Writing Advice from Jay Requard: Build the Map for Your Journey

Jay Requard knows a thing or two about epic journeys. So it’s no surprise that his writing advice feels a little like a call to adventure.

Jay Requard

Build the Map for Your Journey

The journey of a writer and author is far more important than the destination. We get swept up in a perpetual rat-race where we need to have a book out NOW, we need to be building “this, that, or the other” NOW, we have to do this NOW.

I think many young writers forget that this is a process and that the real success is creating the process needed for you not only to produce the work but also creating that process to where it doesn’t eat you alive in the midst of the labor. A lot of people break themselves on the ideas of how other people view them, not how they should view themselves as a growing, creative, maturing person that just happens to write words into stories.

The process is a lifetime of work, not something just made tomorrow, and I think I could provide a good starter for helping those people build their maps for the journey.

Jay Requard is a wanderer and fantasy author currently in New York. Fed on equal amounts of Socrates, Vyasa, and Ursula K. Le Guin, he has spent time in North Carolina, Colorado, Ireland, and London, as well as other parts of the world. While his interests vary from swordsmanship to space to sacred studies, he is a constant practitioner of meditation and has been known to enjoy most books handed to him. In his spare time he brews, tries to practice better habits, and of course, writes fantasy. He is the recipient of the 2016 Write Well Award for “MASK OF THE KRAVYADS” and a runner-up for the Manly Wade Wellman Award for his sword & sorcery novella, WAR PIGS. His most recent release is the Dark Fantasy collection DEATH & DUST: The Pale Sand Adventures.

In 2020 he will release the pirate fantasy series SALT SONGS and the Urban Fantasy series THE TRIALS OF ST. PATRICK through Falstaff Books, as well as THE TEA MERCHANT trilogy and KINGDOMS OF LIGHT AND GLASS through his imprint, Lookfar.

Learn more about Jay by using the links below!