Tag Archives: Online Writing

Work in Progress Challenge Part Three. Yep… Still being honest

Posted on September 29, 2012 | 9 comments

If you are wondering about the title, I don’t want to get into it again.  Check out the previous posts part one and part two

And without further ado… on with the riveting questions…

1.       Is your WIP Published or Represented?

This is a really weird question.  A WIP is, by definition, is IN PROGRESS.  So, obviously it is not published.  Represented?  Kind of an odd question as well.

I guess I can tell you that no, I do not have an agent hanging over my head asking me to finish fast so they (we) can get our paycheck.  This is the first of a possible series, so I do not have a publisher in line waiting for it, although I do have one that has expressed interest.

2.       How long did it take you to write?

Oh!  Actually an easy question to answer!  I started this novel with a vow to myself to finish it by a certain time.  I took two weeks and did nothing but plot it out.  I decided what was going to happen before it happened.  This greatly speeded up my writing time because I didn’t have to fix, rewrite, or add scenes to fix plot holes.  From the actual start of writing the first page, to finishing the first draft….   I started on May 9th, 2012 and finished on July 27, 2012.  I don’t write on weekends (with the exception of a writer’s retreat.)

So, that’s 58 writing days… during which I also completed line-edits for my publisher on “Last Winter Red”, and I took the idea for “Connect the Dots” (a 9,000 word short story) from idea, outline, completion, beta and submission to the publisher – before I got back to (and was able to complete) Fire in the woods.

All that to say… looking back at my writing log, it looks like I actually worked on Fire in the Woods exclusively between 35 and 40 days. (That’s first draft, though.  I’m still editing… and I think I want to add a few more action scenes and make it longer. — I feel a few more explosions coming on 🙂 )

3.       What other WIP’s in your genre would you compare it to?

Here’s another really wacky question.  Comparing to other people’s WIPs?  Even if I could do this, I would be comparing to beta-manuscripts I have read, and none of you would have read those, so comparing would be futile.  This question really does not make sense to me.

I suppose I could try to compare it to published work.  Ummmm.  Geeze.  I don’t think I could to that either.  Imagine “When Harry Met Sally” meets “Die Hard”.  Sweet Romance intermingled with lots of explosions.  ***sigh***   Yup.  Just good old-fashioned fun.

4.       Which authors inspired you to write this WIP?

Honestly, none that I could directly relate to this work.  I suppose everything you read can sub-consciously mold you in a certain direction.  Lately, I have been taking notes on good and bad things I have seen, but actual inspiration?  I can only give that credit to the Big Guy upstairs.

5.       Tell us anything else that might pique our interest about this WIP.

I just love this story, so everybody else will, too.  So there! Tee Hee.  🙂

Seriously, I think there is a little bit for everyone in Fire in the Woods.  Jess is a kid struggling with a bad relationship with her dad.  It’s a story about a father struggling to raise a teenage daughter on his own, while protecting the planet at the same time.  It’s about a boy trying to overcome past demons while proving his own self-worth to himself and others.

And best of all there are lots and lots of explosions!  What’s not fun about that?

6.  Finally:  Tag three other Authors and ask them to complete the above interview.

I’m going to jump out of the box and shoot this over to the three most recent novelists that I’ve read.  I’d love to hear a little about what they are working on now.

Olivia Devereaux – Of that little western “Mended Hearts” Fame

Claire Gillian – Of that annoyingly good mystery with the great voice “The P.U.R.E.”

Rebecca Hart – Author of “Call of the Sea”  Ahoy Me hearties!

And just because I’m a rebel… I’m gonna also give it to J.M.McDowell ’cause she’s an archaeologist and I just find that incredibly COOL!

How’s that for mixing it up?  A Western, an Office Mystery, and a Pirate book, and an archaeologist/Author.  How well-rounded is that?

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Jon Gibbs’s Ten things I wish I knew before I was published #10: Interaction is the name of the game

Posted on September 14, 2012 | 13 comments

How you interact with others will have a HUGE impact on your careers

  • Join your first writing group ASAP and join as many as you can
  • Find other authors who might help you
  • Go to Writers conferences – You can meet people who can help you.  They might tell you where a conference is and you may meet someone there (agent publisher)
  • Remember, you will get a lot of useless information
  • But also remember, you will get some great information as well.

Note:  The above are Jon Gibb’s main speaking points, with my rambling opinions attached.

