Dropping By for a Second...

Hi everyone, just dropping by with another ultra quick update. Things have been nuts here, between Son and I both having colds (he got over his, I'm still feeling horrid), homework and other school related stuff, going out with friends, and me trying to get another story on the go.

Last week, D and I went to Mahone Bay, and we did some walking and shopping, notably in two shops she adores and that I adore now too. Tea isn't my normal hot drink but I do like it and I admit I kind of splurged on a large bag of cinnamon tea. It's good, or I think it is, I can't taste much with my senses dulled due to this *f-bomb* cold.

We also popped down to our favorite place to purchase stones and other related items... I kinda went nuts in there and got a gorgeous pair of dreamcatcher style rawhide earrings and a few other goodies.

And yes, we discussed what direction I'm taking with my writing. It's not one that D was recommending... I was kind of expecting her to whomp me in the arse a few times, but she is leaving me alone on one condition: I do it to my genre's standards but in my style, and my style only.

This idea was my original idea, so it's "legal" to use as a story, in all aspects for me as an aspiring author. I spent my writing time on Wednesday doing detailed character bios/profiles - from their physical appearance right down to the jewelery they wear - and jotting ideas down for it as they came to me.

I'm still in the early stages of that one, although I am close to getting its "hook" - the first line that gets the reader interested and keeps them reading to see what happens next.

Not saying what idea it is or anything else right now. That's between me, my readers/editors and my writing pals. Heck I'm not sure if it's going to stick or not, so I'm not saying anything publicly. I don't want to jinx myself.

I'm not sure if this one is going to work out or not... We'll just have to see. *wink*

Write and Learn: The Lessons I've Learned as an Aspiring Author

As a currently unpublished author with two finished manuscripts under my belt (one is fully edited and refined, the other is still being proofed, edited and worked upon), I can say there are a lot of things I’ve learned over the years, about myself and my writing. For a long time, I thought that all one had to do was put pen to paper (or in modern times, fingers to keyboard on a typewriter or in a word processing application) and just go with it.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the way it works. You have to do a lot of things even before you put pen to paper or start typing away in your word processor, and after that. Yes, writing is a joy for a lot of us out there, and in some cases (like mine) as vital to life as breathing, but anyone who wants to write should keep in mind that although writing is the easiest part of the process, there are a few things they have to keep in mind as they try to break into the world of creating a story.

Here are some things I’ve learned over the last few years, after various attempts at writing several different ideas, and finally succeeding in getting two manuscripts finished. Please keep in mind that these are the lessons I learned, and everyone’s experience may be different...

1)      Keep something handy, like a pen/pencil and paper, or even a cell phone with a memos section in it, so you can jot down ideas when they hit you so you don’t forget them. I also have an “ideas” file for each story in my word processor and will copy the ideas into that, or jot them down in that file when I’m at the computer. I do this so things are all in one spot, and I mark them off with “highlighter” as they are written up or in another color if I scrap them.

2)      Write up a general outline, that way you have a direction to go with the story. It’s not set in “stone”, and can be changed if the story happens to evolve and morph into something else. It may only be three points: Why the characters and the story is happening, the climax and how it ends. Fiction is fluid after all, and things can change in your story in a heartbeat.

3)      WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW. Say if you’re writing a mystery set in Ohio for example, make sure you know enough about the area it’s set in, the culture, the landscape, and everything else.

4)      If you do not know something, RESEARCH IT. I have spent countless hours online researching different things, talking to people about their area/town/village, driving around and getting photos, and other things to make sure I had all of the facts right so I wouldn’t land in trouble with my (hopefully) future audience and those who live in the areas mentioned in my books. I have read several books set in my province or country that had no facts right at all, and I found it very annoying, so I do my best to make sure I have my facts straight, that way no reader or fellow author can say I “had it wrong all along”.

