WHAT A WRITER DOES

1) WRITES WHAT NO ONE ELSE CAN

It is not just night.  No.  

There are two full moons tonight.  

Their reflections stare balefully from the open eyes of your mother-in-law sitting in your front porch swing ... 

the mother-in-law you buried three days ago.


2) SERVES THE READER NOT THE WRITER

The reader doesn't turn the pages because of the need to applaud you.  The reader turns them to find out what happens next.


3) ASKS THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

 “What am I trying to say? 

What words will express it? 

What image or idiom will make it clearer? 

Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?


4) WRITING IS LIKE USING MAGIC

You write the words, and they altered the perceived universe. 

By merely writing you could create damage and pain, 

cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.

 Good writing strives to explain, to make things a little bit clearer, to make sense of our world.

 A writer always tries to be part of the solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.


5) TELLS A FULL STORY

 There’s a name for something with a single point of view: 

It’s called a press release.

 Incorporate multiple perspectives even if you are writing in 1st Person POV.  

Your heroine must struggle in a world that cares about its own agenda not hers.


6.) SINGS A WORLD INTO BEING

Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind:

 vividly, forcefully 

 that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.


7.) IS SUBTLE

 We have to allow the sunken meanings to remain sunken, suggested, not stated.

The most horrifying monsters are the ones never quite seen.

A cop shoots a young drug addict in self-defense.  Simple scene read a dozen times.  

The addict whimpers as he lays dying.  "I'm going.  I'm going.  I'm ... afraid."

The cop holsters his gun, cradles the youngster, and whispers in his ear:

"Sshh,  It is just a bad dream, a bad dream.  Go back to sleep." 

The addict dies.  The cop gets up, sighs, and leaves a bit of his soul by the still-warm corpse.

A BIT BLUE THIS VALENTINE'S DAY?

FEELING A BIT BITTER THIS VALENTINE'S DAY?

For many singles, instead of being a day for celebration it ends up bringing up feelings of self-doubt, loneliness or depression.

85% of all current relationships are unhappy according to the American Psychiatric Association.  Gulp!

Imagine being in one of them this Valentine's Day? 

At least if you are single, you have hope you will find that right person that will put you in the 15% category!

Remember That A Relationship Doesn't Define 

Who You Are

 

Just like when someone asks you what you do for a living, the same goes for your relationship status: 

Whatever your situation, it isn't the end-all explanation of who you are as a person.

  

  Love, like happiness,

 is found 

when your mind is focused on giving it to others.

Valentine's is just another day.

Treat it as such.  

It's NOT Saturday this year: 

so no date tonight is normal!

Another person cannot

make you happy.

Only you can make you happy.

ONLY when you are whole within yourself

will you attract another whole person.

Two half-people sadly do not

make a whole one:

Only two thirsty people

trying to drink from leaking wells.

It is okay not to be okay.

Sometimes, people need permission to break. 

And it is from that broken place 

that they are finally able to become whole again.

Above all,

explore the world

waiting for you to discover it.

How about buying my latest?
Only 99 cents!
A marshmallow heart
costs about the same! 

SAVE CALORIES;
BUY MY BOOK!
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YOU ARE NOT OWED READERS

“There is no such thing as a failed test. You will learn every time you challenge yourself.”  - Marsha Blackburn

As you write, keep in mind that no one cares.

First, you have to make your readers take notice of you with a catchy title, 

absorbing cover blurb, 

and intriguing back cover copy. 

That is the easy part.  The hard part is just beginning.

The savvy writer knows he must keep reader interest at every point and go to whatever lengths it takes to grab and hold that interest.

Ask yourself: 

since my reader may have no interest in this,
 what do I have to do 
to conceive this story in an interesting way, 
to start off with an interesting premise
and to sustain that interest throughout my book?"

No one cares about you, about your book, about what you are writing about ...

Go on from there.

You must make them care by being riveting, 

by appealing to universal needs ... from chapter to chapter, never letting up.

When you finish one chapter, 

you must work to make the next even more interesting, building on what you have already written.

Keep it interesting,

knowing that there is a seductive world out there, 

calling to them to put down your book and come out and play in it.

Pick a storyline you care about.

If you care enough about something, you can more easily make it interesting.

What do you say in your head as you write?

GROWING AS A WRITER

 Since Man first looked up at the stars, he wondered at the moon looking back down on him.

