Tag Archives: fiction

May 20, 2013 · 6:53 pm

Hacking through the brush

Writing is mountain climbing. Half of it is uphill.

Yesterday I spent all day writing a scene that occurs in the relationship of a main character, Billy Ninefingers, with the woman he loves. It’s a pivotal scene, and the way I first wrote it, she makes a decision that hurts Billy, but he goes along with it because he doesn’t know what else to do.

It didn’t read right to me.

So I rewrote it, making him angry, making him push to have his needs met in the situation. I was still not happy with it, so I trashed the new scene.

What I did yesterday was waste 11 hours writing 3624 words, which I then threw away.

Today I’m going to rearrange the living room instead.

Some days you’re writing and the prose flows like fine wine into a crystal glass, gorgeous, smooth; a delight to senses.

Other days your writing takes you deep into the bug infested jungles of Look-There’s-A-Squirrel Valley and the divergent paths you find yourself on are downright frightening.

Where does my mind come up with some of the crazy things that pop up in my work? I don’t know, but some days writing is as much about hacking through the brush trying to find your way back home as it is basking in the glory of a completed chapter.

The bright spots on my horizon are the two women who’ve dedicated a great amount of time to making my work readable, Carlie Cullen and Irene Roth Luvaul.

Irene is what some people in this industry are beginning to refer to as a ‘line editor.’ She helps me make my manuscript submission ready – that is, she makes sure I’ve dotted my ‘i’s and crossed my ‘t’s (insert comma) (delete comma) and that the manuscript is as clean as it can be before I submit it to my editor, Carlie Cullen. Irene checks the manuscript for consistency in spelling the frequently made-up names of people and places, so that my spelling doesn’t inadvertently drift (Liam…Lyam….) Some authors have spouses who will do this for them, but my husband doesn’t read fast enough and has a day-time job. Fortunately my best friend Irene saw I was struggling, and offered to help. This is the first stage of the process, and clears the way for Carlie to work her magic.

Irene is a retired legal secretary with 40 years of proofreading and punctuation behind her. That she WANTS to do this mammoth undertaking on my raw, bloody manuscripts is amazing to me. I’m not as well-educated as many other authors are, and my first drafts are clear evidence of that.

By having the brush cut back (so to speak) before she gets the manuscript Carlie is able to concentrate on the true task of editing the work for publication. I’m not wasting Carlie’s time on things that should have been corrected before she was handed the manuscript. After all, she has other clients and also her own writing. I want her to enjoy working with me, not dread it!

Of course, she will make edits on grammar and things Irene and I may have missed, but Carlie guides me in cutting out the fluff and excessive backstory that finds its way into the tale. She has me expand on the important things, the points of the tale which are the real meat of the matter. She may have me take a minor thing and expand on it, or she may think something is not as important as I think it is. This is where the real story begins to unfold. Carlie turns my manuscript into a book.

If you have been suffering from a series of rejection letters and you don’t know why, it may be that your manuscript was not submission ready when you sent it in. You may not even have known your pride and joy was an unruly child. Many editors and agents will reject manuscripts with plots based on wonderful concepts and with great characters simply because the task of getting the grammar and punctuation corrected in order to get to the real editing is not worth the effort.

But after having been in this business for a while now, I’ve come to realize that it takes more than a great story to make a great book. I’ve seen manuscripts a third grader would not have been proud of, but they were the blood sweat and tears of an author and it killed me to tell them it wasn’t acceptable in its current state.

I’ve had other authors look at me with disdain and say, “Well I always refer back to Strunk and White when I am writing, so I don’t need an editor.”

Yep.

Well, so do I, when I pause long enough to think about it, but I write like a freight train–once the tale has me and I’m rolling, I’m not going to stop for anything so minor as grammar.

Strunk and White IS the final word when it comes to grammar and use, but unless those two lovely men have actually laid their eyes on your manuscript, you may have missed a few things or you may have a tale that, while it is grammatically perfect, it is full of dead ends and lackluster prose.

