Purple Prose

A New Game Plan to Avoid Moral Victories

2009-12-14T21:45:00.001-05:00

Now some of you may know that I'm a football fan. A huge watch-whatever-game-is-on football fan. I've watched a lot of not-so-good football teams play tough against really good teams. The fans and the commentators always say "Well, they played tough. The [INSERT LOSING TEAM HERE] can grow and learn from this. That was a real moral victory."

Bah, I say. A loss is a loss is a loss is a loss. And losing is no fun. It is hateful. It makes you want to cry and pout. Although I do not recommend doing it on national TV. The commentators will make fun of you. See this poor guy as an example.

How does this relate to writing? Funny you should ask. I've had too many moral victories as a writer. I've got to stop saying "At least, I wrote today. That's something." Or "I've got two first drafts. That is more than I had before." This is not the kind of thinking that a successful writer has. I've been writing "seriously" for three years, but I've not sent out a single query letter. I have had the "Wait until next year mentality" for far too long.

No longer will this be the case. I'm changing my game plan.

I'm giving myself deadlines and am making myself publicly accountable for those deadlines.. I'm stating here that this is what I have to do this year. Look for regular scoring updates throughout the coming year.

Game Plan for This week: Write 6,000 new words.

Game Plan for the Rest of the Season:

Finish a 90,000 word first draft of TDC by the end of January
Plot MLTM – World War II short during the first week in February
Write a 10,000 -15,000 word first draft of MLTM by the end of February
Read and EDITS the first draft of TDC by the end of February. Make Notes
Plot GL in April..
Complete the first pass of Revisions on TDC by the end of May
Submit TDC into the Maggies and other contests as time permits.
Read and EDITS the first draft of MLTM during the first week of June. Make notes.
Complete first pass of revisions on MLTM by end of June
Complete second pass of revisions on MLTM by the middle of July
Query MLTM by the beginning of August.
Complete a first draft of GL by mid October.
Complete second pass of revision for TDC by the end of September.
Cry and send my second born novel into the big bad world. Query TDC during the month of October.
Plot as yet unidentified novel during October.
November 1^st – NANO BEGINS!!!!!

Coffeehouse Ramblings

2009-12-01T00:16:00.001-05:00

*crossposted to Modern Mythmakers*

Ok, I should have probably entitled this post "observations of a 31 year old in a college coffeehouse while feeling old", but that seemed like a really long title so I backed off of it. Tonight was the last night of the National Novel Writing Month and I hosted a Write to the Finish Line Write-in. I finished my 50K at around 9ish and didn't leave the coffeehouse until 11ish. That left me nearly two hours to people watch. Now as you know, I'm a writer. Some of you may not know that the word writer is a synonym for an "observer of life." It is also a synonym for nosy, but I like "observer of life" better.

Below are the things that I learned.

According to the two twenty year-olds sitting next to me, Isn't it Ironic by Alanis Morisette is now an oldie. This made me sad…mostly because they're right. Jagged Little Pill is still one of my favorite albums and it is one of the first CDs that I purchased for myself. I remember buying it with my hard-earned baby-sitting money and driving to myself and my brother to tennis lessons while the songs from that album climbed the chart. Those kids in the coffee shop were probably 5 years old while I was listening to that album. SAD!!!!
Some people think they can plan out their lives. Sitting directly across from me (conveniently enough for observation purposes) were two boy wonder medical students or would be medical students. I'm not sure which. One of them proceeded to describe to the other in detail the life that he wanted to have. My favorite quote. "I told my girlfriend that if we were still together in my second year. We should just go ahead and get married and then we'll have a few years together before we have a kid if she wants to." He wins for least romantic proposal ever.
Same medical students. Another great quote. "One of my classmates is 39 years old. I don't want to be old like that before I find my passion." Deluded, deluded boys. I say better late than never.

That concludes my coffee shop observations for this evening. I think I will go grab my cane, my Ensure, and my arthritis medicine, and go to bed now. Good night!

The Secret Baby, the Runaway Bride and the Romance Novelist that Loves Them

2009-04-20T16:26:00.000-04:00

cross posted on www.themodernmythmakers.com

So, I got involved in a book this morning and forgot the time of day. This is not all that unusual. I love books and I often get involved in them and forget to pay attention to what is around me. What disturbs me the most is that it wasn’t even that good of a book. It just had a plot that gets me every time. Every. Single. Time.

It was a Secret Baby book. Yes, you heard me. A Secret Baby Book. I love Secret Baby books and I’m not alone. There are thousands of us. Maybe even millions of us Secret Baby lovers out there. I should be ashamed. I know this, but I’m not. The Secret Baby works.

What is the Secret Baby plot? Here’s the plot in a nutshell. Woman and man have an affair/short term marriage. Woman gets pregnant. Woman or man leaves. Woman does not tell man that she is pregnant and has the baby alone. Some indeterminate time later, man finds out woman has had his child. Chaos ensues. There are variations on this plot (usually involving siblings of the Secret Baby parents), but in general that is how it always starts.

This seems formulaic. It seems contrived, but romance readers (like me) are instantly drawn into the story. The Secret Baby involves a child. It’s a cheap trick but almost everyone loves a baby or a cute kid and almost everyone would agree that a child changes your life instantly. (Finding out that you are the parent of a rebellious adolescent can also be a big life change.) A character that in the past has only worried about themselves is now forced to consider another person – a person that is almost completely dependent on them. The Secret Baby provides an impetus for a character to change. As an added bonus, when the hero and heroine of the book are the Secret Baby’s biological parents, there is the past relationship that didn’t work to add intensity to the story.. The hero and heroine must overcome their shared past before finding their happily ever after. The Secret Baby is one way to add tension to the story and keep the pages of a book turning.

There are several “formulaic” (I hate that word.) plot devices. The Secret Baby. The Runaway Bride. The Reunion. The Takeover. The Vengeful Hero. The list goes on. Most have existed in one form or the other since people began telling stories and they continue to exist because they work. They are part of the tool kit that a romance writer can mix and match to craft his or her story. It is up to the writer to use them in an original and unique way.

What if the Glass Slipper doesn’t fit?

2009-02-03T23:55:00.001-05:00

"Wait, Wait." The young servant girl runs down the stairs calling for the grand duke. "I'm here. I want a turn. Let me try on the slipper please."

The duke turns from the door and looks her up and down as reaches the bottom of the stairs. "You'll do." He says and he reaches in his pocket for the slipper. The girl sits and extends an unshod foot. The duke pulls out the slipper and tries to wedge it onto her foot. It doesn't quite fit…..

This is what happened to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday. They were the Cinderella story. They were the underdog. They were the team that was absolutely not supposed to reach the biggest sporting event of the year, The Super Bowl. While they put up a valiant effort and made a remarkable fourth quarter come back, the still lost. And losing sucks….

Believe me, I know.

Saying that I'm a competitive girl is like saying the Mona Lisa is a masterpiece. It is something that goes without saying. I absolutely, positively loathe losing. I'm not exactly a bad loser. I don't spend my time crying or pitching a temper tantrum instead….I seethe. That's right, I churn, boil, foam, bubble with regret and recriminations. That is what I'm doing now.

If I'm going to lose, I like to know why I lose. What did I do to cause myself to lose? Was it the other team was better than me? The athlete and gamesman in me say that if I know why I lost, I can do better next time. That athlete and that gamesman are going crazy now that I'm in the Friend Zone. I must know what caused this state of affairs…and guess what I'm never going to find out so now I must do the hardest thing that one can do in sports after a bad game.

I must put it out of my mind. That's right. Put it out of my mind and move on to the next game.

Yuck.

Who wants to do that?

Kurt Warner doesn't want to do that. Larry Fitzgerald doesn't want to do that. Anquan Boldin doesn't want to do that. I imagine that none of the rest of the Arizona team wants to do that either. They lost the Super Bowl. They lost the biggest game of the year. They lost the biggest game in that poor, poor franchise's tangled and tumbled history. Yet, as athletes, they know the only game that matters is the next game….even if the next game is in eight months.

So, I think that it is up to me to follow that example. I'll spend the next few months training and slimming down and trying to make myself into a pre-season favorite and the next time that the cannon goes off and the ball is kicked into the air, I'll be ready to go.

Getting Upset

2009-01-27T23:57:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there lived a spoiled young prince who liked to play with a golden ball. One day, the prince was playing with the ball when it dropped into a well …..Hmmm ….Something is wrong about this story.

Blog readers, I have bad news. I think it is safe to say that my game is over and I've been officially relegated to the friend zone. I don't really like being here, but I suppose that I'll get over it….eventually. I'm a little annoyed that the boy person decided to run out the clock because I was hoping to pull an upset, but I think that all hope is lost even on that front.

Football and sports novices may assume that an upset is something that gets turned over or what happens when a man does something to annoy a woman. (Something that occurs pretty often enough from what I've observed.) But no….an upset is different than that. An upset is when a team that isn't expected to win, wins.

An upset is Lyle Lovett marrying Julia Roberts. An upset is Beauty and the Beast. An upset is the story of the Frog Prince.

Does anyone notice anything interesting about my list? Come on, ladies and gents you can do it. You can tell me what those three things have in common.

A beautiful woman falls for a man that is less than attractive.

Seriously, have you guys ever wondered why there isn't a story called The Frog Princess or The Ugly Stepsister and The Prince? Perhaps I'm the only one.

But, I digress. I was hoping to be the 2007 New York Giants. I was hoping to be the 10-6 wild-card team that came into the 2008 Super Bowl and beat the 16-0 team with less than a minute left on the clock. It was the upset of the century. Clearly, since I am in the friend zone, I am not the 2007 Giants.

Hmmm….Considering that there is no story called the Frog Princess or The Ugly Stepsister and The Prince, perhaps I should shoot for being the heavy favorite instead????

Taking a Poll

2009-01-27T16:34:00.000-05:00

So my last three blog posts have been very different than my previous posts and I’m really liking the direction that these posts are going. If this new voice that I seem to have found is the result of my most recent and possibly unsuccessful foray into the dating world, I think I will take it. But I want to hear from you. Do you want to read more of the sports and dating blogs? I have ideas for at least five more and I plan to post them once a week. Please comment and tell me what you think.

Throwing a Hail Mary Pass

2009-01-25T00:06:00.003-05:00

Welcome Sports Fans to the island of romantic hopelessness. You will be happy to learn that this blogger is not the only resident on that island. That's right. There are others here waiting for the Valentine's Day fairy to pick us up and put us in his sleigh and take us to…..Wait….wrong story.

Seriously, with my recent relocation to the friend zone instead of the end zone, I have had the opportunity to observe a friend of mine in romantic distress and on Friday, she threw what could only be called a Hail Mary pass. For those of you that are uninitiated in the world of football, a Hail Mary pass is a pass that is thrown near the end of the game that doesn't have a prayer of being caught, but if it is caught, it will win the game for the team that is on offense. The key word here is if.

Capital I. Capital F. IF……

A Hail Mary is a desperation play and my friend viewed herself as desperate. I don't think she was. In fact, had I been in her shoes, I would have gone for the field goal and tried for overtime.

