For Writers (Tips, Tuts & Encouragement)

• Procrastinating Writer’s Blog
• CLG Entertainment
• The Creative Penn
• LJ Sellers (a writer with lots of good tips)
• 10 Ways to Become a Better Writer
• What’s a Scene? What’s a Chapter? (Check out Timothy’s entire site, lots of good stuff)
• The Inigo Montoya Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words (a few I needed to learn!)

Marketing & Social Media for Authors

•  25 Writers You Should be Following on Twitter
• Best Tweets for Writers

Groups

•  MomWriters

Writing Challenge

• Write a Story a Week

Editors

•  Ask the editor: Do publishers have rules about POV?

Writers

• Jeremy C. Shipp
• Brenda Mantz
• Anne Mazer

Poetry (you never forget your first love)

•  Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Blog

Tools (Simple word processor to reduce distraction while writing and editing)

• Dark Copy
• Jer’s Novel Writer

As some readers here might know, I wrapped up round two of editing my novel in April.  I actually just started Round 3 this week, which is going better than expected.  (Wish I’d started it sooner!)

Round 2 was around January 1, 2009. It took longer than expected, but much of the editing was actually rewriting and reworking things.  (Which means that Round 3 should be interesting!)

What you  may not know is that before writing this, I purchased a copy of Holly Lisle’s How To Write Page-Turning Scenes.  Holly Lisle is a writer who’s made a living at it for 20 years…a put-food-on-the-table type of living.  Sure we all dream of getting that Stephanie Meyer phone call, but most of us won’t.  Once you come to accept that, you begin to rethink this whole “writing fiction” business.  But once you get past that, it’s time to check out Holly’s rock steady advice.

Because I’m a just-do-it writer, I had no notion of scenes (or chapters) while writing a novel.  I’ve taken lots of workshops over the  years, online and off, and I can remember a single teacher discussing either of those elements.  I’d never even considered scenes in a novel, which is odd because back when I wanted to be a filmmaker I took screen writing, which is all scene writiing.

Enter How To Write Page-Turning Scenes.  Holly breaks down exactly what a scene is and why it’s a useful to think in terms of scenes when writing or revising your novel.  She gives some clear cut exercises that really break down how to determine if a scene forwards your story or not, how to know which scenes to add, delete, or revise, and what to watch out for along the way.  She gives clear cut examples of the different kinds of conflict and how and when to use them.

Strictly speaking,  How To Write Page-Turning Scenes is really a book that gives you tools for step-by-step scene creation if you haven’t written a word, but only have an idea. However, I found this extremely useful to help me get organized with my first round of revisions.  I didn’t do a strict scene-by-scene revision because I had too much story still to create, but this gem of a guide did give me tools I needed to get revising.  I highly recommend this book for novices, first-time revisionists, and anyone who need to better structure their scenes.

Reasons I love Twitter, someone linked Neil Gaiman’s interview in the UK pub, The Guardian today.  To the left is my favorite book, but he recently released The Graveyard Book, so check that out too.

As for me, I’ve got IMAX tickets to see “Star Trek” tonight, Mother’s Day to look forward, a birthday party tomorrow, and the finale of “Lost” in a few days. It’s a sunny day and it’s Friday, so all that’s really good!

Oh yea, and I finished “The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile” last night.  Review coming soon.

I’ve decided to do a list of links every month. (Sorry, that means I skipped April, I’ll try to be more diligent!)  Without further ado, here are some links that will help up and coming writers like myself:

Writers

• Writing Her Life
• The Writer’s Washroom
• Amanda Ashby

Magazines

• Fantasy & Science Fiction
• Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine Blog

Fantasy

• Fantasy Debut: debuts new fantasy authors.

Book Marketing

• Savvy Book MarketerTM Guides
• Book Marketing Maven
• Novel Markets

Lehigh Valley

• Lehigh Valley Storytelling Guild
• Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group

Research

• Education portal (free online courses)
• History Fish

I feel so bad - it’s been nearly a month since I’ve updated this site!  My apologies, but up until April 19th, I was diligently revising The Novel, which means that I completed my 2nd round of edits 10 days ago. Woohoo!  There is much more to do. This week I’m furiously reading “The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile“, to get the first 3 chapters ready starting next week to send to Viable Paradise.  I’m also planning on doing a book review when I’m done.