5)      If you’re writing something like science fiction, you have to create everything, from the world its set on (or high tech stuff if its set on Earth in the distant future), to its technology, and everything else in between. Keep things set in different files or binders, etc, and keep checking those to make sure you’re on track, and have everything consistent.

6)      Keep things consistent. If you say someone has blue eyes, don’t say their eyes are brown later unless you state they’re wearing colored contacts for example. What I do is keep detailed character descriptions in a special file/document for them, from their looks to their personality, sometimes even to the way they talk and what kind of accent they have, and if they speak more than one language. This is so I don’t get yelled at for mixing things up.

7)      Keep a timeline, and write major events in order of the time they happen into it, sometimes minor ones if you wish. What is the time frame from the day your story starts until it ends? Do you need a backstory? Write it down in the timeline. What happens in between? Jot it all down in point form and it can be added to or have things removed as the story progresses and evolves. It’s not set in stone, it’s just a general guide like an outline, to keep you focused and remember key events.

8)      Sometimes you just have to write by the seat of your pants... In a manner of speaking. If an idea hits you for the part you’re working on that seems like it may work, go with it!

9)      Rewrites are a pain in the neck, but they are a necessary evil and have to be done sometimes. I can’t recall the amount of rewrites I have done on various parts of my first two manuscripts. Sometimes an idea will hit me that I’ll go with, but when I reread it later on, I realize it’s not right for the story, and I wind up scrapping it and putting in something else.

10)   Edit, edit, edit, and edit some more! Go over everything you have in the story, to make sure you have everything consistent and the grammar is dead on. Like rewrites, editing your work is a necessary evil, but if you want to be published at some point in the future, you have to edit your work a number of times even in first or rough draft. Most publishers prefer almost perfect final drafts of a story/manuscript in a submission, and the closer to perfection it is with its grammar, consistency, and everything else, the better.

11)   Have at least one beta reader. Choose a trusted friend or another writer who knows what to look for with inconsistencies, missing words, grammar and other things you may miss when you’re editing the work yourself. It’s a way to make sure your work is even more perfect for a publisher’s eyes, or the public if you choose to self publish.

12)   Brainstorm! Even if you only do it with yourself, bounce around different ideas to see what would work and what won’t. If you want to brainstorm with a trusted friend, do so. You never know what they’ll come up with that will work for your stories, whether it’s a full length novel or even a short story. I have several trusted friends who shot ideas at me... Some were not right for my genre or my style, but others were, and once I could see the scenes in my head, I ran with them!

13)  Be prepared to take honest criticism, good and bad. Others who read your work may like it, and some may not, so don’t get upset if someone says they don’t like your work or if they give you pointers on how you can improve your writing and style. Just because you may like it and think it’s great doesn’t mean others will automatically think you have the best story ever on your hands. Consider everything that was said, take a good long look at your work and see if you can see what they see, and then try to fix it if it’s a grammatical error or you have inconsistencies, and so on. Keep in mind that everyone has different opinions and although some may think it’s great, others will not. Be gracious, do not get mad at them, and thank them for taking the time to read your work and share their opinion of it instead of blowing your stack and getting nasty at them for giving their opinion. They didn’t have to read it, so be nice and at least take what they say under consideration for the future.

14)   Try to be objective when you’re reading your work. Yes, you may love the story and its characters, but sometimes taking a step back to see what works and what doesn’t in the story is a big help. Look at it as if you were reading someone else’s work and editing it, that way you can pick up anything you’ve missed without getting upset or frustrated.

15)   Don’t automatically think you have a best seller on your hands. Not everyone is as lucky or has a big fan base as others out there. Just because someone like E.L. James hit the best seller list with her first book and subsequent series doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to also. Sometimes it takes years and several books to finally get the brass ring (on the best seller list), and some authors never hit the best seller list even with a huge fanbase and great reviews.

16)   Write a story you’d like to read. Say you would love to read a story on the history of your town, whether it’s factual or a fictional story with historical facts added in. Do your research and write it up!

