for me would be a chat with Kate Bush, Paloma Faith, Jodi Picoult … you get the idea. YouTubers are today’s celebrities in the world of tech.
YouTubers Squid & Stampy
It was an honour to accompany the four young adults, and their energy was infectious. Something I will remember, and something Ash will teach my new heroine, Jo …
Today is Blog Tour Day. This blog tour is where writers and authors answer questions about their writing process. My friend and fellow Choc Lit author, Janet Gover, posted hers last week. It’s a great read. Very interesting. I love finding out how writers tackle novels. You can check out Janet’s writing process here.
I have four questions to answer.
You see, now I’m thinking of the Two Ronnies. This isn’t the first time. It’s the ‘four’ that does it. I’m instantly transported to a hardware store, watching Ronnie Barker harass Ronnie Corbett with ‘four candles.’ I’ll show you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ
As usual, I digress, but what a marvellous, comic display of writing and acting.
Without further ado, or forays into the past, I shall answer my four questions.
1) What am I working on?
I have Book 3 planned and underway. Its working title is What Doesn’t Kill You, and it’s an issue-driven romance, with a strong focus on family relationships. It’s set in Weymouth and Portland, an area I love with a passion. It has so much drama and beauty. The recent storms have provided the opening backdrop and set the tone of the story. My hero, Griff, is a coastguard – strong, protective, and in command. He is master of his own destiny. He respects and loves his father, a courageous, dominant being in his youth, but age, illness and disability has withered the old man, stolen his strength, and destroyed his independence, all things Griff fears. Throw into the maelstrom a demanding job, a two-year-old son and an errant teenage step-daughter, and Griff’s eighteen month marriage to Evie is at breaking point. His relationship is all at sea.
What Doesn’t Kill You is an insider’s view of the pressures and difficulties faced by today’s sandwich generation, and like Truth or Dare?, there will be dark before the dawn.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
There is an edge to my work that is not always expected in a romance. One review of Truth or Dare? put it succinctly: ‘A love story without the soft edges.’ And my publisher, Choc Lit, have got my number: ‘Laura E James tackles some thorny issues in this new Choc Lit Lite, showing that contemporary romantic fiction is not all flowers and swooning heroines.’
3) Why do I write what I do?
I’m a big fan of Jodi Picoult, and love the way she tackles taboo subjects. This is reflected in my books, but because I also enjoy romance, my characters will always search for the hopeful or happy ever after ending.
4) How does my writing process work?
Hmm. That’s under debate.
I’m on book 3, and have made an effort to plan this one. For Truth or Dare?, and Follow Me, I had a beginning and an exact end – I knew what was being said, by whom and where. I had a rough idea of how to get from A to Z, but for the most part the paths were built on ‘what if’, as I went along.
I now have a cartoon image of manoeuvring rocks over tree trunks, pulling the last log out, and hauling it to the front, to continue the forward motion.
I enjoy the organic growth of the characters. On occasion, they surprise me, and one or two of them have been known to solve plot problems on my behalf.
For What Doesn’t Kill You, although I’ve planned, it’s not to the enth degree. There’s plenty of room for improvisation and what ifs.
I write in silence, and it can take me a while to enter ‘the zone’. I don’t set a daily word count – I write as much or as little as is in me, and I cannot switch off my inner editor. If something isn’t right, I have to fix it ‒ otherwise I cannot move on. I don’t write a dirty first draft, but I am acutely aware it is still the first draft, and I love editing – it appeals to my ‘correct’ nature.
NEXT WEEK:
I am thrilled my three friends, Sue Fortin, a fellow Romaniac, whose debut novel, Unites States of Love is available here,Nikki Goodman, recently signed by HarperImpulse, and Crooked Cat author, Kathy Sharp, Isle of Larus, have taken the Blog Tour challenge. They will be sharing their writing processes next Monday on their blogs, as follows:
Sue Fortin: Sue writes women’s fiction; contemporary, suspense and time-slip. All with romance and a touch of danger.
