My newest online hangout is finally here. We wanted to lend voice to a collaboration of writers who are at different stages in their careers, from published down to those penning or editing their first novels. So wherever you’re at in your writing, here’s a place to stop and refuel, find information and get retrofitted with new ideas.
Come join the fun at my new co-blog, Journeys in Ink.
Antioxidants are great brain food, which can help give you a boost when you’re feeling droopy and unfocused. Seriously, who can write with a case of the frazzles? Fruits and veggies that are rich in color like grapes, plums, red cabbage, pomegranates, berries, apples, citrus fruits, acai, broccoli, eggplant, kale, guava, tomatoes and sweet potatoes are known to have antioxidants, which benefit you in so many ways, including stabilizing free radicals and making your heart healthier.
Since pomegranates and blueberries are the perfect Jedi knights to bring balance to the force, what better way to get your fill than by combining all that healthy awesomeness in a delicious smoothie?
You can use any berries, but I prefer blueberries. And using frozen berries gives the smoothie a nice frothy texture. If you don’t have frozen fruit, add a few ice cubes to the mix.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Combine ingredients in a blender or smoothie mixer, blend on medium until you reach desired consistency. Pour into a tall glass, and there you go. It’s the perfect treat for NaNo too. Enjoy!
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.
Every writer who wants to be repped by an agent and published needs to master the art of query writing, getting that monster plot down to a suitable mini-synopsis that reflects both character and voice.
It sure is a pain in the booty to get that query letter right. I worked so hard to get my novel down to a few sentences, but those sentences reflected plot alone, not character and certainly not voice. So I went back to the drawing board and gave my letter a bit more personality.
There’s so much conflicting advice all over the web about what a query should and should not have. And so many well-meaning writers actually make the query writing process more difficult for other writers on the brink of shopping.
Well, here it is, query letter writing, stripped down to the most important elements by Literary Agent, Jennifer Jackson. Check it out.
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.
by my guest blogger, Tirzah Goodwin
Ah, you write the last sentence of the final paragraph of your 200,000-word epic American Novel and you hit save. You’re exhausted, you’re elated. You’re just a little bit smug. I’m sure you’ve hit Twitter to brag to all your writing frenemies out there in the web world.
Then, the next morning you push your computer’s little ‘Go’ button and the screen remains mysteriously black. Mmm, that doesn’t look good. You check all the cords and it’s plugged in. You hit the button again, several times. Because repeatedly hitting it always works…lol. Still, just a black screen.
Now, your heart is pounding, little droplets of sweat start to stream down the crack of your ass (the sign of real desperation).
You call all your friends, a couple of enemies, and even your sister’s idiot husband who thinks he’s good with computers. Nothing works.
Nearly hysterical by this point, you get in the car in pajamas and flip-flops and drive to the nearest computer fix-it shop. You hold your broken laptop out to the 12-year old with the name tag and blubber, “ahbubhabib broken, boghsdiguy novel”, which he understands as ‘My computer is broken, please retrieve my novel.’
Only three hundred dollars later you know your laptop is dead forever. The boney kid swilling AMP at nine in the morning manages to save a couple of files. You have the draft of six chapters, about twenty-thousand words.
You literally lie down on the sidewalk and wait to die. God is not merciful.
Eventually, the police make you get up. Authority figures rarely understand the pain of losing your writing. And it’s best to go the heck home to start all over on your novel or to throw yourself on the bed and scream. Whatever works for you.
If you’re in an apartment, I suggest you scream with your head buried in your hypo-allergenic pillow. Neighbors don’t understand creative pain either.
Next, you’ll twitter all your friends about your bad luck. Several of them have the nerve to snicker a bit at your expense.
Don’t let this be you!
How can you avoid the humiliation?
First, back up your writing in multiple places. At the very least, set up a free yahoo or g-mail account and email each chapter to yourself. This way it’s waiting in a third party email account that you can access from anywhere.
Second, put it on a flash drive. Then put your flash drive where children can’t flush it down the toilet. Don’t trust the dog around it either. My male dog did something unspeakable to my flash drive that I can’t even repeat here for fear the porn police will arrest me.
Third, put it on an old-fashion disc. There’s a reason we used those things all these years.
Fourth, sign up for a third party writing site that allows you to load your writing but not display it. I use a couple of these sites to ‘store’ my writing for emergencies.
