TGIF!

Welcome to the final weekend in July. This officially kicks off my massive and continuing panic attacks about the beginning of school and how little I've prepared for it. It also reminds me of how few days I have left to wake up at a reasonable time, linger over multiple cups of coffee while listening to the quiet and the chirping of birds while I sit on my patio and enjoy the morning. I've always hated the end of summer. It feels a little bit like death to me. I haven't met any of the goals I had set for myself this summer. Haven't even come close. I'm hoping my state of paralysis changes for the better soon, and that as I get into the start and swing of the year, I can once again string together coherent sentences and write.

How about you? How do you feel about the impending end of summer?

What summer?

Where has the summer gone? As a teacher, I have always approached August with little less than a panic attack. There’s so much to do. Lesson plans, opening your classroom, in-service days, professional training, slideshows to make, teacher pages and blackboard classes to update, direction sheets and work sheets to be created and copied. The list is never-ending. And teachers operate on a different calendar than others. This is the beginning of our year, and so much rides on it. If I’ve prepped and worked all summer, I can start the year more easily, and it unfolds much less stressfully. If I haven’t had the time or the chance to do all that prep, the year gets off to a rocky start and goes downhill quickly from there. I’m hoping to get it all together during August, so we’ll see.

Is writing for you the same? Tons of prep and then a fairly easy delivery of your writing? Or do you do it the other way? Less prep, more pantsing? I’ve been working on transitioning to some hybrid approach that I’m still not sure is a good thing. How about you?

TGIF!

TGIF! Sorry to be so late, but it’s been a long, difficult week. All told, it’s been a brutal few months, and I’m feeling more than a bit distracted. But I did find this really interesting post over at Plot Whisperer in celebration of pantsers. Click here to check out the role of cause and effect as a really great strategy for writers of all kinds and tell me: Do you write this way?

Decisions, decisions

If you’re like me, you periodically undergo a conscience of crisis. Well, at least one at a time, if they’re well-behaved. The one I’m talking about is the question of writing the story that is in you burning bright and wanting to get out, and writing the story for the market, the one you know will find an agent, audience, and sell. I have two novel WIPs stalled in progress because I can’t even figure out what genre they would fit into and I’m convinced no one will want to read them. On the other hand, I know I could write something in a genre I have no real interest in and have that move.

Elizabeth Spann Craig from Mystery Writing is Murder has a guest post about this very thing over at Alan Orloff’s A Million Blogging Monkeys. Check it out here and tell me: Do you write for the market or yourself?

I Write Like

I’ve seen this site I Write Like several places around the blogosphere and thought I’d give it a try. Click on the link, copy and paste a section of your writing into the special box and some techno-magic analyzes your words and tells you who you write like. I copied and pasted three different samples of stuff I’ve written and came up with the following responses: I write like James Joyce in one of them, like Chuck Palahniuk in another one, and Margaret Atwood in the last one. I think that’s pretty interesting company.

Go ahead and give it a try. Who do you write like?

Road Map

James Scott Bell over at The Kill Zone has a great post here on what you need to do with your manuscript to make it the best it can be before you submit. They’re good, straightforward suggestions from somebody who knows what he’s talking about, and I was pretty pleased to see that most of the suggestions are ones I follow. You’d think I’d be a whole lot happier with my work.

Anyway, check it out and tell me: What do you think of the suggestions? Which ones do you regularly follow? Do you have any other suggestions?

Do you recycle?

Writers write. A lot. And a lot of those words don’t end up getting used in final scenes. They’re locked up in stories and scenes and first drafts that never see the light of day. They’re cut or put away and forgotten. And a while ago Copyblogger had an interesting post on recycling creative content that made me think.

Over the period of about the last ten years, I’ve written a lot of stories set in the same universe about the same characters. Short things, middle length things, long things. And I never noticed that with some connective tissue put in between them and some minor changes in POV and such, a lot of those things could be reworked into a larger piece like maybe a novella/novel.

Have you ever done that? Reworked your own work into something else?