Lover of cake, Dragonflies and France. Hater of calories, maths and snakes. Sue was born in Hertfordshire but had a nomadic childhood, moving often with her family, and for a time, did actually think her name was ‘The New Girl’. However, having lived in West Sussex all her adult life, it does feel like home and, these days, she knows what my name is!
Sue is married with four children, all of whom patiently give her time to write but, when not behind the keyboard, she likes to spend my time with them, enjoying both the coast and the South Downs, between which they are nestled.
She is a proud to be a spoke in the wheel of The Romaniacs – her lovely supportive friends who she wouldn’t be without and without whom, she says, she wouldn’t be here.
Sue is delighted to be part of the Harper Collins group, through Harper Impulse, who have published her debut novel ‘United States of Love’.
She is also a contributor to the RNA/Harlequin short story Anthology Truly, Madly, Deeply (2014).
A finalist in several writing competitions including Novelicious Undiscovered 2012, she graduated from the RNA New Writers’ Scheme after four years and has contributed to their magazine Romance Matters. She has far too much fun attending the annual RNA conference and has previously chaired a panel and taken part in a workshop at the Festival of Romance.
She blogs about some of her favourite things – Writing, Work and Wine – at http://nikkimooreauthor.wordpress.com/ and believes in supporting other writers as part of a friendly, talented and diverse community.
You can find her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/NikkiMooreAuthor or on Twitter @NikkiMoore_Auth and she invites you to pop in for chats about love, life, reading or writing!
Kathy Sharp: Kathy Sharp is the author of Isle of Larus, a fantasy tale inspired by the Jurassic Coast, and published by Crooked Cat Publishing in 2013. She is now working on the sequel, Sea of Clouds. Blog: http://tinyurl.com/pq8jenp
The Italian Job? Well, I will be in Italy, and it is to do with my ‘job’; not that I call writing a job. It’s a passion.
After the excitement of my book contract with Choc Lit, I’m getting my head down, finishing book two, and what better way to move a story forward than to participate in a writing course. My fellow Romaniac, Celia Anderson, is attending, and we are being tutored by one of my Choc Lit colleagues, Sue Moorcroft.
With Gajitman and his techno army in charge back at base, I shall be crafting my art, and learning new skills, as well as practising my swimming and sampling the local fare.
I know, but somebody has to do it.
There will be photographic evidence of hard work, I promise. Until then, have a great week and enjoy the sunshine.
Happy New Year. I hope Christmas and your entry into 2013 was everything you wished it to be.
Christmas Day was different without my mother here, but I focused on the children and their excitement carried me through the day. We broke with tradition the next day and went to The Big Shops, to look for high beds, and had lunch at a certain pizza house. Our usual Boxing Day lunch consists of home made chips, cold pickles, and meat/vegetarian alternatives. It was right to do something a little different.
We had a great New Year’s Eve, which we spent with some good friends, and the children stayed up to see in 2013. It felt right. It felt as if it was time to consider moving on. Memories are portable.
13 is a great number. Our daughter was born on the 13th of the month, and in another year, I won a singing competition as number 13. I have high hopes for 2013. I have a writing course to attend in Italy, a day’s course in Reading, the RNA Conference and Summer and Winter parties, a work-in-progress to complete, friends to hug, and a family to nurture.
Jubilee street party
I have an entire year in which to create new memories.
This time last week, just after a working lunch, I and my fellow Romaniacs were preparing to present our twenty-five minute panel at the Festival of Romance. We had organised a talk on how well an online writing support group can work. We had tee-shirts, a pop-up banner and pompoms. It went well – especially the cheer-leading display.
This was just one of the many events on a packed itinerary. The night before, we ran a Romanical quiz and the night before that our Celia J Anderson won a contract with Piatkus Entice. I’ll repeat that so Celia catches it…Celia J Anderson won a contract with Piatkus Entice. The table erupted with joy. It was outstanding and we were upstanding.
It was an exhausting but fun and thoroughly enjoyable weekend. I returned home Sunday evening, happy with a positive pitch for ‘Follow Me’, pleased to have spent time with some good friends, and ready for bed.
By Wednesday, I was on a train heading to London for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Winter Party. Another excellent evening of socialising and spending time with wonderfully warm writerly folk.