17)   Never forget to take breaks from writing once in a while. This is to make sure you don’t burn yourself out and to remind you that real life does happen once in a while. I sometimes forget this piece of advice, but thankfully, my husband, son, and others hit me with it once in a while so I don’t get sick. They remind me to eat, to sleep, and to pull my brain out of my “little world” and bring me back to the real world. Take a nap, watch some TV (if you have one), spend some time with a friend or a loved one and just take a breather from it every now and then.

18)   Never give up on yourself. Writing may not be for everyone, but if you really want to be published at some point, or just write for your own enjoyment, don’t give up on it and push it away because you’re frustrated due to a bit of writer’s block or feel like it’s starting to overwhelm you. Stay focused, keep that determination, and most of all, believe you can do it!

19)   If you hit a snag in one spot and feel like you can’t write anything for it, work on another part of it. I have done this countless times, and some days, I jump from one area to another of a story – or in some cases, two or three works in progress – until I find an area that “clicks” and I can work on it. Yes, it is frustrating to have this happen, but sometimes things don’t always fall into place in the way you want it. Relax, take a deep breath and remember that the pyramids were not built in a single day. Even if you are on a deadline, sometimes working on a different part of the story will get the juices flowing again, and it will help you think about how you want things to progress in all areas of your story.

20)   Set parameters for what you’re writing about, yet allow yourself a lot of freedom to write what you want to write and allow your style to shine through. If you don’t set certain limits, you’re going to get off track of the story, but you also have to have some freedom to write ideas that pop into your head without warning. It’s a fine line to walk sometimes, and may require a number of rewrites and changing things around, but it’s worth it in the end.

21)   Be prepared for rejections. It’s a fact of life for any author. Even greats like Stephen King got at least one rejection before they hit the big time, so keep that in mind if you send your work to a publisher. Getting rejected is not a pleasant experience, and it is heartbreaking, but don’t give up on getting your work out there somehow. If all else fails, there are plenty of places that allow authors to self publish, from traditional books to e-books. Some places don’t charge anything to publish through them, others require either a small fee or a large one, and some have tiers for their self published authors – from free for an e-book, to a few thousand dollars for the most complete package. Do your research, and pick the right one for you.

22)   Set aside time to write, even if it’s only twenty minutes a day, or an hour a week. It will keep the story in your mind and keep the juices flowing. So what if you write that day is garbage? You wrote something and even if you have to toss it or rewrite it, it’s still progress.

23)   One sentence is still progress. Sometimes we do get flustered when our creativity isn’t at its peak, but even adding a word or a sentence, or a paragraph here and there is progress of some type. So what if it’s going slowly? It’s still writing and moving along!

24)   Set a reasonable deadline for yourself to finish the story, even if it’s five or six years into the future. This is so you’re not feeling pressure to get it done NOW, and in case things like real life push the writing on the back burner. I generally allow at least three to five years for a story to be completed nowadays, because I have had real life and other things invade on my writing or blocked my creativity for a while. If you finish the story long before the deadline you have set, even better, but do not force yourself to finish it three years before it for example. Work along at your pace and hopefully you will make that deadline even if real life gets in the way.

25)   If a story isn’t working at all for you, or you lost the idea for it in your mind, KEEP what you have written so far. You never know when it’ll pop back into your mind or if ideas you had for it will work for something else. Even if you never finish it, keep it as a reminder of how far you’ve come and learned in the time since you started that idea.