But not my friend.

My friend went for the win. My friend went for the big time score. My friend sent the object of her possibly unrequited affection an email that could very well scare the life out of him.

When she told us about the email on Friday, I nearly fainted. You see, my friend is not the Hail Mary type of girl. My friend runs a very sensible offense usually, a mix of running plays and short passes. She relies on her good looks and bubbly personality to get her results. In the past, that offense has worked well. Maybe a little too well in some cases.

Through the first three quarters of my friend's game, the object of her affection was winning, but she'd turned things around and was beginning to make progress and there was a lot of time left on the clock. Granted it would be really easy for him to burn up the clock if the ball went back into his hands. So my friend went for the big play and sent the email that may scare him or it may not.

As of the writing of this blog, I do not know how my friend's game turned out, but I would like to steal from the Bud Light commercials and say….

Here's to you brave email sending girl who has been receiving mixed messages…… I hope your receiver catches the pass in the end zone.

Kalayna is running a contest

2009-01-21T06:05:00.002-05:00

For those of you who may not know, one of my critique partners has just published her first book. Woohoo! Since she has published her first book, she is also running her first contest.

Click here to enter

Sounds easy enough to enter.

The Friend Zone

2009-01-14T14:45:00.001-05:00

Attention riders on the monorail of love. The next stop on our excursion is The Friend Zone.

Yes, gentle blog readers, I have entered the dreaded Friend Zone. This is not to be confused with the end zone where people go when they score (so to speak). The Friend Zone is where people go when they don’t score. The Friend Zone is a place that you do not want to be. The Friend Zone is where unrequited affection meets friendship.

You see, I’m intimately familiar with the Friend Zone. I have spent interminable years there, but that is another story for another day. Suffice it to say that I gave up the Friend Zone a few years ago when I gave up dating.

I was content with my no-man’s land of a life and I thought everything was going swimmingly. Then, I met my “distraction.” That’s right. I’m talking about the same “distraction” from last week. At the time I wrote the last blog, I thought that things were going well…that I was moving the ball slowly to the end zone.

I thought that at the very least, I’d crossed the 50 yard line and was in the opponent’s territory . I was expecting a cursory defense, but apparently I was wrong.

First and 10.

There were signs. You know the ones I mean. I suggest seeing him again and he sort of shies away from committing himself. “I’m going to watch the football game next Saturday” he says. He knows that I like football. He says hello on his own later in the week, but it’s the friendly, non-personal type of hello. I was about to listen to the Clemson basketball game and told him as much so I was ok with the conversation ending a little early, but still a little confused.

The running back is hit behind the line of scrimmage.

Second and 13

Next night, I see him online and I say hello. We talk a little while about more generic stuff. He’s online paying his taxes. I give broad hints about the weekend, but nothing. Then, he says he’s going to bed. It is barely 10pm.

Incomplete pass.

Third down and 13 yards to go.

The alarm bells are going off in full force at this point. I don’t hear from him for two days and then, I’m watching the football game on Saturday and I see that he’s on myspace so I send him some nonsensical comment about the game. (Yes, I know, I’m escorting myself to the friend zone with that one, but I had to do something. Let’s call it a trick play.) We talk back and forth and eventually, I ask him if he wants to come over tomorrow. “I’m cooking.” I say. He says “No, he has to work.” We talk a little while longer, but there is no mention of seeing each other again. I go hang out with a friend and then send him a teasing message later about something he’d talked about earlier. He responds with what I hope was a good sense of humor.

Screen pass for a gain of 10 yards.

Fourth and 3 yards to go.

So, I guess I’m punting to him at this point. If he’d given me any hint that he was interested, I’d try a trick play and go for it, but his defense has been stout so I’m not even going to try. It seems that putting the ball in his hands is the only option. He can decide if he wants to go to the end zone or the Friend Zone.

But, unfortunately for me…..the signs are pointing to the Friend Zone.

Distractions

2009-01-08T15:56:00.002-05:00

I’m going to blog about distractions today. Specifically, a 5’11, brown-haired, brown-eyed, extremely cute, makes-me-feel-petite, boy-shaped distraction. This particular distraction is draining all my creative juices into the pool of rampant speculation about what he thinks about me.

This is EXTREMELY different to a girl that has successfully avoided “distractions” for four years.

I’m a romance writer….you would think that a romance writer would believe in romance and happily ever after. You would be wrong. See, I believe in love and lust and affection and compassion and all those other things that come with relationships. I just don’t believe that it happens the way that it happens in a romance novel and well, that is healthy. Romance novels sell fantasy. They sell a world that doesn’t exist. They sell hope that Prince Charming is going to sweep you off your feet and save you. Listen to me right now, you have to save yourself. Years of living and observation have proved this to be true. Hard times happen. Marriages and relationships break up. People die. That is reality and that reality makes the fantasy just that much more valuable to us as writers and as readers.

Happily ever after is relative. I’ve always figured that my happily ever after involved me and my gay best friend and an RV travelling across the country in our old age.

Travelling in an RV still might be my future, but the waters begin to be muddied when you date and dating was something that I’d all but stopped doing. After a series of bad first dates, I stepped off the dating train four years ago with no regrets.

Then, it happened as it always happens. A friend says “I have someone that you should meet.” You reluctantly agree. At least, I did and I was pleasantly surprised to see that he had more going for him than his personality if you know what I mean. It took a little while, but eventually he asked me out and I agreed.

That was my first mistake.

You see, for me, dating is like a roller coaster. You get on the ride and it starts moving, climbing the hill, slowly. You start looking over the side, anywhere but in front of you, where you can see the summit of the hill looming. You start having regrets and thinking if you could get off of this roller coaster, you would. You get to the top of the hill and then WHOOSH and a thrill runs through you, but each time you crest a hill or get ready to turn upside down, you have moments of doubt and insecurity.

That is what dating is to me and it is very, very distracting. The time that I would normally spend on my characters and plot have been spent in moments of doubt and insecurity. Does he like me back? He said I was interesting. What does that mean? He’s not talking to me as much as he was last week. Then, I hang out with him, we talk, cuddle, and kiss and the thrill starts again.

I know, I know. I am crazy, but I like roller coasters in the same way that I like romance novels. The roller coaster is the romance novel. It is the fantasy. It is the chance that something good could happen. It is the chance that you could fall off the coaster and die. The major difference between the roller coaster and the romance novel is that in a romance novel, you know that the main characters are going to get a happily ever after. But even with a roller coaster, you know that the ride will end happily, with the riders getting off safely and going to buy their commemorative photos.

With this particular roller coaster, I don’t know when or if this ride is going to end, but for now, I’m having a good time. I don’t know if this will change my vision of happily ever after or if this is just a bump in the road. I do know that this time with my “distraction” has reminded how much I like riding the roller coaster and made me think that even if I don’t stay on this particular ride, I might try another one later.

Now, if only I could figure out how to balance my “distraction” and my writing.

25 Things....

2009-01-07T13:17:00.003-05:00

Ok, I was inspired by my friend Elliot to do this...

I love MASH…I mean I really love MASH. I own all 11 seasons and I watch them over and over again. I can quote along with the dialogue on some of my favorite episodes.
I’m planning to run a 5K in February which is amazing. This time last year, I could barely walk 3 miles without being winded. Now, I’m planning to run 3.2 miles all the way through without stopping.
My house is full of unfinished craft projects.
My genuine love of sports became obsessive when I discovered I could use it as a defense mechanism against shopping.
I have a ton of plots and characters floating around in my head….and sometimes the characters talk to me and say “Write me…you must write me.”
Despite the above statement, I’m a terrible writer 90% of the time. If it weren’t for the other 10% of the time, I would quit.
I learned to knit back in March and now I rarely leave the house without having a knitting project in my bag.
I like having friends over to my house…..and I like knowing that my friends do not care if my house is in perfect condition every time they visit.
I told my mother that she couldn’t have a key to my house.
I get annoyed when people are really late.
I dislike the uncertainty of dating.
I dislike uncertainty….altogether.
There is something really freeing about trying something new.
Most of the time, I like my job.
I don’t believe in fairy tales.
You make your life. It isn’t handed to you.
Choices have consequences. Make sure that you can live with the consequences before you make the choice.
Weight Watchers works.
I want to go back to Flagstaff one day soon….and Paris…and Switzerland.
If I won the lottery, I would quit my job and spend a year traveling.
If I could go back to college and be 18 again, I would get a degree in history.
I want to learn to play the guitar.
When I run, I sing Angels Watching Over Me, Traveling Soldier, and The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia in my head over and over and over again. They are the only three songs that I know all the words to without hearing the music.
I don’t like making conversation when I’m running.
I ran a whole mile for the first time since I was 18 years old last night.

Goals for 2009

2009-01-05T18:58:00.001-05:00

I love making New Year's resolutions. It is like making a list that you can check off at the end of the year. I may build an excel spreadsheet this year, but I haven't decided. I am pleased to say that last year I accomplished four of the six resolutions that I set up for myself. That is success to me…I don't stress out about accomplishing everything on the list.

So without further ado……

Finish my current WIP. I'm writing a really awesome story and it deserves to be finished. Mackenzie and Seth are marvelous characters and they have definite chemistry
Re-write my current WIP. Despite the wonderful story and mythology that I've created, there are some definite issues.
Write at least one more book this year. I think I want to write my football player story. He has no name yet and neither does the love interest, but I'm sure I will figure something out.
Submit to an agent or editor. The Moonlight and Magnolias conference is next October. My goal is to have The Deepest Cut, edited and ready to submit.
Run a 5K. I'm currently scheduled to run a 5K in Myrtle Beach in February. Training hard now.
Learn something new. Last year, I learned to knit. I'm now doing all kinds of fun things. So I'm not going to be specific here.

That concludes the resolutions for 2009. I may post progress reports from time to time.

If Life Were A Romance Novel

2008-12-11T10:30:00.001-05:00

crossposted on www.themodernmythmakers.com

Reality stinks. It really stinks. You wake up in the morning and think about how much you don’t want to go to work. Then, you look at the ceiling and realize that if you want to keep the ceiling over your head, you have to go. Sigh. Next, you arrive at work and sit in a boring meeting or listen to your boss talk about things that give you heartburn for eight hours, working between interruptions. If you’re single, you go home to an empty house or a houseful of roommates that you would really like to avoid. If you’re married, you go home to a husband and his dirty socks or to your kids and their litany of complaints. See reality stinks. Ok, ok….this might not be an everyday experience, but it is one that happens way too often for most people’s comfort.

Life would be better if it were a romance novel.

Every girl would have a hero and a happily ever after. Money wouldn’t be an issue. Small business owners wouldn’t have to worry about payroll or health insurance for their employees. Good looking, protective, honorable, single CEOs would be all over the place like autumn leaves. Ranchers and farmers would always have plenty of money. Women would always look like a million bucks and if they didn’t, the good looking CEO wouldn’t care. Love and marriage means forever.

Life would be better if it were a romance novel….or would it?

