Category Archives: General Writing Tips

Writing to a Deadline AGAIN? You betcha! Part Two

Posted on August 23, 2012 | 21 comments

Yes, here we go again.  When I left you I had five weeks to write a story from scratch and submit.  Here’s how I did it.

Check out yesterday’s post by clicking here to see how I got myself into this mess.

Okay, so this is how I did it…

I took two days to come up with and outline the story.

I gave myself 1,000 words a day of writing time by placing FIRE IN THE WOODS on hold.  Within Ten days (two weeks in to the process—I don’t write on weekends) I had a rough draft.

Three more weeks until Deadline.

I posted the first half of my story on Scribophile, took general comments, and did a mild revision.

Two weeks until deadline… and no one had even seen the second half.

Now it was time for my writing buddies to jump on board.  They all read it in full.  One ripped me a new one.  It almost felt like a “keep out of genres you don’t write” kind of critique.  Ever gotten one of those?

One beta said it was good, but when I asked her about the harsh comments I received from the other person, she agreed with many of them. (Ugh!) Later the same day, two glowing betas came back with mild changes only.

Talk about contradicting criticism!

I mentioned that I was now unsure, and was considering an overhaul… and one buddy… let’s call her multi-published Romance Writer #1 said:  “DON’T YOU DARE!  This is your story, not hers.  Tweak if you must, but don’t change. Always go with your gut.  Your gut likes what you wrote. The publisher will, too.”

So, I thought it over, and agreed with Romance Writer #1.  If I made the drastic changes to both my characters to make everyone happy, it would be sappy, and not really what I wanted.  So I stuck to my guns.  Tweak, polish, complete.

One week and three days until the deadline.

Oh Crud!  I need a query!

I wrote up a query really fast and sent it to my query gnome.  (If you don’t have one, find one)  She slashed my blurb and re-wrote it for me, but left the rest in-tact.  I tweaked slightly to keep in my voice and posted it to my Scribophile group.

Multi-published Romance Writer #2 jumped in and tweaked it some more.

You know what? I ended up with something that even made ME want to read it, and I don’t read Romance. (It’s great having friends that like to write queries.)

One week to deadline:

Yes, I pressed the submit button, and I did it one week early.  Funny, I was not as stressed about this one. I’m not sure why.

I learned a few things through this process…

Well, maybe not learned, but it reiterated things I already knew:

1.        I can write under incredible pressure.

2.       You need more than one beta, get many opinions and go with majority… don’t try to make them all happy

3.       Go with your gut.

4.       Writing buddies are incredibly important.  My friends knew I had a deadline, and they dropped what they were doing to critique.  Know what?  I will do the same for them.  If you don’t have writing buddies, find them.

Thank you Sisterhood of the Traveling Pens!

(Note… all my buddies are “on-line” friends.  Social networking.  It ROCKS!)

So, that ends the tale of my latest madness writing adventure.  Will it work out? Dunno.  But I do know that push comes to shove, I Can do this.

My advice?  Challenge yourself. You don’t know what will happen or what you can do until you try.

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Writing to a Deadline AGAIN? You betcha!

Posted on August 22, 2012 | 32 comments

Yes, I placed myself in the clutches of a publisher’s deadline AGAIN.  I didn’t expect to. It wasn’t planned.  It just kind of happened.  Here’s the scoop…

About two months ago a writing buddy of mine Terri Rochenski announced that she was submitting to an anthology. I looked up the publisher.  They only did Romance.

WARNING WARNING DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

I giggled.  Despite the fact that there was a romantic element in LAST WINTER RED, I knew that writing a straight Romance was not for me… and I was having so much fun blowing stuff up writing FIRE IN THE WOODS that I didn’t really want to take the time to start something new.

.
Anyway… A month later she put out feelers for beta readers.  A little niggle gnawed at my gut, poking and peeling until guilt set in.

The little writing demon inside me smacked me upside the head…  Who cares that it’s Romance!  You just missed an opportunity.

The overachiever in me flipped back to the publisher’s web-site. There were still five weeks until the submission date.

Five weeks…

Is that long enough to come up with a story, outline, write, beta, edit and submit?

Honestly… No it wasn’t.  Did I try anyway?

OF COURSE I DID!

I’m not going to draw this out… I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that I have already submitted a story to this publisher within the timeframe, and I managed to get it in a week early.

So, How’d I do it?  Just to not make this post too long, I’ll tell you tomorrow.  Be there or be square!

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Six Sentence Sunday – A blast from the past. This is funny.

Posted on August 19, 2012 | 34 comments

It’s Six Sentence Sunday again.  Today’s is gonna give you a giggle. I’m going to allow you to wallow in my ineptness.