And the last thing to remember is not to dwell on what’s lost. It’s gone. Have a good cry, a beer, or kick a stuffed teddybear but get over it. Either re-write it or write something new.
And back your writing up!
But if you forget and erase something, remember to tell everyone how great it was. After all, they can’t prove otherwise, now can they?
Good Writing!
~ Tirzah
Also posted at Journeys in Ink, my new collaborative blog.
Me? Ha. No way. Why would you even think that? So I have three blogs, two of which I barely use—okay, three, if you count my slacker job on this one. Aren’t you being a little harsh in your judgment of me? I know how you get.
Now sports addiction? Okay. With that I admit I have a problem. Do they have support groups for that? Just curious. I wouldn’t go, even with the pull of wild horses, but I am curious to know if they exist. I don’t want to be cured, fixed, set free. I’m totally fine with drooling in a rivalry bloodbath gutter, rushing back from anniversary dinners to see important games—Well, it was the 2004 Yankess/RedSox ALCS. That was the best series of all time! Wouldn’t you rush back?—and am quite attached to my draft clipboard and my B pillows thank you.
But blog site addiction? No.
But guess what. In spite of my firm insistance, I’m creating another blog. Not just me though, me and other writers…a collaborative effort if you will. We are combining our experiences and insights since we are all at different stages in our careers. Some are penning their first novels, some are seeking representation and some are close to being published or now have goodies on shelves. No matter where you are in your writing career, you’ll be able to find some inspiration and tips.
So you see? This in no way implies I have an addiction. It’s just a passion for words really, and a strong desire to help and cheer on other writers. No Bloggers Anonymous group is needed.
I just need your support, not a circle of people I don’t know at all. So stop in at the Journeys in Ink kickoff party tomorrow. Be sure to come early. We’ll have treats. Maybe.
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.
Okay. So in reading agents’ blogs, I started freaking out about word count again. Many genres have norms and you can’t really go outside that box. Since my book will probably go upper-YA with all my teen MCs, and I never intended for it to be YA when I wrote it, my word count is way off, by 20,000 words at least. I did have 106,000 words, and then started paring it down, gunning for 97,000 or so.
However, when I did my final edit in the spring, I made sure things were worded a specific way to provide good rhythm and meter, to create a zingy voice and to secretly reinforce my themes with subliminal messages. And the over-pruning I did this week gave the narrative a choppy feel and stripped a lot of that out. I was almost at 101,000, only nine chapters in, but returned some needed lines or phrases to alleviate the stilted feel and to reclaim my voice. A strong voice is just as important as a solid plot, good pacing and well-developed characters. It’s one of the key things agents look for in the first few pages. So I can’t lose that.
Now I’m closer 102,000 again. I’m still tweaking to get my word count under 100,000 at least. Some darlings will have to be cut. I still have many more chapters to prune and maybe I can reach my hope of 97,000 words, but if I don’t, I’m not going to fret. I’m just going to pass around the best story I can.
Now, my word count being out of the norm may mean an automatic rejection. But I’d rather have my work in good condition then to have a stick-figure effort that will get to go on shelves because–yippee–it fits in the typical box but is sub-par at best.
The complexity of my novel can’t be streamlined into 80,000 words. It can’t. My book doesn’t snag or drag in spots. Everything affects the main plot and the MC’s reaction to it.
Stephenie Meyer allowed Bella to repeat the same things over and over about a beautiful, sparkling vampire, beyond 118,000 words, and that passed by the conference table. I can only hope my word count doesn’t doom my work, but trashing and slashing it to fit the norm would do it just the same.
Above all, you must have a good story. And I know I have that.
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.
Please welcome my guest blogger, K.M. Weiland, on her blog tour as she celebrates the release of her novel, Behold the Dawn.
About the Author: K.M. Weiland writes historical and speculative fiction from her home in the sandhills of western Nebraska. She is the author of A Man Called Outlaw and the recently released Behold the Dawn.
She blogs at Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors and AuthorCulture.
Synopsis: Marcus Annan, a tourneyer famed for his prowess on the battlefield, thought he could keep the secrets of his past buried forever. But when a mysterious crippled monk demands Annan help him find justice for the transgressions of sixteen years ago, Annan is forced to leave the tourneys and join the Third Crusade.
