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Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

It’s Complicated…

Posted in writing in general, tagged , , , , , , on October 21, 2011| 5 Comments »

First, I’d just like to say, that I’m walking on a badly neglected treadmill in my basement as I’m writing this. I have quite ingeniously, (and dangerously…do not try this at home), created a little shelf from an old sign for my laptop to perch on. If I walk slow enough, (which is never a problem), I can actually multitask by getting a little exercise while I type this blog. As long as I avoid a horrible accident I’m going to make this my new thing.

So on to what’s complicated…

My novel.

Actually my whole series.

Saying your novel or series is complicated is probably as attractive as describing yourself as complicated on a dating site. Complication is something people usually tend to avoid. There are whole magazines out there with themes of simplifying your life. Most people crave simple. But I’m different and I hope there are others out there like me that crave complicated. I seek out complex plots, intricate details, perplexing characters, and elaborate imagery. I ate up Lord of the Rings (oh I wish there was more Tolkien!). I enjoyed every genealogy tangent, creature description, and pencil-sketched map. Some complain Tolkien’s too complicated and need to watch the film in order to understand the world he created. I loved my Shakespearian courses delving into the double entendres and pulling apart every word.

But I’m the fifth child in a family of six. I thrive in entropy — anything simple and organized repels me. I want to read books and watch movies & tv shows that surprise me and make me think. Most of time, I can see where plots are headed and wished for more suspense and twists. I don’t want everything spelled out for me with plots and characters tied up in little square packages.

I didn’t want to create a linear, basic reincarnation novel, where two soul mates fall in love with each other in a few lives. Novels in which a few peripheral characters play a background role with little change throughout lives. I wanted to portray a reincarnation something closer to life. More characters and more lives. I wanted to create a realistic universe where people grow/fail/stagnate. Where relationships evolve in surprising ways, causing the reader to look deeper into who we are. How you and those in your life may have come to be where you are now.

My novel requires thought. My reader must enjoy tracking characters throughout many changes over time. Relationships evolve in surprising ways and I’ve done everything with the grand scheme of the series in mind. Everything happens for a reason and my reader must think deeply about all that is occurring and why. Each character has their own journey. Yeah, there will be a chart for those readers who might not want to plot their own but it’s there for reason…the more you think about my book the more you will see.

What about you? Do you enjoy a complicated novel every now and again?

Wow and look at that…an hour flew by! Now off to eat some well-deserved smores (I’ll never lose the baby weight this way).

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Are Fantasy/Sci-fi/Paranormal Writers Fantasy Prone?

Posted in writing in general, tagged , , , , , , on September 12, 2011| 6 Comments »

Psychologists Sheryl C. Wilson and Theodore X. Barber are credited with identifying Fantasy Prone Personality by testing for fourteen traits.

Here are the criteria:

(1) being an excellent hypnotic subject, (2) having imaginary playmates as a child, (3) fantasizing frequently as a child, (4) adopting a fantasy identity, (5) experiencing imagined sensations as real, (6) having vivid sensory perceptions, (7) reliving past experiences, (8) claiming psychic powers, (9) having out-of-body or floating experiences, (10) receiving poems, messages, etc., from spirits, higher intelligences, and the like, (11) being involved in “healing,” (12) encountering apparitions, (13) experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations (waking dreams), and (14) seeing classical hypnagogic imagery (such as spirits or monsters from outer space).

Wilson and Barber considered having six or more traits worthy of the designation of fantasy prone. Let’s see how I rate:

(1) being an excellent hypnotic subject= Not sure, I’ve never been hypnotized but I have trouble meditating so I doubt that I would make a good subject

(2) having imaginary playmates as a child= No (thank god, those really creep me out)

(3) fantasizing frequently as a child= Yes, I was an extremely imaginative child

(4) adopting a fantasy identity= No, not sure what this means but I’m guessing you imagine yourself as some sort of character or alter ego.

(5) experiencing imagined sensations as real=  I don’t think I’ve done this yet but would you be able to discern this if you had imagined sensations as real? On the occasions I’ve seen unusual things I’ve had another witness to back it up, so I’m going to say no.