If you haven’t heard, Six Sentence Sunday is a group of people who mostly post their own work, but I just shoot out six sentences of whatever takes my fancy.  Sometimes what I’m writing, or sometimes what I’m reading.  If you want to find out more, click here.  Visit Six Sentence Sunday Site.

I’m still reading Oracle by JC Martin.  I didn’t want to post another 6 sentences from the same work, so I was sitting here at my desk, and I saw a printed copy of my early novel HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT hanging out, feeling abandoned.

I thought it would be fun to open it up to a random page, and just pick six sentences.

Now… I wrote this well over a year ago, maybe even two years, as last year at this time I was editing it.  I laughed when I read this passage.  I am going to curtail my inner-editor and post it exactly as it is printed.  Mistakes and all.

Yes, thank goodness, I have come incredibly far in a little over a year.

At his feet, an arbor bug struggled to scale a small mound of dirt.

Harris sighed as he watched it.  Why doesn’t it just walk around it?  After it fell back for the third time, Harris flattened the mound with his foot, and the small creature continued on its way.  He closed his eyes and smiled, actually finding gratification in helping something so small.  Would Daniel Hyelven have done that?

OMIGOSH!  Can you stand how much tell is in those six sentences?

Did I really use the word “it” four times in the same line?

This is really embarrassing.   I just couldn’t believe it, but I thought it would be worth a laugh.

I just love this story, and someday I will go back and fix it.  After looking at this paragraph, I know it will be a huge undertaking. 🙂

Hope you got a good giggle!

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When your novel comes up short

Posted on August 18, 2012 | 36 comments

I just finished my latest novel.

Yay!  Right?

Umm, well not really.

For the first time in my life … My novel came up short.

I normally write huge, sweeping epic novels.  The last one I had to hack up into five novels.  The one before had three parts.  My mind just thinks “big”.

This time, I tried to center my mind on a one-week timeframe.  I carefully plotted it out, and assigned word counts.  I thought it would be close, but I didn’t expect to be WAY OFF my target word count.

Do I have stuff to add?  Well, yes, thank goodness.  There are a few things that I found I needed at the end that will need to be introduced earlier on.  The problem is, I need about 12,000 words, and I imagine the additions will only total to about 1,000 words.  11,000 more to go.

Yikes again.

I’ve edited 23 pages, and have added 230 words.  I figure the total added for general editing will be about 2000 words.  That’s 9,000 to go.

I don’t want to write unnecessary scenes just to make word count.  I wrote tightly.  Everything is spot-on.

Maybe a little too spot on.

Has anyone else ever had this problem?

 Well I don’t like it.  Nope. Not at all.

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I am Such a Stinking Idiot. I Swear!

Posted on August 15, 2012 | 60 comments

I’ve submitted two works in hopes of publication.  Last Winter Red was accepted, and will be published in December.  Yay!  But what was the other one?

The first writing I ever submitted was early this year.  It was a 2,000 word short-story for a magazine.

This magazine is very well-respected, and takes submissions until the end of January.  They choose the best out of the submissions to publish at different times during the year.

Their requirements were very clear.  It needed to be about a dog, the dog could not talk, and it had to be polished and ready for publication.

Hello, let me introduce myself.

I am an idiot

Well, heck, I had a story about a dog!  I ran it through some betas, worked it until I wanted to spit, and submitted it.

I never heard back from them.  Not a squeak.  And I can’t even say they didn’t get it, because I have a tracking number.  They got it.

I guess it’s okay that they didn’t respond.  They said they would only notify those who were chosen.

Anyway… I stewed over it for a while.  Why wasn’t mine good enough?

I read the magazine, and my story beginning might not have been a fit for their readers, but the ending sure was.  A story is a journey, right?  I just figured my beginning may have been the problem, and moved on.

A few months ago, my writers group announced that they would be publishing an anthology, and asked all members to consider submitting.  I thought about this 2,000 word story.  The chances that I would send it out to any other magazine were slim.

Soo….. I opened up my final submitted version, and gave it a read for the first time in four months.

My eyes widened after reading the second line.  No!  It can’t be!  I scanned back to the beginning, and started over.

Yes.  It can be.  Right there …  In the second stinking line.

A TYPO.

How the heck many times did I proofread this?  How many betas did I go through?  How much time expended?

A Typo.  Not just a typo.  A BIG BLARING TYPO!  So much for “Polished and ready for publication”.

Hello, let me introduce myself.  I am an idiot.  They probably never even read past the second line.

Yep, it’s me.  I am an idiot. Feel free to smack me. Ugh!