Wounded in battle and hunted by enemies on every side, he rescues an English noblewoman from an infidel prison camp and flees to Constantinople. But, try as he might, he cannot elude the past. Amidst the pain and grief of a war he doesn’t even believe in, he is forced at last to face long-hidden secrets and sins and to bare his soul to the mercy of a God he thought he had abandoned years ago.
The sins of a bishop.
The vengeance of a monk.
The secrets of a knight.
Behold the Dawn, my second historical novel (this one set in during the Third Crusade in the Middle Ages) was released earlier this month. As I catch my breath from all my happy dancing and sighs of relief, I’m able to look back at some of the lessons I’ve learned over the course of two published novels and share them with you:
1. Finishing is the single most important factor in writing anything. If you have any intention of succeeding in this writing game, you have to be prepared to apply plenty of bum glue. A novel that’s never finished will never be read by anyone.
2. Don’t skimp on the planning/researching stages. Recording ideas, charting outlines (however lightweight or in-depth), and researching in the early phases of writing saves so much work in the long run. This is a lesson I learned the hard way.
3. Messy first drafts are okay; that’s what revision is for. Don’t fuss too much over plot holes and sloppy writing in the first draft. You can always go back and fix mistakes later, once you have a completed draft under your belt.
4. The story needs to dictate the word count, not the word count the story. While you’re writing, let the story flow as organically as possible. Most stories have a way of finding their own perfect rhythm and length. You can work on trimming or padding the word count later.
5. Don’t worry if the story becomes something unexpected. Few stories end up looking like we think they will. They all have a way of evolving as we write them—and that’s almost always a good thing.
6. Don’t be afraid to kill your darlings. When it comes time to revise, be merciless. Look extra hard at your favorite scenes, characters, and lines; if any one of them is less than perfect, they’ll have to go, no matter how much you love them.
7. Objective beta readers are vital. Writers will never obtain complete objectivity about their work. It’s important to find two or three trusted, experienced readers who can go over your early drafts and point out your blind spots.
8. Let the novel sit for a while after completion. I find that I can never really see a completed project clearly unless I throw it into the back of the closet and ignore it for at least a couple months. Start work on a new project and forget all about the first one, until you’ve had time to gain some objective distance.
9. Don’t hoard your work. When we pour our heart and soul into a story, it’s often a bit difficult to hand it over to the judgment of strangers. But a book that is never read isn’t much better than a book that is never finished.
10. A completed novel is always a triumph. Every completed novel, no matter its intrinsic value, is a success. It doesn’t have to be published; it doesn’t have to garner a huge advance; it doesn’t have to sell a million copies. The very fact that you had the guts and the skill to finish a book is huge accomplishment in itself. Don’t forget to bask in that for a while, before moving on.
Thanks for the great post, Katie. Good luck on your tour.
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.
Let’s see. Where am I when I’m not running or eating pumpkin pie? I am about 80% done with my novel, Sapphire Reign. I really need to be working faster and get it done. It doesn’t help that I’m an edit-as-I-go kind of writer. Having my book finished by the end of the year is my goal.
I don’t think I’ll have time for Nano this year, even though it was so much fun last year. Although, I don’t think I paid enough attention to my husband last November. All my characters in my Nano project ended up super horny. I didn’t even realize it until I went back to rearead it. Good luck to all those entering.
I am using Twitter more now, not a lot, but more than once a month heehee, because SO many agents are using it AND communicating with one another, so I want to be kinda-sorta likewise savvy. If you haven’t already and don’t mind being bored to tears, you can find me here: http://twitter.com/cvwriter
I am now seeking representation. I’ve been sending out queries all summer, slowly, about 4-6 agents a month. I don’t like just going by what genres they represent and zipping off queries. I like to get a feel for personality, to see if it’s worth my time. So, reading blogs and Twitter pages to see if there’s potential compatibility takes time. If an agent is not online, I don’t disregard them entirely, but it makes me wonder about their connections, so I put them at the bottom of my list. Plus, I think it’s really wonderful when agents reach out and take time out of their busy schedules to post articles to help writers do their best.
Another reason why I’m going slowly is because I don’t want to get overwhelmed if I get several requests at once. [Please let that happen to me!!! Come on.] Doing mass submissions by the 50’s or more is just not my style. I do need to pick up the pace I think, but I will still keep it under 12 a month. That’s reasonable and doable.