(6) having vivid sensory perceptions= Yes, again this is hard to understand, but I do feel like I have a high sensory awareness (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, intuition)

(7) reliving past experiences- Yes, again not sure if I’m understanding this right but I have very vivid recall. I can even remember little details as young as three or four years old. I also tend to live in the past more than most people.

(8) claiming psychic powers= Yes, I do think I have slight psychic sensitivities.

(9) having out-of-body or floating experiences= No, I’ve never had this experience

(10) receiving poems, messages, etc., from spirits, higher intelligences, and the like= Yes, this has happened to me before.

(11) being involved in “healing,”= No, I’ve never been involved with a healing before

(12) encountering apparitions= Yes, but I think growing up in pre-revolutionary houses contributed to this

(13) experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations (waking dreams)= No, I’ve never experienced this half-dream state.

(14) seeing classical hypnagogic imagery (such as spirits or monsters from outer space)= Now, this I had to take apart and define in order to understand what they meant by this. Classical =well-known.  Hypnagogic = of, relating to, or occurring in the state of intermediate consciousness preceding sleep. So I understood this to mean a stereotyped hallucination preceding deep sleep and I’ve never experienced this.

I do have six of these traits so I’m apparently fantasy-prone. Does this explain my draw to creating worlds and stories in my novels? Does a writer benefit from being fantasy prone in order to create the world building and immersion needed for the reader? I wonder if the higher the degree of fantasy-proness the better the creativity?

Well, this study seems to correlate the two (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3746620?dopt=Abstract). “Fantasizers were found to outscore subjects in both comparison groups on all of the measures of fantasy, imagination, and creativity…”

Now I feel compelled to see if I’d make a good hypnosis subject.

So all my fantasy or sci-fi blog followers, how do you rate? Are you fantasy prone as well?

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The Help Lawsuit

Posted in writing in general, tagged , , , , , , , on September 5, 2011| 4 Comments »

Nothing scares me more than lawsuits involving authors. I haven’t been able to read the best-selling novel The Help yet (on my to-read list) but the lawsuit that was dismissed recently has caught my attention. Ablene Cooper filed a lawsuit against the author, Kathryn Stockett, claiming the character Aibileen was based on her without her permission. The case was dismissed due to the one-year statute of limitations expiring since the author gave Cooper a copy of the book along with a letter stating that the even though the maid’s name was similar it was not based on her.

This brought up a lot of concerns for me. I hate thinking that if I ever made it big with a novel that someone from my past or present would try to lay claim that I defamed them or portrayed them without permission. I definitely use inspiration from people in my life in order to make my characters seem real, but they are not closely based on these people and I’m careful to use little touches of these traits on top of a completely imaginary characters.

At first I felt like Cooper was probably stretching a claim for money until I read that she sited that the character not only shares a very similar name, job, gold tooth, but also lost a son. Something personal like losing a son as well as having those shared traits is a little inconsiderate in my opinion. Even if the author wasn’t intending to use her for character basis she should have been more aware of the similarities and chose another name. Again I haven’t read the book, so she might have shown this person in a fantastic light but when something so personal is involved like the death of a child I think she could have been more careful.

This lawsuit only reminds me that as writers, we must be careful with character inspiration and mindful that someone close to us might feel exposed. Some may think (especially when self-publishing) that your novel most likely won’t hit the bestseller lists but you really never know. Once something’s written and released you don’t have much control over it and it could get attention. If you based a fictional character too close to a real life person it could come back to bite you.

Writers of historical fiction/fantasy must be just as careful when they are writing about real people from the past. Since it’s fiction/fantasy we have some leeway with the facts and no one can file a lawsuit if they are dead, but you still must remember that these were real people and their descendants and legacy can still be effected by what you write. Be gentle.

So just in case you hit it big and someone wants a piece of your pie, you should follow these rules when writing fiction:

~Never use real names or similar names to characters you might use for inspiration.

~Be considerate when using a character for inspiration. Don’t write about obvious identifying traits or detailed personal experiences someone’s trusted you with.

~Don’t ever tell anyone you based a character on someone you know.

~I try to combine different inspirations for my characters, sometimes merging real traits of many different people. Don’t allow one character to be too similar to a known person.

~Always think of the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Think about what you’d want someone to write about you to the public and remember this, even when your tempted with a truly terrific real-life character.

