Tag: Wiley Wednesday

  • Haiku and You

    By no stretch of the imagination do I consider myself a major poet.  I dabble at bringing images into a snapshot focus through the art of haiku.  It’s not even something I do very often.

    Today I read something disheartening from a blogger I admire.  A British fan of all things Japanese, she goes by the moniker Haikugirl.  In this post she talks about a haiku workshop that made me realize that there are far more rules to it than I knew.  Her own experience involved a criticism that I found undeserved.

    This makes me wonder if I’ll continue pursuing this art form.  Should I forge on even if I’m doing it wrong according to the experts?  My inner critic says no but I think that’s the wrong answer.  I hope the childlike artist inside me finds another haiku she determines worth sharing.

    And speaking of sharing, here is the post I reference:
    Catching the Blossom with a Haiku

    I hope you’ll read her post.  I’d also like to know your opinion on the subject.  In the meantime, happy writing!

  • Darla’s Wiley Wednesday

    As I sit at home during a much needed rest from the day job, I’m trying to get caught up on blog posts for the month. I’ve allowed quite a dry spell after frenzied and joyous activity on all things blog related. Now it’s time to turn the tide and set aside precious minutes to indulge myself.

    While having written that paragraph in the plainest of terms, I can’t help but think of Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”. She would be aghast at how I’ve allowed the work week to stifle my creativity.

    It’s time to remember how artistic productivity rewards and enlivens. I feel the energy coursing through me today even as I sit glued to my office chair. Well, I’m not entirely glued. My playfulness carried over to benefit one of my cats, also in a playful mood.

    Now if I will just remember this feeling in the middle of a bad day at the office, then perhaps I can smile and look forward to coming home to a blank screen and another chance to create. Here’s hoping you find your own artful rejuvenation!

    ~

  • Deep Point-of-View or “How Do You Really Feel About That?”

    As I learn more about the old writer’s dictum, write, revise, revise, and revise; and as I get practice submitting my work to publishers, I’ve found that one of the hardest parts is when you get to the nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty “let’s clean up this sucker because we’re about to hit ‘send’ to give it to the publisher and it’s time to make sure it’s free of any dumb-dumb errors.”

    Dumb-dumb errors. Kind of like Dumb-Dumb Bullets in Lethal Weapon IV.

    But in all seriousness, I wanted to share with you my magic list of POV [point-of-view] problem words that I got when I attended a self-editing workshop put on by my editor, Tera Kleinfelter, Assistant Managing Editor at Samhain Publishing:

    • assumed 
    • considered 
    • decided 
    • felt 
    • figured 
    • heard 
    • knew 
    • realized 
    • remembered 
    • saw 
    • thought 
    • wondered 
    • worked out

    One of the challenges with writing deep point-of-view is that there are so many different definitions for it, but little concrete advice on how to do it. I have found that doing a “find” command on my manuscript for these words, then rewriting the sentence in which they occur, does wonders for deepening my POV.

    Which leads me to my next point. WHY are these POV problem words? After all, fiction is full of “He felt a shiver,” and “She wondered if he would ever get up the nerve to ask her out.” So why are these words “problems?”

    In deep POV, the objective is to get as deeply as possible into the mind of the character. The better that I, as an author, get at giving the reader the exact thoughts as though my character were thinking them without translation, the better I’m accomplishing my goal of going deep into POV. I do not profess to be an expert that this, by any means, but here’s how I understand that to work. Let’s use the “He felt a shiver,” as an example.

    What is the statement? It’s the author telling the reader what the character is feeling; it’s not the character himself doing it, nor is the author showing the reader anything. (Remember that old saw, “Show, don’t tell”?) “He felt a shiver” could apply to the President of the United States entering a room in which the President of Russia and the King of Monaco are sitting; it could be a spy entering a room in which his target is dancing with the person with whom the spy has fallen in love; it could be a serviceperson discharged from the Army after a tour in Iraq and finding out that his baby brother has been in a car accident. It doesn’t show us anything unique about the character.

    “A spasm shivered up the side of his neck, vibrating all the way into his ear and making his stomach roil with dread.”

