Tag Archives: Writing

Braver than you think?

Posted in Writing by

In an exchange with a writer friend the other day, we questioned why someone who lacks self-confidence would choose to enter an industry typically NOT conducive to building self-esteem. Publishing is the industry in question. As she pointed out published writers are asking to be judged. We set ourselves up to be rejected. So why do we risk that?

braveIs it because we want to become rich and famous? I think not. Most of us are savvy enough to know that’s a needle-in-the-bookstack wish. Is it because we believe our work will save the world? If you write fiction, probably not. Maybe we just want to prove we can do it—to friend or foe or even ourselves.

But I think most of us who share our writing publicly are seeking acceptance. We hope to reach others who appreciate our efforts to tell a story. We hope to communicate. We risk rejection to find acceptance. There’s no other way to do it. You can’t succeed without risking failure.

So, though many of us may not seem to be, we’re braver than you think.

elle

Oh my, how you’ve grown!

Posted in Editing, My Books, Writing by

That post title refers to the length of my novel An Illusion of Trust. My target goal of 80,000 words may seem conservative to some of you, but at the time I set it, I’d struggled to get the first 60,000 down. But after I got feedback from my alpha reader, the words started flowing. With additional input from beta readers the book grew more. The manuscript that’s with my copy editor now stands at almost 92,000 words, which is 4,000 more than its prequel, The Brevity of Roses.

paperwhiteSpeaking of editing, I’ve mentioned before that one of the ways I edit is by reading my manuscript on my Kindle. But because I had the old-style button keyboard model I didn’t actually do mark-up on the Kindle. Not so this time around. One of the Christmas presents my family gave me this year was a Kindle Paperwhite, which has a touchscreen that makes highlighting and notation much easier.

I hope I’m not the only writer who gets a little sick of reading their book by the time it’s ready to publish. I struggle with impatience, and it doesn’t help that the question of what I’ll write next starts nagging me long before I finish with the work at hand. Yes, I get distracted by that next shiny thing. In this case, it’s two shiny things, so I’ll have to decide which should come first.

Anyway, I apologize for being so terrible at estimating the time I need to finish something. I thought I’d have An Illusion of Trust polished before Christmas, and then I thought surely by the end of January. Now we’re almost a week into February and it still doesn’t have that final gleaming coat. But it’s close—oh, so close.

May I suggest you subscribe to my newsletter so you’ll get first look at the cover and learn about special promotions and giveaways?

elle

Might as well face it, I’m addicted to …

Posted in Editing, Punctuation, Writing by

Commas! There. I said it. I’m a comma addict. I love them. They’re beautiful little things that add pause and sense and order to sentences—if you know how to use them correctly. Apparently, my lack of education is appalling.

commaYou’re probably aware of this quote:

“I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.” — Oscar Wilde

Well, it wasn’t quite that bad, but after a few hours of inserting, deleting, and sometimes re-inserting commas on one recent editing day, I decided to get smart and refresh my knowledge of comma usage rules. I say refresh because I thought I’d learned all the rules at one point. Not so.

What I discovered is that I use commas where they seem appropriate to me, but sometimes often I do so in ignorance. It’s not entirely my fault. I was taught the bogus rules of always using a comma before but and never using one before because. But other rules I’ve been breaking, I imagine some teacher tried to pound into my thick skull at one time.

I’m in luck. Recently, one of my sons bought me a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style, so I am currently experimenting to see if an old dog can learn new comma tricks. I started with nearly 5,100 commas in my 91,000+ word manuscript. I’m re-evaluating each one. That’s not quite as tedious as it sounds. So far, this exercise has resulted in many improved sentences in ways other than comma use. Even my readers who don’t care a whit about commas will appreciate that.

Here’s a link to the excellent punctuation section of the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL).

elle

What if it’s the key to everything?