Having been through hell and back with “The Last Good Knight” I cannot express strongly enough the importance of having TWO sets of editorial eyes on your work.

Editors have eyes AND they have Strunk and White, and they are not afraid to use it. But editors also understand what makes a good tale and they will guide you in that direction if you will let them.

3 Comments

Filed under Books, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, Art, divergent paths, fiction, humor, manuscript submission, pivotal scene, writing

May 14, 2013 · 7:26 pm

Creativity

Creativity. Making something good and wonderful from something ordinary.

Sometimes writing is more about inspiration than it is anything else, and other times it is all about the perspiration.

Even when we are inspired and our work is flowing, there is a lot of work involved.

Research. The internet is an awesome resource and I highly recommend you do not rely solely on Wikipedia, The Fount of All Knowledge, fine repository of sometimes mythic information that it is.

Stitching the plot holes together. Finding them is the trick, because everything looks perfect to me, until Irene gets hold of it!

*doh*

Meeting and greeting the characters who people your tales. I write descriptions and biographies of them as they appear in the first raw draft of the tale so that I know them and how they will react in a given situation.

The day 14 writing prompt for the short story a day in the month of May from StoryADay.org for today was (and I quote:)

“Simple task today (ha!): The Prompt Write a story that opens, “On the edge of the mountain, silhouetted against the setting sun, there is a small ramshackle cottage made of wood.” Tips This sounds, at first blush, as if it has to be set in a fantasy or fairy-tale world, but I bet you can […]”

SOOOOO this is what MY somewhat less than fertile mind came up with today:

On the edge of the mountain, silhouetted against the setting sun, there is a small ramshackle cottage made of wood. The wind blows through the cracks and crevices, and the glass that once graced the windows has long since fallen prey to the winter storms.

Once it was full of laughter, love and merriment. Children played in the now wild garden. Raccoons now raise their young beneath the floor boards, and owls nest in the rafters.

The cottage and the mountain are one; both have always been and only time will tear them down. Nature always takes back her own.

This is in keeping with my commitment to writing my shorts in 100 word bursts, even though I’m not that impressed with it. It’s an exercise, and just doing it is good for the writing muscles.

Am I any closer to being able to write a decent pitch for my forthcoming novels? I don’t know, but I’m having fun. One day I wrote my 100 words as a love poem, too frank and soul-baring to post here.

It’s cathartic in a way – 100 words that fall out of me for no one’s amusement but my own. Some are good enough to share, some are just mental crap. But it’s a good exercise, and it stirs the creative juices.

3 Comments

Filed under Books, Fantasy, Literature, writing

Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, fantasy, fiction, humor, literature, writing

May 8, 2013 · 7:28 pm

The Knight Returns

As always, I have five or six projects going at once. I’m in the editing process on Mountains of the Moon, a Tower of Bones prequel. I’m getting a sci-fi short-story ready for submission to Analog. If they reject it, I will publish it as a novella.

And now I am doing revisions on Huw The Bard, and writing Billy Ninefingers, I find myself writing a new opening vignette for The Last Good Knight. The revised edition will have several new chapters, one of which was completed only a few days ago. It will not have the prologue, nor will it have the chapter that is a long info-dump. They tell a lot, but they are mistakes made by a new author, and they do the book no good.

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m in love with my characters. And of all my characters, Julian Lackland holds a special place. He was my first real hero, my first slightly-flawed-but-nonetheless-still-perfect hero.

This is the issue: we as authors want readers to see our literary vision with the same clarity as we see it. The problem with that is our readers will NEVER see our vision as we do. They will see it through their own eyes. This means our task is to enable them to visualize the story and the characters in the way that is most pleasing to the reader.

Folks don’t want info–they want action.

So I’m going to give it to them. Heh-heh. Good Luck, Lackland!

Fortunately, I am an indie and I have the ability to unpublish a book that isn’t working as it currently stands, and do it as it should have been done in the first place had I not been so new at this business.

