Tell us why you participate in National Novel Writing Month
I find it a superb way to practice writing to a deadline, write without the worry of editing and letting my creativity flow with no constraints.
How/When did you first learn about NaNoWriMo?
My first NaNo was 2009 when I was persuaded by a new writing friend from my writing group to participate. At the time I’d only written very short stories (and I mean short). The idea of fifty thousand words made me refuse point blank but gradually she convinced me I could do it. That first NaNo’s project was edited and revised almost every year until I finally published it 2018.
How many years have you participated in NaNoWriMo?
This will be my tenth NaNo – I only missed 2017 when I was working on two manuscripts that were published that year.
What is your NaNoWriMo project for this year?
The idea came late in October (almost November) it just popped into my head to write a young romance set within a university campus. The two main protagonists have evolved into fully rounded characters now.
If you were to introduce yourself to a group of strangers, what would you say?
I indulge my creativity in writing whether writing fiction or aiding clients within my freelance business and am a writing community advocate.
Do dreams inspire your writing ideas?
I have used several dream sequences within my works of fiction, they are always vivid and I quickly write them down. I always have a notebook on the bedside table.
Who is your favorite author? Why?
Stephen King is my literary hero. He is the greatest story teller, creating characters with minimal description, grips your interest from the first page and never disappoints. My greatest possession is a personal letter I received from him. It is framed about my writing desk.
What is your preferred genre to write in?
I do not write to genre, I write the story an it chooses which genre it is as it unfolds.
Soar, Adam, Soar, by Rick Prashaw with Adam Prashaw, (Dundurn Press, 2019) What inspired Soar, Adam, Soar? I intended to write my own, unusual life story. A Catholic priest married and became Dad to a child identified as a girl, named Rebecca Adam by smart parents (LOL), the kid who took us on a 22-year ride to the “boy in the mirror” he knew he was. His drowning at 22 from a seizure gave the memoir a new twist and urgency.
How did you come up with the title? It’s my final 3 words on a Facebook tribute to him the night he died. The post is Chapter 12 in the book. The phrase popped into my head writing that night about our long ago love of the movie, Lion King. Mufasa telling the small Simba that one day he could look to the sky to find his father. Except here, in a cruel tragedy,the old Mufasa lives. I look for my Simba in the stars.
Is there a message in your book that you want readers to grasp? Love wins! Diversity is good. “Beauty comes in many colours”, Adam posted once.Freedom is what we do to what happens to us (Jean-Paul Sartre). Despite the tragedy, Adam’s infectious joy, positive spirit and wicked humour infuse the story, especially with his 125-plus social media posts. Jan. 20, 2016, two days before the drowning: “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies in us while we live (Norman Cousins)…”
Where can readers find you on social media and do you have a blog? Everywhere, like my son LOL! Web site, http://www.rickprashaw.com with blogs (book tour, transgender, grieving, organ donor, faith). @RickPrashaw on Instagram, Linkedin and Twitter. There’s a FB Author page here https://www.facebook.com/RickPrashaAuthorw/
Do you have plans for your next book? Is it a sequel or a stand alone? 2 books moving forward, simultaneously. Father Rick, Roamin’ Catholic, stories from my faith journey that capture my crooked, straight path to heaven’s gate. Adam will show up here. Private Dick Prashaw, D-Day Dodger, will be my Dad and Mom’s WW2 love story, a creative non-fiction book I throw myself into as a character to finally get Dad’s war story out of him.s
Do you favor one type of genre or do you dabble in more than one? I read and am writing memoirs, biographies. There will be a few more memoirs drawing on my political and newspaper lives. The creative non-fiction book has me in a sweet place of writer’s terror. And I’m loving short stories falling out of my heart to the screen.
What is your best marketing tip? From my NGO and political work, I knew John McKnight’s community assets mapping. Map all the universes you inhabit — work, play, sports, hobbies, neighbour, school, past lives etc. Identify their social media, meet-ups or gathering places to market the book. Parenting, grieving, Pride and organ donor universes are part of why Soar, Adam, Soar is in its 4th printing eight months out.
Do you find social media a great tool or a hindrance?
Both! I love telling Adam’s story but I crave a hermitage right now. Instagram is new and good. Twitter with its trolls and fights is a necessary evil. Facebook works as readers and my friends devour the stories behind the book and from the 32-city (and counting) tour
What do you enjoy most about writing? All my life until now, I wrote for others, e.g. news editors, religious superiors, NGO and political bosses. Now I write to myself. The best book compliments are from people who know me and say your book is exactly as if I am speaking to them. I found my voice.
Do you read for pleasure or research or both? Pleasure, with a heaping side plate of research. I am reading a few war and faith books prepping for my next two memoirs. Waub Rice’s Moon over Crusted Snow is my stepping into fiction writing coming soon!
Who is your best supporter/mentor/encourager? My mutt, Dallas, a 7-year-old flat-coated retriever who Adam adopted, stalks me everywhere. Adam’s my agent.
Where is your favorite writing space? I wrote this memoir at my home office, in Adam’s old bedroom. Cereal bowls of coffee, 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. writing, punctuated by two walks with Dallas
Do you belong to a writing group?If so which one? Ottawa Independent Writers Group that meets once a month. Online, the Canadian Authors Association, National Capital Region.
If you could meet one favorite author, who would it be and why? It’s often the book I have just finished. Hmmm, one. Michelle Obama, to soak up her class and energy and thank her for being my book’s guardian angel in the O Biography section, with Becoming,
a shelf above and over Soar, Adam, Soar.
If you could live anywhere in the world – where would it be? 2 answers. (Sorry. I’m bad with rules) Right here in my beautiful Ottawa and back “home” in Northern Ontario (North Bay, Sudbury)
Do you see writing as a career? Well, as an emerging writer at 68, till my last breath….