Now it’s time to get my head down and complete my work in progress ready for early submission to the New Writers’ Scheme, and maybe write a few more short stories.
I’m happy to say my short story, ‘Telling Tales’, achieved runner-up in Choc Lit’s Summer competition . Congratulations to Tracy Fells for her winning entry, ‘Phoenix and Marilyn’.
The weekend of November 16th sees the start of the 2012 Festival of Romance, in Bedford.
I attended the inaugural Festival last year in Watford and had a thoroughly brilliant time. I met authors, publishers, editors and a group of ladies who, with me, were to become The Romaniacs.
The Festival format is a little different this year with Regency Romance hitting Bedford town centre and workshops and events divided between venues.
Friday night is the Festival of Romance Awards and Ball and I am thrilled to announce my current work in progress, ‘Follow Me’, has been shortlisted for the New Talent Award. Not only that, but five of my fellow Romaniacs are also on that list.
In total, twenty five new writers are in the running, so there’s plenty of great competition out there.
Many friends are up for a variety of awards and it is fantastic their hard work is being highlighted in such a positive way.
I offer my congratulations to everyone whose name has appeared on a shortlist and thank Kate Allan, Chief Organiser, and the committee for all their hard work in producing a weekend of romance.
For those who cannot make the event, I hope you enjoy your own weekend of romance.
On Saturday 13th October 2012, I attended an Advance Novel Writing Course, run by Julie Cohen. It tickles me that it was held in Reading. I know it’s pronounced Redding, but still.
I enjoyed the whole experience – the early morning drive, meeting like-minded souls and learning how to improve my writing.
The main thrust of the day for me was finding ways to build up my hero in ‘Truth or Dare?’ I’ve been working on ‘beefing’ him up and increasing his point of view, but felt I’d reached a point where anything I added would be waffle. As writers, we know that everything we put in a story must move it forward. Through Julie’s exercises, I have found depths to my hero that need exploring and sides to him I hadn’t considered. This excites me. I have so many ideas, I’m having to rein them in a little, just until I have them under control.
I type this as my two recently acquired kittens, Rascal and Sheldon, run riot around my house. If I can get them sorted, I’m hoping my ideas will lie down and also submit.
Friend and fellow writer,Wendy Lovedaykindly tagged me for The Next Big Thing. Well, with all the chocolate I have consumed this week, I’m not surprised. But enough. Let’s get down to business. I have ten questions to answer about my work in progress and once I’ve done that, I’ll choose five other writers and ask them to tell us about their work, for posting next Wednesday.
I think it’s a lovely way to get to know one another.
Q: What is the working title of your next book?
I am currently working on my second manuscript and it is called ‘Follow Me’.
Q: From where did the idea come?
I was thinking about my new found fondness for Twitter and how wonderful it was to communicate with my favourite authors and the idea grew from there. What will it take to entice a person to follow back? What measures can be taken to ensure the other person isn’t a fruitloop? How could this fit into a romance without it appearing sinister? This was the starting point, but the story has evolved since the original idea.
Q: Under which genre does your book fall?
A contemporary romance/family relationship story. I didn’t know I wrote these until I started the second one, but I do like to have a family in there.
Q: Which actors would you choose to play the part of your characters for a movie?
My male protagonist is an action hero, slim and dark. I’m a big Johnny Depp fan and my character, Chris, is in his late thirties. Mmm. Johnny Depp. He’d play the tortured soul so well. Victoria, the female protagonist is a little younger, with unruly copper curls. Could I get away with Sandra Bullock? I realise she’s in her late forties, but hey, it’s make believe and she looks great.
Q: What is a one sentence synopsis of your book?
If I write a one line synopsis, it will give the story away, but here’s a little something… The real world is a daunting place, but having pulled the plug on technology, does Victoria Noble have the power to reconnect her emotions, or will she freeze and crash?
Q: Will you self-publish or be represented by an agent?
My next job on my ‘To Do’ list is to start submitting to agents.
Q: How long did it take you to write the first draft?