~If you can’t resist closely basing a character on a real person, get their permission in writing first or be sure to send a copy of your book to them at least a year before your movie’s released 🙂

Happy Labor Day everyone and I’m just happy I’m not in actual labor today! I hope it’s a beautiful day of beach/pool/picnics/bbqs or whatever you choose to close up the summer.

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Query Letter Rejections

Posted in self-publishing, writing in general, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

Yes I’m still getting them!

I couldn’t believe it when I checked my email yesterday and saw the kind form reply apologizing for being a bit late (eight months!). Could that really have been only eight months ago! I feel like so much has happened since then.

How did I come so far in only eight months?

I learned how to query, how to process promising agent’s rejections, decided to self-publish, began a blog and website, and took on self-publishing. I can’t help but be proud of so much growth.

I reminisced about those hopeful replies and requests that I checked for every hour and had to laugh out loud when I saw it. It felt so wonderful not to care at all about it.

But what if this had been an interested agent’s reply at this point, what would I have done?

Right away I knew that this was the right direction for me to go in with this series and I would have politely turned down the agent at this point.

That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t query a new novel in the future but this series is made for self-publishing. I agree with so many other self-publishers out there that you must evaluate each project’s needs and marketability on a case by case basis. But I am so excited by this process and love this adventure. I love the support from all the self-publisher’s blogs, forums, and my blog readers and I can’t wait to see my first proof, get my first positive review, hold that finished book in my hand, sell my first 100 copies, and get an email from an appreciative reader (I will frame that you know).

Yeah, I realize there are all the negatives to cope with also: the first negative review, slow sales, emails from disgruntled readers demanding refunds, but I’m going to focus on the reason why I’m expending all this energy to begin with–I have to get this story out and I just hope there are some that will enjoy all my hard work.

It really has been so much fun so far!

What about you? How has your writing/ querying/ publishing journey progressed so far and how do you feel about it?

 

 

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Back to Civilization!

Posted in writing in general, tagged , , on August 31, 2011| 3 Comments »

   (Basically what Hurricane Irene left on every street in our area)

Wow, Hurricane Irene really ransacked our area. We finally got power back today in the house we evacuated to but our house is still without power. Nothing like getting an email the day before a hurricane that you must evacuate your home with all your animals since we lie in a low-lying area. So we packed up our two cats, dog, and bunny along with seven days of provisions to seek refuge in a kind sister’s house. Before we left our house I tried to move anything irreplaceable up to the second floor and was faced with one of those hypothetical questions when I had to pick what I could bring with me if for some reason the house washed away. So after packing up all my sons baby photos and videos we said goodbye to our house and the trees that loomed dangerously to it.

I also of course googled how hurricanes effect late pregnancy and freaked out completely to see an increase in deliveries due to low barometric pressure. The image of going into labor during a hurricane and not getting that epidural plagued me and thankfully baby did not decide to make an early appearance. Then my diabetic cat has his first low insulin reaction in the middle of all this stress and I’m chasing him around on the floor nine months pregnant trying to save his life with honey injections with a flashlight. He’s doing fine now, thank the lord, but will not let me near his mouth. Now all I want is to get back home and unpacked before this baby’s arrival and I’m wondering what this nesting disruption must be doing to my already crazy pregnancy hormones.

Oh well. Things could be worse. As soon as the winds died down my husband sneaked under dangerous down trees hanging on power lines to find that out house not only remained flood free but not one tree was down on our property. Yay!

It has been terrible not being able to work on my projects and respond to my book formatter’s and graphic designer’s emails. I realize how much I love working on my novels. Writing (and now publishing) has become a definite part of my life and I really miss it when it’s gone. So I guess that means I’m a writer now. It’s not publishing, making sales, or developing a following that makes you a writer, but what writing brings to your life and how it makes you feel. Writing gives me another purpose and keeps my mind engaged. I truly love writing and hope I always will.

Oh enough whining…back to writing.

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On to the Sequel…

Posted in self-publishing, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 26, 2011| 1 Comment »

Wow. Everything’s going by so quickly suddenly. The summer’s almost over, my son’s school will start soon, the baby’s on its way, a hurricane threatens to disconnect my internet for days, and of course I’m in the midst of book formatting my first novel of the series. Originally when I set the 11-11-11 launch date I thought I was giving myself extra time just in case of a colicky baby or the baby blues prove a challenge, but now with time ticking away I’m so glad I didn’t pick an October release!

