Mynx Writes

Alex Diakonis I am a writer. After all the years I have tried different things: soldier; linguist; cyclist; barista and more, it feels good to say that I have finally accepted what and who I really am. People can go their whole life not knowing who they are and then, like a bolt of lightning, it hits them. BAM! “That is what I should be doing.” I wish I was one of those stories, I think it would have been cool. Not me though. Ever ignoring my father’s advice, I never make things easy on myself. I’ll give you, dear reader, the beginning of this path and some practices which have worked for me. The year was 1987. My mother had to work and my aunt had a day off, so she was babysitting my younger sister and me. I never was one for Barbies, so I resorted to asking if I could play on the computer. My aunt hesitantly obliged and gave me one of maybe 3 programs available at the time on her Macintosh: word processing. I started out typing things like my name and things like that....

SARK isn't exactly a Muse, but she puts mine to shame. When I was a teenager, I found this poster by SARK in a Toronto mall and immediately fell in love.  I took it home, gave it a place of honor on my bedroom wall, and made it a point to read it from start to finish at least once a day. Some of the best advice I've ever received for fostering my personal creativity came from "How to be an Artist", and to this day, the words remain with me, even though the poster has long since disappeared. If I could, I would take every single bit of advice in this poster and turn it into one of the 12 Steps For Fostering Your Creativity this weekend. However, rest assured that you don't need to stop at the 12 steps listed here today.  Find your own copy of this poster, frame it up, and hang it in your writing space - and don't be afraid to open yourself up to being the creative creature that you are. Are we ready, then?  Grab a notebook and a pen or open up a fr...

Greetings and hello from the land of tomorrow! *looks off camera, clearly confused* What? You want me to say what now? You sure this isn’t the sci-fi and beer drinkers biannual Spock and Ale convention? Oh dear. *throws away prepared script* Hello there and welcome to my ramblings about my writing career. I have been tasked by our wonderful web mistress here to share with you my experiences with writing and pass along any tips I have to you, the reader. So, as soon as she puts down the whip, we can begin. My writing hobby started with an obsession with wrestling. You can come back now and stop laughing; it's the truth. When I was a young pup, I was enraptured by wrestling. It wasn’t’ so much that I thought it was real (all wrestling fans know it is fake), but the intriguing characters and what they did in and outside the ring. In the 80s and early 90s, it was all about the over-the-top characters and their lavish lives. This made me obsessed with characters and how they coul...

Writing and blogging is an addiction. Admit it - if you write or blog - you are addicted to it.  It's your drug of choice, and you'd probably give up breathing before you put away your pen and paper or your laptop and bid adieu to the Internet forever. This is also the only addiction (that I know of), that you should want to become better at. With that in mind, every Friday for the year of 2012 I'm bringing you the Mynx Writes Weekend Workshop.  Consider it your own personal 12 Step Program for the weekend. Starting next Friday, with each Weekend Workshop I will tackle a different subject related to your addiction, including: 12 steps to overcoming writer's block 12 steps to putting off procrastination  12 steps for brainstorming 12 steps for fostering your creativity 12 steps for creating believable characters 12 steps for building a better blog 12 steps for social networking for writers and bloggers 12 steps for world building Becoming a Grammar...

I have been a writer for almost twenty years. By writer, I mean someone who has penned numerous stories and novels, but never had anything published. In 2006 I got tired of hearing from agents that my novel, Nephiim Genesis of Evil was a great story, but they didn’t think there was a market for it. This was before the ebook rage, at a time when the term self-publishing had an even worse stigma than it does now. I had a friend who encouraged me to go on ahead and self-publish the novel. I was hesitant but decided to jump in. I’m glad I did. Here are a few things I learned from that experience. Self-Publishing Was Easier Than I Thought It Would Be In 2006, I had to hunt for a printer to publish Nephilim and I was worried that the end product would look like a self-published book. I was pleasantly surprised that the released book was just like anything you could pick up at Barnes & Noble. I was also expecting to have a harder time getting it into stores and places online...