Posted in Dream, Editing, My Books, Writing by

Like all writers, I jot down my brilliant thoughts when and wherever they come to me. Okay … I jot down my not-so-brilliant thoughts too. I’ve written these thoughts, of whatever degree, on scraps of paper, napkins, page margins, magazine subscriptions cards, even a mirror. I’ve yet to buy one of those nifty waterproof notepads for the shower, but I do keep a notepad in the drawer of my bedside table.

note

Unless this is your first visit to this blog, you probably know I’m in the final stages of editing my next novel, An Illusion of Trust. The task has become so intense that I also edit—symbolically or literally—in my dreams almost every night. It’s not restful, but I think my nocturnal editing has produced a good idea or two subconsciously. It’s also produced one bit of maddening frustration.

Remember that notepad beside my bed? Well, I woke from one of those editing dreams the other night and got up to use the bathroom. Fully awake, I thought about what I’d been dreaming and when I got back to my bed, in the dark, I pulled out that note pad and wrote a note to myself.

See the photo in this post? You can read “description” in the second line, right? Any clue what the first line says? Well, since I’m a little bit familiar with my chicken scratching, I think the second word is “thing”. But I’ve looked at the first word for three days now and I still can’t figure it out. And even if I read the note it as “blah-blah thing description”, I can’t imagine what I meant. Then again, maybe the two lines are separate notes. Aaarrgh!

So, I’m haunted. Obviously, I thought this was important at the time I wrote it. What if it’s the key to a brilliant edit? What if that edit would pull every element in the book together? What if the future of my writing depends on this notation? I’m not sure I can move past this.

How will I prevent the recurrence of such a horror? Any future middle of the night notations will be made in the notes app on my iPhone!

BTW: If you decipher that first word, let me know and I’ll send you a signed copy of Illusion after it’s published.

elle

Why Every Story I Write Will Be the Same

Posted in Fiction, My Books, Novel, Theme, Writing by

I’m getting very close to having An Illusion of Trust ready for publication. I expect to send the manuscript to my copy editor next week. I think it’s pretty clean already, so I don’t anticipate many changes. Soon it will be ready for formatting—well, there’s the matter of a cover too. I’m on the third design now, but I think this is going to be the one.

hugAnyway, I’ve been thinking about how to describe this book. I have an official description on the fledgling book page, and that tells you, in general, what happens, but what it’s about is more than that. What it’s about is what everything I write is about—love. And I don’t necessarily mean romantic love. Only some of my novels and stories contain those sorts of relationships, but all of them are about the universal human search for acceptance, the essence of love.

When it comes to pitching my novels, I always think how much easier it would be if I wrote mysteries, or thrillers, or horror, or fantasy—anything easier to describe than mine. I write about people. I’ve always thought that if I’d gone to college I would have majored in sociology in some form. I’m curious about the form and function of human society.

Those who know me in real life would probably find that statement curious, hilarious even, since I’m not particularly sociable. I’m just more at ease observing than participating. Possibly many writers are the same. But everyone wants to be accepted. We all search for our place where we feel loved and safe, where we belong, where we matter. And always that search begins within. In that sense every story I write will be the same.

The trick is to make those stories fascinating.

elle

It’s a good thing I don’t write thrillers!

Posted in Feedback, Fiction, Revision, Writing by

Recently, a lovely writer friend, acting as my omega reader, suggested I increase the tension in the last third of my next book, An Illusion of Trust. That could only make it a better book, right? She even explained further what she meant by that. Okay, I thought, no problem.

Yeah, right.

tensionNow I have 100 pages of manuscript daring me to revise them. I’m not good with tension. I don’t read (or watch) many thrillers because I can’t stand the tension. Even in non-thriller fiction, I’m often tempted to peek ahead because I can’t take waiting to see how things work out. So writing tension does not come easy for me.

One of my first beta readers for this book, suggested I prolong the mystery a bit in one scene. Obviously, I tend to reveal too quickly. My omega reader commented that I do a good job of building tension and then releasing it just a bit in the first two-thirds of Illusion, so it would seem I just need to leave out the release in the last third. Why is that so hard?

Of course—as usual—I’m over-thinking this task. I just need to leave a few points unresolved until later in the story. I might only need to voice more of my main character’s thoughts a little more, to show that uncertainty still exists. Yes.

So …

Okay.

Yeah.

Any minute now …