I’m hosting a guest post for the book tour for “Captain Shelby”. I’ll leave the word to author Jesse Giles Christiansen now. I hope you all enjoy the guest post!
On Writing
I’ve been writing longer than others, and not as long as many. What do I know of it? Hardly all there is, and I shall die in the same predicament. But surely I know something, and that’s what I wish to share here.
The most important thing is not to write something, but to write something directly from the soul.
If there is a Muse, he resides there; but he is a god as a child. He knows everything, but does not know how to access it. He is a raging river, and you are the damn. Like the Greek gods, he is nothing without your worship. Worship him by opening the damn all the way. You will be not be able to swim all day, and will have to go to the shore and rest. Tomorrow, get back in the water again and tread water as long as you can. You can’t win, you can only survive. The better you survive, the better your books will be.
Be courageous, or make a living. Choose now.
I know, this is a brutal choice. It really comes down to dedicating your life to a passion, or dedicating your passion to making a life. If you want to create great work, you have to forget about genre and trend. I read recently that by the time you caught literary fashion, it would be out of fashion. Write to write. With a lifetime of hard work, and a little luck, your work will survive.
Writing process leads to processed writing.
Just put it on paper, and your literary work becomes paper with words. Let the words live and breathe, leap on their own from the paper, and your literary work will become slanted rays of sunlight. Know the sunlit roads, then make a new shortcut. Slant the ray of sunlight. Think of it this way, if you know what’s coming next, so will the reader. Your true voice lies in the raging river itself, where it could not go … not where it has gone.
Great work is not enough.
The literary world has changed. For the good. For the worse. You can publish in a heartbeat, and be forgotten in that same heartbeat. You can submit manuscripts to overwhelmed publishers, and grow gray along with your postal or email receipts, which hold the worth of lottery tickets. That is the bad news. The good news is that if you grow a strong marketing limb, great work has a chance … a good one. This means a savvy publisher, strong social media presence, and recognition, whether that be awards or your name on big lists—or both. If you don’t make it, perhaps it wasn’t great work to begin with.
I wish all writers a long career of rich ups and edifying downs, but most importantly, the opportunity to be a literary artist with a readership. What a privilege indeed. For no matter how high you climb, isn’t that what you wanted in the first place? What we all really want? The rest is in the hands of the literary gods.
Yours in literature,
J.G.C.
About the Author
Jesse Giles Christiansen is an American author who writes compelling literary fiction that weaves the real with the surreal. He attended Florida State University where he received his B.A. in English literature, and holds an M.A. in philosophy from Georgia State University. He is the author of Pelican Bay (book one in the Captain Shelby Series), an Amazon #1 list bestseller, outselling Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. One of Christiansen’s literary goals is to write at least fifty novels, and he always reminds himself of something that Ray Bradbury once said: “You fail only if you stop writing.”
His latest book is the literary fiction/magical realism novel, Captain Shelby.
For More Information
- Visit Jesse Giles Christiansen’s website.
- Connect with Jesse on Facebook and Twitter.
- Visit Jesse’s blog.
- More books by Jesse Giles Christiansen.
- Contact Jesse.
About the Book
There are places even the sea cannot go…
In coastal Denmark, a young man named Nereus builds a longship and leaves at age eighteen to discover a new, enigmatic land. Faced with unimaginable obstacles, he crosses the North Atlantic, only to be captured by the Skraelings, the Inuit indigenous people who seek revenge on all settlers because of a “Great Red Man” who murdered many of their family members.
Many years later, Nereus is hired by a group of Irish settlers who are fleeing the tyranny of King Henry VIII, and he takes them across the North Atlantic to the New Found Land. A fierce battle ensues against the sea, the Little Ice Age, and the vicious Skraelings.
When Nereus falls in love with Laura Hodges, fiancée to the group’s leader, William Brockelby, he becomes embroiled in a dangerous love triangle…until the formidable mystery surrounding Captain Nereus H. Shelby is finally revealed.
Speak Your Mind