I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions.  The only resolution I've ever successfully kept is not to make resolutions in the first place.  That way, I never disappoint myself.  But, if you want to do something with your writing and your blog, and you've got the attention span of a gnat on crack like I do, you will need to set some ground rules for yourself.  I've been brainstorming over the last several weeks to come up with a list of ideas that should keep my writing and my blogging going strong throughout the year.  This will be no mean feat since I've got a degree to finish, a job to find, and then will have to juggle both in the process of continuing to blog and write. With that in mind, here are my writing and blogging resolutions for 2012. 1.   Set a schedule, and stick to it.   This doesn't mean that you can't rearrange or adjust the schedule as necessary, but make a promise to yourself that you will set a schedule and keep it.  For...

Insomnia. It creeps up on you and doesn't let you go.  One minute you're so tired that you can't keep your eyes open, and the next minute your brain is on overdrive and you're still so tired that you can't keep your eyes open.  So you lay there and let your brain run rampant.  In my case, last night, it was on full overdrive.  I did everything.  I rolled over.  I put a pillow over my head.  I got up and went to the bathroom.  I got a glass of water.  I even grabbed my phone and tweeted to whoever was awake and listening for insomnia to go away and tell my brain to shut up on the way out. And then, it came to me... Tommyknockers. Not the movie - the book. Have you ever read it?  "Late last night and the night before, Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, Knocking at the door..." I'm no genius, but this book holds the solution. Stephen King, when he wrote "Tommyknockers", was expressing an idea that writers all over the w...

If you follow me on Twitter, you've no doubt seen me mention Craftapalooza and not much else on many a weekend lately.  The fact that I've been a mostly unemployed college student this year has afforded me the opportunity to revisit old hobbies and pastimes in the interest of being thrifty this holiday season.  (Translation: Y'inz are all getting handmade shit from me this Christmas and if you don't like it, too damn bad!) The past several months have been especially busy at Crafty Bitch Headquarters (aka Mom's house), where we've been busier than Santa's elves on crack trying to get the presents and cards finished and ready to go out in time for Christmas.  Now, I'm in no way implying that we do crack at Crafty Bitch Headquarters.  Our speed is usually more along the lines of a nice glass of red wine, which is probably why it's now December 6th and we have a grand total of 11 Christmas cards crafted.  The truth is, there are so many fabulous thi...

Well, here we all are, for better or for worse, attempting to complete Day 3 of National Novel Writing Month .  If you are on schedule, you've got no less than 5,001 words completed, and you've even dug into tomorrow's word count quota. Or more. It you aren't on schedule, no doubt you are gnashing your teeth, pulling your hair, and have even thrown in the towel already. (Or at least threatened to.) Here's a thought: Don't. Quit. Don't. Give. Up. Wanna know a secret?  I didn't write a single word for my NaNoWriMo project on November 1st.   That's right.  I didn't.  I meant to, but life got in the way.  I had to work.  I had to drive the two hours home from my mother's house.  I had school work to do. Wanna know another secret? I still didn't have any idea what I was going to write for NaNoWriMo this year, even when I sat down to write my two day quota yesterday. As a matter of fact, I didn't actually sign up for NaNoWriM...

For those of you in the know, the title of this post speaks for itself, and you are either laughing at me or nodding your head in sympathy because you are planning on spending the month of November much the same way I will be -- glued to your computer, gulping down coffee, and neglecting your family and friends until you have completed your goal of writing a fifty-thousand word novel. For those of you who are new to NaNoWriMo Madness , don't let that first paragraph scare you away.  I didn't mean it.  Okay, so I did, but it's not as bad as it sounds.  Really, its a lot of fun, and your friends and family will be so proud of you when it's over that they won't hold a grudge about you neglecting them for thirty days straight.  (In theory, anyway.) So, what exactly is this NaNoWriMo Madness of which I speak?  Simply put, it is that festive event that takes place every year during the month of November where aspiring novelists test their resolve (and their san...

I wrote this short story when I was in high school, and later, after several revisions, submitted it for publication to several well known fantasy magazines.  Thus, I received my first ever rejection slips from the world of professional publication. I'm proud of those rejection slips.  They are proof that I was brave enough to put myself out there.  They are proof that I took the first toddling steps towards reaching my goals as a writer, at the young age of 16. No matter whether you are considering traditional publishing or self-publishing, it is important to remember that you are going to face rejection.  Not everyone is going to like your writing style.  Not everyone is going like your content or your subject matter. However, someone out there is going to like your work.  It pays to network, to be persistent, and most of all, keep writing.  Kyra’s Gambit             “You don’t have to k...