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Showing posts from November, 2009

The Driving Force of Conflict

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 ...

Dead-lines

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...