April 2, 2014

Turn everything into a noun

I'm dying to write a post about my 2nd novel that I just published, ROSEHEAD, but it's not available everywhere yet, and I have yet to post the free ebook files of it on my site, so I have to wait! Grr!!! Soon, soon! Meanwhile, I had this revelation while reading (of course, always). A tiny little thing, really, that adds to the post I wrote about how to write the perfect description. And how it didn't occur to me before, I don't know. I guess there is truth to the whole credo of write a lot, read a lot, and you will get better. The idea is simple. It's so simple, that I want someone slap me silly with a blimp full of pillows, or make me eat begonias, or, I don't know, paint all my socks green so I would remember this for the rest of my life, however long it is I have left to live. Are you ready? Here we go. (And if you've known this before, go ahead, split your midriff from laughing.)

TURN EVERY FUCKING THING INTO A NOUN.

March 2, 2014

How to write the perfect description

by Ksenia Anske

I read a lot. Well, by some standards maybe I should read even faster, but I also write full time, so I read a book a week. That's about 50 books a year, and my body being close to 40, probably another 2,000 books in the rest of my life. Although, who knows, maybe by then people will live all the way to being 200 years old (doubt it). It takes 10,000 hours to get good at something, or so Malcolm Gladwell says. That's 5 years of doing something for about 8 hours a day. I started writing full time in May 2012, so this spring it will be 2 years. In this time I have read 80 books. Of course, I've read books before this, but I didn't read them as a writer. I also wrote 4 books so far (if you want to count the little book of tweets, that's 5) which technically are 2. My first trilogy wasn't meant to be a trilogy, so let's count it as 1. This means I'm on my 3rd book now. I did this math to illustrate to you how fast (or slow) we learn. I read good stuff, really good stuff. Just look at my reading list. I'm trying to catch up on classics because I read them in English for the first time, as if I were a teenager (I'm about 16 years old by that count, having moved to US from Russia 16 years ago). Still. You would think by now I would've learned how to write the perfect description. I thought I totally got it. I felt it. It was flowing out of my ferocious heart laden with emotion. Feel, I told everyone, feel and write down what you feel.

RIGHT. WRONG.

February 18, 2014

Why it's okay for first drafts to be a mess

by Ksenia Anske

I know I promised people to write about my Russian literature influences, like what books inspired me to write, what authors, and someone asked for a post on how to write ABOUT ME blurbs. I will get to it, I swear, but something else bubbled to the surface today, something that I want to share, to help those of you who are like me, unsure of themselves as artists, stumbling in the dark, wanting to share their art and not quite having enough courage to step forward, into the light, and say it as they want to say it, afraid of judgement, afraid to be themselves, like I often am, and therefore to those who withhold their true creations, ashamed, perhaps, or perhaps thinking their writing is so utterly ugly and horrible and shallow and not worthy of anyone's time that they never dare. I've been there, I'm still there, I'm slowly climbing out, and I learned one big lesson today that will help me get better, and hopefully I can condense it into one blog post to help you too, to give you a hand. Hold on to my hand, together we can create art the way WE want to, the way WE feel, the way WE want to share it with others, no matter what anyone might tell us.

February 8, 2014

My journey as a non-native English speaker & writer

by Ksenia Anske

A non-native English speaker (like me) and my blog reader asked this question: "Hello Ksenia!! I was visiting your blog and I was thinking why not sharing your journey as a non-native speaker writer! I don't know if you have already written something similar but I think it would be very interesting and useful to share some tips! I mean the ways that helped you to encounter the difficulties of writing in English which is not your first language."

Yes, for those of you who didn't know, English is not my first language. Russian is. I came to America in 1998, knowing a few phrases from Beatles songs like "Hello", "Goodbye", "I love you", "Help", and such. I did know German though, from living for 4 years in Berlin in my teens, so since both languages belong to the Anglo-Saxon language group, it was perhaps easier for me to grasp? Not sure. Anyway. I had to learn English fast, because, number one, those annoying newspapers kept calling and asking for a subscription, and I couldn't properly tell them to piss off, and, number two, I left Moscow in the middle of college (studying architecture) and I had to transfer my credits and learn English (pass TOEFL and all that jazz) to be accepted by the local college and graduate with some sort of a degree. Or sit home and go crazy. So I learned it.