26)   Backup, backup, backup! Don’t keep it all in your computer if you write via a word processor, have something like an external drive or a memory stick to keep the most recent version of it safe in a backup file, or store it on a memory stick or external drive of some kind if you don’t want to keep it on the hard drive. You never know when something like a system wide computer failure, a virus or something else will wreck your work if you use a computer like I do. Backup on something you can easily transfer the story onto the hard drive again, even if it is on a writeable CD. I learned this lesson the hard way with the first short story I wrote as an adult... It’s on my Pentium system, which has only a CD player and floppy drive and can’t get it off of there unless I print it out and retype it character by character onto my new system, which doesn’t have a floppy drive at all. I had to retire my Vista system a couple of months ago, and I’m so glad I was using memory sticks and an external drive to backup my work because I would have lost BOTH manuscripts if I hadn’t. Thankfully both are safe on various memory sticks and my external drive because I am very diligent about backing up everything, from my research to the character descriptions to the manuscripts – and parts to be spliced in later on – almost every single day. Do it each time you add something or edit, because it may save you a lot of heartbreak in the end.

27)   If you think something is “too graphic” for your intended audience, it probably is. Either tone it down or do a fade out so the reader’s imagination can take over.

28)   Be detailed, but not too detailed. Do not bore the reader with a ten page description of a boat or how pretty the snow is during the wintertime. Learn to balance things between describing something in detail to the nth degree, but in order for the reader to picture something in their mind, some detail is needed. It’s a fine line to walk sometimes, but it can be done!

I know it’s a long list, but I’ve learned so much, and am still learning as I go along. I hope this helps an author out there, whether they’re starting out or have been in the business for a very long time. It’s been a long road to get where I am today, after countless failures to complete one single story for so many years... When I finally finished my first double length novel, it was like nothing I had ever felt before, a triumph I still can’t believe has happened, and sometimes I have to remind myself that I not only did it once, I did it twice, and I hope to do it again.

Blessed are all the creative types, from artists like my Peapod, to authors like myself... 

Here We Go Again....

It's official:

I now have a folder set up and the idea I got thanks to my mentor and another writing friend/fellow author has been dubbed "Untitled 9". I set up the folder this evening and now have everything I have so far added to it.

I have a feeling of deja vu, probably because a similar thing happened to me last year about this time... Anyone who has been following my blog over the last eighteen months or so will note that although I finished "No Regrets" draft one on October 19, 2012, I had the idea for Book 2 less than a month later. Yeah, it feels exactly like things did last year when I first started jotting down ideas for what was dubbed "Untitled 8" back then and what turned into Book 2 over time.

However, unlike last year, I'm starting from scratch this time, so in that way, it feels like I did when I first started developing ideas for the characters in "No Regrets" and where things took place, etc. This one is still in its embryonic stages and although I have a few ideas for various things and part of a scene somewhat "gelled" in the brain, I have a lot of things to figure out, like how to start off Chapter One for starters. Things may be slower with getting this idea off the ground for that very reason, but I'm sure with a lot of hard work, blood, sweat and tears amongst a lot of researching, days of wanting to bash my head against the wall, turning the air blue in here thanks to a lot of "choice words" and so many other things that make up being an author, I will get things moving in this one at some point, especially once Book 2 fades from the mind a lot more and the writing batteries come back up from being so drained.

It feels odd working on something fresh, brand new and unknown, but I hope that feeling goes away very soon and I'm able to get into it like I did with my first two books. Switching gears to a new story with an entire new cast of characters may seem daunting at first, and it is hard to do it sometimes, but I am determined to get moving forward with my writing again, even if it takes me into the new year to get things going with this new idea or another one. It took me three entire months to get into the groove of Book 2, and I'm not expecting much to happen other than the occasional idea popping into my brain before that time period is up this time around. 

I've started the Ideas for Scenes file for this one and will be starting a rough timeline tomorrow. I already know what will happen overall in the story, but am not sure on a few things... Like how the main characters wind up in their situations at the start of the book for example, and who the antagonists are/will be, and so on. Things will come to me over time, as the story is slowly revealed to me in my mind. More questions are in my head right now... Like how much time passes between the first word of the first page to the final word on the last page of it? How long is it before the leading couple get involved?... And so many others are starting to bounce around in there.

