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...