The Write Slice: Write or Wrong

I am nearly finished with a series by Michael Sullivan called Riyria Revelations. I am not much of a fantasy reader, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this series, mostly (I think) because his story does not completely rely on magic, but instead uses it on occasion to help the characters. Overall, the characters do most of the work themselves. But the real reason I am posting today is to praise his technique. Not only is the story really enjoyable, but it is also well written. I have a lot of respect for Sullivan because he is a self-taught writer, having learned from the masters. And who are better teachers than that? He gets so many things right that I could go on for pages and pages. But I won't. My focus today is how he deals with info dumps. At some point or another, we all have to provide more information to our reader for him/her to fully grasp our story. The tricky part is integrating it into the story rather than making it feel like a "dump" of information. ...

This is just to let you all (if you didn't already) that I suck. I utterly, completely, and fully failed at NaNoWriMo. 13,155 out of 50,000. 26%. A miserable low "F." 438 words average per day. What a horrible attempt. Now, if you included all my revision work, emails, lesson plans, and all that, I'm probably pretty close to that 50,000 words. But I didn't because that is stuff I do every day, and NaNo feels like (to me) it's supposed to be something "special" or extra. However, I did get more consistent in my writing. I have a hard time waking up early in the morning, but I did that more often than I have recently. So maybe it wasn't a total bust after all?

I realize that the elections were a week ago, but I'm just getting around to posting my thoughts about it. First of all, I want to let you in on my political views, few though they may be. (I'm not much of a fan of politics in general, but I try to do my homework at election time.) In the 2008 election, I voted for Obama, and I believe he has done a pretty decent job in his four-years term. He was given an exceptionally difficult economic situation and did the best he could with it, I believe. My husband told me about a book he read called On the Brink by Henry Paulson. Paulson is a former Secretary of the Treasury who served under both Bush and Obama. He tells the story of our nation's economic state and that we were literally hours from bankrupting our country several times. According to my husband, Paulson states that both Bush and Obama approached their respective presidential situations intelligently, asking relevant questions, and making difficult decisions that wer...

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. For the first time, I'm going to attempt to participate this year. But with a slight modification. I'm going to aim for the 50,000 word goal, but not necessarily all on one piece of writing. I'll be working primarily on my medieval novel, but I'm also going to include blog posts, stories, or other writing that I do toward the word count. In order to reach the goal, I need to write about 1667 words per day, or approximately 5-7 pages. That includes weekends. Without weekends, I'll need to write 2273 words per day, or 7- 10 pages. Whew. That's a lot of writing. I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to have time to do it all, particularly with school and the kids, but I'm sure going to try. And I'm going to try and keep you up-to-date on my status. After all, that counts too. Just one question: do lesson plans count too?

Kissing to some means a strange ritual in which lips of two different people press together, creating suction, so that when the lips separate, it makes a loud noise. It is used as a symbol of love between partners.  Or some people will kiss the cheek as a sign of affection for someone. Then there's the band KISS, a great rock group with some pretty freakish make-up (who are all really old men now). But in writing, kissing takes on a different, though no less significant, meaning. K.I.S.S. stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. You could also use more vulgar language, but I (generally) don't cuss, so in my world it is "Stupid." It used to be that the written word was often a forum in which a person could show off their intelligence. The less their audience understood, the smarter the author was. That has vastly shifted today. Amazingly, writers actually want their readers to understand what they are saying. That's part of the reason for writing conferences -- t...

I went to the League of Utah Writers Fall Round-Up a couple of weekends ago, and while there, they had the awards ceremony for their annual writing contest.  I'm happy to announce that I did receive an award. I entered a themed short story that I was really quite proud of, especially since I struggle with short stories.  I had high hopes for it.  Unfortunately, it did not win anything.  :( But, I also entered the first chapter of my newest novel, Dazzling Demons .  I received a 3rd Honorable Mention for it.  Sadly, I was not as excited at the time as I should have been.  I mistakenly thought that everyone got an "award," so since I was the 3rd H.M., it just meant I was at the bottom of all the entries.  It wasn't until I received nothing for my story that I realized it actually meant something. Of course, it is not as high an award as I would have liked, but it gives me a lot of hope for my writing and my story.  I was competing against...