    That tells us a lot more about the character. It’s probable, of the three examples I listed above, that it’s the serviceperson finding out about his brother. It’s unlikely that the President is going to report a feeling in his stomach as “dread,” particularly when meeting two other heads of state (although, if it is, you can use this description to “sell” the reader on WHY it’s plausible that the feeling belongs to the President). It’s unlikely it’s a spy, since a trained spy is unlikely to feel dread like that, and certainly not upon seeing the person he loves in the arm of an opponent or an enemy.

    The more directly you can describe for the reader the emotional flavor that is referred to by one of our problem words, the more deeply you are showing the reader the character and, therefore the more deeply you are getting into POV.

    Happy writing!

  • Wiley Wednesday: Life After NaNo

    Those of us who have done NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) share one thing in common, whether or not we actually completed our project or not: there’s a sense of let-down after November is over, a feeling of “what now?” Rest easy, writers; you’re not alone. There are others out there to play with, other projects to tackle, and other crazy goals to set.

    A great place to look, even if you didn’t do NaNo itself, is the “I Wrote a Novel, Now What?” section on the main NaNo site. It has several sections useful to writers of all stripes:

    Revision Advice – After the draft is done, the editing begins. There are as many ways to revise as there are to edit, and this section features excellent suggestions to make the process less painful.

    Revision Pep Talks – never underestimate the power of a good pep talk! Marathoners and long-term Weight Watchers can tell you, attitude is everything; a good pep talk can help give you a well-placed attitude adjustment.

    NaNoWriMo-style Events On the Horizon – I love this section! It is comforting, particularly in the first and second weeks of December, to find that there are others out there doing what you’re doing – or, in some cases, doing WAY more. There are blog-everyday-for-a-month people, editing people, and NaNoNotNovember folks. This is a great place to come to get ideas about where other writers hang out, and what you can do to keep up the madness of NaNo. Momentum’s a beautiful thing.

    Novel Writing Contests Without Entry Fees – This is a great way to test your mettle. Many contests out there do not require entry fees and this is a place to find many of them. Not all of them are for novels, either – the Writer’s Digest “Your Story” contest is 750 words or less – a great way to prime the pump.

    Some Thoughts on Publishing – This is a very useful section. Rather than pimping for the publishing industry, it contains links to some excellent advice sites, particularly helpful for avoiding scams.

    More OLL Goodness – Last, but not least, this is the place to come to find out what else the crazy folks at the Office of Letters and Light (the organization that brings you NaNoWriMo every year) are up to.

    Bottom line, if you love to write, there are others out there who love it too. Even if you don’t have an in-person writing group in your very own town, with the internet, you don’t have to. Writers all over the world connect and support each other every day. What are you waiting for? Get out there and write!

  • Darla’s Wiley Wednesday

    Today I’m supposed to impart some sort of writing wisdom. Honestly, I don’t feel qualified. What I can do is follow a theme.

    Are you writing your novel yet? Have you signed up for the 2011 National Novel Writing Month? I hope so.

    It’s a fun, frenzied time where we learn what we can do if pressuring ourselves to write. So far, I’ve kept up with the quota and already learned more about where my story can go than I dreamed possible.

    I hope you’ll join us in NaNoWriMo next year if not this. Just know that it’s not too late to start. Nor is it too late to complete the task if you’re feeling behind.

    Happy writing!

  • Wiley Wednesday – Writing Quantity Over Quality

    As the month of October quickly slips along, I’m left to contemplate participation in NaNoWriMo. That is shorthand for November’s National Novel Writing Month. It’s actually a worldwide affair during which writers of every conceivable genre scramble to put out 50,000 words toward one story in thirty days.

    This is no minor feat, demanding an average of over 1,600 words every day. Last year I count myself blessed to have succeeded. The resulting manuscript still needs work, as I set it aside in favor of other projects and then life in general. Still, I did it!

    Dogged persistence isn’t the only requirement. A big part of the process involves turning off the inner Critic. That alone is no easy task. Another is ignoring the desire many of us have to edit what is on the page instead of continuing to write. Edit in January or February after the pressure is off and you’ve stepped away from the project for a time.