Every girl would have a major problem. A malicious stalker. A kidnapped child. A business about to be taken over. A fiancé who isn’t what he seems. An evil mother or sister that wants to cause problems. The world would be in constant peril from unseen forces, sometimes supernatural unseen forces. Every hero would have had a troubled childhood or been scarred forever by a woman. Yes, he has a successful career, but he doesn’t have anything that matters. He’s sworn off marriage, but he doesn’t really mean it. He’s just waiting for the right woman. Doesn’t that sound like a barrel of laughs for the poor unsuspecting heroine to deal with? Doesn’t she have enough problems with the malicious stalker, kidnapped child, failing business, and evil mother?

Suddenly, reality doesn’t seem to be quite that bad….

The First Installment of Vikki's Movie List

2008-12-07T23:04:00.003-05:00

As a writer, I love old movies. The dialogue is often very crisp and flows well. Sure the special effects are nothing compared to the special effects of today, but the writing and plot are usually awesome. These are must-see movies and are listed in no particular order.

1. The Sound of Music - I love Julie Andrews. My dad introduced me to this one. I came home from church one Sunday night and he told me there was a movie on that he really thought I would enjoy. He wasn't wrong. I still love the song 16 going on 17 even though it has been years since I was 16 years old.

2. Singing In the Rain - The best ever Gene Kelly movie and I've seen a lot of them. The dancing by all three of the movie stars was spectacular. "Good morning! Good morning! Its great to stay up late! Good morning....."

3. Casablanca - As Time Goes by...Rick and Ilsa...Here's looking at you, kid. There are no words to describe this one.

4. I Was A Male War Bride - Actually, anything with Cary Grant. This one is my favorite by him though because of the spectacular humor. Not everyone can look dashing and handsome dressed as a very ugly woman.

5. It Happened One Night - Clark Gable's best movie (even better than Gone with the Wind). Claudette Colbert's way of hitchhiking was much better than Clark Gable's. The dialogue is spectacular.

I'll be adding to the list later....

Nano is Upon Us!

2008-10-31T21:57:00.002-04:00

We are mere hours away from Nanowrimo.....Very excited and very unprepared. I have a story, a mythology, characters, and nothing else. That seems like enough...not really because I don't have enough of any of them. Ugh!!!!! Panic! Panic! Panic!

Write Like A Reader

2008-10-20T22:40:00.004-04:00

Actually....Edit Like a Reader would be a better title but I like alliteration so I used Write Like a Reader instead. Tonight I went to the writers workshop. The critiques made me start thinking....

How would I feel about this if I were a reader?

As a writer and a self-editor, it is important to think like a reader. Readers are brutal. Readers have lots of choices, many, many other books and authors to choose from. Readers do not have to read or more importantly buy your book.

So I think as authors, we need to ask ourselves these questions.

Would I turn the page? A reader needs to be hooked into the story. I, as a reader, have picked up a book only to put it down five minutes later because the story didn't intrigue me. When I edit, I read for hooks. I try to make sure the last sentence on the page is something that would make the reader turn the page.
Am I bored? This is slightly different than making the reader turn the page. This is about having a compelling enough story that the reader wants to keep going. Key elements of a compelling story are characters that a reader can love or hate and conflict that is believable.

Why do I need to know this? As a writer, I love to talk about my world or interesting bits of information. It is fun. You have created this elaborate mythology where witches masquerade as lawyers and the ocean is full of treasure hunting mermaids and vampires came to the American colonies on pirate ships. You want people to know about it. Unfortunately, when you write and you include this information, it slows down the story and you risk boring the reader and giving the reader a reason to stop reading. You must be brutal and cut anything that gives the reader a reason to stop reading.

It is really terribly painful for a writer to think this way. We all want to think that our novels are perfect and that every word that we've labored and agonized over is absolutely necessary. The cold, hard, bitter truth is that we write with the idea that someone is going to read our work and it is our job, yes, job, to insure that the reader enjoys our material. Therefore, editing like a reader is absolutely essential.

Noveling 101

2008-10-16T05:38:00.004-04:00

Last night, my co-ML (link to her handout) for the Columbia region and I hosted Noveling 101. Other than the tri-Mus, we only had one participant, but that is OK! This is the handout that I made for the workshop. Which was sort more of a facilitated discussion. It was mentioned that I left out the question Why.....you can add that on your own.

Who

Characters – Nearly every story needs a character with which the reader can identify.
Point of View – the viewpoint from which a story is told.
- 1^st Person – The narrator is the main character. 1^st person POV is characterized by the use of "I."
- 2^nd Person – Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure novels. These were told using 2^nd person POV. The reader was the main character. "You" is used often in 2^nd person.
- 3^rd Person Close – The narrator is inside the characters head. He/she can hear the thoughts and emotions of the character but they don't use "I."
- 3^rd Person – Omniscient – The narrator is an observer. He/she sees the story happening but they do not experience the characters' emotions or thoughts.

What

Plot – a framework on which your story is built. Most plots include an Inciting Incident, Rising Action, a Climax, Falling Action, and a Resolution.
3 Act Structure – One of the easiest frameworks to remember. Shakespeare used this in most of his plays.

When

Pacing - the speed in which the story moved. Certain words convey urgency. Certain words convey lassitude.
Timing – the date and time that the story occurs. This doesn't have to be exact, but if you're writing World War II story, you probably don't want to set it in 2008.
Length – No, not word count! Length in this instance is the amount of time that passes from the first page of the first chapter to the last page of the last chapter.

Where

Setting – Real or imagined, setting can play a pivotal role in your story. It impacts every aspect of your story from characters to plot.
- World building – Even imaginary worlds need rules.
- Sensory Details – Use your five senses to add detail to your story. It is an excellent way to add word count!!!

How

Remember this is NaNo! Quantity is more important than quality.
Butt in Chair. Hands on Keyboard.
If you can't find the time, steal it!
Pre-planning can be really helpful especially if you're a plotter. Join us for the plotting bash.
There's nothing like a little moral support. Attend as many write-ins as you can.

Moonlight and Magnolias

2008-10-12T22:51:00.001-04:00

Proof That I Overpacked

2008-10-05T22:15:00.003-04:00

I will be posting more later in the week about the absolutely fabulous Moonlight and Magnolias conference that I went to this weekend, but for now.....I leave you with absolute proof that I overpacked.....This is from my return trip and includes the raffle bag that I won and the bag of books that I acquired at the conference (all autographed!). We could no longer fit my fellow Tri-Mu's belongings in the trunk. Kalayna's stuff went into the backseat for the return trip. I'm such a sad, sad person. Becoming a two trips to the car girl from the hotel room is nearly an unforgivable sin!

The Challenge of Traveling

2008-10-02T09:53:00.002-04:00

So when I contemplated taking my iron to the conference, I knew that I had gone too far. You see, I can't take a trip for a weekend without packing like I'm traveling for a month. I sit in my bedroom, surrounded by my stuff, and I pack for every possible contingency that I can think of. I'm pretty sure that it's hereditary because the rest of my mother's family is just like me. If the women in our family were dropped on a deserted island with only our luggage, I think we could survive for a year (provided we didn't kill each other and that we could find a source of fresh drinking water).

The point of that story is that I am going to Moonlight and Magnolias today for my very first writers' conference. I'm really excited about it. And as usual, I'm overpacked. (Yes, I'm taking the iron.) The car is packed and my fellow Tri-Mu, Kalayna and I will be leaving soon. She is not usually an over-packer, but between the two of us, we're taking enough stuff to live at the Hilton for a couple of months. So, apparently, not only is over-packing hereditary, it is also contagious.

I plan on posting pictures from the conference next week so stay tuned!

Nanowrimo is upon us!

2008-09-29T22:06:00.003-04:00

Well, it is that time of year again. November is quickly coming upon us....ok in some ways it isn't coming fast enough! I'm ready for Nano...well not really, I'm plotting my novel now. I'm really, really excited about it.

I think that it is going to be a great novel. I have a fabulous idea and a couple of great characters. In an unusual turn of events for me, the idea came first and then the characters. Usually, my characters come first. Sometimes, it can be a challenge to figure out what to do with them and to give them conflict. Hehe...but I usually figure it out.

We already have new wrimos on the message boards. Come visit us on the boards and if you're in Columbia, affiliate with our region.

Olympic-sized Writing Challenge

2008-08-08T13:09:00.001-04:00

I love the Olympics….The pageantry, the fanfare, the competition, the winners, the losers, and most importantly, the stories. There are some great stories this year. Dara Torres, a 41-year old mother, will be competing in her 5th Olympics (they weren’t even consecutive Olympics) as the world-record holder in the 50 meter freestyle swimming. Lopez Lomong, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, is carrying the American flag in the opening ceremony and is competing in track and field for his adopted country, the United States of America. I can’t wait to here more!!

For weeks now, I’ve been watching the Visa commercials. Olympians overcoming overwhelming odds to do extraordinary things. I have two favorites. In the Kerri Strugg commercial, Morgan Freeman’s voice talks about the vault and its difficulty and then ends with “and she did it all on one foot.” The other is about a track and field runner from Great Britain that tore his hamstring on the track and with his father’s help finished the race. I’m really not sure how these commercials relate to Visa, but I love them. They are soooo inspiring.

The commercials tell me…you’re going to stumble, you’re going to fall. Get up and keep going. Writing is like that. You’re going to face rejection. You’re going to face writer’s block. You just have to keep moving forward and improving and eventually, you’re going to cross that finish line and maybe if you’re lucky, stand on that gold medal podium of success.

With that in mind, I am challenging anyone who wants to join me to challenge yourself for the next 18 days. My challenge is to finish a skeletal first draft of my current WIP. Writing THE END will be my gold medal!

My One Real Skill….Procrastination

2008-07-10T21:47:00.001-04:00

I love to write.

I do.

Really, I do, but sometimes, the words just aren't there.

Here are some things that I do when the words aren't coming all that freely.

Blogging. To the untrained ear, this actually sounds like writing. I mean blog is a shortened form of web log. Sort of an electronic equivalent of a sailor's log book. A place to record (i.e. write) the day's occurrences. Ummm….Not the way I do it. See when I blog, I like to play around with the design of my template or someone else's template. Unless, you consider writing code, writing, this is an excellent tool for avoidance.

Knitting. Knitting is the newest way for me to avoid writing. Yarn is becoming an addiction. I'm now a regular attendee of a "Sit and Knit" at the local yarn store. I'm now making knitting friends so I can have more people to help me avoid writing.

Reading. I would venture to say that most writers love to read. I've decided to call my reading, research. Do you think that will work?

Making a Living. Unfortunately, this is the main culprit behind my recent lack of productivity on the "novella." My work has fallen on me and I'm trying to dig my way out. That being said. I like my job best when I have a lot to do so my hope is that in a couple of weeks, I will figure out how to balance the need to pay my bills and the desire to write competent fiction.

What do you do to procrastinate?

Lessons from the History books or If I were a Congresswoman…..

2008-06-24T20:50:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I'm very frightened by the fact that we have learned nothing from history. The following paragraph is a very big generalization about the Great Depression and may not be 100% accurate, but it is the more or less what happened.