We yearned to fly up there somehow to see for ourselves what lay upon those distant shores ... 

and one day, we finally got there ... 

because we did not give up.

We yearn to make an impact with our writing, our casting of sparkling tales into the darkness.  

If we do not give up, we will reach that goal ... 

but only if we continue to grow.

HOW DO WE GROW AS WRITERS?

1.)  READ WRITERS WHO INSPIRE YOU

Here are some of which you may be unaware -- 


BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott:

Anne is the Bette Midler of the writing world -- and no, this book is not about birds.

 “Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram--it's the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar.” 


CARING FOR WORDS IN A CULTURE OF LIES by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Marilyn is the standard bearer for the power of words.

 “Loving language means cherishing it for its beauty, precision, power to enhance understanding, power to name, power to heal. And it means using words as instruments of love”


THE SITUATION AND THE STORY by Vivian Gornik

Vivian weaves the magic of how the internal story gives birth to the external one.

"Every work of literature has both a situation and a story.  

The situation is the context of circumstance, sometimes the plot;  

the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer:  the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say." 


THE WRITING LIFE by Annie Dillard

In fluid and dream-like prose, Annie relates the harsh world of writing.

 “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. 

 One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all ... 

The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later."

What are some of your favorite inspiring books?


2.) SHAKE IT UP

Like those Go-Go Dancers of the sixties, shake it up.  Only first person for you?  Do third person.  Only prose.  Write a haiku.


3.) DANCE AS IF NO ONE WERE WATCHING

Forget about selling your book, about your audience, about what is hot. Write the best story you know how.  

Tarantino says that you should make your story for you.  There are others like you that will like it, too.


4.) WRITE FOR AN AUDIENCE

Yes, I know what I just said.  

But we are story-tellers.  We do our best work thinking of how best to stir the listeners.

Imagine you are telling your tale to a very sick friend, trying to get her mind off her pain.

 Can't be boring.  Can't be pedantic.  

Must conjure a world that takes your friend from the sickbed of pain to a world of wonder.


5.) WEED OUT WORD CRUTCHES

We all have words we fall back on over and over.  Work at expanding your vocabulary.

Wordle helps there:
http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. 

The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.  

It will help you see your crutch words while giving you a fun time.

STRANGE LEGENDS OF VALENTINE' S DAY

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LOVE IS 

AND WAS STRANGE

 From Feb. 13 to 15, the Ancient Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. 

The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain. 

The Roman romantics were drunk. They were naked. 

Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them. 

And you thought New Orleans at Mardi Gras was weird!

They believed this would make them fertile!

Waiting until a full moon sounds

more enjoyable ...

And was another Ancient Roman

fertility superstition

to boot.

 

 

 STRANGE FACTS ABOUT VALENTINE'S DAY

1. Girls of medieval times ate bizarre foods on this day to make them dream of their future spouse.
2. Physicians of the 1800s commonly advised their patients to eat chocolate to calm their pining for lost love.
3. Richard Cadbury produced the first box of chocolates for this holiday in the late 1800s.
4. 15 percent of U.S. women send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day. 
5. The red rose was the favorite flower of Venus, the Roman goddess of love.
6. Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all gifts on this holiday including jewelry.
7. Every Valentine’s Day, the Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet.
8. In Japan, women are expected to give chocolate and other gifts to men on Valentine’s Day. This tradition was started as a marketing campaign by Japanese chocolate companies. 

 In 1947 New Orleans, Valentine's Day merged with the Mardi Gras season.

 It made for an unpleasant combination.

Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, Our Lady of Holy Death, is stalking the French Quarter streets killing apparently at random. 

What does the psychotic actress, Irene Dupré, know of this entity and what lies behind the murders? 

 She remains silent, only smiling.

 Santa Muerte’s strange acolyte 

lurks in the shadows 

watching, waiting. 

Waiting for what?

 Give yourself an early Valentine's Day gift 

and pick up a copy.

 Only 99 cents for the Kindle

$5.97 for the print!

 

Alright!

Truth in Advertising:

Give ME the Valentine's Gift 

and BUY my book!

WHY WRITE A SERIES? IWSG post

A series provides a built-in audience 

for your next book, of course.

You have time to flesh out your

secondary characters

so that readers love to tune in

to see what happens next 

in their lives. 