I completed 60,000 words from January to March of this year, stopped for a few months and am now back on it. As a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Scheme, I was able to submit my partial for critiquing, which has presented me with some excellent challenges and wonderful advice.
My first full manuscript, ‘Truth Or Dare?’, on which I cut my teeth, took three years from start to final draft. I say final draft – I’m still tweaking as I learn more about the craft of writing.
Q: With which books within your genre would your story compare?
This is a tricky question to answer. I would love my stories to be compared to Jodi Picoult’s, as I like to examine gritty issues. I loved Me Before You, Jojo Moyes and the way she tackled the question of euthanasia. Joanne Harris is another to whom I aspire. There are many great writers for whom I have immense respect and with every book I read, from a wide selection of genres, I learn something new.
Q: Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Twitter and the wonderful Carole Matthews, who I think I have finally convinced I am not a mad stalker.
Q: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It’s a modern tale for today’s woman, with business intrigue, a troublesome four year old, and the beautiful Dorset coastline for its setting.
To submit or not submit? That is the question I asked myself thirty times.
I am a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Scheme. It is a fantastic organisation which offers friendship, advice, the chance to meet other writers, agents and publishers and once a year, have one’s manuscript critiqued. The deadline for the critique is August 31st. Well done to everyone who submitted.
At the beginning of this year I had a plan; By July I was going to have a second story written and submitted to the NWS. It started well as I joined in with a challenge set by author Sally Quilford entitled 100k in a 100 Days. The aim was to write 1000 words each day for 100 days, starting on January 1st and ending on April 9th.
By March, I had 60,000 words written, most of which belonged to the work in progress (WIP). My writing came to an abrupt halt late March, when I lost my mum. Everything that followed knocked writing off the agenda.
I could not get back into the work in progress. The last scene I’d written concentrated on the hero’s grief having lost his family. It was not a place I wished to visit. With that in mind, I decided not to submit to the NWS. I emailed the organiser explaining my situation and received a lovely reply which left the door open for me to send in a partial (a non-completed story) and a synopsis if I felt able.
As time progressed and life settled into a new groove, I turned to writing short stories. They were perfect for fulfilling the desire to write without draining my emotional reserves. With aspects of my life hanging in the balance, I derived satisfaction from starting and completing a project within a short time span, and it appeased the guilt of not tackling the WIP knowing I was keeping my hand in.
There’s the telling word – appeased.
In hindsight I think those who know me well realised I was struggling with the idea of not submitting. I had 60,000 words saved in Drive C. I had neglected them. My poor, desperate hero, like me, had to start dealing with his grief. I could not leave him in his state of disbelief.
I began to think about the story once more. I mentioned one or two ideas to my wonderful Romaniac chums, who as ever, were supportive, funny and pillars of rock and again the suggestion was made that I should consider sending in a partial. I then received the same advice from two established members of the RNA.
Have you ever had that feeling someone is trying to tell you something?
At the beginning of July, struck by a bolt of insanity, I declared to my family and friends I would be submitting to the NWS and I would work for as long and as hard as I could to finish and polish the manuscript. I had six weeks, after all.
This Tuesday I didn’t go to bed. I stayed up reading through a revised and rewritten 52,000 words, replacing over-used phrases, correcting chronology mistakes and fixing typos and cut and paste errors.
I went to bed at 07:00, Wednesday, rose at 09:00, and at 11:00, handed the NEW padded envelope, fattened with my partial, to the post office assistant.
It was the first time I’d been out of the house in days.
Okay. So I didn’t manage to write the whole story, but I reached a point about a week before when I knew it was not going to happen. Perhaps I should have written the entire book before editing, but I wanted to submit more than a first draft. I appreciate it is not a final version, but I have presented my work to the best of my ability.
What have I learned? Support, advice and encouragement from family, friends and writing chums are invaluable assets when faced with the impossible, and I thank you for providing all three in lorry loads.
Scrap that. Make it juggernaut loads.
No. Container loads.
And what of my hero? He is out of his disbelief phase and he’s through with the guilt, but he is sinking lower than the Titanic. I wonder if like the sun, he will rise and see the dawning of happier times?