In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency by promising a New Deal for Americans. The incumbent Hoover administration had badly bungled things on the economy. They spent a lot of time wringing their hands and saying "Woe is me." The Hoover administration focused their improvements on things that would have little or no impact for the average American. (Sound familiar?) Roosevelt's New Deal kept things simple. He focused on the biggest problem. People were scared of the future and what it held for them. They were scared that they couldn't feed their families. They were scared of losing their homes and their jobs. Roosevelt calmed those fears by creating the alphabet soup agencies and creating work for out of work Americans. By the time that World War II hit, things were improving. Economist still argue about what brought us out of the depression (some say the war was what really brought us out of the Depression) or if we would have come out of the depression on our own. Regardless of the answer to this question, Roosevelt's New Deal was a psychological boost to the American people.

In 2008, the biggest problem facing Americans is fear. It is essentially the same problem that Roosevelt faced. Americans are frightened of losing their homes, jobs, lifestyles, etc. We are not as poor as we were then, but we're frightened all the same. We see rising costs everywhere, we see home values deteriorating, we see record high gas prices, and we've got a new worry, climate change. It is also very clear that our current policies aren't working quickly enough. In fact I would call most of the politicians in Congress and the Whitehouse Hooveresque. (Yes, I made up that word.)

I think it is time for a new New Deal. Here's what I think should be done.

Bring down the cost of gas by decreasing the demand for it.
- Tax breaks or subsidies for people that buy more fuel efficient cars (not just people that buy hybrids.) Thirty miles per gallon is pretty darn efficient if you've been driving something that gets less than 20 miles per gallon. At 12,000 miles per year and $4 per gallon, a driver can save $800 or 200 gallons.
- Tax breaks or subsidies for people that buy and then drive more fuel efficient vehicles like motorcycles, scooters, or electric cars.
- Subsidize local governments that are hurt by the decreasing demand for gasoline. When things improve, encourage them to increase their gas tax.
Subsidize the building of walking trails, sidewalks, and bike paths to local town centers (I would ride my bike to the store if I weren't afraid of death or disability) and make sure that they have adequate bike racks.
- Benefit: A healthier population usually equates to lower healthcare costs.
- Benefit: Decreases the demand for gasoline.
- Benefit: Creates employment opportunities.
Subsidize the building or expansion of public transit systems.
Create a new industry for green power or renewable fuels.
- Throw money at companies willing to do the research and development of these types of energy and to produce them quickly. (Examples: Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, synthetic fuels, etc.)
- Create government funded training programs for working in this type of industry by working with existing educational entities.
- Offer initial tax breaks and subsidies to companies or individuals willing to purchase these types of goods and services.
Prop up existing essential industries and offer tax breaks to those companies that are willing to gamble on growth.
Provide mortgage relief to distressed homeowners (My ideas for this are all bad).
- This is an extreme idea, but in places where there is a significant glut of excess homes. Purchase them and bulldoze them. This is an easy way to decrease supply. (I think a city in Ohio is actually trying to do this).
- Make the mortgage rates extremely affordable to first time buyers.
- Regulate the market more. Encourage fixed rate mortgages not ARMs or interest only.
- Help underwater homeowners refinance at the current market price of their house. Allow banks and mortgage companies to write off this debt.
For heaven's sake, make sure the media reports some good news. Reporting bad news all the time scares people to death and makes things worse.

As Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

A New Goal

2008-06-18T22:42:00.000-04:00

So....I'm a member of a small writing group and we call ourselves the Modern Mythmakers. Isn't that a fabulous name for a writing group? We're all genre writers and we are all actively pursuing publication as a goal. Here's the problem....none of us are published yet.

So we've set a goal....By December of 2009, we're all going to be submitting stuff to be published. I'm really hoping to have it happen sooner. I'd like to submit my Nocturne Bite by the end of the year.

I've started it, but after talking to the group, I think that it has problems. I'll have to fix them.

South Carolina Writers Workshop

2008-06-08T21:32:00.000-04:00

So for the past few weeks, I've been diligently working setting up a blog for the Columbia II Chapter of the South Carolina Writers Workshop. Well, we're finally done!

Check it out!!

http://columbiawritersworkshop.blogspot.com

It's a fun group of people.

The Real Cost of $4 Gas

2008-05-25T11:27:00.000-04:00

I was a business major in college and a nerd for most of my life. This doesn’t mean anything really except that sometimes I have a tendency to think in dollars and cents. That’s what I’ve been doing lately with the cost of gasoline. Don’t get me wrong. I hate spending $4 a gallon on gas. That’s why I did this analysis.

Here are the numbers.

In May of 2007, in South Carolina we were paying around $2.80 per gallon for gasoline. That means if you were driving a car that got 30 mpg, you were paying $0.09 per mile that you traveled. If you were driving a car that got 20 mpg, you were paying $0.14 per mile that you traveled.

In May of 2008, it is predicted that we will hit $4.00 per gallon for gasoline. That means if you are driving a car that gets 30 mpg, you will pay $0.13 per mile that you travel. If you drive a car that gets 20 mpg, you will pay $0.20 per mile that you travel.

From May 2007 to May 2008, the cost of driving a mile has gone up by $0.06 for many drivers with SUVs and large cars. This means that you spend $6.00 more on 100 mile trip than you did this time last year.

To put this in more personal terms, I drive a 1999 Chevy Cavalier that on average gets around 30 mpg and I live about 100 miles away from my parents’ home in Pamplico. My cost per mile increased $0.04. It now costs me $8.00 more per trip to visit my family.

I think I read somewhere that the average person drives about 1000 miles per month (that’s what I drive). This means that the average person is spending about $60.00 more in gas a month than they did this time last year. I don’t know about you, but I spend way more than that on entertainment and other unnecessary stuff every month.

I think the real cost and yes the real benefit of $4.00 gas is psychological. People are now thinking about their consumption again. In the past decades, American society has begun to believe that bigger is better. We’ve built bigger houses and bigger cars as our families have gotten smaller. My grandparents raised nine kids in a one bathroom-three bedroom house. It was a tight squeeze, but they managed. We now have families raising one kid in a McMansion. To build the bigger houses, we’ve moved farther and farther away from where our jobs are located and created what is commonly called suburban sprawl. This means that we’re driving bigger gas-guzzling cars more miles.

We have to change and $4.00 gas illustrates that better than all preaching of the actors, politicians, scientists, and activists combined. A vehicle that gets 7 mpg is not a smart decision. A vehicle that gets 40 mpg or better is.

Articles on things that could be done now!!!

http://benelling.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/incredible-efficiency-and-lower-emissions-the-genius-of-jonathan-goodwin/
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/24/beck.oil.prices/index.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2005/11/b1157843.html

Why the heck aren't the car companies and the government doing these things now?

Rant completed. Back to my writing.

So its late at night...

2008-05-19T23:29:00.000-04:00

So its late at night and I know I need to go to bed, but I'm not that tired yet. I went to the SCWW meetings and my friend Alex nagged me about bringing some of my writing in again. (He wasn't there the last time that I read.) I just don't have anything that is ready yet.

My problem isn't that I'm not writing. It is that all that I've written in the last year is unedited slush. In theory, I ought to be able to fix this by editing. After all, I have a 50,000+ word novel completed. Plus, I wrote 10,000 words of a Nocturne Bite plus various and sundry other little things, but none of that stuff is ready to be viewed by human eyes other than mine. My 10K Bite is being completely re-written from scratch. (I just crossed 1000 words in that re-write by the way.) I feel like whining.... I'm not that good of a writer. I'm ashamed of my fiction...Etc, etc, etc....

I've got to get over this!!

I may take the first part of my re-written Bite next time. It is coming along well and I'm trying to edit as I go so it might be OK. We'll see.

I've been cheating on my writing

2008-05-05T22:47:00.000-04:00

My writing probably has a private eye watching me right now. I've been unfaithful and I am ashamed. For the past month, I've been indulging in a bacchanalia of HTML code, CSS, how-to blogs, and GIMP. I got drafted by one of my writers groups to build a blog for them….so I did. Unfortunately, the blog building was addictive and I felt the need to change my personal blog…….several times.

Here’s the good news. I’m almost done. Goodbye, canned blog. Hello, 3-column, color, customized with a cool title graphic blog. The last thing I need to do on this is to “center” the title graphic over the three columns. There’s only one problem. I’m not sure how to do that. Oh well, I’ll say so long to my new hobby tomorrow…

If I don’t….well I won’t write 15,000 words this month.

Madeline Hunter, CRW, and Changing My Blog

2008-05-03T21:17:00.000-04:00

Today is the first Saturday of the month so I went to the CRW (Carolina Romance Writers) meeting in Charlotte. The guest speaker was Madeline Hunter and I must say that she was absolutely fabulous. The title of the workshop was "The Book That Writes Itself." It was mostly about conflict and it was EXTREMELY helpful. Leila and Van from my Nocturne Bite are getting a complete rewrite.

Some soundbites from the workshop

-"think like an editor"
-"the conflict is the engine that moves the book"
-"a good story must have compelling characters and a plot"
-"attraction is the pull. conflict is the push"

If you ever get a chance to hear her give a workshop, you should do it. She's a good speaker and her speeches have content. That is very hard to find.

On my blog...Google is a truly wonderful tool. I've been trying to figure out how to edit my HTML to give me a 3 column template for three weeks. I gave up and googled it. It guided me to any number of sites that gave me step by step instructions. I used them and now I have a three column template!! Yea!!

My New Nephew!!!

2008-04-23T23:36:00.000-04:00

Ordinarily I write about writing, but I have much more exciting news. Here's some pictures of my new nephew!!!

Isn't he adorable???

What comes first the chicken or the egg?

2008-04-21T22:34:00.000-04:00

What comes first the character or the name? In The Deepest Cut, my current WIP, my female main character has grown out of the name, but my male main character existed before his name.

I knew that he was a World War II pilot that had more or less been sacrificed for the greater good. I thought he was from rural New England. I liked the idea of him being fiercely independent and tough. I talked to some friends and decided that Biblical was the way to go. I hit upon the name Seth and knew that was his name. Seth is a strong, gentle man's name with a side of sexy to go with it.

I have a character named Jim floating around my head. He's not James. He's not Jamie. He's Jim. Jim is a dependable man's name. Therefore this character is dependable.

So what comes first for you....The name or the character?

Do all writers people watch?

2008-04-18T18:55:00.000-04:00

I played hooky from work today. Seriously, I took a vacation day to have some work done on my car this morning. Once it was done, I had the whole afternoon free to play. I met some friends for a write-in on the horseshoe at USC. It was a beautiful spring day so there were lots of people out and about. We didn’t get much writing done, but boy did we ever people watch.

Some of the people that I noticed:

The older man walking across the Horseshoe wearing a bowtie. It was the USC president. I didn’t have to make up a story about him. He’s in the papers occasionally.

The good looking young man in the polo shirt and khakis walking a little yippy dog. I thought…there’s a henpecked husband or boyfriend. I have no proof that he’s married or dating, but I make assumptions because of the tiny dog.