Short v. Long

As I wrestle with the novella/maybe/wannabe novel, I’ve been thinking a lot about writing style. I’ve said before how long and how hard I’ve worked to cut down on my verbiage, to pare down my writing to the essential words and to make those words work in a very spare writing garden. But I also find that I like reading lush description when that’s done right and well and isn’t simply the result of spraying words for filler.

That carries over to first drafts as well. Write It Sideways has an interesting post on the pros and cons of writing short v. long first drafts here. Check it out and tell me: How do you write your first drafts? Short or long? And is that style reflected in your final draft? Or are you a universe away from where you started after rounds of revisions?

Celebrate Monday and a question or two

Happy Monday everybody. I hope you all had a great weekend. It’s time once again as we start a new week to celebrate ourselves. Tell us about something good that happened to you. Something that made you happy. Something that you did that made you feel good.

It doesn’t have to be big news or anything earth shattering. Small is good, too.

I’m about one scene from completing a 35,000 word novella. I thought about trying to work it up to 80-85,000 words and novel status, but I think I kind of like it just the way it is.

I’m not very familiar with the novella as a form. I know some of my favorite books are novellas, but beyond that, nada. My questions to you are:

Are any of you familiar with or have written novellas? Is there a market for them? Is the submission process the same as for novels? Anything anyone has to offer will be greatly appreciated.

Enough about me. What about you? What’s making you happy and/or going well in your life? Share it with us and celebrate yourselves.

Celebrate Monday

Happy Monday everybody. I missed you all and am thrilled to be back. And it’s time once again to celebrate ourselves. Tell us about something good that happened to you. Something that made you happy. Something that you did that made you feel good.

It doesn’t have to be big news or anything earth shattering. Small is good, too.

I’ll go first. My foot is healing and I’m up walking around. And with the time I’ve had to myself even with the surgery and the kids all home, I’ve managed to find the time to work on a novel I started writing bits and pieces of ten years ago. As of now, I have almost 18,000 words for it now, and pretty much everything laid out in my head. I’m hoping to have it ready for my crit group by the end of July so that I can take a look at edits while I’m getting ready for next year during August. It’s different than the novel I thought I’d be working on. I guess it’s genre, but I’m not too sure about these things. So we’ll see.

And speaking of time, given that I was pretty productive with it, I think I’m going to follow a lot of my fellow bloggers in our little corner of the blogosphere, and go to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule. But I'll still try to get around to your blogs regularly. We’ll see how that works.

But enough about me. What about you? What’s making you happy and/or going well in your life? Share it with us and celebrate yourselves.

The really big question

Sometimes they come to me in a dream. Sometimes I wonder what if? Sometimes I see something on TV, or at the movies, or online, or on the street. The voices in my head tell me. If you’re a writer, these are all perfectly acceptable answers to the BIG question: Where do you get your ideas?

Roz over at Nail Your Novel has a great post here about getting story ideas for free. Check it out and tell me: Where do you get your ideas?

Tell me true.

I love dialogue. I love writing it. I love reading it. I love listening to it whether it’s in my classroom, the hallway, on TV, or walking down the streets of NYC. I love the words, the slang, the phrases, the rhythm, the cadence, the whole hidden conversations in our conversations.

I love the variety of purposes dialogue can serve from exploring characterization to describing scenes and characters to giving us information to further the story. And when I write, I always write the dialogue first. If I can’t hear the dialogue in a scene, I can’t write anything else until I can.

Roz over at Nail Your Novel has a great post here on dialogue. Check it out and tell me: How do you feel about dialogue as an element of your story? How do you use it? Do you eavesdrop on people around you? Is it easy for you to hear when you write?

No more words.

There are times, an increasing number of times it seems, when at the end of the day, after talking, and talking, and talking some more to students, parents, administrators, husband, kids, that I have no words left. No voice to speak, no brain cells to rub together for thought, nothing to put fingers to keyboard to write or blog. You're just empty, empty, empty. Burn out, balance, call it what you will, it seems an occupational hazard for bloggers and writers. And it seems to be running rampant through the blogosphere.