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Scoping out locations for your novel #3: Road Trip! (Contes Farm)

Posted on August 11, 2012 | 23 comments

In scoping out locations in South Jersey for my new Novel, I needed a farm that was between point A and an airport.  Last week, we visited the airport, and it was perfect.  Would the farm be that good?

I clicked on the GPS and started driving.  First problem:  It’s too far away.  I need it far away, but not this far.  There is another farm option, but that one is actually too close to its local airport.

Erghhh!  The woes of real-life locations.

As I’m driving though, I figure out a way to make it work.  I just need to tweak something just a little bit.  Yeah, I decided, it will work, and it will be much easier than trying to make the one that’s too close to the airport “fit” into the story.

We headed out into farm country, and I kept repeating:  “Please be surrounded by woods… please be surrounded by woods.”

We turned onto a road, and pulled up to the small farm-stand building. Conte’s Farm.  Hmmm… not as grand as I had expected, but the building is not important.  I dragged all the kids out of the car, and announced we were going out into the fields to pick our own fruit.  Boy, did their faces light up!

It’s funny, with all the things they were guessing as we were driving, I was afraid they would be disappointed.  Wow, were they excited.

We went to the back and got our baskets.  “So, how does this work?” I asked.

“He’ll be there in a minute to bring you out,” she said.

Much to my joy, and my kid’s excitement, a tractor pulled up with a big trailer attached with seats on it.

Perfect, since I’d already written this scene, and there was a tractor in it.  We loaded up and he pulled us out into the fields which were HUGE.  Much bigger than I had written, but that’s fine.  An easy fix.

I shielded my eyes, and scanned the far reaches of the fields.  They were surrounded on three sides with a very thick forest.  Wahooo!  And the woods were even on the correct side, heading toward the airport.

Happiness abounding, we set out to pick our strawberries and had a blast.  “Nice tractor guy” picked us up a while later and dropped us off at the blueberry fields.  The weather was perfect, and we had tons of fun picking fruit.

Note of caution-if everyone in your group has their own buckets, you may be coming home with five pounds of blueberries… Just say’n.

Anyway… next hurdle…

As we checked out, I asked if they have anything fruiting in August (That’s when my novel takes place, and I really didn’t want to change that.)

“Yes, that’s peach season.”

YES!  I’d already written about peaches… and I was worried, because they didn’t mention peaches on their web-site.

Two locations down… the farm and the airport.

Point A would be a little more of a trip… for another day.

My next challenge is to find a hotel within a reasonable distance to this farm.

That, unfortunately, may be the hardest part of all of this.  I might have to make one up.

What do you think of “making up” a location, where all other locations are “real”?  I may be able to fudge it, by being hazy on the address of the hotel.  Whaddya think?

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Do you know something about the military? Calling all Beta readers or “Wanna-be” Beta readers

Posted on August 5, 2012 | 10 comments

I am searching for a few good men, or women, or teenagers who have knowledge of the military and how it works, and/ or live on or grew up on a military base in the USA.

I am going to openly admit that I’m writing fiction that has a lot of military activity in it, and I am taking a lot of wild guesses since my father never talked about the service AT ALL.

I’m looking for a few people who know more than I do who can take a look at my novel and say “Yeah, that’s possible” or “No, you are completely off your rocker… that would never happen in a zillion years.”

In a nutshell, I don’t want to ruin what I think is a pretty good story because of my lack of military knowledge.

The novel is Fire in the Woods — a sci-fi based in New Jersey on the East Coast of the USA.  It starts off at McGuire Air Force Base, and then runs through several South Jersey locations.  The target audience is YA (teen) girls, although there is a strong male character at her side that I think will appeal to everyone.

I have visited each location and mapped out the story.  Now I just need to know if I have to change any character’s military ranks/titles/positions, or embellish/change things to make it at least somewhat plausible.

If you’ve never done a beta read before, and know about the military, that’s fine.  I have people who can smack me around for writerly-mistakes.  I just need a few “military content editors”.

When completed, I expect it to be 50,000 words (200 pages).  I would need it read and critiqued within 30 days of starting it. (That’s about seven pages a day.  Easy breezy)

I will most likely send it in 50 page sections (One week per section) so I can work on your comments for one section while you are reading the second.

Please let me know if you are interested.

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Scoping out locations for your novel #2: Road Trip! (The Airport)

Posted on August 4, 2012 | 25 comments

While I was researching sites in Southern New Jersey, I needed a farm that was close enough to point A and also within 20 miles of an airport.  I found many farms in South Jersey, but one was perfect.  It was right smack dab between the two other locations, and it was surrounded by woods (which I also needed.)