Everything I’ve read about increasing your indie book sales recommends getting your second book out as quickly as you can after your first. Many say that nothing promotes your first book as much as another book release. The more books you can get out there the better. So, as I’m learning the ropes of publishing the first one I’ve been busy revising my second. My goal is to release the sequel January 2012 and I’m even planning on including the first chapter of the sequel in my debut book.

Honestly, I’ve been revising this book over the last year. I’ve gone through all my normal revising checklist and now I’ve added all the things my editor pointed out in the first novel. I feel like I can’t get it any better on my own and since this sequel is almost twice as long as my first, I know the editor, the copy editor, and the book formatter will all take twice as long, so I need to get moving. I did worry that one of my most trusted beta readers is midway into the sequel and would need to allow time for her critical feedback, but I know I can still make improvements between this first editor run-through and the second. I might even have time to send it out to a few more people as well.

So I wrote to my AWESOME editor to see if she was available to take on another book of mine. She said to send it on over and that’s what I did. Two books now on their road to print. I can’t believe it. Is this really happening?

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Has Writing Changed How You Read?

Posted in writing in general, tagged , , on August 24, 2011| 2 Comments »

So I was hooked up to a contraction measuring machine yesterday and I brought along a book I’ve been trying to finish for sometime now. Lately I’ve been giving priority to reading self-publishing guides, writing forums, blogs and beta reading. (I probably should be cracking out those baby care books but since this is my second it will all come back to me, right…right?)

Well, I had to have something I could hold in my hand so I grabbed the best-seller that’s been waiting patiently on my nightstand. Leaving books half-finished is not like me. I normally start and can’t stop reading until it’s done. It wasn’t until I kept rereading lines on the page for the third time that I realized it:

Since writing my own books, I don’t read the same as I used to.

Before what was entertainment and pleasure has truly become a study. Now I feel the need to observe everything: flow, punctuation, dialog tags, pov usage, plot developement, and avoiding clichés.

I used to finish a book and say, “How awesome was that book!”

Now I ask, “How did the author do that?”

Has this somewhat diminished the enjoyment of reading?

It definitely seems like I read slower and in smaller clips. I’ve certainly switched from a passive reading and absorbing role to an active and analytic role. In the past, I would feel this way when we were reading a book for a class, and even though the enjoyment of the prescribed book is affected, I would always come away with a deeper understanding of the book and I tend to remember those books in much better detail.

In a way, reading is now more work. But I think about each book while reading and long after I’m finished, and I have a much better understanding and appreciation than I would have had previously.

It must be the same for artists. They probably have difficultly just looking at a beautiful landscape and saying, “What a gorgeous sunrise!” Since they’re probably thinking, “What color is that sun?” and “How can I create that myself?”

What about you? Have you noticed that you read differently since writing? How has your reading process changed?

 

 

 

 

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Setting up Google Alerts

Posted in self-publishing, writing in general, tagged , , , , , , , on August 22, 2011| 1 Comment »

 

Google Alerts - Monitor the Web for interesting new content

 

Just a little tip for anyone not familiar with a great tool called Google Alerts. I heard this mentioned on another blog and wondered if I would be able to figure out how to do this myself. I typed in ‘google alerts’ and wouldn’t ya know it went directly to a google alerts screen. You can enter any keywords or phrases that you want to be notified about anywhere online. This is so important for writers since if anyone reviews your book on their blog or happens to mention your book you can immediately thank them. It’s important to know what others are saying about your writing and your books (good and bad) and this way you will be notified it’s out there.

After you type in something you want to track (my example: Infinite Sacrifice), you can choose what facets of the web you want to search (I chose everything). Then you can chose how frequent you want it sent to you (I chose once a day) and if you want only the best results sent to you or all (I chose best results). Lastly, you enter the email you would like these notifications sent to.

You can create as many of these alerts that you want. I chose to enter the titles of my books, the series name, a few different versions of my name, and my website address. This is also a neat idea if you want to track a certain author or topic you’re extremely interested in. I also decided to enter the names of future titles of my book since it would be good to know if someone else uses these titles before I can.

Well, just another tip I learned about through purusing blogs and thought I’d pass it on!