The should-not. Ok so there was more than one should not out and about today, but this one was particularly noticeable. She should not have been wearing horizontal stripes or a skirt that short. The fashion police would have written her a ticket. Not that I have a whole lot of room to talk. Some of the things that I wore in college would put me in fashion jail these days.

The cute little flirting couple. Now, they might not have been a couple. There were many times in college that Adam and I sat out on Bowman field or in the stands of a baseball game or at Peppino’s looking like a couple. We weren’t.

Is people watching a writer thing or do other people do it too?

Man Hunting

2008-04-08T06:06:00.000-04:00

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about being single. She’s married. Our conversation digressed from talking about a wedding that she’s going to be in next year to me listing my must-haves and would-love-to-haves in a man. I’m not sure how it got there, but I think it had to do with set-ups and blind dates.

I don’t think my standards are too high, but maybe they are….You tell me.

Requirements

1. Age Range: 25-40. Anything younger than 25, I would feel like I’m robbing the cradle. Anything older than 40, I would feel like I’m dating my dad.

2. Must tolerate my love of sports. At first glance, you would think that a girl sports lover would be appealing to a man, but I’ve found the opposite to be true. So, I’ve decided that if they don’t share my love of basketball, football, baseball, the Olympics, etc, then they must at the very least tolerate it.

Note :**My Dad (the one who afflicted me with this problem) once told me that I should play dumb. I just can’t do it. Its not in me. I’m not that good of an actress.

3. Have ambition. I’m not saying that they have to strive to be a CEO or a doctor, but the desire to stay gainfully employed is key. I need someone that can carry insurance if I ever quit work to write (not likely to happen, but what a dream!). Plus, the idea of supporting a man is less than appealing to me.

4. Must be a handyman or able to call and pay for one. Either choice works for me. I really don’t care. What I don’t want is a man that says he can do something when he really can’t. There’s nothing worse than spending money to fix something that wasn’t broken before Mr. I KNOW I Can got a hold of it because he didn’t want to take the time to learn how to do it right.

Note: **My cousin lost phone service and plumbing in her master bedroom because she married a Mr. I KNOW I Can the first time around. Thankfully, she’s no longer married to him.

5. Must value education. This is a key requirement. I once had a guy tell me (a Cum Laude Graduate of Clemson University and the daughter of two educators both with reasonably advanced degrees) that he didn’t think education was important. That was a first date. He didn’t get a second.

Note: **Here’s the deal. You don’t have to be educated to value it. My grandfather dropped out of high school to join the Navy. He became a self-educated farmer (he read everything he could get his hands on I’m told), and was absolutely adamant that all three of his daughters were going to college (they graduated with four year degrees.). He even helped put his younger siblings through college. Education was important to him even though he wasn’t formally educated.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to figure out how to work this into a story and I don’t think I can. Not in a way that hasn’t been done (better) before. I do think that this would be a good way to get to know your characters. I write romance mostly and I think this could be a good way to learn what motivates my characters and to see how they’re working at cross purposes. I think that I’m going to make a list for Seth and MacKenzie (my new characters) and see what happens. I think this could really add tension to the story. 

So what are your requirements? What are your main character’s requirements?

Ready set go...

2008-03-19T21:14:00.000-04:00

OK, I ws having this discussion with some friends not too long ago. Shouldn't a thriller be thrilling? Shouldn't every word have a purpose? One of my friends that I like says no. You can't have action every word. I agree with that statement, but I also think that when you're writing a book, every word needs to have some kind of purpose.

Here are some of the purposes that words/scenes in novels should have.

1. Show the reader who the character is and how he feels.
2. Advance the plot.
3. Foreshadow some future event in the plot.

You can't just impart information. If you're going to impart information, you need to write non-fiction. If the scene doesn't have a purpose, Cut it... Just that simple.

Biting off More Than I Can Chew

2008-03-11T21:50:00.000-04:00

So at the beginning of March, I decided that I was going to write a Silhouette Nocturne Bite in about two weeks. That's between 10,000-15,000 words. This is actually quite doable if life doesn't get in the way and if you have the story plotted out in advance.

Unfortunately, life got in the way in the form of three major projects coming due at work and a visit from Mom and Dad last Saturday. To add more difficulty, I'm more or less doing this by the seat of my pants based on a general idea that I had floating in my head.

Running things by the seat of my pants is definitely not my style! I've been bouncing ideas off a writing buddy of mine. Thank heavens!

The story is moving along quite well, albeit more slowly than I anticipated. Its a vampire story set in Charleston,SC. Yes, this is my favorite setting. 400 years of tumultuous history collides in that place. There's always a story there. Since this is a paranormal, it seems appropriate to set it in a city that is full of ghosts.

I may do a blog on some interesting bits of Charleston history...a little later. Just so that you can get an idea of why I love it so much.

So is there any particular setting that you could use over and over again?

Is it your real name?

2008-03-01T21:10:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about psuedonyms lately. Gwen Hunter was at the SC Book Festival last week and she talked about why she wrote under many names. For her, it was all about demographics. Gwen Hunter's demographics are not the same as Faith Hunter's demographics.

I always wonder about the authors that I read. Do they use a psuedonym or do they use their real name? If they use a psuedonym, why? Is there some significance to the name that they chose? If they don't use a psuedonym, do they regret it? I've heard a variety of responses to this question, but I'm always interested in hearing more.

If I use a psuedonym, I know what it will be. I plan to publish anything paranormal under the name, Tori Pryer. Tori is a shortened version of Victoria. Pryer is an anagram of my last name. What do you think?

Books Books and More Books

2008-02-23T19:25:00.000-05:00

This is the weekend for the SC Book Festival and of course I attended today's session and I plan to attend tomorrow's session. I feel a lot of joy being around other book lovers and I love to listen to authors talk about the process of writing books. These aren't craft sessions, but they're interesting and you always come out of the meeting thinking about your own process.

I went to last year's session as a writer and a would be novelist. I marvelled at the ability of these people to create characters, place, and plot out of the air. I thought about how much I wanted to do that on a bigger scale than the short stories that I typically wrote. I listened last year as someone that wanted to write a novel as someone that had started multiple novels and hadn't completed a single one.

This year, I'm attending as someone that has written a novel albeit an unedited, unrevised novel. I'm hearing things from a different perspective almost as if I'm part of the inside group, the group in the know. Isn't that weird? I'm not a published author. I have a lot of work to do if I'm going to get there, but I'm one of the few that have written a complete draft of a book from beginning to end.

I'm looking forward tomorrow's sessions. I can't wait to see what the rest of the panels have to say.

So I've written a book, now what?

2008-02-19T19:50:00.000-05:00

I'm very proud of the fact that I've written a book. I wrote it back in November as part of Nanowrimo. So needless to say, it is a very, very rough draft. I made up my mind to let it sit until February when I would pull it out and start seeing if I had anything good at all.

Well, its February.....

The first thing that I found out was that editing is very intimidating when you're looking at a piece that large. Do you do a line edit? Do you read for content? What do you do?

I didn't have the answers so I decided to do what's smart and ask someone. I got some good advice from a friend who's been there and done that. Thank you!! So here's what I'm doing for now.

I bought a notebook and for each page of the novel, I have at least one page in the notebook. I'm writing down the scene, the characters, the Point of view, a brief synopsis, questions I have for myself, and impressions ( what I think I can do to make it better). I kind of feel like I'm breaking it down into manageable chunks.

Rather than looking at it as one huge piece, I'm looking at it as a lot of pieces that make up the the bigger piece.

I think I can do this now. My goal for this book is to make it submittable by the end of December. We'll see what happens.

Speaking in Public

2008-02-14T05:41:00.001-05:00

OK...I confess. I'm a talker. I've really never met a stranger. I think its a genetic trait inherited from my mother. Yes, she's a talker too as is my brother. I've had to speak in front of classes before in college. I always felt that I did fine. I would get good grades for the presentations.

So when I joined Toastmasters to improve my public speaking, I didn't think that I would have that much fear of getting up in front of an audience. Wrong! I did a speech yesterday on hook lines. I know about hook lines. I'm a writer for heavens sake. I could talk for a while on the subject. I wrote the speech. I more or less memorized the speech. Yet when I got up in front of the audience, I got nervous and started stuttering. Ugh!!! Its so frustrating. I guess I will get better with practice.

The purpose of the speech was to present an organized speech and I think I did that. I had a beginning, middle, and end. So I think I did what I was supposed to for that speech.

My next "assignment" is to do a speech with a purpose. My purpose is going to be to entertain. I'm going to tell my Cliff Castle story. I'll have to rewrite it for the ear, but I think that would a fun one to do....

Weight Watchers

2008-01-31T22:47:00.000-05:00

So....I've decided to do it. I'm going to join Weight Watchers again. Its a little bit like brainwashing yourself. Convincing yourself that your eating habits are wrong. I know mine are. I've known for a long time that they were, but I haven't done anything about it.

This is my second attempt at Weight Watchers. The first time around I lost 29 lbs to around 150 lbs. Still sounds pretty fat right? Not really. I was a size 10 which is a good look for me. Some people may want to be a size zero or a two. Not me. Size eight is the smallest that I would want to be. Anything under that and I start to look emaciated.

I fell off the wagon a few summers ago and I've gained the 29 lbs back plus 22 more. Don't bother to do the math. I weigh 201 lbs. Thats right 201 lbs. I like to delude myself that I don't look like I weigh that much, but I know it isn't true.

So....My goal for the first three months of this thing is 20 lbs. Thats 10% of my body weight. I'm going to exercise and eat right. I'll keep you posted about this journey as well as about my writing trials and tribulations.

A Few Days

2008-01-14T19:13:00.000-05:00

I love older movies. Right now, I'm watching "So Proudly We Hail." Its the story of the Army nurses on Bataan in 1942. I read a book about it some years ago. It mentioned that the movie was historically inaccurate. I'm still enjoying it.

Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, and Veronica Lake. I think one of my characters is going to look like Veronica Lake in one of my books. She's gorgeous, practically angelic. Just beautiful.

Bataan is one of the most tragic stories in American military history. The cruelty of the enemy was just horrible and unimaginable. Its a story that can't really be told.

Anyway, I'm just sort of rambling. I had the first part of my nano novel critiqued for general wrongness yesterday. Got lots of good comments that maybe will help me start to shape up the whole novel. I'm a little scared of doing it, but...we'll see if I can salvage it.

Caucuses....

2008-01-03T18:35:00.000-05:00

I'm very interested in the Iowa caucuses. They are certainly intriguing. Politically, I'm an independent. I have voted for Democrats and I have voted for Republicans. I'm tempted to vote in the Democratic primary coming up in a couple of weeks and I never thought that I would do that. I typically wait until the November elections to vote because I don't want to declare myself for one candidate or the other.