I am also working on a collaborative blog, which will be launching in a couple of weeks, with writers who are at various stages in their writing careers. Be sure to look for my announcement on that. This blog with all the zany regular writers and guest bloggers should be a lot of fun.
And that’s about it. What have you been up to?
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.
Yesterday, I read a first chapter on a critique forum I belong to where a male character—position not given—gave a just-hired guidance counselor a tour at his new employ. The whole chapter was empty. The dialogue was stilted, the characters non-existent, the narrative completely absent of voice, tone, texture, description and pertinent action. Plus, it brimmed with dialogue tags. Obviously, this word-waster’s a beginner, but even worse than that, a poser…not just someone who wants to write and has no clue where to start or how to bring words to life…this is someone who’s writing without passion. Clearly.
When people are passionate about something, no matter what it is, there’s an undeniable spark you can see, a hint of potential and desire underneath the rubble, and you know, aha, a diamond in the rough…which ultimately leads to dedication, persistence and a stretch for success. But, no matter how hard you try to write fantastic prose, if you don’t have passion for what you’re doing and believe in your ability to tell the story, it’s going to show.
Not that my work is perfect. I’m still in bloom. I’m an unpublished newbie and have so much to learn, but, I need to write, be it short story, poem, flash, novel, doesn’t matter. Writing is my dream revealer, my stress release, my thought organizer, my creative breath. I’m driven to put paper to pen and sharpen my knowledge by learning from others and reading books on craft so I can write well. In fact, reading books on technique is what kick-started me to write my first novel.
I love elements about my baby, but I’ve laid it to rest, at least for now. I poured so much emotion into it while writing it. I cried when I killed off my MC, Jenna’s best friend, steamed in fury during heated conflicts, trembled when Jenna was fending off the knife-wielding rapist who killed her BF, and reached for tissues again when she was reading a kiss-off note from her love interest even though I knew it was a practical joke being flipped into a marriage proposal.
As crazy as this emotional rollercoaster seems to you, that’s what passion is, being parked in the shoulder, searching high and low in your car for another crayon because your frantic writing is illegible on Dunkin Donuts napkins in that stupid light green. If you’re writing without experiencing the thrill and emotion of the work and not pouring everything into it, then you’re merely attempting to string words together that you only hope make some sort of sense and entertain.
Check out reviews on Amazon. With experienced, well-known authors, from Dean Koontz to James Patterson, readers can easily spot the difference between novels that were rushed to meet deadline and those birthed out of passion. Plots are weaker, characters are flatter, endings are messy or unsatisfying. Everything’s different and all the worse for the lesser effort. Those writers make big bucks for publishing houses and themselves, so they’re allowed to fudge every now-and-then and hand in something under the gun.
But don’t let that be you—except for raking in the money part of course. 
No matter where you are or end up in life, or how many awards you win, never lose your soul’s fire or consider something finished and great if it didn’t stem from it.
You should always strive to add greater depth and make your work better, to hone your skill and find your true voice, to develop characters so rich and full that even you forget they’re not real and care what happens to them during the journey and after THE END. Discover and use your most hidden, ugly, lovely, horrible emotions. Write the best pieces you can, losing sweat, tears and sleep in the process. Because if you don’t, readers will see the shallowness in what you’ve written. They’ll know. Don’t be a poser: a sub-par, mediocre, commonplace wannabe. Be exceptional, a true writer, an author, rushing onward in your drive and love for the craft. Grow and learn and work harder. For personal use, write whatever you want, but for the masses, always write with passion. Always give your best effort. Never less.
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.
Calling all writers who love treats as much as the written word. Here’s your chance to win $200. The new Mezzo Magazine is running a contest for its December/January issue. The sponsor is a Canadian cake factory known for its creative cakes. They are looking for creative stories centered around cake. Finally your sweet-tooth and writing drive can join forces! Deadline is November 30th. Issue goes live December 25th. There’s no entry fee or site affiliation. Just write a delectable treat and send.
You may also submit shorts, flashes and poems, if free from excessive gore, violence, profanity, hate or discrimination, at any time for consideration for the autumn, spring and winter issues. They’ll pay a flat $50 for the chosen feature story. Submission guidelines:
For further guideline details, click here. To read this month’s stories, click here. Good luck!
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.
RSS - Posts
