Next time, we'll talk about Althea.
Join us on our voyage on the Sea of Words. There's more to being a writer than writing. -- Karen and Tony Muldoon
Friday, May 31, 2013
How Finnigan Became: Part 2
Tony
was working on a story for one of the sailing magazines and Karen was suffering
from a bout of writer’s block. She thought creating a character and giving that
character a name might result in the character revealing the story. Deciding on
the right name was something akin to picking out a name for the baby you’re
expecting. From nowhere, Althea Burnside popped into her head. And Althea did
indeed begin to tell her story. Joel Finnigan was a significant part of it. But
Joel didn’t speak to her the same way Althea did. Also, Karen likes to write
haiku; so her prose tends to be spare as well. Tony, on the other hand, has the
gift of the Irish storyteller, and a great fascination for history as well.
Tony read what had become a novella and felt Joel speaking to him. “You really
need more than two pages on World War II,” Karen remembers him saying. And so
the collaboration began and Becoming Finnigan became.
Next time, we'll talk about Althea.
Next time, we'll talk about Althea.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
How Finnigan Became
Where do you get your ideas?
It's a pretty sure bet that anyone who has ever tried playing the old subject and verb game has been asked that question more than once.
The answer is almost always the same: damned if I know.
In our case, both individually and collaboratively, we don't get the ideas; the ideas get us. From then on, it's a case of bolting the various pieces together and getting the engine to run. The ideas come from what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the Universal Soul: the stories are swirling around out there in the universe and the writers are merely the channels they select to make their grand entrance.
Becoming Finnigan is a perfect example of that. The boy/girl game is one of the staples of literature simply because it's one of the staples of life. The great events of what Henry Luce called the American Century - the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and the upheavals of politics in America are the beams and joists that we used to knock together the stage on which this eternal drama was played.
Next time, we'll talk more about how the story of Joel Finnigan and Althea Burnside emerged.
Becoming Finnigan is available in e-book and paperback from www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com
It's a pretty sure bet that anyone who has ever tried playing the old subject and verb game has been asked that question more than once.
The answer is almost always the same: damned if I know.
In our case, both individually and collaboratively, we don't get the ideas; the ideas get us. From then on, it's a case of bolting the various pieces together and getting the engine to run. The ideas come from what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the Universal Soul: the stories are swirling around out there in the universe and the writers are merely the channels they select to make their grand entrance.
Becoming Finnigan is a perfect example of that. The boy/girl game is one of the staples of literature simply because it's one of the staples of life. The great events of what Henry Luce called the American Century - the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and the upheavals of politics in America are the beams and joists that we used to knock together the stage on which this eternal drama was played.
Next time, we'll talk more about how the story of Joel Finnigan and Althea Burnside emerged.
Becoming Finnigan is available in e-book and paperback from www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Becoming Finnigan
After many years
of writing together and separately for newspapers and magazines, our first
novel Becoming Finnigan is being
published by High Tide Publications this month. It’s about life and love in the American
Century, the choices we make, the impact we have on each other’s lives and the
ability of love to survive in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
Karen and Tony Muldoon
Through the process of writing and publishing,
we’ve learned that there is a lot more to being a writer than writing. And we’d like to share that with you.
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