The Modern Literary World of the Fiction Writer

After spending the past year-plus researching and writing, I found my travels through the composition process enjoyable and inspirational.

Whether you create your story out of thin air, or spend months doing research, reading, and exploration, the modern world’s amenities for the writer produce the ease and comfort necessary for a wondrous literary journey across the horizon of authorship, and off into the crimson sunset of publication.

My most recent journey began with an idea, as is the norm, and progressed as it unfolded like a flower in the light of a morning sun’s dawn. Ideas popped up from sources I did not expect: ideas for chapter story-line avenues that led to the next chapter, and the next, and the next.

Today we have the ease of ordering documents, books, ship logs, etc. online, in formats that include paperback, PDF, and ePub. Our access to original source materials, as those from Project Gutenberg, certainly are a phenomenal wealth of FREE works to feed the literary minds of hungry researchers. No need to rely on the chance that a modern revisionist has reinterpreted what really happened at any given time in history, or to resort to burdening oneself with the filled-with-erroneous-information accounts so commonly found in Wikis (and quasi-educational TV shows) – one can read the eyewitness accounts and actual transcribed historical documents for themselves, all downloadable in a variety of convenient formats.

Writer’s block fades away, like a misty fog in the midday sun, for the Indie authors who busy themselves with transcending the realm of composition-only, trekking into the endless fields of cover design, ePub formatting, text font selection/downloading, and more. There always remains something to do, including additional project ideas to outline.

Imagine for one moment… those days of writing, times where composition was the sum total of one’s literary endeavor - not including query letters, cover design approvals, marketing, and hosts of other details carried out by one's self and one’s publisher; those days of spending hours at the library pulling cards from a small drawer file to find the book you need to read for a given project. It does remain enjoyable to visit a library from time to time; there is just something about a library's atmosphere, but maybe that is only an experience one retains from childhood memories.

The ability to use GoogleEarth to visit so many locales across the globe and walk the streets is amazing. To stand on the coast of Oman gazing across the water toward Iran and Pakistan, then zoom in along Africa’s Skeleton Coast before traveling the highways and byways throughout the Americas, can leave one at a loss for words. And to have the ability to copy the exact coordinates, Latitude & Longitude, should the need arise, is a fantastic privilege.

There are many sources out there online for checking grammar and punctuation standards/trends. One can rejoice in the ability to scan multiple reputable sites for questions that arise during editing, comparing each for added clarity of decision. Consistency is one of the author’s trustworthy words; pens, and highlighters of varied colors, the tools of the editing trade. And a nice hot drink is the pleasurable liquid music that soothes the savage beast.

Happy researching & writing!