Today I hit the road north again, this time to Seattle. I will be working in a Starbucks in the South Lake Union part of town, in a building that houses Amazon. Afterward I will meet my son there and we’ll go to a vegan restaurant, where he’ll pretend to enjoy the food (because he loves his mother) and we’ll have a good time. All the while, all three tales, Huw the Bard, Billy Ninefingers, and Julian Lackland will be rolling around in my head, and I will attempt to carry a conversation on as if I weren’t a raving lunatic, obsessed with my imaginary friends.

He’s used to it.

Tomorrow, while my son is having oral surgery, I will be in the waiting room, devising new tortures for old friends. If it goes long enough, I might finish another vignette!

Sorry son, Mama’s a writer. Reality isn’t her best thing.

5 Comments

Filed under Adventure, Epilepsy, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Romance, Swashbuckling, Vegan, writing

Tagged as Art, fantasy, fiction, humor, knights, literature, vegan lifestyle, writing

May 5, 2013 · 1:35 am

Sell me that book in 100 words or less!

I’ve been participating in a month-long exercise where you get a prompt and you write the story. I have set the bar a bit high, as I am giving myself only 100 words to tell that story. It’s a bit difficult, but I have a reason for this, beyond my usual insanity.

The back of a book has something we writers call blurbs (I know. I shouldn’t use author-speak in company, it’s not polite.) Technically it is called “the pitch” because you are pitching your product to prospective buyers. This little thing is critical. Your cover must make them pick up the book or click on the icon and your pitch must sell it. But hello – you have only about 30 seconds to capture the prospective buyer’s interest enough for them to crack it open, or use the look inside feature for eBooks.

I’m not real good at writing pitches. Neither are the Big Six Publishers, oddly enough! Even the big companies have found ways of avoiding pitching a novel simply by putting glowing reviews of other works by that author on the back cover.

Back Cover of Mage-Guard of Hamor by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Bleah. That doesn’t sell me a book, Tor-Forge, publishing giant that you are. As you can see, on the back cover of this book there is no blurb, only glowing comments about the author’s other series of books. This may work for a well-known author like L.E.Modesitt Jr., or Brandon Sanderson, but it doesn’t work for me as a reader.

I have observed many indies taking the same route, and skipping the blurbs entirely.

Indie authors take note: I (and millions like me) don’t buy books without blurbs of some sort, somewhere, unless I am already familiar with that author’s work. I want to know what I am buying, so even a bad blurb will interest me more than a quote from a glowing review by one of your Beta Readers.

Just sayin’!

So here I am, suffering the curse of the indie author, trying to not only be my own publicist, but also my own advertising agency.

Thus, I am going to learn how to write a blurb, if it kills me. Writing a 100 word piece of flash-fiction is called a “drabble”. I figure if I can get this down to a fine art, I can write a decent blurb.

The original prompt went as follows:

Write A 100 Word Story (“Drabble”) . . . although a 100 word story will probably take longer than expected, it’s still going to take a manageable amount of time.

To make a drabble work,
-Choose one or two characters
-Take one single moment/action/choice and show us how it unfolds
-Give us one or two vibrant details in as few words as possible
-Show us (hint) how this moment/action/choice is more significant than the characters probably realize in the moment

I decided to use these parameters for the entire month of flash fiction. Here is my first one, written May 1st.

Ted (5-1-2013)

Edna stirred her coffee and looked out the window toward the shed.

“Did you feed the chickens?” Marion always asked, though she knew Edna had.

Edna looked away from the shed. “Of course I did.” Her eyes turned back to the shed. “We won’t be able to keep him in there much longer. He’s growing too big. We should have a barn built for him.”

“Ted was always a greedy boy.” Marion stirred her coffee. “I warned him he behaved like a beast.”

A rumbling bellow shook the shed. A long green tail snaked out of the shed door.