Jon Gibbs is the author of one of my son’s favorite books:  FUR-FACE, which was nominated for a Crystal Kite Award.

Jon is an Englishman transplanted to New Jersey, USA, where he is an ‘author in residence’ at Lakehurst Elementary School.  Jon is the founding member of The New Jersey Author’s Network and FindAWritingGroup.com.

Jon blogs at jongibbs.livejournal.com

Website: www.acatofninetales.com

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Six Sentence Sunday – “And the Nightinglae Sang” by Kip Wilson

Posted on September 2, 2012 | 7 comments

I recently purchased the anthology “Timeless, An Anthology of Young Adult Romance.”  Here are six sentences from one of those stories: “And the Nightingale Sang” by Kip Wilson

In this passage, our heroine is meeting the boy she loves for the first time in months.  He is a traveling minstrel, and a poet, and she is as in love with his music as she is in love with him.  Take it away, Kip!

Photo from my Goodreads list

“I would as gladly be a rose as a lily, if it gave me the chance to live in your poetry,” I said, waiting for him to offer me more.  Had he figured out my wish?

“You will most certainly find a home in my poems one day,” he murmured into my ear, “but for now I want you in my arms–as a real girl. How I have missed you, my love.”

Our time apart vanished in an instant, and I became his.

Awe!  Are you feeling the love?

For more sets os six from published works  as well as works in progress, check out the Six Sentence Sunday Site.

http://www.sixsunday.com/

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Search and Destroy in the Editing Phase

Posted on August 25, 2012 | 33 comments

Daily Writing Tips recently had an article explaining bad writing compared to poor writing.  The one part of the article that struck me was the end.

They presented a list which I will admit (giving them total credit) that I copied and pasted below.  I only want to talk about #5, but I am including the entire list, because I think there are a lot of writers out there who can benefit from it.

Here we go:  Total credit to Dailywritingtips.com (If you want to see the whole article, the link is below)

———————————————————————-

Here are some tips on avoiding the pitfalls of bad writing:

1. Be Fresh
The purpose of metaphor and simile is to evoke recognition by comparison or allusion. Write these analogies to aid your readers with your clarity of vision, not to serve your ego, and avoid clichés.

2. Be Clear
When drafting expository fiction or nonfiction, record your voice as you spontaneously describe a scene or explain a procedure, transcribe your comments, and base your writing on the transcription, revising only to select more vivid verbs and more precise nouns and to seek moderation in adverbs and adjectives.

3. Be Active
Use the passive voice judiciously.

4. Be Concise
Write tight.

5. Be Thorough
Accept that writing is the easy part; it’s the revision that makes or breaks your project — and requires most of your effort.

———————————————-

Okay then… end credit to daily writing tips.

(On a side note:  If anyone needs clarification on anything in the list above, let me know and I will do my best to translate.)

Let’s talk about #5.

This is near and dear to my heart, as I have just finished a roller-coaster ride self-imposed deadline of 5,000 words a week to finish a novel in 10 weeks.

I finished my first draft four weeks ahead of schedule, and dropped myself into editing.

Is my story great?  Well, of course it is! It’s my idea and I love it.

Is it well written…

Umm well, it will be.

Now is the tough part.  I need to attack all the sneaky “tell” that slipped in when I wasn’t looking.  I need to describe bronzed skin rather than telling “his skin was bronzed.”

Luckily enough, I have many words to spare, as I ended up short on my word-count target.  I have plenty of room to expand.

Right now, it is “search and destroy” on “Felt” “was” “it” and all those other nasty little tell markers.

I was paying attention this time around, and I tried my best not to have blatant run-on tell passages (as I’ve been guilty of in the past)  which is good, but all of my tell is now “subtle”.  It is the kind that will probably slip past most publishers.  But I don’t just want this to be a good novel.  I want it to be a great one.

Yes, it is this revision process that will make or break this novel.

I am approaching it by not reading for flow yet.  I am just looking for all those “little nasties”.  Once I think I am “nasty free” I will read for flow, and then ship off to betas, trusting them to slap me upside the head for everything else I may have missed.

How do you “search and destroy” during the editing phase?

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Write A Story With Me Number 6 Mikeala Wire

Posted on August 7, 2012 | 5 comments

Yay!  It’s time for  A write a story with me update!  There is so much going on that sometimes it makes my tail spin.

My brain had this cute little simple fantasy story in my head, but we have gone through so many twist ant turns I’m having trouble keeping it all straight!

