My So-Called Writing Process

My name is Alexandra Rushe and I write the Fledgling Magic series, the story of Raine Stewart, a sickly young woman who gets swept through a portal to the world of Tandara. Magic permeates the world of Tandara, but, instead of wands, the wizards in Tandara channel magic through wizard stones. A Meddle of Wizards, the first book in the series, is a fish-out-of-water story. Raine is yanked from her not-so-comfortable existence and thrust into an unfamiliar world where she’s forced to step outside her comfort zone to survive. Unchanneled magic is dangerous and lethal, and Raine, a neophyte wizard, has a series of magical misadventures.

Frankly, she sucks at magic. Fortunately, she has a wizard named Bree to tutor her and a textbook called A Beginner’s Guide to Mastering the Glow: Incantate—Don’t Incinerate. The Beginner’s Guide is part how-to manual, part history, and part cautionary tale warning would-be adepts of the fate awaiting those that lack a healthy respect for magic.

Like Dorfus the Doomed, for example, who accidentally turned himself inside out.

Readers often ask me how I write. That’s a tough question, because the writing process is weird and differs from person to person, but I guess you could say that I’m a plotser, a combination of pantser—those writers who write by the seat of their pants—and a plotter—those who plot first and write after. I’m also a linear writer, meaning that I start at the beginning of the story and bully my way through to the end, with a lot of hair pulling and anxiety in between. What amazes me is how the subconscious mind works. Some tidbit I drop at the start of a story will wind up being significant. Weird, huh? Or, I’ll be writing along, thinking I know where the story is going and wham! A character will appear with no warning, like the frost giant in my story. Tiny Bartog showed up, unannounced and fully formed in the first book, and it was love at first sight.

Species also have a habit of appearing unexpectedly, leaving me scratching my head. In A Muddle of Magic, I write of the aratuk, battle hags that reap the souls of the unworthy, and snow devils, rapacious creatures that live in the mountains and feed on lost sheep and travelers. Neither the aratuk nor snow devils were planned or plotted, and that’s why I keep a bible, an index of characters, places, and terms I make up. When I first started writing, I used to put everything on note cards and kept them in a box. Now, I keep a running index in a separate Word document, though a spread-sheet is another option. Some writers of my acquaintance are fond of sticky notes, Scrivener, and flow charts. Different strokes for different folks.

Humor is another element that pops up unexpectedly in my writing, maybe because my dad was a funny guy. He hated the beach, hated the sand and the sun and the crabs. I can still hear him saying, “If I had a house at the beach and a home in hell, I’d go home.” And, once, while sweltering in a hot car at a funeral, he quipped, “When I die, shove a hambone up my ass and let the dogs drag me off.”

Daddy never got the funeral he wanted—we couldn’t afford it. He was a big guy, see, and three-dog funerals are pricey. We cremated him, instead, and threw ink pens into the hole when we buried his ashes. But, that’s another story . . .

Or maybe humor finds its way into my stories because I’m Southern, and Southerners are funny people. We talk slow and sweet, like caramel, and we have a colorful way of expressing ourselves. We can’t just say somebody’s ugly. We say, “She’s uglier ʼn a mud fence daubed with lizards.” We don’t say someone lacks intelligence. We say, “He’s dumber ʼn a bag of frog turds.” Southerners can’t get right to the point. Language is the point, and ours is rich and colorful, and ever-changing. We don’t talk. We sing in syrupy cadence, our voices caressing each word and drawing it out, taking a one-syllable word and making it into a sonnet. “Damn,” becomes day-yumm. “Lord,” becomes Low-ward-duh, and “hell”, becomes hay-yull. And don’t even get me started on the “S” word. That one goes on for days.

If you asked me how to write funny, I couldn’t tell you. Don’t have a clue. It’s a mystery, humor, like writing. I don’t know where it comes from, but I’m glad it’s there.

It keeps the darkness at bay.