I will keep practicing until I get the hang of creating something interesting in 100 words. Blurbs don’t have to tell the whole story, that is what the inside of the book is for! All they have to do is sell the book–be that tantalizing bit of interest that hooks the reader into buying your book.

Yesterday’s drabble went like this:

Drake – 5-3-2013

He stood on the parapet, silhouetted against the starry sky, his wings wrapped tightly about him against the chill wind. The sounds of the darkened world below drifted up to him. The nightbird’s song. The servants in the castle below. The lowing of cattle in the distance.

Hunger, intense and overwhelming clouded his vision.

Spreading his wings Drake fell forward, the wind catching and lifting him; soaring. A scent on the wind alerted him to his quarry.

On a corner she stood, ripe and full lipped—the tamale vendor.

Silently, he dropped beside her, whispering seductively, “Two tamales, please Senora.”

I’ve had a lot of fun with this, and I may have some ideas for longer short stories here, so it’s certainly not a waste of time, even if I never get the hang of selling my own work!

11 Comments

Filed under Books, Dragon Age, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, writing

Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, Brittain, dragons, fantasy, fiction, humor, writing

May 3, 2013 · 6:14 pm

It’s all Greek to me

Dragons.

Two tons (or more) of muscle, scales and, frequently, fire.

What’s not to love?

They are rumored to be as devious and crafty as your mother-in-law.

Don’t bandy words with a dragon or you may lose more than the argument.

Again, not unlike your mother-in-law.

My dragons are not really the kind who bandy words about, however some do breathe fire. That heats things up a bit!

Heh heh. Oops.

Darn it. Now we need a new hero.

I hate that when that happens.

In English, the word dragon is directly derived from Old French – dragon, which in turn comes from Latin draconem (or draco) meaning “huge serpent, dragon,” AND also from the Greek word drakon meaning “serpent, or giant sea fish”. Both the Greek and Latin term referred to any great serpent, not necessarily mythological, and this usage was also current in English up to the 18th century. So in that sense, dragons REALLY did exist.

Which came first Latin or Greek? Greek – it’s a living language and has been spoken for over 3000 years. Many Greek words found their way into Latin, and other proto European languages. Thus English has some roots in Ancient Greek.

Now as far as dragons go, in my two worlds they are quite different from each other. In Waldeyn, (Billy’s Revenge) there are two kinds. The smaller wingless variety often has a second breath that allows them to breathe fire–quite an effective weapon, as Huw the Bard will discover. The bigger ones fly and prefer to eat people, so they are considered a nuisance.

No, my dragons are NOT vegans. But that would be an interesting twist….

In Neveyah, (Tower of Bones) they tend to be immense creatures of both magic and the element water. This puts the mage at a disadvantage, as the element that heals the beast is the element of water and you must never use it against them. Water is also their best magic weapon, and they are relentless. They have high reserves of chi and strong magic at their disposal, along with excellent shielding ability, so using any magic at all against them is a no-no.

Good luck, boys.

There are ways to fight them, and all my heroes will find ways to do so with varying degrees of success. Writing those scenes is a real adventure, as I get to put myself in the battle, and choreograph it so that it flows, is believable, exciting, and hopefully no one crucial to the story dies.

1 Comment

Filed under Adventure, Battles, Books, Dragons, Humor, mythology, Vegan, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, dragons, fantasy, fiction, humor, knights, literature, magic, mythology, vegan lifestyle, writing

April 29, 2013 · 5:47 pm

Inspiration

The town I grew up in, Olympia Washington, has a reputation for being just a bit, how shall I put this? Weird. Wild. Wacky.

The city is the state capitol, so there is that political side of things, that energy that drives the local economy.

Then there are two colleges, one of which is The Evergreen State College, a school that attracts some amazing people. There is a fine community college, and across town in the city of Lacey, there is Saint Martin’s University.

Many students who come here from out-of-town choose to stay in the area, and so we’ve become a place known for our high-energy arts and music scene, and our…interesting…downtown life.