This week we are taking a pleasant little trip over to lovely Rotterdam with My So Called Dutch Life.  Mikaela Wire is a little nervous, because she says she’s not a writer.  I think she did a great job.  Be sure to leave her some words of encouragement after reading!

Click on the link below to be jet-packed on high speed to the Netherlands.

Take it away Mikeala!

http://mysocalleddutchlife.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/write-a-story-with-me/#comment-920

If you need to catch up, you can view previous installments through the link below.

Here are the previous installments:

Part One – Jennifer M Eaton

Part Two – Jenny Keller Ford

Part Three – Susan Roebuck

Part Four by — Elin Gregory

Part Five — Eileen Snyder

Part Six — Mikaela Wire

Stop by next Tuesday to see what happens next!

Vanessa Chapman… TAG You’re it!

Good Luck, Vanessa!

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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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EEEE Gads! Why the heck did I read a Western? A Review of Mended Hearts by Olivia Devereaux

Posted on July 26, 2012 | 24 comments

Yeah, so, I just read this little Western story.  In general, other than non-fiction as a whole, the lump sum of everything Western (as in America’s traditional “Old West”) is at the bottom of the barrel of stuff I’d want to read… and I almost never scrape the bottom of the barrel.  So why the heck did I pick this up?

Two reasons.

Reason  #1:   I am submitting a short story to the same publisher “Still Moments Publishing” … and as any good author should do, I wanted to research something that they recently put out (April 2012 in this case.)

Okay, so …  this publisher has tons of titles…

why pick something you know you won’t like?

Reason #2:  A little bird told me that this story was submitted for consideration in an anthology, but they did not think it was a good fit.

However…. They liked it so much they wanted to publish it as a stand-alone.  They even created a new “western” category to their offered listings to slip it into.

All this drew my attention, so I bit the bullet (Tee Hee) and resisted my urge to cringe at the [very stark, boring and very western] cover.   I bopped over to Amazon and popped a copy into my Kindle.

Here’s the jist of this 28-ish page story:  A family is living out in the middle of nowhere.  Dad gets hit by a stray bullet and dies.  The next day the son finds another guy (a stranger) in their barn bleeding from a gunshot wound.  The widow takes him in and cares for him, hoping that when he wakes up he will be able to tell her what happened to her husband.

Yeah… boring.  Not a spaceship in sight.  However…

 Let me tell you something …  I think this lady could probably re-write Humpty Dumpty and be able to get my attention.  Within a few pages, I totally forgot how much I hate the Old West as a genre.  I was completely absorbed in the story, and emotionally connected to the characters.

.
Oh! Let’s not get carried away there.  Reign yourself in, Buckaroo!

Normally I have a laundry list of things to pick out.  You know… general writer’s mistakes that make me cringe.

In this novel?

NADA.  NONE.  ZILCHO.

I bow down to the writing Gods and say “Why Why Why can’t everyone write this cleanly!”

The writing was crisp, fresh and for the first time this year – NO TYPOS.  Yay!  Extra cookie just for that, because that has really been ticking me off lately.

So, what was wrong with it?  I had to rack my brain, but I will nit-pick on two very minor things.

Number one:  This woman’s husband just died.  She is still has dirt on her skirt from burying him… and this other guy shows up.  She is instantly attracted to him (but at least feels guilty about it.)  This is what bothered me about this:  She is portrayed as really loving her husband.  So, I put myself in her shoes …  If my husband just died a few hours ago, I would barely be able to look at a man … let alone find one attractive.  I just found that unrealistic. – subtract half a cookie.

Number Two:  I hate when names sound alike.  It confuses me.  Maybe it is because my eyes read quickly, and only pick up certain letters, but this is just a pet peeve of mine.  The Woman’s name is Ella, and her son’s name is Eli.  Now, I realize this may have been one of those “name your kid after you” things,  but every time I hit “Eli” my eyes read “Ella” and I had to go back and re-read because I got confused.  –Subtract another half a cookie

So, for these two nit-picky things, I am nibbling away at one full cookie.

Yeeee Hawwww!

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this little-ditty, yes-sir-eee.  If the writing were poor… if it had not flowed so well, and if the characters were not so well rounded, I may have remembered I was in a Western.  If the chemistry between the Widow and the patient wasn’t so dern good, I would have been annoyed by her initial attraction to him for longer than a page.

The writing was just dern good.

