The Write Slice: Write or Wrong

I attended the LTUE (Life, the Universe, and Everything) Symposium for the first time this year. This is a three-day workshop focused around speculative fiction (fantasy, sci fi, horror, paranormal, etc.), but still has a lot of really good general writing information. I don't traditionally write spec fiction, but this conference inspired me to dabble in it a bit. Whenever you go to writing conferences, you get a lot of great advice, instruction, and information. LTUE was no exception. I'll share more of that info with you as the weeks progress. But perhaps the most helpful panel for me was the very first one I attended called Overcoming Adversity. As you all know, my life is busy, and finding or making time to write is very difficult. I am a part-time teacher (which, since it's teaching, that means nearly full-time), mom of a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old, Stampin' Up Demonstrator , wife, and homemaker. My kids are young enough they need fairly constant availability,...

I have an exciting announcement! My critique group has finally made our group blog live.  It is called The Writers' Ramble .  Go check it out. You can read the description for yourself, but basically we will write a blog post on the same topic each month, then The Writers' Ramble gives a brief synopsis of each post with a link. So you can now check out all the wicked awesome people who are willing to put up with my crap and help me polish into gold...or at least bronze.

We've all heard the buzz about critique groups, alpha groups, beta groups, peer review groups, and any other term you can think of to describe such an organization. But sometimes we forget to stop and think about "why" we need such a group and instead just add it to our list of Things to Do in Order to Be Successful . So let's look at some of the whys. First of all, there is one crucial detail that all these titled groups have in common: other readers. Did you realize the answer was that simple? Other readers. That is what makes an effective writer.  We've all had the experience of somehow getting stuck in our own minds. We missed stupid, easy spelling or grammatical mistakes; the scene in our head didn't make it to our paper; instead of a riveting conversation, we produced daily, boring drivel. But of course, since it is our own writing, we don't see those flaws. It is, after all, our baby, our darling, our perfect little angel, and by the way, how da...

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?