As a reward, I took some time off to plot my next move, visit a college I’m interested in attending, and went to an AMAZING book fair, where I snagged 10 BOOKS for $8.50. Woohoo!  I also found a great local used book shop (didn’t know they existed anymore), and I’m compiling a crapola pile for trade in purposes.  (I always keep my worthy books.)

Speaking of book reviews, very soon I’ll be reviewing How To Write Page-Turning Scenes, which I read before I started editing.  Very helpful!

Finally, I have a top secret project possibly in the works now that some time has opened up in my life.  Coming soon: yet another post of links, a new blog look and style, and writing tips!  (I’m actually getting good at writing fiction, who knew?)

This weekend I attended The Write Stuff Writer’s Conference here in Allentown.  I was pretty psyched because Maria V. Snyder, fantasy author, was going to be there and I had a to learn about this genre.  I also managed to squeak in just in time to join a critique group on Friday night and, serendipitously, Ms. Snyder was on my critique panel.  You were only allowed to submit the first page, and I was the 2nd author up.  I thought I did pretty well.  Not sure it was even my best submission, but it felt good to know that I have a hook, it’s a good start, and that my love of language was obvious.  I met a few other writers at the mixer, but was dumb enough not to stay overnight since it was close to home. I won’t do that next year!

Another author, Juilene Osborne-McKnight who writes historical fiction, was also there.  This is another genre I love and am considering writing, but I figured I’d best stick to fantasy this  year. She gave the keynote address.  On that, I CANNOT say enough. She literally transported me back to my childhood, the sweet spot of it, and no one has ever done that to me before.   I went up to her afterwards since she teaches at one of the local colleges.  I have to email her when I get a moment, since she gave me her address.

All in all, I learned a lot.  I will definitely go next year, and most likely, I’ll join the writer’s group that hosted it as well.  I was told by one person that I had “Talent”, that is, not just “I learned the skill of writing”, but I have it.  I believe it, too, well, honestly, I always have.

Things I learned:

• Agent Panel: self- promotion by an author does not make a difference in bringing in the really big numbers. Hm.  I don’t think these agents liked self-promotion, like I’ve been learning, but we’ll see. Also, the publishing market is changing with the advent of audio books and ebooks, but not as quickly as one might think.
• World Building: there was a lot here, like remember to think about your target reader as you build your world.   Great tips on where to get accurate data.  My favorite? Children’s historical books. Going to pick some up.
• Revisions: this was a jam packed session. The author was funny and spoke really fast! I have a whole notebook full of little tips on deep-down line editing.
• Workshop on Genre Crossing: more and more authors are doing it, and it’s less taboo now. We’ve got to make a living I guess.
• Fantasy chat: my novel DEFINITELY could be YA. Whoa!  Hadn’t considered that! Word count for YA is 75,000.  Ms. Snyder told us her publishers told her to drop her novels to 100K (fantasy is usually 110-120K, I believe)  I’m saying “woohoo!” to this because YA Fantasy is hot right now.
• I am a story teller.  I want and need to study my craft more, as in literature, myths, archetypes.

Final reveal?  I’m not sure I can name my genre, I’m not sure pigeon-holing is as valuable as it once was.  But I do now know that what I love in literature and want to write is literary fiction with fabalistic devices, but not too many.  I still think of The Time Traveller’s Wife when I write that, more than Isabelle Allende. I could be wrong.

Ok, wonderful weekend.  Wiped out from it all, but feeling SO GOOD.

