Closing this blog

I have decided to combine this blog with my main one - you can see my writing posts now over at http://kezs-blog.blogspot.com/search/label/Writing

Hope to see you there :)

Bum glue

I got the bum glue out today and finally finished off the short story I started about 4 or 5 weeks ago.  I'm wanting to submit it to RWA's Little Gem's short story competition in Jan - it needs major editing though.  I've just started one of Margie Lawson's deep editing courses so will work my way through the exercises using this story.

I finished the short story course last week with Anna Hackett - Short Story, Big Impact.  Wow!  I learnt so much and I think will continue to learn so much more every time I go through the notes.  Anna was available for feedback constantly, it was amazing. Such incredible valuable - I can't rave enough about the course.

I'm going to concentrate on shorts for now while I find my voice - it'll be a great way to try out new techniques and styles and to hone my skills. 

I've always said I can't write by hand anymore.  I need to sit in front of a computer to have the ideas flow.  Unfortunately its also way too easy to get distracted when sitting in front of the computer - ooh look, an email, while I'm at it I'll check Facebook etc etc ;)

On Tuesday I took my little netbook with me to write with while I sat in the car and waited for B's drama class to finish.  Its been so long since I've used it though that the battery was flat.  So I was forced to *gasp* write by hand in my 'handy dandy notebook'.  I got about 300 words written in 30 minutes - a bit slower than on the computer but with the added advantage of silencing my inner editor.  Its hard to make too many changes while you're writing by hand, so I was just writing.  I typed it up last night and made some changes as I was typing - first polish.

So I tried it again last night - put the computer aside and pulled out the pen and paper, then typed it up.  Again, it worked pretty well.  I think I might be on to something here...  It also has the added advantage that you can whip out a notebook & pen pretty much anywhere and not get a second look, but pulling out a computer just looks pretentious :)

Loving this short story course I'm doing!  Its been really valuable and we've only up to lecture 4!

Another course

Since I seem to gravitate more to writing short stories / flash fiction than anything full-length, I've signed up to do a short story course through the RWA (Romance Writers of America).  I'm looking forward to it!

Speaking of short stories, I submitted another one to a writing.com competition last night.  It had to showcase emotion, so you needed to get inside the protagonist's head and see what they were feeling.  It had to start with the line "Her laughter broke the silence".  I'm not very good at writing emotion, so I wanted to enter the contest to get some feedback and help improve.

So, here it is.  http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1711954-A-date-shell-never-forget 

Warning - this one is not subtle, and is rated 18+ for violence..  I guess I've been watching Midsomer Murders too much lately :)  Actually I've been finding myself analysing the way they put the story together in that show, and how they sprinkle the clues etc.  Most of the time its extremely well done.  It's a great example of that old saying "if you show a gun in scene 1, you need to fire it by scene 3" (or whatever the actual quote is!)

There's some interesting writing advice on this blog post here - http://jobourne.blogspot.com/2010/09/anne-gracie-on-dorothea-brande-and-her.html

I might try it out and see how I go..

I haven't made it back to my novel yet, but I have been doing some cathartic writing just for myself.  I made it back to writing.com last night and dashed off a flash fiction entry for that day's competition.  It had to be less than 300 words and use the words clay, list and nose.  I spent less than an hour on it, and thought it was pretty cute in a limited time span. 

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1710137-Right-under-your-nose

ETA - What do you think?  I had a comment that it was a bit too subtle and I needed to make it clearer who the character was.  

You know what they say about the best laid plans?  A few days after my last post, my mother in law went into hospital and subsequently passed away yesterday morning.  I haven't had the concentration to write much at all - be it emails, blog posts or let alone on my story.  My thoughts have been choked with grief, my concentration span minimal.  For the last week, we knew she was dying, it was just a matter of when her body would give up the fight.  Every phone call would make my body tense, my heart start to race.  As callous as it seems to say it, when I answered the phone at 1:30 on Sunday morning, knowing what the phone call had to be, the main reaction was relief.  Relief that the journey that had been so hard on everyone, was finally over. 

So now my mind has cleared again (until the funeral on Friday anyway), I need to get back into the habit of writing.  I'm not going to stress about word count at the moment and I've given up on the idea of entering anything into the STALI this time around.  I think I need to just journal for a while, get my thoughts out and get back into the habit.  Forget about the novel and just journal.

Still beavering away slowly.  (Can you beaver away slowly or does beavering involve haste?!)  Word count is down partly because I lost my writing mojo earlier in the week and partly because I'm going back tightening up what I've got as well as writing more.  I know I was just going to write and get it all down, but I want to enter it in the RWA's STALI contest (Single Title and Loving It).  You need to enter the first 10,000 words of a manuscript - I'm entering it for the feedback, not with any expectation of winning!

So currently up to 6,340 words.  I'm in the middle of a scene and need to leave it to simmer while I work out where its going.  I have one scene from the beginning of the book that is just completely wrong - the character has changed from when I wrote it - so I need to think about how to rewrite it.  The rest is ok, just needs a lot of cutting & polishing, and a bit of research on setting.  Oh and 1,000+ of those words belong to a scene that actually comes a lot later in the book but I needed to write it when it came to me.  So really I have about another 5000 words to write and then edit the heck out of it all in the next 3 or 4 weeks.  It closes sometime in September.

Having said all that, I am still aiming for my 50,000 words by Oct 24th.  I'll just have to work a bit harder some weeks!

I'm a fraction behind my targeted goal words - I was going to write on Saturday night but kept getting distracted watching the election. 

