Author Q&A – Charles Petrie
Charles
Born October 19, 1971, in a Montreal Hospital in Quebec, Canada, he grew up outside of the small village of Howick on a small farm.
Charles is a writer twenty years into his journey busily embarked on the grand achievement of writing a million+ words a year for 15 years.
1.Tells us about your writing/ published book(s)
My writing? Well, it’s a mix of practice, or me just writing about myself, what I’m thinking or watching, which may be quiet, but is still useful because it keeps the writer’s mind sharp.
But there are also stories in what I refer to as Sci-Pow because I don’t know where the Sci-Fi ends and the Powers begin because my characters often develop super-hero powers.
I can’t forget the poetry either which is both of those, my thoughts given the flow of poetry, be it about me, my thoughts or doings or about a character that is instaported to an alien space station orbiting the world beneath whenver he writes as little as a verse of poetry which is a heck of a power to have.
As for the published books, The closest thing I have to a book is my own very small effort to print a collection of 71 poems that I gathered together in duo-tangs which I sold to some people who went above and beyond with the buying of a book that they probably weren’t going to read.
But I had the few sales and counted that as a victory.
2.Where’s your favourite place to write?
I can write anywhere, so long as I have access to one of my devices, even while walking and I do mean walking on the streets which has led to some almost walking into people much to their annoyance, but for the most part was easily done.
But I do most of my writing in front of my desktop with something playing in the background because I prefer to write with noise rather than silence.
So music, youtube, tv, a movie I’ve seen before, that’s how I like to roll.
3.Have you always wanted to write?
I wouldn’t be on the writer’s path if not for the three pillars, which are comic books, movies and reading, in that order.
Yes, it’s comic books that most fired the imagination but without any one of those pillars, I wouldn’t have become a writer.
But no, it wasn’t always what I wanted to do, even as I started to write poetry in High School and had my first success as I had a poem published in the yearbook in Grade 9.
I didn’t decide to walk the writer’s path until I was 28 on 01-01-2000.
4.What do you do when you have writer’s block?
I used to accept this term without any further thought to it, but not anymore.
Writer’s block suggests there’s something stopping a writer from writing, which isn’t true, sit down and write about how you can’t write that story you’ve been writing for each day for the last two months until this morning when you just stared at the page for ten minutes and threw your hands up in the air before you screamed and ran back to bed.
Or write about your crappy day job or that the person you asked out laughed in your face.
As for Story Block, that’s a thing. Though for me, I think it has more to do with me being a write by the seat of my pants writer instead of one who plots.
I run out of steam and the stories lapse into what i refer to as comas. They’re not dead, but they aren’t waking up anytime soon.
Or ever. And there are far too many of them .
5.What advice would you give to someone wanting to write their first book?
Sit down and write it. It’s that simple. Once you have an idea of course. Now you can further expand this idea with lots of plotting or you fly totally by the seat of your pants.
It’s exciting to fly by the seat of your pants and let the enthusiam carry you through the early days, so long as you’re visiting it daily, or at least regularly.
But what I have found for me, is the flying by the seat of my pants has almost let me down.
At the same time, plotting helps you through those times where imagination alone fails you.
So what I know I have to adopt in the future is a hybrid of the two because too plotted does not allow for the freedom to follow your characters as they take you in a different direction than you had planned to go.
6.Would you want your book made into a film?
Would I? Oh yeah, I’d love to have my work adapted into a gilm, even tv and my stories lend themselves to adaptation because Sci-Pow is perfect for the silver screen I just have to finish the stories and get them out in front of someone who can make the first part of that want come true. Buying the rights.
Yeah, that’s all.
It’s Charles’s birthday today so go find him on Twitter and with him a happy birthday!
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