I have a lot of tabs open and the only way for me to organize them properly is to post them.  Ya know, so I can review later.  Here they go:

Literary Agents:

• Rants & Ramblings on Life as a Literary Agent: Word Counts
• Nathan Bransford: 10 Commandments for the Happy Writer

Editors:

• Editor Unleashed: How to Build Your Twitter Cred and Write It Forward

Freelance Writing:

• Renegade Writer Blog: Adding Value
• Writer’s Resources Blog

Creative Writing:

• Miss Snark’s First Victiim 

Marketing for Writers:

• Marketing Articles 

Groups:

• WOW! Women On Writing
  
• Writers & Readers of Distinctive Fiction

Writers:

• Jennifer Roach: How to Critique fiction without crushing
• Jenn Hollowell
• The Urban Muse: 5 Excuses that undermine writing success
• Annette Fix

Tools

• WikiMatrix: open source wikis 

Enjoy.

It occurred to me last night as I labored through a wedding scene in my novel that I am NOT actually revising my novel.  I’m still in the process of writing it.

At a start of 63K words, and perhaps 15+ typed double spaced pages already cut, plus maybe the same amount hand-written added, I’m still 40K shy of high fantasy typical genre.  I have LOTS of subplots I need to work out, I have to change POV, and I have to have a secondary view from the antagonist’s POV.  Arg.

Even some of what I’ve already gone over need more work, much more.

All in all, though, I feel better.  A final edit should not take me 3 months, so it make more sense that it’s still not completely developed.  Plotted, mainly, yes, but supporting characters need more flesh and the protagonist’s journey needs to be longer as well. With all that, I should be able to get to 110K, maybe by the summer.

Sigh. God help me. And I want it to be literary.  Hm, is that suicidal??

Ok, first my apologies in blogging in 2 weeks; seriously, I don’t know where the time goes.  Much of it to ficiton writing, though, and that’s a good thing.

Secondly, my latest issue of P&W arrived, and I was indulging in it the other day.  There is an aticle about Cuban American author Achy Obejas, which includes an excerpt from “Ruins”.

It was WONDERFUL.

That got me back to: why am I writing high fantasy? Shouldn’t I be writing literary fiction?

In bed this week, I thought of my literary history, which I think began when I read “A Wrinkle in Time“. As I look back the books I really remember are “Stranger in a Strange Land”, “Roadmaps”, the Ray Bradbury collection, and the Douglas Adams collection, all read before I went through my Stephen King and Anne Rice phases, King later replaced by early Clive Barker.  And of course, Jack Finney’s time travel books.  Yea, there’s a lot of scifi that I read, but in high school I loved “Siddhartha” and Shakespeare, so my literary tastes were also refined early on.

My point is, what I really want to write is always literary, but my mind is inspired to stories by the fantastical.  And the SF/F audience is not the same as a literary audience.  So I’m not sure where to go. My non-fantastical story ideas are dull and dry, and my fantasy is not conducive to my more natural literary voice (or at least, I can’t quite get it there, as the elements of fanstasy seem to steal from the element of literary devices).

Augh. I need some schooling, or a tutor or master I can follow, or something.  Ideas?

I have a confession to make.  The great, awesome, wow-I’m-really-into-it fantasy novel I’m writing?

It’s written in first person.

OK, OK, before you start throwing shoes at me, you have to understand TWO things about me:

1. I LOVE LOVE LOVE books in first person.  Really.  Maybe that’s why I’m so fussy about books, it’s tough to get 1st person right.

2. Somewhere along the way, I was taught that you should ONLY EVER WRITE from one person’s POV.  Ever.  Or you’ll burn in hell, or drown in a soggy slush pile.

Ever.

This is an extraordinarily difficult feat while writing fantasy, by the way.

This week, I started reading George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones
.  It’s really extraordinary how he worldbuilds, just flawless and easy to get without being “simplistic”.  I have in my novel been struggling with the villian.  I’ve given her an amazing backstory that really brings out her dimensionality.  When I write her, though, she’s as flat as a sand dollar (sorry, daughter brought home another fish book from school).

Last night it occured to me this could all be solved with POV and 3rd person perspective.

OH CRAP.

Not only that, but a buncha little “can’t quite figure out how she’d know THAT” of things would be resolved.  You have the stationery court characters, which I’d anchor, probably to her mother, and then you have the exiled jouneying princess.  It could be done.  It would be good.  Hm…  And Firlona would get redeemed as we’d learn EXACTLY why she has so much hatred without the hearsay.

SIGH. today I’m tired just thinking about it…