So, what’s the verdict?  She lost one cookie in the creamy bad stuff section.  And, sorry, it’s the rules … I need to take away another due to lack of explosions.  So that leaves three out of five cookies.

Oh!  Wait Jennifer!  You gave her an extra cookie for having no typos!

Well, yes-sir-eee you’d be right about that, Buckaroo.  That is a grand total of Four out of Five Oreos for Mended Hearts by Olivia Devereaux.

[She cringes]  Ewwwwweeee!  I just gave a nice review to a Western.  What is this world coming to????

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Flash Fiction Friday on Wednesday – Be careful what you wish for

Posted on July 25, 2012 | 16 comments

This is the character study I did for my character “Jessica” in my new WIP, Fire in the Woods.  I wrote this just to get a “feel” for her before I got started with the story.

The story ended up going in another direction, but this was the basis/starting point of her character. (As well as the rest of the story)

Jess lay in the grass.  The stars of a billion galaxies sparkled in the night sky above.  When she was little, and her parents fought, she’d hide in the backyard, and the constellations would keep her company.  Since her parent’s divorce five years ago, not even the stars could console her.  Instead, they made her feel insignificant, small, and alone.

A shooting star’s tail lit up the night and disappeared from view.  She closed her eyes, and wished with all her might.  She wished for someone who could understand her, for someone to love her.

She wished for someone to appear, and change her life forever.

…Be careful what you wish for.

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How to Write a Really Great Novel: The FUNNIEST EVER (And Maybe Best) Review

Posted on July 5, 2012 | 12 comments

Yes, he is reviewing a novel, but WHO CARES!

The Monomaniacal Middle Grade Reviewer goes off on a tangent starting at about 1:05 on how to write a great novel, and then goes in-depth around 1:59 about what makes a good action scene, and then again at 3:35 on how to write a great action scene.

This is probably his best interview EVER.

If you care about a kid’s opinion, this is a great interview to take a look at.  I am bookmarking this just to come back and take a look at it once in a while.

I think this kid has a future in reviews.  Oh, yeah.  The actual novel is Rick Riordan’s Battle of the Labyrinth

Take it away, Dude!

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Guest Post: Zombies & New Worlds & Violence, Oh My! by J.A. Belfield

Posted on June 22, 2012 | 8 comments

Yes, I’m talking about all the titles that have been slowly flooding the book markets over the past few years.

To be honest, I’d seen all the hype for zombie fiction & dystopia/post-apocalyptic novels. To begin I viewed them with scorn.

Yes, I did.

And I apologise profusely.

Because I was ignorant.

I wondered how something like zombies could possibly make a decent novel when it’s often the horrific visuals of a zombie film that grab us the most.

I wondered how on earth anyone could be enamoured by a story with a cover that depicts the world as broken and dreary as heck, and nowhere anyone in their right mind would want to live—again, I guess, something that would have great impact in a film.

Then I listened—to other readers—instead of being so opinionated.

Before I knew it, I’d let them sway me into picking up these books I’d struggled to figure out (without having read them …. Yeah, I know, I know, don’t say it).

Now?

I pretty much can’t get enough of them.

Granted, I’m not so keen on the zombie novels—unless you count Amy Plum’s romanticised version of zombies in Die For Me.

But I picked up Hunger Games convinced I would hate it.

O_o

So happens, I went out and bought Catching Fire as soon as I could and even had someone send me Mockingjay so I didn’t have to wait to read on to the end.

Yeah, I pretty much began devouring books from this genre I’d not even given a chance.

Since then, I’ve read Divergent, too—as well as finished up with Insurgent mere hours before writing this post.

Then there are the ones that combine genres: vampire dystopias seem to be the latest craze. Andrew Fukuda’s The Hunt or Julie Kagawa’s Immortal Rules, for example. I’ve read both of those. Admittedly, they haven’t wowed me quite as much as straight dystopia has, but they were still decent reads, neither of them alike, and both had highly intriguing concepts.

So what is it about these genres that seem to be spreading like wildfire? The characters, their conflicts, the action which often horrifies due to the violence involving youths, the love story (because there almost always seems to be at least the potential for one) … or the fact that we just don’t know what the future holds for our earth and to get even a fictional glimpse of that is simply too fascinating to pass up?

How about you? Have you tried these types of novels? What do you think it is about them that’s setting the reading population on fire?

http://www.jabelfield.com/

Novels/Stories by J.A. Belfield

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