The questions are good things. They keep me thinking and wondering how a new story will unfold, and also keep me focused on finally seeing its full picture in time. Right now, it's sort of like looking up at the night sky, and only seeing one or two stars peeking through a cloud cover.... Slowly over a few hours, the rest of the constellation and later on, the rest of the stars are revealed to you. That is the best way I can describe something like starting a brand new story from scratch for anyone who hasn't tried it, or wants to try writing something, even a short story. 

I just hope the questions do not stop for this one, and I get sucked into it like I did with the previous two. With a little luck, I will be back at it sometime soon, and back to driving my poor husband, son and mentor nuts with seeing me being spaced out all of the time because my mind is so focused on the new project.

Have a great night everyone. 

Slowly Changing the Gears...

It's been a full week since Book 2 went into stasis, and so far, so good. I'm getting urges to work on it, but at the same time, I'm able to stay away from it for now. Yes, it's hard to do sometimes, but so far, I'm managing and although there are some days I have to hand the computer over to someone else, it's not as bad as what it was last year after I put "No Regrets" into stasis for the first time.

This last week has been interesting to say the least. My husband was working all evening shifts - minus this weekend, where he was working two day shifts - so I haven't had any days that I was home alone all day and wanted to write. Friday will be the big test for me, because I'll be home alone all day that day, but thanks to a few things popping up here and there, I may not be all that crazy that day.

You see, my beloved mentor shot an idea at me for a possible storyline, and I copied it and pasted it into an "Ideas" file, just in case. I'm not going to say what it is publicly, y'all know how I tend to be closed mouthed about my stories and their plots, but it's a good idea that has merit and it is within the "romance with a twist" genre I write in. I was mulling over the idea for a bit, thought about modifying it a little bit and set it aside while I relaxed and tried to keep sane from not having anything to do with the writing open on my taskbar.

Over the weekend, I said something about not feeling great, and of course, my writing buddies chimed in with their support and friendship, with a few reminders I'll be okay (that's normal, we support each other fully in all aspects of our lives, not just writing!), and one of them said to message them. I did, and thanks to this friend, I started having quite a few questions bouncing around, and he gave me a few extra to think about.

Thanks to him and my mentor, I *may* have a new idea for a future manuscript. What it consists of is their ideas combined together into one, with a few modifications. There is a huge twist to it, one that hit me while I was talking to both of them, and it's going to work, if I can do it just right. 

Again, I'm keeping the mouth shut on what it is publicly, just like I didn't share any of the storylines from "No Regrets" and "Book 2" while I was writing them. I don't even know if this new idea will turn into anything or not at this point, it's very early in its conception stages, and I'm not sure what the main characters look like, let alone their personalities, their careers, or anything else for that matter. All I have right now is the combined ideas from my two friends, with the big twist, where in Canada the story will be set, and the leading characters' first names. That's it. 

I know, it's not much, but at least I have more today than I did last week, so it is progress of a sort. Yes, I am looking at the bright side of this, I'm still the eternal optimist, and it's times like this that I am grateful that I'm so sunny-natured. I swear that's the only thing that keeps me going some days, that and my son and husband.

So today, and possibly the rest of the week, I plan on jotting down ideas and doing research on everything I have so far for the new idea. I'm not classifying it as anything like "untitled 9" or "book 3" yet, because I'm not sure how far it's going to go, or even if it's going to make liftoff right now. It's something I hope to turn into another book in time, and there may be a book or two in between today and this one getting off the ground for all I know at this point. We'll just have to see how things go with this one, and future ideas.

On another topic, I'd like to thank everyone who commented or sent me anniversary wishes yesterday and today. Yesterday, my husband and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary, and the day was extra special thanks to our family and friends sending us congratulations and well wishes.

Before I close, I would also like to remind everyone that although today is Remembrance Day here in Canada, remember our veterans and our allied forces year round instead of only one day of the year. Our world would be a much different place if they hadn't protected our freedom, after all.

"Highway of Heroes" by the Trews...