Guest Blog: Michael Young on Immersing Yourself

Today's guest blogger is Michael Young, author of The Canticle Kingdom and shortly to release a new novel, The Last Archangel.

He is also a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (how cool is that?) and can be seen in the background of this flash mob the choir did recently (again, how cool is that?)

Michael's a super-nice guy and let me feed him breakfast burritos without complaining about it.

Now, with no further ado, here's Michael.

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“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting." -Ray Bradbury

I love this quote, because I think it’s a great way to go about being an author or artist. Not even Old Faithful can produce it’s incredibly consistent show without any water. Writing is about people, relationships and conflicts. If you live your live in a vacuum to other’s creativity, chances are you won’t be able to foster your own, and you’ll never get the nickname “Old Faithful.”

I became interested in writing because I immersed myself in books, music, art, and even fantasy video games when I was young. All of these things helped my imagination to grow and my desire to share that imagination. That’s not to say that you should just copy what others do, but you can let other forms of art get you into the mindset mentally and emotionally to create yourself.

I find this works well for me with music. Before or while writing, I often immerse myself in some piece of music that evokes the proper emotional state. Movie soundtracks are great for this, because that is exactly what they are for: evoking certain emotions.

What do you think about this quote? Do you find that this is true in your creative process or do is another way better for you?

The Last Archangel is a high-speed adventure about a destroying angel with intense job dissatisfaction, but no choice for a career change. His term of service is “Until the End of the World” and so he’s very interested in getting that to happen. When an evil group approaches him with a plan to do just that, however, Xandir has to make tough decision: partner with evil or finally overcome the choices that caused his fall in the first place.

“The Last Archangel” releases on July 14^th in both paperback and Kindle. You can find out more about at it http://thelastarchangelbook.com or at my blog http://www.writermike.com or my Facebook author page http://www.facebook.com/authormichaelyoung. You can order it on Amazon.com at http://amzn.com/1599558947.