Olympia is one of the most Vegan-Friendly cities you could ever want to go to, as nearly every small restaurant and cafe has at least one vegan offering and many have an entire SECTION of their menu that is devoted to vegan options.

We are also the home of Riot Grrrl punk rock, with bands like Sleater Kinney and Bikini Kill to our credit.

Downtown is fun, crazy and most definitely a walk on the wild side, even on a Monday afternoon. When I am not on the road, I frequently drive up to Olympia and go to a local coffee-house called Batdorf and Bronson on Capitol way just to spend the day there, writing. I do this especially when I have come to a dead-end, because something about being in downtown Olympia inspires me when nothing else will.

The best parade of the year is called the Procession of The Species, and it is not just a parade, it is an event. In a time-honored tradition, people put their lawn chairs and camp stools out on the curb two days ahead of time, staking out their viewing places. The chairs will sit there, lining the curb like so many abandoned soldiers for two days prior to the parade and no one will steal them.

The parade itself is awesome.

From Wikipedia, the Fount of all Knowledge:

“Taking place during Olympia’s annual Spring Arts Walk, the Procession regularly draws 30,000 spectators and 2,000-3,000 participants.^[2]The celebration, now in its 17th year, is completely noncommercial, made possible by community contributions of money, materials, time, and skills.^[3] The Procession is produced by Earthbound Productions, a 501 C-3 organization, and currently does not benefit from any public funding from the city of Olympia. Seven weeks before the Procession, a community art studio is established. This studio is open to the public and a minimal donation is requested, but no one is ever turned away for lack of funds. As there is no permanent studio space available for the Procession, each year Earthbound Productions locates and rents a space to serve as the community art studio; ultimately, the group hopes to find a permanent location.^[4] The studio, staffed solely by volunteers, becomes a central location for art & music workshops and costume design. Participants use a wide range of artistic approaches, such as Batik, Papier Mache, and Luminaria. They use mostly donated or scavenged materials to express appreciation for the natural world and create their costumes, banners, floats, puppets, drumming, community bands, and more. During the event itself, bedecked in their costumes featuring the elements and various species of plants and animals, people of all ages join in the procession. The event itself has three ground rules: no live pets, no motorized vehicles, and no written words.^[5]

I have to say though, while the giraffe and the whales were awesome, the giant clam costume (the geoduck) at this year’s procession drew many…surprised…comments.

One of the fun activities happens 30 minutes ahead of the procession. Two wagons loaded with side-walk chalk pulled by volunteers make the journey along the entire parade route handing out chalk and the spectators then decorate the streets. Some amazing art happens. The wagons return to collect the chalk, leading the procession.

I don’t get direct inspiration from downtown as in “Oohh, write about this…” I just find it stirs my own already quite out-there mind and when the old brain can’t seem to pull up anything worth writing, the change of scenery does me good.

Alas, today I must hit the road once again, but inspiration travels with me this time. I think it will be a productive trip.

6 Comments

Filed under Adventure, Books, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, Vegan, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, fantasy, fiction, humor, literature, Procession of the Species, vegan lifestyle, writing

April 19, 2013 · 3:45 am

Transporting Dead Dinosaurs

The Joy of Childhood
© Leah Reindl 2012

So I went on an outing with one of my grandsons and his Kindergarten class. You may remember this child–The Boy whose antics keep Grandma hopping.

I honestly thought he was going to be the difficult child on the trip, but it turns out that he has an image to maintain (already) and his little mates believe he is the soul of reason. His teachers adore him.

(See Grandma’s look of shocked disbelief.)

However, I did have the pleasure of riding on the school bus in the seat directly in front of the ‘interesting child’ in the class, a little firecracker we’ll call Mercy. Her voice was beyond piercing–my ears are still ringing.