Right now, I don't know who I would vote for. Mike Huckabee is my favorite of the Republican candidates. Though I have liked John McCain since he spoke at Clemson during the 2000 election. They both strike me as moderate candidates no matter what they say about being conservatives. I promise you that I will never vote for Mitt Romney in a general election. He's an incredibly smarmy candidate and I just can't like him. I certainly don't like that he was the first to sling mud on the Republican side. I will vote against him in the general election regardless of who wins the primary there for the Democrats.

For the Democrats, I think that I would rank them Clinton, Edwards, and Obama. Obama and Clinton would be great stories. The first black president, the first woman president, but I love the rhetoric that John Edwards is spouting. He probably can't do anything about what he says, but what he says, he says so passionately. I can't help but like him. I think that he truly believes in what he is saying and thats rare. I think Clinton can win and she's become more real to me in the last few years. She used to be a cardboard cutout in my mind, but now she's human. Obama kind of generates the same feelings in me that Mitt Romney does (not a good thing), but I like that he's spouting about change. I think we need change in some things. Not in everything, but in some things...

My issues are the environment,healthcare, the economy, and good sense about Iraq. Thats the order too. Foreign policy is important, but bringing our troops home before the job is done is not showing good sense. Things are improving over there. We're almost finished. Lets finish it first. The economy....things are going OK there, but we need a leader that can manage the fall out from the Clinton/Bush era policies that let irresponsible lending get out of hand...My heavens why were interest-only loans ever legal. Healthcare....I don't want universal healthcare, but I would like improvements to the system like caps on medical lawsuits and allowing the balances to carry over on FSAs or encouraging Americans to focus more on their own wellness. Better regulation on hospital charges. The environment speaks for itself. I want my leaders to push for alternative fuel sources, caps on the amount of pollution that is put in the air, limit development in certain areas. I don't want them to be stupid about it, but I would like our leaders to look 20 years down the road instead of four. Thats for everything not just the environment. Our leaders, our politicians are typically short-sighted...so so short-sighted.

Sigh...That is my soapbox for today. Maybe I'll vote in a couple of weeks to voice my opinions.

New Year's Resolutions

2008-01-02T22:23:00.000-05:00

Blogging hasn't been on my mind lately as I've been writing and enjoying myself. Christmas has come and gone and its time for that annual event called the making of New Year's Resolutions. Yes I make them every year and seldom keep them.

I kept one of mine last year...I wanted to Write a Book. So in the spirit of keeping at least some of these resolutions I'm going to make some new ones.

1. Edit my book into submittable format and submit it to an agent or publisher...Success will be sending it off.

2. Write at least one more book....Nano 2008 should help me with that one as will the Tri Ms.

3. Take my writing seriously. Treat it like a job and engage in tasks that will help me advance my writing as a career goal...such as joining RWA and making a commitment to write as often as possible.

4. Exercise regularly....success will be exercising at least 3-4 times a week.

5. Read my bible more regularly...I may need to invest in some kind of bible study material, but to start with I'll just re-read Paul's letters.

6. Find a church...I want to attend church again, to be active in church again. I'm beginning to feel spiritually disconnected. Before my home church fell apart, it kept me really grounded. I would get the spirtual food from there, but I can't count on that anymore in that place of extreme tension...so I need to find some place that I feel comfortable where I live now.

Anyway...Those are my goals for the year.

Hit the word count for my Nano Novel

2007-11-29T18:53:00.000-05:00

Writing is something that got into my soul when I was very young. I think I was eight when I first tried to write fiction. The desire to create fiction, to tell a story, holds my soul tight within its fist never really letting loose any fragments of the piece that it holds For the last 15 years, I would start and never complete novels. Short stories and poems were easy because they could be written in one or two sittings, but novels....Novels were Mt Everest. Novels were the moon.....Novels were the world's largest chocolate Sundae after a steak and potato dinner...You get the picture.

As of 7 am on November 28th, I hit the 50,084 word mark of my Nano Novel. I had two scenes left to write. As of this blog, I have a scene and a half to write. I should finish those tonight. I'm guessing that it will be about 55,000 words when I'm through, but it will be virtually complete. It will be my first ever complete draft. I have something that I can go back and try and edit into a publishable or at the very least a submittable story. This is one of the greatest moments of my life, writing or otherwise. To have achieved a long held dream is beyond my imagination.

Thanks to my fellow Nanoers, Chris Batty, my fabulous characters, my loyal friends, and to the Academy....etc, etc...

Research Trip after NaNo

2007-11-20T12:58:00.000-05:00

So I struggled last night with a scene. Austin's ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The problem that I had when I was writing it was that I didn't know quite how to deal with setting. I can see the battle ship grey walls (bulkheads). The hatches lining a long corridor. The big guns sinking beneath ocean. I couldn't describe it because I didn't know enough about the kind of ship that he would be on nor did I know the appropriate naval terminology for everything. This caused severe problems and my manuscript to have lots and lots of holes that will need to be filled later.

I think that after the first of the year, I'm going to have to visit Patriot's Point in Charleston one weekend in January. The last time I went was when I was kid. I'd had my eyes dilated that morning so I didn't see the outside of the ships at all. Hmmm....So I think thats the plan to make my novel better is to get better information.

I think that I also need to interview my grandmothers and grandfather about life in the 1940s. What was on the radio, what was on the movie screens, what did the movie houses look like, what were the stores like, what was a farm kitchen like, etc. , etc. Since its Thanksgiving, I may get started on that this weekend.

More than Halfway There

2007-11-18T20:52:00.000-05:00

So I've been Nano-ing for more than half the month and I'm very pleased with how my novel is coming out. Yes, its not very good but its progressing along at the rate that I hoped it would. I'm ahead of schedule as far as writing. I've got characters with fairly distinct personalities. I've got an exciting plot with angst. All in all, its not too bad.

I'm writing romance. Not exactly what I intended when I started the book, but that is where it's going so I have to live with it.

I really like the group of people that are participating in this month long event. We all seem to be just a little bit crazy in a good way. I think that you almost have to be to be willing to do this. One thing that I find that we have in common is that if we didn't have to worry about money, we would all write for a living. When you find people like that, you know you have a good group. Very excited about finishing up...Its getting close to being all downhill from here.

The Slow Down...

2007-11-11T20:39:00.001-05:00

So I called my former math teacher father on my way home from the write-in. Apparently, he hasn't been paying attention the a million and half times that I've told him what I was doing this month. I told him my numbers and my goal and he said...."You're about 40% of the way through so I would say that you're right on target." Thanks for sharing, Daddy.... I told you not two minutes early that I was on target for where I needed to be for my novel. Jeez, you had to go and make it a math problem and give me a percentage...

Speaking of my father, I called him after the Clemson-Wake Forest game. We won. Yea!!! We have two games remaining Boston College next week and South Carolina the following week. He asked me which game would I rather us win if we could only win one, SC or BC? I think most fans would rather for us to win BC because then we get the opportunity to play for an ACC Championship... To even be in this position is more than I could have hoped for at the beginning of this year. I plan on writing all day next Saturday before going crazy and actually watching the BC game.

Anyway, I should actually be writing instead of blogging right now. I'm just considering this a warm up exercise for the real writing that I need to do tonight.

Novel Progress and Writing a Novel in a Month

2007-11-07T07:22:00.000-05:00

I really love this! For the past six days, I've been attempting to write the first draft of a novel straight through without stopping for revisions, without worrying about character arc and development. Just keeping the fingers moving and seeing what comes out in the wash. I feel like I'm letting the characters tell me who they are for a change and its great!

Carly - was at Pearl Harbor. Is cynical, but hopeful. Has real doubts about herself and her ability to be loved.

Kate - untested by life. Incredibly immature. Going to the Army Nurse Corps is going to change her so that she's ready to meet Ben as an equal in a later book.

Babs - a real surprise...she was going to be this occasional character that just showed up. She's evolved into this main character, sort of the opposite of Kate. Very very cynical and hard, but caring too. Really like her.

Trudy - not a sweet old lady. More of a harsh very Southern martinet who is the voice of reason and wisdom in this whole story.

I haven't gotten a real feel for the male characters yet, but I'm sure that will come as I work in their heads a little more. First indication is that Austin is very normal and infatuated with Carly. Ben is delusional and knows nothing about Kate despite knowing her for most of her life.

Thats the story so far.....

Last days before NanoWriMo

2007-10-30T20:23:00.000-04:00

In two days, I start the NaNoWriMo! I'm very excited because I think that this will be an opportunity for me to learn how not to re-write everything until I finish a draft of my story.

Working Title: Spanish Moss

Heroine: Carly McKissick - 30 year-old Navy Nurse who no longer believes in love or marriage. She was soured by her long-time boyfriend dumping her for a younger/richer debutante while she was stationed in Hawaii.

Hero: Ausitn Lowell - 24 year-old petty officer from Texas who joined the Navy to get out of Texas. He left his uncle's ranch after they had a falling out. (over what is the question? Howie's wife?) He's been in the Navy for four years. He falls in love with Carly almost instantly.

Setting: 1942 Charleston

Major Plot Points:
They meet.
Carly resists.
Kate (a friend) arranges for them to meet again
Carly reluctantly begins to care for Austin
She reads in the paper where Trip is getting married (and doubts start in on her)
She dumps Austin
Austin goes back to sea
Carly is missing him, but thinks she's better off alone
Austin's boat is attacked by a German U-boat in the Caribbean and he's injured.
He's taken to the Naval Hospital in Charleston
He meets Trip (Carly's ex)
The meet again and Austin tells her he loves her, he understands no. Carly says she still can't, she's afraid of losing him.
Trudy (an important secondary character throughout the book) talks to Carly about her own first love.
Carly catches Austin before he gets back on a boat and tells him that she'll wait for him.

Hopefully, this plus my rather important subplot about Kate and Ben will give me 50,000 words.....Keeping my fingers crossed.

Updates on my NaNoWriMo Novel

2007-10-26T23:17:00.001-04:00

I've decided on a working title for my novel. Spanish Moss. It has a very southern feel to it I think. I've been working on developing my characters and trying to outline my plot in some detail so that it will be easy to write. Tomorrow is the plotting party for NaNoWriMo I'm very excited about it.

I've been telling other people about my plan for next month so that if I start failing, I'll feel guilty. Anyway, thats all I've got to say today.

Assorted thoughts

2007-10-16T23:01:00.000-04:00

I've been creating characters and plotting the book that I'm going to write for the NaNoWriMo. I've not blogged lately.

Its going to be a prequel to the book that I'm trying to write now.

Main characters:

Carly McKissick - 30 year-old Navy Nurse
"Austin" Lowell- 24 year-old former cowboy current petty officer in the US Navy (need to find out what ship)

Supporting players:

Ben Marsh - resident at Roeper hospital, resident at Trudy's Boarding house, Trudy's nephew
Kate Allen - resident of Trudy's Boarding House, Ben's girlfriend, nurse at Roeper hospital
Trudy Ragan - wealthy widow/former nurse, started taking boarders to stave off loneliness
Maude Lincoln - African American practical nurse, helped nurse Trudy's husband, Trudy's business partner
Heyward Rutledge III- Carly's ex, dumped her for a sweet young debutante

Other boarders:
April Henderson
Kelly Hampton
Tara Johnson
Mandy Thoms

There are the characters for the book. Not totally sure of the plot yet. I'll post later.

