The Write Slice: Write or Wrong

I'm not even going to try to explain why it has been so long since I've posted.  Just be glad I'm on now.  And I'll try to do better in the future. This survey was shared with me, and since they say you have to read voraciously in order to write well, I thought it would be a good survey to share.  I'll follow up one of these days with a similar survey geared toward writing.  Wouldn't it be interesting (though not necessarily surprising) if the two aligned fairly closely? What are at least 2 of your favorite genres? Young adult (YA) and mystery What is your least favorite genre? Western What is your all-time favorite book? Way too many to choose from What is the first book you remember reading? A children's book called something like The Good Witch Do you prefer books or audio books? Books (haven't tried audio much) Who are your favorite authors? Stephanie Meyer (I know, I know; not "classics" but totally engaging); Rachel Ann Nunes Ho...

I must start by apologizing that I have not blogged before now. But you are not the only ones I let slide this week. I have not been very good at writing my novel, or my daily journal of my son. My blog is just one more thing in a long list that I slacked on... But on a more positive note, I did attend my monthly writing group meeting this last week. So at least I did something for my writing. We had a speaker this month named Clint Johnson (clintjohnsonwrites.com). I'm sure we've all heard all the things that a successful novel "has to have" - the essentials to any story. Most of the time I have heard the primary necessity as being your characters, but Clint presented a workshop on conflict. It is through conflict, he said, that your character is forced to act outside his/her comfort zone, and therefore be understandable and relatable to your reader. Interesting perspective. As he defined it more as the night progressed, I admit it made ...

I decided to enter a contest on another blog to write the best rejection letter in the universe.  Click here to read my entry.

I have to apologize because I have not posted for a while because I have been trying to meet a deadline. Granted, it was a self-appointed deadline, but it still ate up all my time.  I was trying to get a revision to my review committee, and I was working on a certain part of my story that I wanted to be in the revision. I finally got the revision to them late last night. I worked frantically the last several days to meet my deadline yesterday. And it's not because I put it off to the last minute; I have been working on it consistently. But I guess I have the same problem my husband does when he does home improvement projects: I don't plan enough time. Whenever he tells me that a certain project will take X amount of time, I have learned to anticipate about 3X amount of time. And it's mostly just because he hasn't done that project before, or it's been a long time, so he has to teach himself as he goes. And then there are always unanticipated compli...

So there is a lot of hype out there about the value or detriment of ebooks. And there are as many conflicting views as there are people.  There are some who say that ebooks will destroy the publishing industry because it will prevent customers from entering bookstores and not every book is available as an ebook. ( Stephen King has even taken this approach in his decision to delay the ebook edition of his new novel to help generate traffic into bookstores - because of course, he holds all power. Okay, okay, so he does.) You also have to consider that although the ebook price is generally lower, there are still many of the same costs - editing, the author's cut, the agent's cut, formatting, etc., etc. The only real difference in costs are the physical published pages. But consumers generally only see the published pages - which an ebook lacks - so they believe that an ebook price should be significantly cheaper. And when the publishing industry is onl...

So I'm in the part of writing in my novel that is one of the most difficult parts. Yes, I'm revising (as I'm sure many of you figured out by the first sentence), but it's the type of revision right now that is so hard for me. I am using my current novel as a master's project as well, and I met with my committee about the first chunk of writing. Right now the main character, Anna, has a best friend named William. They have been friends for years, and my first draft had him basically as her mentor-friend. My committee suggested I capitalize on this friendship and add a love triangle to my story. They suggested that Anna did not have to feel any differently toward William, but that William could actually be in love with Anna and complicate her other relationship. I had never even recognized that as a possibility in my novel, and I recognized their advice would make a stronger novel, so I decided to do it. Now, here's the hard part: revising the big stuff. The...

So my two-year-old is at the point in his development where he is connecting different concepts together as he learns to speak. I am constantly amazed at what connections he makes.  Like last night, we were driving in the car, and he was repeating phrases from the song that was playing. So he sang things like, "new day" after the line ended. Of course he only picks out the words he really knows and understands. One line ended with the word "change." So my sweet little two-year-old sang "Change." Then he tried it again connecting it with the only way he understands the word "change": "Change diaper!" in his little sing-songy voice. Talk about hysterical! So what does my son singing a song have to do with writing? Surprisingly, a lot. When we write, we are learning a new language, much like my two-year-old. We start out kind of slowly, doing a lot of observing and occasionally trying to mimic what we see. Then we start mimicking a lot...

I met a gentleman a few weeks ago who gave me a great definition of a writer vs. an author. He said an author is a writer who has been published. Under that definition we are all writers. We all write, whether it is emails, grocery lists, blogs, poetry, novels, memos, etc. But we don't all consider ourselves writers. I have dabbled in poetry and a few other things for many of my growing-up years. But I have only recently begun to consider myself a writer (see my short essay " i am a writer "). So what made the difference? I did! When talking to my husband the other day, I realized the difference between most of us and those who consider themselves writers: it is all about how we think...literally. The difference for me occurred when I started thinking about my writing. I used to write for assignments mostly, but not for myself very often. I started really writing for myself with my first novel, Market Murder . I started trying to figure out how to make things work. ...

Titles are amazing elements of writing. They are intended to tell a reader the basic idea of your entire piece of writing in a few short words or phrases. But they are also profound, witty, catchy, or otherwise memorable. Which is why they are so exceptionally difficult for me. I'm always searching for those few perfect words that will cause someone to want to read my piece (whether essay, novel, poem, or anything else), as well as be something they will remember when they are telling their friends about it. And those few perfect words always seem to elude me. I can recognize a perfect title; it's full meaning is usually embedded in a line or phrase somewhere within the writing itself that seems to perfectly sum up the theme or main point of the writing. But maybe I'm not an experienced enough writer to find those perfect words in my own writing. Or maybe I just don't recognize them because I'm too close to the piece of writing. Regardless of th...