I was alone with the kids that weekend, so I figured we’d make a day-trip out of it.  I didn’t tell them where we were going.  What we did is drive the route that my characters from “Fire in the Woods” would be running. We went in reverse order and visited the airport first.  My oldest son and I jumped out of the car.  At that point, I told him that I was scoping locations for my book.

Yes, the Monomaniacal Middle Grade Reviewer was totally into it.  The two younger ones were already “over it.”

I was a little nervous, because I had already written a lot of my story just from Google Earth and other sky maps.  Would the location be as good in real life?

The first thing that struck me was the chain link fences surrounding the runways.  I guess I should have thought of that.

“No problem,” I whispered.  “The tanks with just run right over those.”

“Tanks?”  my son asked, a big smile on his face.  “What are you gonna do, Mom?”

I just smiled.

He laughed.  “You’re gonna blow it up, aren’t you?”

Yeah, my son knows me pretty well.

I couldn’t get out to the runways, although I probably could have gone inside and asked for a better look, but I didn’t have my business cards or anything.  I could see all I needed, though.  Long runways, surrounded by a thick forest on one side, and a lot of trees on the other… out in the middle of no-where.  It was perfect.

There was something else fun, too.  A big re-fueling tank.  Ah, the joys of hundreds of gallons of gasoline, just sitting there, waiting for me to…

Yeah.  This location was perfect.

We were only there for a few minutes, snapped a few pictures, and then it was off to the farm.  Excited now, I was hoping the farm would be as good.

Have you ever visited a location for your novel?  How did it go?

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Scoping out locations for your novel #1

Posted on July 28, 2012 | 17 comments

First of all, if you’ve noticed that I haven’t responded to comments since Thursday, it’s because I am on a writer’s retreat.  Yay!  Another one?  Yeah, I am giving it a go.

I have higher hopes for this one, and I am not up against a super-steep deadline, so I’m not in a panic about time constraints. I’ll be back on Monday.

Okay… back to today’s topic…

In general, I am a Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer.  The settings of my stories are different planets, or fantasy worlds.  For my new novel, though, I decided to try something different.  Yes, it is Sci-Fi, but instead of taking my readers to the alien’s planet, I decided to bring the aliens here.

Has this been done before?  Yes, of course.  I’m just putting a little different spin on it that I think will be fun.

So, I need a setting.  Since we are on Earth this time, I can’t make everything up, so I am trying to force the story into buildings and locals that actually exist.

I have to admit… it’s a lot easier to write about another planet.  If I need something for the story, I just create it.  I’m grinding my teeth looking at maps and judging distances.  It’s so much easier to build a world from scratch exactly how you want it.

Where’s my setting?  I chose Southern New Jersey on the East Coast of the USA for two reasons.  #1:  I’ve been there a lot, so I can relay the “feel” of it.  #2:  I need four separate “places” for the story to develop.  South Jersey has all four.  Easy breezy, right?  Well, not entirely.

As I’ve done in the past, I’m going to split this post up into a couple of weeks, because otherwise this post will definitely get too long.  We’ll start next week with the road trip I took with my kids … driving the route my characters would be walking.

What about you guys?  Have you ever tried to develop a story from REAL places?  How’d you do?

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Biggest Mistakes New Writers Make #4: Resisting Feedback

Posted on June 29, 2012 | 33 comments

Do you resist feedback.  Are ya sure?  Come on, now… Let’s be honest with ourselves, shall we?

At a recent NJ Author’s talk on “Getting Published” the authors (Listed and linked below) discussed the biggest mistakes they think new writers make.

 ***Don’t be resistant to feedback***

Danielle Ackley McPhail (Author of the Literary Handyman, and Editor of Bad Ass Fairies) commented during this discussion (see the other posts if you are just tuning in) that “you can’t be resistant to feedback”.  She said if you resist what editors say, and you seem resistant in general, they might not come back to you.  She said to recognize your role in the relationship.  If you won’t budge, then you won’t move forward. (And we all want that second book deal, right?)

For those of you who are not lucky enough to have publishers or editors yet, the same can be said about your beta readers.  If you have them listen to them.  You might not always agree, but if more than one person thinks something is weak, and you think it’s great, you need to consider that you might be looking at your work with blind eyes.  Take a deep breath, and LISTEN.  Be open minded.  Put your guard down, and you just might be surprised by what happens.

Jonathan Maberry:  www.Jonathanmaberry.com

Mike McPhail:  www.mcp-concepts.com

Danielle Ackley-McPhail:  www.sidhenadaire.com

Jon Gibbs:  www.acatofninetales.com

Jennifer R. Hubbard:  www.jenniferhubbard.com

Kristin Battestella:  www.jsnouff.com/kristin

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