Austin's hometown

2007-10-04T19:54:00.000-04:00

I went to Texas for the weekend and in honor of my friend Dee, I think that Austin is actually going to come from McKinney, TX. Its a nice little town with a really cool town square. If I need help remembering what it looks like, I can always call her and ask for pictures.

There is an old-fashioned ice cream shop in McKinney that had an actual soda jerk. I need to find out if it was around in the 1930s. Herby's may be making a guest appearance in my book. I had a good time. There are a lot of houses where there used to be cattle country. I'm going to try to envision it as it was before Dallas boomed.

Still in the mood to Write

2007-09-23T21:23:00.000-04:00

I'm going to try to build a character sketch or two for my NaNoWriMo project. Edward "Austin" Dunn is a sailor in 1942. He was a sailor before Pearl Harbor but he was stationed on the east coast at the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Carly Greene is a Navy nurse stationed in Charleston, SC. She lives in a rooming house run by a former nurse, Trudy Hargreave. Mrs. Hargreave is a widow who married well. She started a rooming house in her husband's mansion after he died with business partner, Maude Washington. Maude was the daughter of former slaves who had become a practical nurse. She took care of Herbert Hargreave when he was taken ill and befriended Trudy. Trudy is a character in my current book. She's Jim's Aunt and Grace Anne will go to live with her eventually.

Interesting factoid: Charleston was where the first American casualties arrived from North Africa, but this takes place before then.

Austin was a Texan who was tired of living on the back of a horse so he joined the Navy. The Germans had disrupted shipping and Austin was a casualty. His ship had been torpedoed and he was in the water until another American ship rescued him and some of his shipmates.

Carly was a nurse in the Naval hospital at Charleston where Austin is brought in as a patient. She's a rural SC girl who came to Charleston because she wanted to do something with her life. Carly is really no longer a girl. She's 29 years old and has been a nurse for awhile. Austin is 23 years old and has been in the Navy since 1940.

Thats the start I think...

The War.

2007-09-23T20:10:00.000-04:00

I'm watching Ken Burns' The War on PBS. I've been looking forward to this since the last summer. Its the story of World War II and the American people. I'm very interested in the subject as that is the story that I'm trying to tell. Grandma was in the WAVES. Granddaddy Hinson, my Daddy's father, was in the 2nd armored that landed in North Africa in November of 1942. He was in Sicily, Southern France, the Battle of the Bulge, and finally Germany. All the while, he wrote to my grandmother and they fell in love. They got married when he came home from the war and my Dad was born in September 1946. There are so many stories like that. Ordinary people asked to do extraordinary things and more importantly, they did it.

My dad's father died when he was a young boy and my grandma remarried to a man that I consider my grandfather. His story is almost as fascinating as my biological grandfather's. He is 91 years old and has had bad eyesight almost his entire life. He was not accepted for military service, but he was a very good farmer. His younger brothers went into service and he stayed at home to work on the family farm (the very farm that I grew up on). In the waning years of the war, German POWs were used as farm labor. My granddaddy tells the story of how they used to feed them good southern food and how much they enjoyed it. That is an interesting story.

There are soooo many more stories. I want to tell them or a version of them. I definitely think that my NaNoWriMo project will be a historical based in that time. Those are the stories that I love to tell that I don't feel get told enough. That is that.

No one reads this...

2007-09-21T23:00:00.000-04:00

Bill let go of the rope and fell into the Higgins boat from the netting that extended down the side of the ship into the water. It least it wasn't far. He'd caught the boat as it was on the upswing of the wave.

"Careful there old sport." The seaman and Bill watched as the rest of the men in Bill's company descended into the the plywood crate that would deliver them to the French coast as if they were a box of cookies from his mother back in Hemingway, SC.

They were to be part of the first wave to hit the beaches in the invasion of France

Another Freewriting Exercise.....

2007-09-21T06:36:00.000-04:00

The Higgins boat popped up and down against the waves as the Navy Seaman steered toward the beachhead. Bill tried to hold onto his breakfast as the smell of vomit permeated the air around him. The low murmur of voices sometimes rose over the sound of the sea and the shells bursting around them.

"Yea though I walk...if I get it, will you...I'm coming home to you, babe...Hey Sarge..." Fear surrounded all of them and there was none of the false bravado that had gotten them through nights before. No one talked about killing the Jerries or what they were going to do.

Boom Boom Boom....The shells burst around the ship. German. British. American. Boom Boom. The boat came to a jarring stop.

"Hey Seaman! Can you get us in any closer?" The LT yelled above the sound of the waves pounding the shore.

"Sorry, bud this is the end of the line and I'm the only one with a return ticket." The seaman spoke with a heavy Brooklyn accent. He lowered the side of the Higgins boat. "Hurry up and get off the boat. I've got two more loads to bring in this morning."

OK... So this is really terrible, I'll try again tomorrow.

Mystical Story

2007-09-20T20:56:00.001-04:00

I want to write a book that I would love to read and lately, I'm really loving the paranormal/urban fantasy stories. They're absolutely fabulous. I just read JR Ward's Lover Unbound and I can't wait to read the next one.

What kind of stories could I right? Vampires have been done to death and better than I could ever hope to do myself. Werecats are also done better than I could ever hope to. Fairies, witches, goblins, ghosts, special abilities and talents done.

I'm thinking I'd better stick to history. I know that without blinking an eye. I could do a ghostly soldier? That might work. I love ghost stories. We'll see. A D-day scene.... Bill Whittaker is killed on Omaha beach. Fast forward 60 years, Betsy O'Reilly buys a house from a the family of a widow and comes across some old letters from Bill Whittaker and his ghost.

Maybe that will work...or I could try time travel....Not sure really what will work.

Actually Freewriting

2007-09-20T06:48:00.000-04:00

Margory stared at the pencil that Cliff was banging on the conference table and wondered if he was bored too. The boss's voice droned on and on as he talked about something important to one of the other teams. Synergy smynergy. She hated the stupid business words that really meant nothing. Why should one person say "I'll touch base with you later." What did that mean? Why not say "I'm putting this off until another time because I don't know the answer yet." That is an acceptable answer. Sigh..

"In conclusion..." Margory was glad that her boss was finally finished. He would probably ask for comments next and Jordan would be sure to comment. Jordan was such a suck-up. It was Angela this and Angela that whenever you were around Jordan. He sounded like he had a crush on her and Angela was fifty if she was a day. Jeez. Margory wondered if she could accuse Jordan of sleeping his way to the top since Angela was their boss.

Cliff drummed the pencil harder and kicked her under the table when Jordan started talking. She met his eyes and gave him a half smile. She knew that he was thinking the same thing that she was thinking about Jordan. Yesterday, they'd mocked him at lunch. They'd probably do it again today.

Angela praised Jordan and dismissed the meeting.

"Thank God" Margory whispered to Cliff as they went through the glass doors of the conference room. "If I'd had to listen to a minute more of that drivel," she paused "well I don't know what I would have done...."

That concludes my fifteen minutes of free-writing...Now I must go get ready for work.

Freewriting:A creative writing exercise

2007-09-18T21:23:00.000-04:00

My creative writing professor espoused the benefit of freewriting. Of keeping the pencil moving (or the fingers clicking) no matter what for a period of time. Fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, whatever. You keep writing no matter what comes off the pen or the keyboard. Sometimes you come out with some great ideas. You can develop characters figure out where your plot is going so that is what I'm doing here. Freewriting.

I tend to focus on perfection rather than getting words on paper which means that if I write at all, I write very slowly and get bogged down. I have several short stories and a lot of unfinished novels. In November, I'm going to participate in the NaNoWriMo and I think I need to train for that. Start trying to get words on paper no matter what they are and see what happens. A 50,00o word month is a herculean task for me. They want it to be a finished novel or close to it in very rough draft format.

I'm going to start training by doing 15 minute intervals where I try to produce a start to a believable scene and I'm not focusing on what the scene is doing or wording it exactly right. I may even try pantsing it a little bit. Planning a little bit by little bit and let the characters take over the story.

Newly Ironic Names

2007-09-17T21:44:00.000-04:00

Right now, I'm very upset. A small subset of people in my home church decided that the preacher had to go and they forced him to resign....Rather than consider any other alternative course of action, the told him essentially resign or be fired. This is the man that did the children's sermons to teach their kids. Who visited them and their families in the hospital when they were sick. A man who had done nothing that God would disapprove of.... The excuse they used was that he abused the travel policy. Abused the travel policy! They weren't even sure of that! They could have required more documentation. Limited the amount of money for travel. Almost anything, but they didn't.

Needless to say Union Baptist Church is not currently the appropriate name for my church. In fact, you could probably call it Division Baptist Church and be closer to the truth. A lot of church members are unhappy with the decision. I think the real reason that they got rid of him was that he didn't pander to certain families. He played the equal opportunity game and got burned. I could just spit. I swear I'm going to write a Magna Carta that reveals people for the Pharisees that they are!

Cleaning and other necessities

2007-09-16T15:05:00.000-04:00

I swear that I have too much stuff. My living room is a disaster area and I don't even want to go into the condition of my bedroom Books, movies, clothes, shoes, and other necessary accoutrements just don't seem to put themselves away.

I've decided to do the NaNoWriMo by creating a completely new book from scratch. I think I will work on The Oak Creek Chronicles up until that point and then start writing. I should probably start thinking about the plot. (I'm not exactly a pantser.) I've had a couple of stories lurking around in my head, but maybe I should go with something totally new.

I love the concept of paranormal things as I've really been digging the new style Urban Fantasy books. Stray by Rachel Vincent is one of the best books that I've read this year and I don't even know how to describe my love of JR Ward's Brothers. That comes out in a few days.

Then I have my love of the historical to contend with...Hello...my current book takes place during World War II. I love that time period in ways that I can't even begin to describe. I'm anxiously awaiting Ken Burn's The War that comes out in the fall. Elvis and Johnny Cash and the fifties and sixties are also possible time periods. It may be easier to write in today's time period about being a single girl. I have experience with that.

The truth is that I have a lot of options for what to write and when to write it...... More news coming as I post.

Plot Points

2007-09-11T22:03:00.000-04:00

Since I've done a character sketch for Berta. I think its time for me to do a plot sketch of sorts. This story has been sitting in my head for six years and its time for it make room for other creative pursuits.

Grace Anne is pregnant and alone in the world without a friend to her name. Jim knows that she's pregnant with his cousin's baby and proposes in part to give his cousin's baby a name, but he has a secret. He's been secretly in love with her for years. He believes that Grace Anne is still in love with his cousin and he becomes resentful, because he knows the truth about Lyndon and the kind of person that he was. Grace Anne eventually falls in love with him, but she's too scared to admit it....Etc Etc Etc....

Character Study: Berta Cooper

2007-09-10T19:07:00.000-04:00

So I've said that I was going to do preliminary character studies on this blog. This is the first one. I may try it from her perspective. Lets see....