I am a member of the League of Utah Writers. One day in my critique group, the question (in not so many words) came up as to what was the value of being a member? Some of my group members complained that they had already heard everything, their local chapter didn't share anything interesting, and the group tried to get them involved as soon as they showed up. I've had several weeks to consider their perspectives and these are my thoughts about the importance of being part of a professional group: The most selfish (and in many cases, basic) reason is because it looks good for you. Agents/Editors are overwhelmed with submissions these days from people who think they are the next Stephanie Meyer, JK Rowling, or John Grisham. Frankly, they don't have the time to sift through all the crap. So, when a query letter indicates that this author is a member of a professionally recognized organization, the author automatically jumps to probably the top 5% of potential clients. Be...

I was recently introduced to a website called  http://brevitymag.com/ .  This website is a collection of nonfiction essays. If you are anything like me, you find it exceptionally difficult to write "short" things.  (That's why I write novels and not short stories.)  This is a great collection of masters of the brief, but meaningful, writing.  I know I will refer to it frequently as examples of ways to improve my own writing. As Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit."  (I always appreciate the joke that the character who spoke this line is a pompously over-talkative individual.) Perhaps that is one of the reasons I struggle with creating effective humor in my writing...

A phenomenon has been circling around the globe the past few years that I find rather amusing.  I'm talking about the overusage of "e" and "i" before words. It all started with a couple of new terms that came into regular usage maybe a decade or two ago. With the advent of the Internet, suddenly we could receive e-mail -- a useful term to describe the notes and messages directed to us electronically.  Then a few years later a company named Apple introduced a new product called the iPod  that utilized a music program called iTunes (notice -- lower case "i," upper case next letter).  I have no idea, but I am assuming Apple used the "i" because it sounded near to "my" but was catchier. Or a more "official" answer might be this one . It makes sense, but I know better than to believe everything I read on the Internet too. Now I can e-file my taxes while perusing the e-text of the world's e-commerce. I can also find out ...

A couple of months ago in my writing group, we applied the advice by Kelley Lindberg in a query letter workshop. I took in a query letter that I thought was a pretty decent first draft, but quickly realized it needed a lot of work. But doesn't everything? Of course they gave me specifics to fix, but they helped me realize some things that are more general to any query letter. Mostly, through their questioning, they helped me understand my own story better. First of all, I thought my opening paragraph was fairly intriguing, but quickly discovered it absolutely was not accomplishing my purpose. I had written, "Late medieval England is not the place to find a love triangle between a peasant girl, a nobleman's son, and a prince...or is it?" I was trying to show that my character was unconventional, but that opening paragraph did not capture that for my audience. Instead, my group suggested I use a specific scene that would capture her character. Near the beginning ...

I have a friend who got me interested in a graphic novel series: Fables by Bill Willingham. It is a series that supposes all fablekind was forced out of their lands and now have a secret society in NYC. It's a fascinating story, but most definitely for adults. Graphic novels are not a genre I'm terribly familiar with (for those who don't know the lingo think "comic books"). Before this series, it had been years since I had read Persepolis and decades before that since I had read comics. And it is a genre that you read differently from other genres. Because of the nature of the genre, nearly the entire story is told via dialog with an occasional time or place marker. Especially as I started reading the series, however, I read it like a novel. Meaning, I followed along from frame to frame reading all the dialog and forgetting to look at a lot of the pictures. I would kind of have to force myself to actually look at the images. But the interesting thing was, ...

Today's post will be quick because I just wanted to share a realization I came to this week.Mostly I'm sharing it to see if I'm weird as a writer, or if there are other people out there like me. So, I submitted a chapter to my critique group last week, and I actually received very little negative feedback. This was kind of surprising to me because I was a little bit nervous about this particular chapter. It dealt with a topic or idea I don't feel particularly proficient in, and a style of writing that I have no experience with. In other words, it was out of my comfort zone, and accordingly I thought it would need a lot of work. Hence, the surprise at the comments. This has happened to me one other time on my other novel. A different topic, a different writing style, but equally unfamiliar. The comments at that point were that it was more detailed and engaging than the rest of the story. So, two different ways to take these comments, both of which I have vacillated...