First though, you have to picture the school bus packed with 6-year olds, each one in varying stages of that mania only a 6 year old child can bring to such an event. The adult volunteers were given groups of 3 children each to monitor. We lined up outside the school at the curb, and got on the bus, keeping our groups in order. My daughter and I shared our group, which worked out well.

The first thing I noticed was the amazing lack of leg-room in Grandma’s seat. That and the fact that nowadays Grandma seems to take up more than half of the bench.

Oops.

Still, two of ‘my’ children were able to sit on the bench with me, and despite the fact that my knees were firmly pressed into the back of the seat in front of me, we rode fairly comfortably.

Directly behind me was the girl who we’ll call Mercy. She was imaginative, boisterous, and full of ‘it’. She wore her emotions for everyone to clearly see, and every thought that entered her mind was immediately expressed, loudly, twice for emphasis. She was needy, loud, inappropriate and hysterically funny.

Mercy was the poster-child for ADHD.

As the large yellow sardine can I was trapped in hurtled down I-5, Mercy’s commentary dominated the din. “Look at that dude! He’s smoking a cigar. I’ll bet he’s a gangsta. He’s gonna do a deal. I saw it on TV.”

“Mercy, that’s inappropriate. We don’t talk like that, remember?” The lady who was Mercy’s wrangler was awesome. She was an older lady who volunteered at the school and who was also the school crossing guard. I suspect she was a retired teacher, as she had opted to wrangle the three toughest discipline cases in the class.

The other two were boys and they were…interesting…, but Mercy was the real loose-cannon in the bunch. She was the ringleader, the one the other two looked up to.

Just around the time I noticed I had lost the feeling in my legs, the school bus pulled alongside of a long semi, an open-top box trailer that was covered with a canvas tarp. A corner of the tarp had come loose, and flapped in the wind as the truck rolled down the highway, giving a tantalizing peek at the contents of the load. (It was sawdust.)

Mercy said, “Look that truck is broken. I wonder what’s in it? It’s probably going to crash, cuz its broken.”

Her seatmate, a boy we’ll call Dewayne, said, “It won’t crash. That’s just the tarp. I wonder what’s under it?”

Mercy said, “It’s broken, so it’s gonna fly off and kill someone and there’ll be blood everywhere. We’ll probably be on the news when it happens. And it’s a dinosaur, under the tarp. A dead one.”

Dewayne said, “How do you know its a dead dinosaur? It could be any sort of dead body.”

“Human bodies aren’t that big. It has to be a dinosaur.” Mercy’s tone implied that she held the trump card. “I wonder where they’re going to bury it.”

All I could think of was that the seat behind me was occupied by two future authors of fantasy crime fiction, and the girl could possibly be a future Quentin Tarantino. This little girl was hysterically funny, obsessed with the macabre, totally off the wall and sharper than a tack.

I was SO grateful she was not in our group, as she was fast as lightning, didn’t hear any instructions, and made her own rules as she went.

It was a fun trip.

Grandma needed a nap when we got home.

7 Comments

Filed under Adventure, Books, Dragons, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, Vegan, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, Dinosaurs, dragons, fantasy, fiction, humor, vegan lifestyle, writing

April 15, 2013 · 8:36 pm

Gurus, St. George and Uncle Orson

I write stories. I tell people what may have happened had St George not slain the last dragon and taken the fun out of life. Obviously I am telling the tale from the position of a storyteller.

This works well in the first draft, where I can “he did” “they went” to my heart’s content, but during the second draft I must take these “telling” places and expand on them, making them more active.

Many people ask me what I think about ‘critique’ groups.

I don’t.

I don’t think about critique groups at all, as critiquing is only a small sliver of what an author needs to hear in order to get his or her work ready for submission. Any wannabe can trash another person’s work.

I have found that for every serious author, there are five posers who think they are Jane Austen and that gives them the right to “just tell the truth.”

My ears are bloody with the sounds of unpublished and unpublishable authors piously ranting about the rules and quoting self-help writing gurus as they shred a fellow author’s work in the guise of critiquing it. This is why I don’t go to the groups whose main focus is destroying the dreams of others.