On Saturday I met with the Newcastle Maitland RWA group - what a fun few hours!  I didn't get any writing done, but we had a lot of fun!  We chatted about the conference and the Clayton's conference, discussed the upcoming competitions, talked about writing craft, chatted some more.  They seem a lovely group of ladies!

Oh and I got a huge bag of prizes from the Clayton's conference!  Yay!

Am I mad?

Yes, quite probably :)

I'm stepping up the campaign to write a book before my 40th b'day - I have 10 weeks (counting this week), and am aiming for the NaNoWriMo target of 50,000 words.  That's only 5,000 a week which is quite doable if I can carve out about an hour / day, 5 days / week.  It certainly won't be world class, but I want to a) get into the habit of writing each day and b) finish something!!  I'm going to just sit and write in the hope that I can silence both my inner editor and inner critic while I'm doing it.  Both of them are very inhibiting when I write..

RWA Clayton's Conference 2010

I had the best weekend.  I took part in the RWA Clayton's conference - for those that couldn't make it to the actual conference at Coogee.  For 3 solid days, we chatted, had guest speakers (real live published authors!) in the chat room, did writing challenges, threw virtual parties.  It was so much fun that it was hard to come back down to earth today.

I learnt so much about writing, had some lightbulb moments, learnt about different genres - from Sweet category to paranormal, from historical to erotica, and I'm sure there were more as well, different publishing styles and so on.

It was really exhausting but so much fun!!  We even had our own Awards night last night and I even won a few prizes!  I feel my writing has improved even just in the few days of challenges - and at the very least my confidence certainly has. 

I made some great friends; its been a wonderful introduction to the RWA.  And the really fun thing is, I "met" 3 ladies who are in our local writing group, so I no longer feel shy about going along to it.  Can't wait til Saturday now!!

New direction

I'm putting aside my kid's book for a while.  I'm not sure what's wrong but it's not "talking to me" :)

In the meantime I have this other family in my head that keeps pestering me to come out.  It's a fascinating process coming up with their backstory - almost interviewing the characters.  "So tell me, why don't you get along with your sister?" lol

Will run with it and see where it takes me.

I've been editing my 'Fractured Fairy Tale' for a fun competition I'm entering.  My first draft had plot holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through!

The competition is part of a Clayton's Conference weekend through the RWA (Romance Writers of Australia).  They're having their real conference in a couple of weeks time and for those that can't make it to that, they also hold a 'clayton's' online conference.  It sounds like a lot of fun!

I wonder if there's a way to write in the shower?  I come up with wonderful scenes while I'm in the shower, but as soon as I get out, I'm slapped in the face with reality.  Usually in the form of "Mummy, can you..."

*sigh*  Off to do my BAS...

Very pleased with my last Flash Fiction entry (first one in the 300 word section).  I've received two 5 out of 5 reviews for it so far!

Plot vs theme

This week's course was on plot & structure.  I've realised that's why I keep stalling with my book - it's boring!  It has a great theme, but not a strong plot as yet.

We're having to analyse the plot points in To Kill a Mockingbird for the next assignment.  It's funny, the parts I remembered of the book from reading it at school were the parts about getting Boo Radley to come out.  When you think about it, that's just a minor plot and while it adds to the theme, it doesn't advance the main plot along at all.  Interesting.

I'm finding I'm reading books more critically now with learning so much from the course.  I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not though - it's harder to lose yourself in a book while you're analysing it :)

I did a 2nd 1000 word story yesterday on writing.com. I think my work is improving each time and thanks to some really nicely put constructive criticism of my last story, I have more ways to improve.  I'm really loving the feedback, even though I struggle with feeling a bit defensive when I first read it.  The most pleasing thing about yesterday's story was that it only took me an hour to write initially (the first one took 2 hours), and then back & forth over a few hours to polish.  I sat down - while Billy was watching something on TV - put the headphones on, turned the music up so I couldn't hear anything and just wrote!  So it can be done!

I need to keep moving ahead with my book.  At the moment I'm feeling like its a waste of time writing anything because I'm learning so much and will have to go back and rewrite.  But then, that will always happen.  I will always be improving and changing as an author, so I need to just write the best I can at this moment in time.  There's always plenty of time for a rewrite later anyway :)

Apprenticeship

Something I read in a Jackie French book has stuck in my mind.  She said something about it takes 3 years to become a plumber, so why expect to become a writer overnight.  You need to practice every day. 

I've joined Writing.com as a way to get reviews on my writing.  One of the threads has a daily prompt with a competition to write a short story (less than 1000 words) on the prompt topic.  It's a great way to get some impetus to do something each day. 

I wrote my first 1000 word story today - it's nothing special but I was pleased with it because I managed to actually finish something!!  I have a great deal of trouble making my stories "fat" (as Jackie French puts it) so it'll be good practice.

The cat woke me up about 6 this morning, so as I was lying there trying to go back to sleep I started thinking about the next assignment.  It's about writing dialogue - we have to write a 2 paragraph monologue in our character's voice.  I worked out what I wanted to say but I knew as soon as I got up to use the computer, Billy would probably be up and he'd start talking to me, so I'd lose what was in my head.  I grabbed the notebook beside my bed and started trying to scribble it down - it was practically dark and the cat was trying to chew on the end of the pen as I wrote..  Ah the trials!

Anyway I got it written down and then transcribed when I got up.  I think if / when I buy that netbook I'll put it next to my bed for when inspiration strikes!

I was reading something about Ruth Park last night, about how she used to jot down story lines while doing the ironing with umpteen kids at her feet.  It seems that wonderful novels can be written under any conditions - you don't need the solitude and space.  Gee it would be nice though!