Many of you have probably heard of NaNoWriMo, or the National Novel Writing Month. Well, if you haven't, it is a writing movement that promotes writing 50,000 words of crap in the month of November, so that you can use the other 11 months of the year to polish it up into something palatable. Well, per my friend Jayrod's request/suggestion, I am participating with him on a local level this June. He is working on his novel, Crimes of the Umbramancer , and is behind where he'd like to be. So he came up with the idea to do his own NaNoWriMo. And as it is always easier to complete something like that with support, and he knew that I had a lot to do of my own, he invited me to join him. So, now it is June 4, and I am just getting started. But I have a good excuse. My family has been on vacation for the last week-and-a-half. So I am getting started late, but I'm going to be strong. My goals are slightly different for this month. I am aiming for 50,000 words, but that is...

Yes, I was one of the $600M+ ticket sales who went and saw The Avengers last weekend.  It was a great movie.  The CGI was so amazing and seamless, it almost seemed realistic. BUT, so I don't ruin the movie for those who have not seen it yet, I wanted to discuss the characterization that was apparent in the movie.  I'll mention a few key scenes, but I'm mostly interested in how the characters act and interact.  (And I'm sure those of who are comic afficianados will tell me how wrong I am, and that's okay, but this is my impression from the movie.) Main Characters: Black Widow, Hawkeye, Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor. Villain: Loki (brother of Thor) Black Widow: Not as fully developed, perhaps because she hasn't had her own introductory movie.  Basically a bad girl turned good.  "Saved" by Hawkeye.  Great marital arts-type moves, and loves her handguns. Hawkeye: Also not as developed, but is "brainwashed" onto the bad side at ...

Today's post is informative as well as asks for group participation.  I have been asked to give a basic grammar presentation for a writing conference.  But they are worried about people actually attending the presentation, so they asked me to make it more "interesting" and "exciting" than "Grammar 101." My initial thoughts are something along the lines of "You've written the killer story with amazing characters in a beautiful world, but no one seems to catch your vision.  Is it because they cannot understand your vision?" But what do you think? How do we make grammar more exciting?  It's a necessary part of the writing process (some would say necessary evil).  And I frequently tell my students that the reason we learn the rules of grammar is so that we can effectively break them.  And the key word there is "effectively," certainly not "randomly." Grammar is all about creating meaning.  We do not need "gr...

I think I've said before that I am the atypical writer. I don't have a proliferation of ideas floating around in my head.  Mostly the only ideas I feel are worth exploring intensively are occasional dreams that I have. So that usually means I work on one thing at a time. Supposedly though, most writers are working on several projects at a time. I never understood how they could do that because I want to make something just right before I move on. But I had a good friend who enlightened me. I've been working on my historical romance for a long time. Most recently I've been trying to re-write and revise different parts of it. But my friend, Jayrod ( http://the1stog.blogspot.com/ ), helped me realize that I've been working on this so long (years) that my skills and abilities have drastically increased since I started the project. It's not that I can't make my novel perfect, because I certainly can, but it will actually take more work to polish and improve w...

I've always heard that a good book cover design is crucial to a successful novel. It should be carefully crafted to relate to the story, but not give away all your secrets. And of course, it must be eye-catching. I always knew that the cover was important, but I didn't realize how important until recently. I have a four-year-old who loves to read, but he cannot read alone yet. However, he really likes to go to the library and pick out some of his own books. I take him to the library, he grabs a basket, we walk over to the children's section, I plop down on a bench, and he starts looking for books. This usually involves him finding a small section and shelf and stopping there. He can't read the titles, so his only criteria for picking a book is looking at the cover. He doesn't even open it up to look at the pictures inside. He pulls a book off the shelf, looks at it, and sets it in his basket. He continues to do this, pulling from the same location until I tell h...