Copyblogger has a great post about what you can do when you run out of content, words, knowledge. Check it out and tell me: Has this ever happened to you? Where do you get your inspiration, knowledge, words, content, ideas, whatever you call it, to write and/or blog? What do you do when they don’t come?

Rewind

Summer presents unique opportunities and stresses for me. Every summer I tell myself I’ll take the time to write. And I do. I write curriculum. I design online courses. I attend seminars, take courses, create documents I’ll need for classes along with all the normal running around with loved ones that is normal for this time of year. We all have these kinds of obligations that take precious time. And we all make decisions about how to parcel our time out. I’m in the process of trying to figure out how I’ll find the time and the energy and the brain power to finish my WIP this summer.

And if you look around the blogosphere you’ll see a whole host of others who are trying to deal with the whole time management strain balancing blogging, writing, real life, and the very real issue that the more followers one has the less time one has to comment and maintain the online relationships one had when starting to blog in the first place. Faced with all that and burnout, bloggers are starting to unplug more regularly, for longer periods of time, or in some cases closing their blogs all together. I’m thinking myself of how I’m going to schedule my blogging this summer as well.

Write It Sideways has an interesting post here about the reasons writers should blog. Check it out and then tell me: What are your blogging plans for this summer? In general? What stressors help you decide? Does where you are in your writing journey play a role in your decision? Or are other considerations more important?

Happy together

I’m going to share something with you. For all the years that I have been writing, I’ve never before belonged to a crit group. I’ve had beta readers for years, people I trust to help me make my writing better. And for a long time, that was enough. But I’ve been lucky enough recently to find a home with an online crit group. When I was asked to join, I was just so blown away.

And more than a tad bit worried. I’d never done formal critiques before, am not an English major, and, well, doubted my ability to bring anything worthwhile to the table. And I really didn’t know what to expect or how things worked. I’m happy to say my group members have been incredible. And I’ve learned a lot already just from my time with time.

Write it Sideways has a great post here about the joys and benefits of an online crit group. Check it out and tell me: Do you belong to a crit group? On line or in person? How did you find your group? Is it everything you hoped/wanted it to be?

Soul searching

Poet and critic Rainer Maria Rilke once said: “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself: ‘Must I write?’”

This is one of my favorite quotes about writing. What great quotes about writing (or just great quotes in general) stick with/inspire you?

Is it hot in here?

I have to admit that when I looked at this post/title I thought to myself how could you not love this? I mean, writing like sex? How cool is that? And then I read it and realized I really did love it. What a great way of looking at writing and the process and there are how-to tips included. What could be better than that?

So tell me: Is this what writing feels like for you? Have you tried any of the how-to tips? Do they work for you or do you have better suggestions you’d like to share?

TGIF!

Happy Friday. My brain is fried and I don’t think I’ve had a coherent thought in days. That’s a bad thing for anyone, but for a writer it’s catastrophic. Writers are story tellers and story tellers are creative. What happens when the creativity dries up and there’s no inspiration to be found?

Write to Done has a great post on how to have ideas. Check out their seven steps to creativity and tell me: How do you inspire creativity?

Decisions, decisions, decisions

We all know the pain, frustration, and fear of failure from our own particular writing sins. I can freely admit that I think my biggest writing weakness is plot and story structure. I’ve struggled and worked on these and still am not happy with myself. And in my current WIP, I’m beyond worried that the choices I’ve made doom the novel and like a beached whale, the cumulative effect of those choices and my weaknesses as a writer will crush the story under its own weight.

Write It Sideways has an interesting post on six fiction writing weaknesses and their quick fixes.

Does anyone else feel like this? What do you consider to be your own writing weaknesses? What do you do/have you done to help fix them?

What were you thinking?

Rejection is a part of life, possibly more for writers than some others. It's part and parcel of the process. But for everyone currently being overwhelmed by revisions and queries and critiques and anything else that carries the sting/possible sting of rejection, Jill Corcoran has an interesting post on famous authors and their famous/rude rejections.

How do you handle rejection/the fear of rejection?