Archive for ‘July 2009’

Some things writers have to deal with just seem baffling. This is a blog by Bev Vincent and a prime example.

Apparently I Write Like a Girl

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Last night, at about midnight, I had finished my word count goal for the day. Being exhausted, I found a good stopping point (basically, my forehead hitting the keyboard) and stumbled off to bed, tripping on miscellaneous dogs. I laid down without bothering to take my bra off (very uncomfortable) and settled into what I thought would be a good nights sleep, what with feeling accomplished and all that. My underwire would not allow this, so 15 minutes later I was forced to make the effort to take it off and change into some comfy pjs.

Another 20 minutes later, my eyelids fly open. Truthfully, I am very afraid of things that go bump in the night, and that are capable of hiding under my bed (I really must look into platform beds). Backstory: when 8 yrs old, I convinced my parents to let me stay up and watch an episode of The Outer Limits. It just haaad to be the one with the Bogeyman that pretends to be a stuffed animal hiding under the bed in order to steal little children my age. *Now is more scared of dark* Because of this one traumatic night, every time I watch a scary movie or read a scary book (Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan), I cannot sleep. I get too paranoid. I'm a writer - my imagination goes crazy with anything.

Anyways, so I was thinking about some of the premises of my work in progress, and well, lets just say they're not the most sunny of plots and characters. So, I begin to think about other scary things, like when I went to the movies last week to see a comedy, and the last preview was for a psycho thriller horror thing, and it left me shaking and crying (no, seriously, they freak me out that bad when I'm not prepared for them). So then I try reading some nice chick lit, but to no avail. 4:30 am rolls around, and I am no closer to sleep. Worse, I keep interrupting my chick lit reading with thoughts of "maybe if my main character did this...." or "What if the antagonist said that..."

So now I am here, writing this blog and working on my book. Here is some advice for writers, sleepers with problems, and general populace:

1) If you are Bipolar with a wacked out sleep pattern already, CAFFEINE WILL NOT HELP YOU. Especially if drunk in the late afternoon and you have a chance at falling asleep before 1 am.

2) People DO NOT LIKE IT when you call them because you can't sleep. They don't care - right then they hate you.

3) Pets also do not like you when you are awake late at night, especially cats not declawed. BEWARE THE SLEEP DEPRIVED CAT.

4) PLEASE REFRAIN FROM EATING CAKE late at night. Give it to me instead.

5) If you get easily spooked by things in the dark, a healthy dose of LOLCATS and LOLDOGS can really help you out.

There are so many contests out there for readers young and old, and there are several books that I've been trying to get my hands on has still eluded my personal library. Here are two, from a contest by Traveling To Teens. If you want to enter, better hurry! Contests end on July 31, so follow the link at the bottom. Yay! I love Traveling to Teens and contests for books.

Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev:

(Blurb by Traveling To Teens)

Beatrice Shakespeare Smith has lived for as long as she can remember in the Theatre Illuminata – a magical place where the characters of every play ever written can be found behind the curtain. She is not a player herself, and when management thinks she’s starting to upset the balance of the theatre, she’s tasked with making an invaluable contribution or leaving. So Beatrice decides to do what she knows best – stage a play. But it’s not going to be easy, and there are forces at work against her…

Link to Lisa Mantchev's site: http://www.theatre-illuminata.com/

O.M.G. I so want to read this! I was in Theatre all four years of high school, and I loved it - I have a small playbook, As You Like It, thats over 100 years old. And bringing so many characters together! I would love to see how the cast of this book gets along.

The Demons Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan:

(Blurb by Traveling to Teens)

Nick and his brother, Alan, have spent their lives on the run from magic. Their father was murdered, and their mother was driven mad by magicians and the demons who give them power. The magicians are hunting the Ryves family for a charm that Nick's mother stole -- a charm that keeps her alive -- and they want it badly enough to kill again.

Danger draws even closer when a brother and sister come to the Ryves family for help. The boy wears a demon's mark, a sign of death that almost nothing can erase...and when Alan also gets marked by a demon, Nick is desperate to save him. The only way to do that is to kill one of the magicians they have been hiding from for so long.

Ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Nick starts to suspect that his brother is telling him lie after lie about their past. As the magicians' Circle closes in on their family, Nick uncovers the secret that could destroy them all.

This is the Demon's Lexicon. Turn the page.

Link to Sarah Rees Brennan's site: http://www.sarahreesbrennan.com/demonslexicon2.html

I love books that contain some aspect of magic, demon/angel, faerie... anything sci-fi, really. And the flow of the book seems to be fast paced and exciting - a great book for me to read in one sitting in the middle of the night. Excitement abounds!

I have been trying for years to get a full book out of me. I haven't even made it to queries. And last night, I figured out why I've been having so many problems. I need to do OUTLINES!

I used to think that free forming was the best way to write, and it could be for some people - probably only seasoned writers. I've started my book with 10 different first chapters because I couldn't figure out the best sequence of events. Or the chapter I would be writing would end up having no reason to be in the book, and so 6,500 words fall to the mighty red pen of the editor. Even worse - I would get off on some ridiculous tangent and end up ranting about how people don't understand other people and how tolerance blah blah blah. I believe that tolerance is important, but does the protagonist really need to be seen tolerating a bad cut of meat from the butcher?

So for no particular reason other than it just happened, I started outlining the story I've been trying to tell for the last three years. And do you know what? It MAKES SENSE!!! Without having to worry about transition scenes, how exactly a conversation goes, or descriptive passages, I can get down to the meat of the story and figure out where the hell I was headed in the first place. I can actually see how one thing leads to another, and how my random subplots can actually work and weave themselves into a decent conclusion and what have you.

I feel so much less stress now that I have an idea of what I was doing. The best part? At least half of the 1st chapters I've written can be edited, reworked, and placed in different sections of the book. All I have to do is finish the plot outline, work on my main character outlines (the protagonist is admittedly flat at this point), and then I can get to work on fleshing out the story. It sounds like a lot of work, and well, it is. But its SO worth it - you'll see ;). Of to work I go!