Creativity…With Meg Amor

 ChrisChat:

 NICE!!! I love it when a character takes over. I have one who keeps nudging me in the back of my head, he’s a right crazy pain. Did you find the writing process change once you let Charlie in? Some have explained it becomes easier, but difficult because the story goes in directions you didn’t want. Outside of just sitting down and actually writing, what should any writer keep in mind with the process? Had to come back and add something else… “the wild part of me that needs more ‘air time’.” What does the freeing feel to you?

Meg:
Thanks Chris!! 🙂 I love it when a character takes over too. I just trot around briskly after them to keep up, scribbling furiously. 🙂 LOL on your head nudger. Oy!! I do love them when they turn up though and won’t leave us alone.

Yes, I think the writing process did change when I let Charlie in and he did his own thing. I learned to let go a bit and just wait for ‘them’ (the Muses) to turn back up. I stopped being so worried about the story. And started to trust that it would come. I didn’t really have to ‘control’ the process. I just had to trust that once I got this bit down they gave me. Then the next bit would turn up. Previous to that, I always thought I’d get stuck or writers block. But once Charlie turned up and I let him run riot 🙂 I realised the story was out of my control anyway. I was simply channeling the story and I had to trust that another piece WOULD turn up.

I got to throw the odd idea in, but really, they tell me their own stories now. 🙂

I think ultimately for me, I had to trust that ‘they’ know what they’re doing. And to be okay in the stage where you’ve written down what they’ve just given you, but nothing new has filled in the vaccum yet. And to not force it. I think if they’d just given the whole story to me all at once, I wouldn’t have slept for weeks. Nor been able to take breaks to eat, go to the bathroom etc. LOL. It’s quite intense for me when it happens. And I’m literally hunched over the keyboard for hours, typing like a lunatic. This is when I go – thanks so much Gran for making me take touch typing. LOL.

In answer ‘to the wild part of me that needs more air time.’ I get to be very vulnerable and quite open through my character Charlie. Charlie’s raw in many ways. He’s articulate, is good at introspection and highly intelligent. Sometimes getting to the real him, can be a challenge for Charlie though. He’s so used to doing the PR charm machine, that when he really gets to take some walls down. He starts to let in Henry and Izzy. It takes a lot of trust and he gets to be all of who he really is. The good, the bad, the ugly. Some of the scary bits he thinks people who find frightening and hate about him. But he gets to be all of who he is with them. That’s a huge gift. I think we’re all looking for that. Just to be accepted for who we are.

I can ‘tamp’ myself down a wee bit at times, because I am very exuberant. I have a loud laugh, I find all sorts of things funny. I’m crazy and wild. I don’t live by other people’s conventions. Henry says to Charlie at one point, “Maybe your crazy self is your sane self.” And that applies to me too. I think I’m at my best when I’m my crazy wild self. But sometimes that’s still hard to do. To trust that it’s okay or that people won’t run away screaming into the night. 🙂 It’s freeing, but also very vulnerable. It’s like showing the soft underbelly of yourself to the world and hope you won’t get kicked in the guts for it.

Boy, you ask good questions. 🙂 Thanks.

ChrisChat:

 When I was younger we would visit friends and one was from Australia. I loved learning her phrases. My brother lives in Scotland…dad’s first marriage…so I know a few phrasings/slangs from him and my sister-in-law, let alone from my friend from Jamaica. This is going to show, I haven’t read Dark War, yet (so many great reads, so little time ) but does your New Zealander words/phrases slip in? How much do you have to fight not to allow them in?

Meg:
LOL. Great question. One I worried about a wee bit when I first started out. How fabulous that you have all these nations of people around you. 🙂 I love it. Anyway, back to the question. I ‘solved’ the problem in a way, by making my main character a New Zealander. And even in a Christmas story I recently submitted, I did the same thing. I’ve lived in the State, on and off, twenty odd years. So I have some Americanisms on board. And sometimes they do get muddled up. LOL.

I’ve put in things that Henry or Charlie have said and my editor came back with, is that a New Zealand or Kiwi phrase? Oh… LOL. Then I’ll go and look it up and yes…it is. 🙂 The thing with being here for so long, is that while I retain my Kiwi accent, I have picked up lots of American words. So sometimes I really don’t know which country something belongs to. Also, our phrasing can be different sometimes and my syntax is odd anyway. So I have to work on that stuff sometimes. 🙂

We swear a lot more. So parts of my speech and a lot of New Zealanders have to be toned down for an American audience. We also use words that are considered upsetting to some people here. Like Jesus, God, Christ etc. And for us, they’re just words that have some energy to them, rather than sacred words. So I have to tone those down too. Although, I did question whether religious people would be reading my sultry steamy romance novels. 🙂

I ended up attaching a list of Kiwi words for Henry and Isolde, book one of the Trilogy because there were quite a few words that Izzy uses, tha people may not know. I say Crikey and Crikey Dick all the time. It’s an exclamation of surprise, similar to wow. I had Isadora saying ‘He wouldn’t have a bar of it.’ It wasn’t until my editor asked about it and I looked it up, that I realised it was a New Zealand and Australian phrase. It means, you won’t touch it, or be interested in it. I had to change it to ‘My Daddy wouldn’t cotton to it.’

So, yes, I need my editor for my speech patterns and my Kiwi words. And to get my American words right too. My one thing I didn’t change for Izzy was that she calls underpants for women – panties. New Zealand women generally just call them pants. But I thought that was just too confusing, so went with the americanism on it. I think I can get away with that, because Izzy has lived in the States ten years and will have a few Americanisms onboard. LOL.

I have to work harder with Henry and Charlie obviously. Henry is a real old Southern gentleman and has a soft Lousiana cadence to his voice. So he speaks in a less ‘decisive’ style in some ways. I’ve heard Morgan Freeman speak like that and he’s from the South. He’ll use ‘It was a good review, I guess.’ And Harry Connick Jnr is a native born New Orleanian, he has the soft cadence, but not the full Southern drawl.

Thank you Chris, this has been really fun. 🙂 Great questions. 🙂 Thanks and aloha everyone Meg 🙂