Win Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction

As a writer, your journey to the end of the story is a long, tortuous one, fraught with problems—procrastination, distractions, self doubt. These dangers are countless, and unimaginable.

That is, until now.

Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction shows you all of that and more, through the use of wonderful, whimsical, and sometimes just plain weird imagery. In partnership with Jeff VanderMeer, we at BookLife Now are offering an exclusive look from Wonderbook: a map of this journey. So we ask you—where are YOU on the journey to the end of the story? Look at the image below and tell us where you fall. Answer in the comments area and you’ll be registered to win print copies of both Wonderbook and Booklifenow – three winners will be selected randomly, just add your comment below.*

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Of course we’re all writers here, too, and a few of us (unable to join in on this contest), offer our own glimpses:

Caroline Ratajski: I’ve emerged from the Plains of False Inspiration and I am currently stumbling along the border of Desert of Pointless Writing and Encounter With Self-Doubt.

Jaym Gates: I’m somewhere between the Oasis of Malaise and the Fortress of Distractions. I have the book, and it’s probably a decent book, but I have too many other things that need to be done, and no real energy to get back into momentum.

Bear Weiter: With my current novel, I really wallowed in the Plains of False Inspiration for a long time—everything and anything that came to me that seemed special, unique, was considered and explored. It took more time than I had expected to wade through there and get past it. Now I’m mostly working around the Fortress of Distractions, but that’s pretty standard for me—that one I know well, and battle often enough that we’ve almost become friends. Not quite, but almost.

Update: Jeff says “I’ll throw in a couple of extra things into the winner’s packages.” He has refused to elaborate, but free books, free postage, and extra stuff?! You definitely want this.

*Because this is a contest, a few quick notes. You must be 18 or older to enter—I know, that sucks, but it simplifies things legally. If you’re under 18, get one of your parents to enter for you. Three winners will be selected at random from all of the posted comments—we reserve the right to not approve your comment for spamming or inappropriateness (rudeness, tastelessness, and excessive profanity all fit in here). If you post a comment and use a bogus email address (yeah, I said bogus), you get nothing! No purchase is necessary to win—and we’re not selling anything anyway. Postage will be taken care of, but it may take a while for the books to arrive should you live outside of the US. The contest is open through October.

75 thoughts on “Win Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction

  1. Lake of Endless Revisions. I keep seeing this thing just across in the distance that looks like a True Ending. It's maddening.

  2. Right now, it looks like I'm in the loops of procrastination. I tell myself I'm writing the story "in my head," but that's just a way of avoiding the monumental task of ACTUALLY TYPING WORDS OH MY GOD SO HARD

  3. I am just clambering over the last buttress of the Fortress of Distraction (obviously, that's why I'm here talking to you) and about to set my first foot upon the Bridge of Certainty :)

  4. I am far far away from True Ending. Right now I’m stuck in the fortress of distractions and eyeing that Momentum river. Help! I really really need a Wonderbook smoothie to get me going..

  5. I've been swimming in the Lake of Endless Revisions for a few weeks now. Someone please send a boat to fetch me!

  6. Just slogged my way through the Oasis of Malaise and find myself high atop the Fortress of Distraction. The Bridge of Certainty is so close, I can make out the individual bricks. I can see myself crossing it in my mind’s eye. But first I must climb back down and deep inside the fortress, something is growling.

    I thought I had slayed the Beast of Self-Doubt, but what else could have left those deep, trench-like footprints tracing my own path here from the fear mired oasis? What else could produce a howl that sounds so much like my own failure?

  7. I am on my knees before Self-Doubt, staring out across a landscape not shown here – the karst Plain of No Response, whose sinkholes seem to have swallowed all my submissions.

  8. I seem to be perpetually stuck at the Start. Always on the verge of going. But somehow getting stuck in not doing it.

  9. well, poo la moo it's Nov. 1, I have done 1245 words in my first National Novel Writing Month and I MISSED THIS contest. Gah! Because, you see, I am on the first part of the first red dash just to the right of the Start … told myself all my working and child-rearing life that "I could write fiction if I had the time/energy/magic talisman" and, poof! Decades later, here I am…. and a day late at the contest. or….. ? maybe not???

  10. Help! I’ve
    Been captured and am being held
    In the terrifying fortressofdistraction torture !!
    chamber

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