I have found a group of writers who share an understanding of all the phases that a manuscript goes through before it reaches the final draft. Comments, when solicited, are encouraging. Flaws are noted, yes, but more importantly the places where the story shines are also noted. The writer is a fragile creature–it takes very little abuse to make them bleed.

The award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy, Orson Scott Card is one of the guru’s whose books on writing have shaped my approach to not only my own work, but how I look at the works of others. Uncle Orson, as he refers to himself, has a fabulous website with many links to writing seminars, Hatrack River. Orson puts himself out there with his political and religious views, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that he KNOWS about writing and how to write a good, readable book.

Orson’s wife is his first-reader. He has a list of questions that he asks his wife to answer in regard to his work, and the way those questions are phrased is interesting. I now use those same questions and so do my two writing groups when we are PRIVILEGED to be first readers of an author’s cherished manuscript. This is the list as I have it in my own files, tailored to my own work:

Five Questions for The Wise Reader who is evaluating my tale:

1. Were you ever bored? Please tell me where it became slow and hard to stay with it.

2. What did you think of the main character _______________________? Of ____________________? Of _________________________?

3. Was there anything you didn’t understand? Is there any section you had to read twice? Is there any section you became confused?

4. Was there anything you did not believe? Any time you said ‘Oh come on!”

5. What do you think will happen to the characters now I am done telling their tale. What are you still wondering about?

My goal is to eliminate any areas of boredom, implausibility and cliché and I need your help to do so!

I think that writers grow when another eye is on their work. Of course it is an uncomfortable thing to have a whole section pointed out as being repetitive and possibly irrelevant, but it’s better to hear it from trusted friends before you publish than to never know why you keep getting rejections. Agents and editors rarely have time to tell hopeful authors why their work isn’t acceptable. This is why they use the dreaded form-letter-of-rejection.

Having received enough of these to wallpaper an outhouse, I can tell you honestly that we aspiring authors are left to struggle on our own and learn the craft of writing as well as we can. This means we take courses if we can afford them or we avail ourselves of the very good education we can receive via the internet.

It also means we must ask others to look at our work. Local writing groups are the best places to meet people you can trust. Perhaps you’re not a member of a writing group and you want to become involved in one, but you are afraid of having your work torn to shreds. This is a real possibility, but there are MANY groups in every community, and quite a few will have the same rules as my group does. Attend several meetings as an observer before you commit to bringing any of your work. Once you see how they treat each other’s work you will know what you can expect from them.

Treat others the way you want to be treated, regardless. Don’t let the occasional bully stop you from growing and achieving your dream.

And this brings me back to where I started–trying to take an idea as it was laid down in the first draft, tell the story and yet show the action without going off the rails in either direction–showing OR telling. As a reader I cut my teeth on Louisa May Alcott and J.R.R.Tolkien. They were authors who knew how to TELL a story and I lived it as they told it. Nowadays it takes a special sort of reader to enjoy classics as they were originally written, because they were rife with telling and not showing.

The second draft is much easier when it comes to laying out the action. In the first draft I know what is supposed to happen at a given point, but I don’t always know how to show it, so I have a conversation that tells what happened. In the second draft I take those conversations out and replace them with the event.

Now I must have my characters go forth with their swords and kill me a dragon. We’re done talking about it boys! Show mama what ya got!

7 Comments

Filed under Adventure, Battles, Dragons, Humor, Uncategorized, Vegan, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, Do you like my outhouse, dragons, fantasy, fiction, humor, Orson Scott Card, vegan lifestyle, writing

April 14, 2013 · 8:31 am

Did I say that…?

I love words. I hate auto-correct. I love writing words that make sense and say what I want them to say. Auto-correct is not conducive to that.

I hate spell checker. Now, if I was smart like Shaun Allan, I could take all those crazy nonsensical sentences that auto-correct accidentally gives me and make a dark, joyous joke out of them.