    Finishing fifty thousand words in thirty days requires each author to focus on simply spooling out the story rather than worrying over the quality. This is key to completing a tale under any conditions, let alone increasing the rate of production.

    So, write instead of editing. Write despite any murmurings of an inner critic. Just sit down and write.

    Have I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year? I honestly can’t say. First, I need to figure out what to write! It’s great fun, though, and provides an opportunity to meet writers online and in person at various events or through the website.

    If interested, you should definitely check it out. Instructions for participation are simple, and then you put fingers to the keyboard and get busy. It’s that simple, if not exactly easy.

    Write, right?!

  • Wiley Wednesday

    As a music lover, I’ve long noted a preference for male vocals.  This fact became obvious when I tried listing female singers in my collection for a Thursday Thirteen.  That effort reminded me of a very different voice – from the written word.  Music is about the sound first and foremost, the story and emotion it carries like icing on the cake.

    The written word, for me, is different in that I don’t care about the voice telling the story.  That doesn’t appear to be a popular notion these days but I stand by it.  Tell your story however you will, from whatever POV, just give me believable characters in an interesting tale.

    Opining about this during a personal dry writing spell, I guess my goal is partly to hush my own inner critic.  I hope I’ve done the same for you and we’ll all get to enjoy more story.  Happy writing!

  • Wiley Wednesday—Five Ways to Manage Twitter Overload

    With Twitter’s exponential growth over the past five years, many users are feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of tweets that show up in their stream.

    As a corporate social strategist, I had to find a way to manage multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts without feeling overwhelmed. These five tips turned a mammoth task into something manageable.
    1. Use a 3rd party client like Tweetdeck, Seesmic, or Hootsuite. All three can be used on the computer or on a smartphone. Hootsuite is the only one that does not have a dedicated desktop application; you use it online.
    For personal use, I’d recommend Tweetdeck, as it has the most intuitive user interface–it’s easy to understand and customize. In addition, it now has a tweet scheduling function, so you can pre-arrange for any message to be sent at any time on any day. It’s a huge time-saver, especially for those informational or promotional tweets.
    2. In your twitter client, set up a column to follow pertinent hashtags (If you’re new to hashtagging, Mashable has a great post about it). That way, you’re following a more focused conversation. For writers, #amwriting is informative, but very busy. I prefer to follow #MyWana (writer support and community) and #1k1hr (groups of writers aiming to write 1,000 words in one hour–great support and motivation). You can also follow genre-specific tags, like #romcom. To find your ideal hashtag, use the search bar in Twitter, or use a site like Twittag or Tagalus. By dedicating certain columns to certain topics, you’ll feel less overwhelmed by a slew of disconnected updates. This will also make it easier to follow and join conversations–just remember to include the hashtag in your replies!
    3. Create Twitter lists to group the people you follow. Then, in your twitter client, you can set up a column that shows updates exclusively from one of those lists.
    If you’re new to listing or have NO idea what I’m talking about, these three resources will help:
    4. In your client, consider removing the full follower stream (the column that updates you with every tweet by everyone you follow) or at least move it to the far right of the columns, so it’s not the first one you see.
    Here’s what my Hootsuite dashboard looks like:
    My columns, from left to right: my social media list, my attorney marketing list, the general twitter feed, mentions, and sent messages. In Hootsuite, I keep a separate tab just for hashtags, but that’s only because there’s a huge number that I monitor. For personal use, I’d eliminate the “home” and “sent message” feeds and replace them with my favorite hashtags.
    Tweetdeck and Seesmic work in the same way, but Tweetdeck would be more simplified–which is almost always a good thing.
    4. Arrange for your tweets to be sent out for you so you’re not spending time throughout the day getting sucked into Twitter. For personal use, I schedule tweets throughout the week, then dedicate a time each evening to actually socializing and connecting.
    You can break Twitter down into three types of tweets: informational broadcasting (like sending out a link), promotional broadcasting (sending out information about you and your books; should be less than 20% of your total tweets), and conversation. I sit down on Sundays, usually, pick a handful of links I’ve found useful, and include them in my tweets–adding, of course, appropriate hashtags.
    I have a feeling my next Wiley Wednesday will be the anatomy of a tweet!
    Some tools that help you schedule your tweets: your twitter client; Buffer, which calculates the times of highest activity for your followers and sends your list of pre-arranged tweets out at those times; Timely does something very similar.
    5. Don’t feel like you need to read every tweet that gets posted. Sometimes, to filter through the chatter, I’ll use blURL to give me a list of my home feed tweets that include hashtags; that way, I can browse for useful information and pass over most of the “this is what I had for lunch” tweets. Other times, I’ll set an age limit on tweets, i.e. I won’t read anything more than an hour old. That way, I have fewer updates to read. This is especially good as most tweets have a shelf-life: either the content won’t be relevant anymore, or it will have been retweeted, and you’ll see it in more recent tweets.
    Twitter should be fun–not an obligation. Hopefully these tips will help 😀

