Sylvia van Bruggen on Writing with Soul/ebook giveaway

Today, I welcome Sylvia van Bruggen!   She's on tour with the Virtual Book Tour Cafe.

Giveaway:  One lucky commenter will win an e-copy of her new book, Mindscreens.  Winner will be chosen by random drawing.  Deadline to enter is 7/12/12 at 11:59 p.m. EST.  In addition, all commenters will receive a link and free coupon code for my ebook Annals of the Immortyls.  Please leave an email address or url where you may be contacted. 

How do you know that you are writing what you love to write? You know it because you can't contain yourself, you jump up and down in excitement and really can't wait to see what happens next.

This may mean for instance, that you have been writing a whole wrong genre for you. For me the big change came when I discovered I love to write fantasy. I felt that excitement. I felt my hands trembling as I wrote down my words, and I couldn't fathom not writing anything else.

I feel the same kind of excitement when I write on play. They are the same. Both are connected to my soul.

Yes, there is that word again: soul. I believe that writing, like all forms of creativity, is connected to the soul. It's passion. I define passion as soul sparks, the sure fire way you know that you are doing what you love and what you were born to do.

So, how do you discover what you love to write? By trying. I tried paranormal romance for instance, finished a book in it, and realized I didn't give a damn about the characters. I had a completely different experience when I wrote my novella MindScreens. I do love writing anything but writing MindScreens: oh my goodness. It was completely freewritten (no plot or anything, just an idea), it made me giggle and feel all gleeful and I couldn't wait to write again.

You also know you were meant to write something when you feel your fear kick in majorly. The intenser the passion is, the harder your fear comes poke it's big fat nose around the corner and roars his bum off until you sit shivering in the corner.

So, when fear comes to bully you, you shouldn't cower away, in stead you should be very very happy because it means you have found your passion in writing.

Some of you already may know what you love to write, others may have a hard time with it. To inspire them I have made a list of genres you could try out, and I have added non fiction too. You could start brainstorming topics that you are interested in, that's going to be a lot of fun to begin with. I can highly recommend going to Squidoo and start writing there. It's fun to do and you get to flaunt your knowledge on a specific subject.

A completely incomplete genre list, just to get you going

Science Fiction

Alternate history

Fantasy

High Fantasy (lotr et al)

Magic

Historical

Mystery

Horror

Humor

Detectives

Thriller

Romance

Paranormal romance

Just get the basic ingredients for a story (a character, a setting, and something that changes for that character) and just freewrite. You could even use the same character in each story, and tweak the setting to the genre, and you are good to go.

This discovery is going to be a fun little journey for you :)

Sylvia van Bruggen:

Sylvia van Bruggen is a fantasy/science fiction writer, poet, avid blogger and artist. She is the founder of Playful Creative, a website for creatives who want to work through their mental blocks and who want to learn how to play with their writing. She has self-published a novella, two poetry books, and her poems and short stories have been published in various magazines. She currently writes a fantasy novel, and she works on publishing another poetry book. She lives in the Netherlands with her husband, two cats and several novels in various draft stages.

Mindscreens

Jessamine Harper has it all: University course she loves, job as a Top-level Healer and dream man in the form of desirable Professor Lucas Corwin; but when Corwin breaks down and is taken away by the Mindcops, the world that Jessamine knows begins to unravel. Does the boy she hate, Ben, hold the key to her past as well as her future? Can she escape the clutches of the Mindcops herself? Only time will tell, and does Jess have much of that left?

Excerpt

"What's the emergency?" An equally snappy voice answered straight away, "Healer Harper, report to Med-Office at the south entrance. Slip and fall, going through scanner now, but judging from the bone sticking out I'd say it's broken." Grade A injury, good thing I hadn't eaten.

"I'm gonna miss class, you have to report me!"

"Not my problem, now scoot along."

I pushed my Jotter into my bag, shouted: "Medical emergency!" and started to run down the hallway. Left, right, down the stairs, swerve around some slobbering kissers, and then down the long corridor to the Med-Office, my voice getting hoarser and hoarser from shouting at people. The curse of being a Grade A Healer, only getting called when there's a big emergency. Better learn how to run fast if you want to save someone's life.

http://sylviavanbruggen.blogspot.com/