Shaunie can write circles around me. Actually, he can write circles around ANYone. My prose when I try to write the way he does comes out forced, as if I was acting like a writer. When Shaun writes it, it’s entertaining. When I write it that way, it reads like ‘Ulysses’ would have read if James Joyce had written it via text-messaging on his smart-phone.

Although, now I think of it, that might have been an interesting lit-class….

But I have to say, that if anyone could make auto-correct work FOR them, it would be Shaun Allan.

I find that just reading Facebook posts as posted from my Android smarter-than-me-phone would be entertaining if they weren’t so embarrassing. My comment on a friend’s post regarding vacations last year: “We went to DC but didn’t get to Vagina, as we didn’t rent a car and were on the Metro.” I’m not sure why my phone felt the need to auto-correct Virginia in such an interesting manner, but hey–what ever works, right?

My comment received five likes from people I didn’t know before I took a look at it and saw what was actually posted.

The really strange thing is my brain didn’t process the fact that we were IN Virginia! We were staying in Arlington, but for some reason I thought we were in Maryland! Washington DC is built in such a way that when you go across town you can literally travel from Virginia to Maryland in ten minutes, something my rural west-coast brain couldn’t seem to get straight. My phone really WAS smarter than me!

I’m not sure how to fit that comment into a medieval alternate reality tale, but I’m working on it.

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Filed under Adventure, Battles, Books, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, Damn Spell Checker, fiction, humor, literature, vegan lifestyle, writing, WTF?

April 10, 2013 · 9:56 pm

Rain, rain, rain

Once again, spring has decided to funnel water on the Northwest. Two weekends ago it was lovely- mid seventies weather, with the feeling in the air that winter had indeed ended and better days loomed on the horizon. I had all the cushions out on the back porch and was, briefly, in heaven.

Now, the doom and gloom of the standard Northwest spring has returned, and I find myself suffering from the blahs. I can’t think straight, much less write a coherent sentence. On the positive side, my 2nd oldest granddaughter, Courtney, will be staying with us for a few days, so I will have someone to share the misery with.

The locals joke that if you see someone with an umbrella, they’re from out of town. This is not true, as I have a large collection of umbrellas, many of them unbroken and still useful! Even the cutest umbrellas frequently end up in street-corner trash-bins, ending their days as the tattered and broken relics of impulse purchases.

The winds here in my little valley are known to be death to umbrellas, even expensive ones.

I do confess that I can be seen at large events in the summer with an umbrella keeping the SUN off my lily-white skin!

Despite the carnage, I feel compelled to keep buying umbrellas, feeling somehow as if the next umbrella will be the one–the true umbrella for all seasons, able to withstand 40 mph winds and sideways rain-bullets. I just know that my desire to have some cheery vestige of spring in the form of a floral print over my head will somehow work out and I will manage to remain both dry and stylish.

(snorfle)

The weather here is kryptonite to even a super-umbrella.

Unless….

Wait… is that…

Oh god.

It’s the one personal rain-shelter superhero that can take the hurricane force winds and merrily give Spring a thumbs-up. ( I’m sure that the one-finger gesture was meant to be a thumb…it’s pointing up anyway….)

It’s a Golf umbrella, that ubiquitous bastion of Pacific Northwest Fashion. Conversations between middle-aged sisters in Northwest restaurants tend to run like this:

“Is that my umbrella by your chair?”

“No, its mine. Mine is the blue and white one.”

“MINE is the blue and white one. I’m sure I brought it in with me.”

“Well, this one is mine, see? Here are my initials. I knew this would happen, so I used a sharpie. You didn’t come in here with an umbrella. Did you leave it in the shoe store?”

“No, I’m sure I had it when we went to Costco. That was after the shoe store. Are you sure that umbrella isn’t mine?”

“NO! It’s mine!”

“Next time I’m getting a red and white one, so I can spot it more easily.” (Eyes restaurant full of red and white golf umbrellas.)