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Back to the ole drawing board…

Posted in self-publishing, writing in general, tagged , , , , , , , on August 15, 2011| 2 Comments »

So in the middle of this whole first self-publishing experience, I’m attempting to get my second novel of the series ready to quickly follow the first.I find myself going back (what feels like so long ago) to the first major edits of my first. So these are the things I’ve learned from so many terrific editing blogs out there:

1) Remove all the ‘just’s you can

2)Remove all the ‘that’s you can

3)Do an ‘ly’ search for adverbs and change them where you can

4) I tend to overuse the word ‘look’ so I do a search for those and change them

6) Tighten up unneeded words

7) Remove all unnecessary dialog tags

8 ) Cut the fat (take out anything that doesn’t move the story forward)

9) Change all ‘has pulled’ to ‘pulls’ or ‘is running’ to ‘runs’, even ‘comes running’ to ‘runs’

I’ve also started to go through all the things I learned from my editor so she doesn’t think I’m a lost cause. My goal is to have a lot less red on the pages with the next one.

It seems a never-ending process though because publishing the second makes me want to finish writing the third book so I can have that follow as well, but I’m only human! How can I be learning self-publishing, promoting, editing the second, AND writing the third! How do these prolific writers do it?

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Where am I?

Posted in self-publishing, tagged , , , , , , , on August 12, 2011| 7 Comments »

(If I was here I would get a lot of writing done)

Okay, I actually had to reread my post that listed all I needed to do before I launched on 11-11-11 and I noticed I left out one step: after the book is formatted I need to pay for a proof. I have to save time for that since I might need to tweak a few things. Also fellow blogger, Holly Grant was so kind to remind me to create a separate bank account in my company name and obtain a tax ID number. So I will have to add that to the list as well. Other than that, everything looks to be included there and just wanted to give everyone an update to where I am now.

~My superstar editor returned the second look through and she went back over every single word. In two weeks! How does she do that? She reiterated some things that I decided against (causing me to ultimately change them) and noticed things she overlooked with all the red all over the page. So my question is, do I need to send this out to a copy editor? I’m shocked with how meticulous my editor has been and with the second edit I feel like this MS is in great shape. But I want this MS to be a perfect as it possibly can and if traditional publishers send their novels through editors and copy editors I probably should too. I wonder if there will be style suggestions that will only confuse me more but the copy editor just might see things the editor missed as she was dealing with the whole mess I sent her originally. Well, I guess we’ll see, I’m sending it off to the copy editor today.

~I’ve contacted my cover designer and asked what I will need to create the POD cover and it seems I will need the page number to measure the spine correctly. So that means I will have to wait until the book formatter has finished before I create the cover. I also have to decide if I want to put my author pic on the back (ugh I hate pictures!) and a little bio (ugh I hate bios even more!).

~I did purchase ten ISBN numbers for this book and all my future books and something feels so great about looking at all the numbers that will one day be my published creations.

~I asked my book formatter if I could send him the almost finished MS just so that he could get a head start on the quote for all ebook formats and POD. If for some reason he is too high for me I want to have some time to find another recommended one. Hopefully the quote will come back within reason since this guy was recommended by a highly respected self-pubber.

~I’m still deciding whether or not I should include the first chapter of my sequel at the back of the first of the series. I posted it up on kindle boards and members brought up so many factors I hadn’t considered. The major issue may be that it’s not that beneficial to include a teaser sample until the sequel is available. A great point, but if I could release the second a couple months behind the first then that could be great hype for the second book; longer than two months, well it might get forgotten about and then I can’t make releasing the sample on my website a big deal. So I sent out the first chapter to be edited anyway and I can use this time to decide what I should do.

~I will contact an attorney relative (they come in handy) to help create an LLC for my publishing house (it sounds like a big deal but it’s not). That way I can publish under that name and if I’m ever famous (psish!) and sued, I will be protected.

~All the while my faithful beta has been reading my sequel and I’ve been making revisions whenever I receive feedback. I can’t forget that this sequel needs to come out as close as possible to the first novel’s launch date. Oh I wish I had a crystal ball for this.

So it looks like I’m making good progress and the baby doesn’t seem to be on its way out just yet, so maybe I can get most of this done before B-day.

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