  • Wiley Wednesday – Mechanics Over Muse

    Often of late, it seems all my writing has been confined to emails for the day job. I’ve been going home without even the inspiration to sit in front of a keyboard or pad of paper. Despite this, I have made up my mind to look at the bright side.

    There are positive aspects to my daily tasks. For example, every email typed is given proper grammar and spelling. Many also take a special skill at diplomacy or succinct explanation. And there is some self expression involved, though neither particularly fun nor the least bit fictional. At least I am still honing my craft if only in a mundane way.

    How about you? Are you up to anything interesting these days? If not, I hope you’ll take to heart that your creativity will eventually find a way of expression. While waiting for my own muse to take over and demand an out, I’ll work on the mechanics of writing.

    In addition, I’ll try to keep my spirit primed by way of Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”. That means artist’s dates to entertain my inner child and morning pages to channel negativity. Want to know more? You’ll find tons of resources on the web in general as well as this very blog. Whether or not you need the boost, I hope you’ll check out her valuable tools to creativity.

  • Wiley Wednesday: Mapmaking

    “No, put it there.” “No, over there.” “On the bureau, can’t you see?” “What bureau?” “The one in the bedroom!”

    Discussions about space sometimes plague us. Where do we file that client information? Where do we put the new hire? Where do we store all the books that we bought? We just bought a new TV, now where do we put it? What about the bin for recycled goods?

    This is true for our characters too. The worlds we create for them to inhabit are places that need to be as real to us as our own home. If we put a tree in the front yard in the morning, it better be there in the evening when our character comes home from work – or a neighbor cut it down, it fell over in a storm, or the city came and trimmed it. It can’t just go “poof.”

    So… How do you keep your trees from going poof? Because, after all, tree poofage is a leading cause of stress among writers, according to a recent poll.

    Maps!

    That’s right, I said maps. Draw a map of your space. You can draw a map of a room, a house, a street, even a planet. Even if you can’t draw very well, you can at least sketch in the main points. Where IS that pesky tree, anyway? Who lives to the right of the house? The left? What’s the name of the street?

    This is an old trick of fantasy authors, to draw maps of their worlds for readers to use. Some of them are quite elaborate and beautiful. But it can be useful even for “regular” world building. For example, in our upcoming release of BURNING BRIGHT, Rachel and I have a restaurant and bar called the Factory. We sat down and drew out how many tables there are on the main floor, where the bathrooms and kitchen are, the stairs, elevator, back door, and other elements are. That way, when our characters move around in the space we know what direction to turn them, what they see when they do it, and how to avoid walking them into walls.

    Try it with your house. Take a piece of paper out of your printer, and a use a pencil. See if you can’t draw your home, starting at the property line. Mark where the driveway is. Where do you park? Imagine coming home from the grocery store, and follow yourself from the moment you shut off the engine. Do you go in the back or front door? What’s the room you enter when you first come inside? Where’s the kitchen? Bathroom? Bedroom? What’s in the back yard? (A tree?) Fill in details as you go and don’t be afraid to erase and start over. It takes practice, and it doesn’t have to be pretty – it just needs to be clear.

    Tell me in the comments if you tried it, how did it go? Or, alternatively, how do you manage your imaginary worlds?