My wife sometimes accuses me of going to extremes. In the car, the heater is either on full blast or the AC is icy. I can be a bouncing Tigger one minute, a solemn and quiet Eeyore the next. When writing I’m the same way, methodical and slow in outlining, then writing with abandon, not stopping or thinking or even coming up to breathe.
There are so many things I have learned thus far in my journey to become a published author. I am a very eager person but unfortunately sometimes I lack patience. Patience is definitely something I didn’t have when I first started writing.
This is the first year in the three years that I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer’s Month) that I didn’t “win”. In case you don’t know, NaNo is where you write 50,000 words in the month of November. I started my fourth novel for NaNo this year and then life got in the way. I’ve been disciplined enough to write a novel outside of November in the past but having that month to completely focus on word count has always been ground breaking. Being competitive with yourself works for some people but not for others. It works for me.
I’m not a fan of Sara Gilbert per se, but she delivered a great TED talk on the Muse. And based on that talk she has just published a book on creativity called Big Magic
If you could give yourself a present for the holidays that would improve your life, your art and your relationships with others, what would it be? For me it would the gift of confidence! Having confidence in yourself as a writer and as an artist is crucial to your success and to your very survival in what can often seem to be an indifferent world. To have confidence in yourself is to appreciate and treasure your uniqueness and singular point of view that no one else in the world has.
Few writers pay much attention to character placement, but this is something of paramount concern to filmmakers, and a subject I cover in depth in Shoot Your Novel. A director has to lay out his camera shots, deciding when a close-up shot would be more effective than a long shot, for example. He may want the camera positioned far away from the action, to make details unclear and evoke curiosity or misinterpretation. Or he may have an extreme close-up to ensure viewers don’t miss a tiny detail that is crucial to the plot.
About 3 months ago I submitted my writing to a chapter contest for Romance Writers of America. I received the feedback a little over a month ago and am just now writing a post about it because I was too embarrassed to share before.
I took the decision not to do NaNoWriMo this year. I’m so far behind with other writing projects; I could not contemplate starting something new. However I did enjoy the last couple of years and learned a lot from it. Hopefully for next November I’ll be ready to try it again.
Does your writing sometimes feel dead? Perhaps your words stare vacantly back at you like lumps on the page? Or do you feel like a lump as you write? How can you inject passion and danger back into your writing?
Here’s where we talk about plotters and pantsers. If you don’t know the definitions – a plotter is a writer who outlines their book before beginning to write it while a pantser writes from “the seat of their pants” with no outline. Kind of like writing from the stream of consciousness. I don’t think a survey has been taken but from what I’ve seen, most writers are plotters. Yet there are many famous pantsers too.
I’m writing this guide as my journey. I am now a third of the way through my 4th book in two years, and have just started my 5th. When I was thinking about it I though it would have been great to have a little step-by-step guide. A guide of someone else’s process, someone else who knew absolutely nothing… like me.
Today I gave my classes an assignment: write about a story or event that is significant to you and why it’s significant or memorable. I haven’t seen their papers yet but some of the students told me what they had chosen to write about and these stories were very meaningful to them for various reasons. This just proves what I heard one of my writing heroes, Garrison Keillor, say on the radio show, A Prairie Home Companion years ago: telling a story and figuring out the best way to tell it is “always worth the effort.”
You’ve finished your first novel, sent it through the wringer of your critique group or chosen beta readers, and tweaked it again and again. Nerves rioting, you’ve decided set it free into the reading world. You’re standing in the open doorway and the paths before you are numerous. You notice a passing author out for a stroll with their third, or was it tenth, book at their side. You clear your throat and timidly ask, “Which road is the one to Publication City?”
Urban Legends are the sturdy children of ancient myths and legends. We love to believe the story about the hook on the car door, or the dog drying in the microwave, or the car following a driver in the middle of the night and honking because there was a killer in the back seat. We love these stories, we believe these stories because we heard it from a friend who heard it from their aunt who swore she knew the victim, or at least heard of the victim. No names are ever exchanged. But even so, the story must be true. Preposterous, but deliciously true.
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