 

Every good book has well-developed characters, an engrossing plot, and a healthy dose of conflict,

but a good book series demands all of that and so much more. 

A series makes a promise: 

it promises that readers will enjoy a richer, more evolved experience as it progresses.

 When readers commit to reading a series, they do it for one main reason: 

because they care about the characters. 

The reader must want to follow the characters on their journey, 

getting to know them like real-life friends and family, 

and becoming invested in the outcomes of their conflicts and endeavors.

Alongside solid plot development, 

a series must focus on constant character development in order for it to hold any hope of sustaining itself. 

Your characters must undergo significant changes throughout the story. 

They should not be the same people at the series' conclusion as they were at its commencement.

Hollywood and Horror 

The two seem to be made for each other ... 

add in WWII, madness, and the exotic locale of post-war New Orleans ...

and now you have something.

Love, Ambition, Loss, Conflicting Ego's

Each character drawn in 

by these things are changed by them. 

None remain the same.

What remains amidst 

the smoking ruins 

come Dawn?

That is something upon which

the survivors reflect

in the shadows 

of their thoughts.

HOW TO WRITE AN ESEMBLE NOVEL

Speaking of ensembles:

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Take Ken Folett's Century Trilogy.

It begins with Fall of Giants. 

The first 7 pages of that novel consists of the list of characters.  Wow.  

How many people put the book down after seeing that?


J K Rowling knew how to handle an ensemble novel. 

 Despite one school of thought that urges 

an ensemble novel not to be just of two major characters with a supporting cast,

JK had a triad of heroes.  And her novels did just fine.

So what are some good guidelines 

for an ensemble novel?

1.) YOU know your characters.

Your novel's characters must stand out one from the other if they are to stick in the minds of your readers.

Readers will not have the advantage of being able to remember their faces as they would do in a large party. 

If you know your characters inside and out, then you will make them distinctive.


2.) INTRODUCE YOUR CHARACTERS SLOWLY

Remember that large party I was talking about up above?

Imagine if host of said party introduced you to a dozen people within minutes?  

How many of them would you remember ... even with aid of seeing their faces? 

Give each character AN IMPORTANT FUNCTION THAT PROPELS your novel along and an arc that is meaningful.


3.) NO MINI-ME's ALLOWED

No subservient character that is not part of the group, but just follows along to serve as comic relief or sounding board for needful exposition.

In my The Not-So-Innocents Abroad, 

I took pains to not let 11 year old Nikola Tesla become that to my story-line. 

 Even his black cat, Macak, served an important function.

How can you tell if a character is not a Mini-Me but a supporting character 

(which is entirely all right, and is, in fact, necessary for ensemble novels)?

A supporting character has an actual life when not with the rest of the group ...

and that is mentioned in the novel.


4.) NO TRAITS WITH LEGS PLEASE

Your novel is not SNOW WHITE so please no walking traits that masquerade as living, breathing characters!

People are mosaics of many traits, many interests, many flaws, and hopefully many virtues!


5.) NO "ONE OF THESE IS NOT THE SAME"
 
Avoid homogeny.  

Most groups have diversity in their ranks, even if they are performing the same task: Policeman, Fireman, Doctors.

BUT AVOID "THE ONE OF EACH" CURSE --

Star Trek: Voyager seemed guilty of that to me.  

It smacked to me of tokenism, checking off boxes when writing the character into being,


6.) REMEMBER THE BREAKFAST CLUB --

GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS PASSIONS

 If you give your characters passions

—poetry, football, astrology—

those interests will influence their reactions and distinguish them from each other.


PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR CHARACTERS' SPEECH PATTERNS

Not everyone speaks the same: their education, their social background, their interests will all shape how they speak.

After a few chapters, if you have done your job right, readers will be able to tell one character from another just by the way in which they speak. 


LET CHOICE OF CLOTHING REVEAL CHARACTER

The prim and proper girl versus the cheerleader.  The poor student versus the wealthy socialite.

The jock versus the scholar.  The shy student versus the extrovert.

I did not mention one article of clothing but you saw the clothing difference in each set of individuals I mentioned, didn't you?


7.) DON'T BE KANYE WEST

Name your characters with care.  

No Josh and Joe; no Kira and Kelly.  

Names that blur together in your readers' minds are the kiss of death.

Give your characters distinctive names that stand apart from every other character.