Well, I never! I just heard that my baby boy has taken up with that Andrews girl. Well, I won't have it! I just won't have it. My only child will not marry the bastard daughter of a sharecropper. Why Papa Cooper would just roll over in his grave to hear of his only grandson marrying that little harlot. I could just shoot Roy for even suggestin' such a thing. Sometimes that brother of mine just doesn't know how to handle certain social situations. He depends on me to advise him. That little wife of his is mighty sweet, but she just doesn't know how to uphold the Marsh name. Bless her heart. It is up to me to make sure that I maintain the position of the Marsh family in the community.

Why...I was talkin' to Bob Ellis just last week. He owns Montford Plantation out in Lynchburg. I saw him at the general store last week with his sweet daughter, Lily. She's suffered so for not having a mother. I just wanted to pat her pretty little head. Now there's a girl that's worthy of the Marsh-Cooper heritage. She would just be perfect for my Lyndon. Those gorgeous golden curls, those big blue eyes. She is just the apple of her daddy's eye. Bob was telling me that he'd heard my Lyndon had grown into a fine boy. He has. He's just so handsome. Just like his daddy was. Oh I remember those days. Those wicked dark eyes that Trip had just caught my attention. Of course it didn't hurt that his grandaddy served with my grandaddy in the late unpleasantness. The Coopers were Carolina royalty and Trip was such an attentive husband until...the accident. Why I still can't bear to think about it.

I told Lily Ellis that Lyndon had asked about her and she was just so flustered at the thought of such a handsome young man paying her any attention at all. Of course, not to be vulgar...But with her looks and her daddy's money she will be drownin' in suitors in just a few years if she isn't already. She's a very patriotic girl so she was very happy to take Lyndon's address. She promised to write him right away. Well, I certainly must write him tonight as well. I'll be sure to tell him what a lovely young girl she is and I'll make sure to mention her Daddy as well. That Andrews girl will be nothin' but a distant memory if I have my way.

I love Doris Day

2007-09-09T19:33:00.000-04:00

I know...I'm a throwback to an older generation that no longer exists, but I love to listen to Doris Day sing. She has the most beautiful voice ever and she was incredibly light on her feet in Lullaby of Broadway which I'm currently watching.

I think that my love of a generation and time that doesn't exist is what inspires me to write historicals. I haven't written in a few days and I'm hoping to be inspired by the movie. I plan on participating in the NaNoWriMo this year and hopefully, I will be able to knockout my book without dwelling on the details too much. Then after its finished...I can revise revise revise!

Football and Frogmore Stew

2007-09-06T22:45:00.000-04:00

This is my favorite time of year. The start of football season is upon us. Pro football starts tonight and college football started last weekend. Clemson won on Monday night so I'm pretty pumped up about that. Always a good way to begin a year.

Biggest upset ever in college football happened on Saturday when David defeated Goliath on Goliath's home turf. Appalachian State defeated Michigan (one of the greatest football programs ever) in The Big House. Pretty impressive I think.

The beach weekend was fun. I enjoyed hanging out with my family and eating lots of good food. Including the SC classic, Frogmore Stew. It's a must have dish if you ever come visit the state of South Carolina. AKA Beaufort Boil or Low Country Boil.

Overpacking and other assorted madness

2007-08-31T21:55:00.000-04:00

Overpacking is a cardinal sin. How much stuff could one person possibly need for a three day trip to the beach? Two big bags of stuff is probably too much, but I plan on swimming a lot and I don't want to put on old clothes plus I need sheets and blankets and pillows plus games and movies. I'm staying somewhere with my family! It could be boring so I need a bag of books and a notebook. I have to take m laptop for work. I think I'll just stuff as many DVDs, CDs, and Books as will fit in that bag. One bag stuffed to the gills with clothes, and a bag for shoes and towels. Sounds like a plan.

My brother has just left his house two hours away to stay at my place tonight so it will be 1 am before he gets here. I need to write, but I don't have time right now. I've got to go finish packing.

Writing Blogs not Books

2007-08-30T23:02:00.000-04:00

Talking about one's own life is very addictive. I love to journal and have journaled since the beginning of time it seems. I think I was nine or ten when the idea of keeping a personal journal first occured to me. I wanted to be like Mallory in the Babysitter's Club. Loved those books as a kid. That was also about the time that I started thinking about writing a book.

I started my first novel that year. It was about a girl who is left alone to run the farm during the Civil War. Her family were essentially poor dirt farmers trying to scrape a living between the rich plantations. Her daddy and older brothers in a fit of misplaced loyalty leave the farm to fight for the South. Leaving the women and babies alone. Her mother dies of some kind of fever and the girl is left to keep her family safe from the marauding invaders from the north and keep them alive in crisis. She relies on her friends to help her scrape the living out the dirt. See very melodramatic for that age. All in all its not a bad plot. Too bad I never finished the book. Maybe another time.

My current novel is again set in SC (the old write what you know bit.) during the Second World War. I've created a community called Oak Creek that is very much like the community where I grew up. Again writing what I know. Judgemental and caring at the same time. Very much eager to maintain the normalness of their lives. Not bad people but, protective over their lifestyle. I think I'm going to do character studies on this blog of some of the background characters. This might add depth to my prose if I understand them a little better.

Sand Dollars

2007-08-29T20:58:00.000-04:00

Spending this weekend in Garden City...The last big beach weekend of the year. Beach music, the shag, the sun, the sand, the ocean....and the crazy family. Yes my family is totally and absolutely nuts.

My mother and her two sisters haven't been able to be in the same room in my lifetime without getting on each other's last nerve. They've decided that its a good idea to spend the weekend together in a single house. Thats right. A. SINGLE. HOUSE.

My grandmother thinks that her grandchildren are perfect. Not me and my brother. My two cousins and their children. Example: My female cousin was dating someone that would become her first ex-husband. I told my grandma that he was bad news (and he was, but thats another story.) She told me that I was just jealous because I didn't have a boyfriend. When my cousin was going through her divorce, she acted as if she'd never favored the marriage. Hello!! Crazy!!

That is just the beginning....I could go on for hours.

Clearly, I'm crazy too. I'm spending the weekend with them at the beach. I could tell myself that it was research, but its not. I'm going for the food and the ocean front house.

Working Title

2007-08-28T20:55:00.000-04:00

I have been trying to come up with a title for my book and frankly I'm stuck. So far I've been calling it Jim and Grace Anne after the main characters, but I don't think thats going to work in the long run.

The Tank Man's Baby
The Tank and the Baby
March from the Sea
The Oak Creek Chronicles: Book 1 (I like this one as a series title.)
A Ordinary Life
Carolina Girl
Carolina Wind (I think I'll call it that for now)

So....The Oak Creek Chronicles: Book 1 - Carolina Wind

I'm going to work with that now. Maybe it will change as time goes on. Making some oven roasted tomatoes. They smell wonderful. I'm going to add them to my salad tomorrow. Hopefully they'll turn out okay.

Fat Girl Writer

2007-08-27T21:41:00.001-04:00

I'm fat! I'm not pleasantly plump. I'm not chubby. I'm not overweight. I am FAT! Its would be Okay to be big if I were happy, but I'm not really happy with my current weight. Yet I'm not doing anything about it. That has to change. Starting tomorrow....I'm going to exercise. I'm going to wake up and go walking. I'm going to do yoga morning and night for ten minutes. I'm going to make an effort.

As of now....I weigh 203 lbs. I want to be between 150-160 lbs. Thats a good weight for me and should be relatively maintainable.

I suppose that I should set smaller acheivable goals so that I don't get discouraged. Therefore my first goal will be to lose 10 lbs by September 30. Lets see if I can make it.

Now on to the writing. I went back and read the first love scene that I've ever written today. I didn't do too badly. I kept the "purple prose" out of it and focused on the way that the lovers were feeling and not what they were doing. That being said.....I'm stuck. I can't keep what I wrote last week because it doesn't fit with the story. I thought that I could use it as a prologue or something, but I don't think that even that will work. Sigh! I hate it when that happens. I hope that this week is a better week.

Tip of the Week...

2007-08-24T22:44:00.000-04:00

I went to my writer's group on Monday and I learned something that I didn't know about writing so I'm going to post it.

When you put a tag on the dialogue, the first person mentioned after the dialogue should be the speaker. For example:

"I'm getting married." Jim looked down at his shoes so Roy couldn't see the emotion flashing across his face.

Jim is the speaker; therefore, he is the first person mentioned.

I thought that this was really good advice. It seems simple and obvious, but I didn't know it. This is the best part of attending my writer's group. I learn things about writing that I've never learned from book and I've read a lot of books on writing.

Who Knows Me Better.

2007-08-23T21:34:00.000-04:00

I've joined Toastmasters International to improve my public speaking ability. I would like to be able to pitch my novel if I ever finish it. No when I finish it!

I give my first speech in two weeks. Its an icebreaker and I'm supposed to talk about myself. I know it should be easy because who knows me better than me. It won't be easy, but that's not going to stop me from trying.

This got me to thinking about how well I know my characters. Can I describe them? Are they real people? The heroine Grace Anne is a tall slender red-head with curly hair and green-eyes. She's nineteen years old and troubled. She's had a rough childhood and the only thing that saved her from sexual abuse is a large dog named Peanut and the ability to run. It also helped that her stepfather was a drunk and often passed out. How do I incorporate that into the story without actually saying it? I've alluded to some of it, but I haven't fully incorporated into the story. Grace Anne is still running and because of it she's allowed herself to get into an awkward situation by trusting the wrong man. That is where the story begins.

OK so seriously, I've got a wonderfully complex heroine that I'm not sure how to make her situation known. I'm beginning to think that a prologue is the way to go. Hmmm????

No Stoplight Town

2007-08-22T21:34:00.000-04:00

I grew up in the boonies, the woods, the swamp....It was truly the middle of nowhere. I call my hometown, Pamplico, but the sad part is that I'm not even from the town. I grew up on a farm outside of Nowheresville, USA. Other people worried about getting hit by cars on their bikes, I worried about being hit by tractors.

It wasn't all bad, though. I had a lot of free time. Time that I spent reading and writing, but mostly reading. I read the classics Austen, Alcott, Bronte, Ingalls-Wilder, etc. I also read the not-so classic Nancy Drews, Trixie Belden, Babysitters Club, the Sweet Valley series, and romance novels that I would steal out of my mother's piles. These books made me dream of writing a novel one day.

That day has come and I intend to see it through. Success for me would be finishing a novel. Anything else would be icing on the cake.

How do you define success?

Once upon a time....

2007-08-21T21:55:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time there was an almost thirty year-old spinster living in a small state not so far from here. She had a dream, a vision. She wanted more than anything to write a book, but she wasn't sure how to do it. She tried buying books to tell her how to write. She went to websites to tell her what publishers would buy... She started her book, but after a few months, temptation would call her name and she was off to another great idea. She didn't realize that writing a novel required discipline and work. She thought that it would be easy and it wasn't...

This is my story. I've tried a dozen times to write a novel with no success. Now is the time to change that and this is the story of my process. Lets hope for a happy ending.