What reward do you give yourself for making a deadline? Wine, chocolate, Peaky Blinders.
Bio:
Rck Prashaw has had a diverse career as a journalist, Catholic priest, executive director of a national NGO, and political staff to members of Parliament. He is a winner of the National Ron Wiebe Restorative Justice Award. Rick lives in Ottawa.
Mandy Eve-Barnett is a multi-genre author writing children’s, young adult and adult books. Every story has a basis of love, magic, and mystery. Mandy currently lives in Alberta, Canada but is originally from England. Her background is diverse and gives her rich experience to utilize in her writing. She has been a nursing professional, a business owner, and a sort after administration expert. She has traveled throughout Europe, parts of America and Canada and was born in Africa.
Mandy joined a writers group about 10 years ago and has not looked back. She shares about reading her first piece of writing to the group “I thought okay, I have to write something. So I write this very short piece and it had a twist at the end. So, you know, I was really nervous, but I read it and the room went quiet. I’m thinking, “NO OH!?” I’m never coming back again, it was obviously dreadful and they absolutely hated it. Then everyone went, Wow! They just loved it and that was the hook for me to have a reaction to something I’d written just was absolutely thrilling. I’m just thinking I have to do it again.”
Mandy is passionate about writing to the point of obsession and she succeeded in becoming a published author in record time. With eight books published since 2011 and one more launching in September 2020, she indulges her Muse in creative as well as freelance writing. Her venture into freelance writing has been successful in creating projects as diverse as social media posts, promotional literature, and professional biographies, to ghostwriting a marketing book. She also regularly contributes to the Never Been Better page in the Sherwood Park newspaper, has been published in several anthologies and collaborated in creating a ‘how to begin writing your memoir’s’ guide book for seniors.
Mandy regularly blogs and she encourages support and networking of all writers as a writing community advocate. She is also prolific on social media in a multitude of platforms. As the current Secretary of The Writers Foundation of Strathcona County and past President of the Arts & Culture Council of Strathcona County, she lives her creative life to the fullest.
Without characters our stories would have no real impact on our readers. We write to engage and intrigue them and hopefully make our protagonist the character our reader cares about. If your experience is anything like mine, there is usually one, or possibly two characters, that make their presence known in no uncertain terms. They want the starring role in our narrative. These characters are usually more defined in our minds and are ‘easier’ to relate to, whether because of a personality trait or that they are more fun to write. When creating the protagonist and antagonist in our stories, we give each opposing views and/or values. This is the basis of the conflict that carries our readers along their journey. Each character, whether major or minor, needs to have flaws and redeeming features, motivations, expectations, loyalties and deterrents.
This leaves us with the problem of developing our supporting characters with as much attention to detail as the main antagonist and protagonist. When creating characters we must remember to ensure that each character acts and responds true to their given personality. Character profiles are a good way of ‘getting to know’ our characters, this can be achieve mainly by utilizing character’s names, personality traits, appearance and their motivations. A name is a vital part of creating a mental image of our character for readers. The right name can give them a quick visualization of our character’s age, ethnicity, gender, and even location, and if we are writing a period piece, even the era. For example if I say the girl was called Britney, you would probably picture a young girl because of the association with Britney Spears. However, if a female character were called Edith or Edna, you would imagine someone born several decades ago. So you see a name is not just a name.
A burly man would be called something like Butch but not Shirley, unless of course you are going to tell the story of his struggle throughout childhood to overcome the name. There are plenty of web sites available, which list the most common names for each decade and locations around the world. These are great resources for writers, who require particular names for period stories or want to stay true to a certain decade.
The use of a nickname will also give your character an identity, be it an unkind one given by a bully or one of respect or fear for the bully. You would expect Big Al to be just that, a large person, however, Little Mikey would be the exact opposite. Nicknames, or sobriquet’s can work very well in defining an ethnicity as well but care must be taken not to offend a person of color. Obviously there are certain words that were in common usage decades ago that are not politically correct now, so we need to be diligent in their use.
We should also consider giving our characters a conscience. Will the hero question his actions if they are extreme to his morals? Does the villain have a deep-seated angst? What motivates them? Some flawed characters can be difficult to write on occasion as they are far removed from our own personality (well I certainly hope so!) but with care we can accomplish a believable character.
How do you set about building a character?
Do you write out a full description of your characters?
Have you based a character on someone you know, a famous personality or mixed up several people’s traits to make a new one?
Firstly, apologies for not getting a post up sooner – as you can imagine with full time work and writing my NaNo novel it’s been a bit hectic along with the usual life stuff.
Having said that I am, as of Thursday 14th November only a couple thousand off my target of 50,000 words so a celebration is imminent. I was late to NaNo this year as I only just completed publishing the sequel to The Rython Kingdom. After numerous reader requests for a sequel I used last year’s NaNo to write one and as we all know that is only the start of the journey to getting a book published. Rython Legacy has been favorably received – whew!
I did dither about actually participating in NaNo this year, I have two manuscripts lying in wait from other year’s and couldn’t decide whether to tackle them or create a whole new story. Then there was the problem of what story to write. As with most writers there is a lot to choose from – part stories, pages of story ideas and everything left on the back burner. As it happened a new story formed out of no where and that’s what I have been busily typing. It is a love story of sorts set in a university. This gave me my first problem I have never been to university so research has been a huge part of this challenge. However, my daughter and future daughter-in-law have been so I have utilized their experiences into the narrative.
Of course any NaNo novel is the first draft and the manuscript will go through many changes, revisions and editing before it is ready for publication. For now I am fully immersed in my characters, their setting and where the story is going.
Good luck to my fellow NaNoWriMo writers – word power is our thing.
Mandy Eve-Barnett's Blog for Readers & Writers 