The Write Slice: Write or Wrong

Here is a link to Nathan Bransford's post yesterday. He is a well-known and very successful agent who always has an outstanding blog I like to follow. I found his post as well as many of the comments and questions insightful, so I thought I would make you aware of it if you were not already.  I was especially encouraged by the fact that about 30% of his queries are potentially publishable (of course, some with more work than others). So keep writing!

So I've been wanting to join a critique group for a while, but had not been able to find one. Well, I finally met some people through my League of Utah Writers chapter that were also interested, so we started a group. Last night was our first time meeting, which went really well and was quite enjoyable. There are a lot of bloggers out there who write about finding a critique group (including Natalie Whipple's great suggestions at Between Fact and Fiction ). But although I have heard it discussed in workshops/presentations/classes, I have not found many bloggers responding to how to react once you have a group. This is what I would like to address today based upon my own experiences. 1.  Put in what you expect to get . Commit to give as much effort into each of your group member's writing what you want them to put into yours. My group meets face-to-face more frequently than I am able to commit to right now. However, I have openly told them to please cont...

So I achieved a great milestone yesterday: I actually finished my first draft of my current novel.  I don't know if it's fully sunk in yet because I don't seem as excited as I think I "should" be.  Don't get me wrong - I am so glad it is done, but I'm also not finished with it yet. Maybe that's the thing.  Maybe I'm dreading the next part.  This is a novel I really want to pursue publishing with, but I know that is going to be a lot of work.  And what I'm dreading most is what it needs the most: cutting. My biggest weakness when it comes to writing is cutting.  Remember all those length requirements you had on your essays in school?  Yeah, I never had even a twinge of a problem meeting them.  In fact I usually had a harder time staying within the upper limit requested.  I have a really hard time knowing what is essential, crucial information, and what is fluff.  I don't know what I can reasonably get rid of and not sacrifice my sto...

So I've never really understood the purpose of New Year's Resolutions because I believe you should be trying to improve yourself all the time, not just once a year. And if you set a new goal, and then fall out of the habit of something, you should try to re-establish the habit relatively soon rather than wait months for the new year to roll around. However, in keeping with other people's traditions, I have listed my "New Year's Resolutions" below. Mostly, they are just things I want to improve upon that happen to coincide with the new year. Some of them you'll care about, and some of them will interest you very little. But (at least for me) you seem to work more diligently to keep your goals when you write them down because now you are "accountable" for them. 1. To start off with a couple of obvious ones, I will write more consistently on my novels/stories/other ideas . I was in a pretty good daily habit for 6 or 8 weeks, then unexpected life...

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.