I love craft books!

Almost put the title of this post as my facebook status but I have a lot of friends who don't know me as a writer and I didn't want to talk about crocheting. :)

I'm reading "Writing the Breakout Novel" by Donald Maass. I missed the RWA conference this year, but read several blogs about it and his Fire In Fiction workshop was highly praised. I attended his workshop last year (well, most of it) and loved it. Borders was out of "The Fire in Fiction" when I was on my latest craft-book-buying spree but I happily picked up WBN instead.

Loving it! It's getting me inspired and helping me find answers to questions I didn't even know I should be asking my characters or about my story. Making progress!

And yet also feeling overwhelmed. :)

Revise or start over

I sit down with all these new ideas to revise a scene. Then I start reading what's there and end up just making little changes here and there and none of my new fabulous ideas come out in the "finished' product. :(

So my new approach is to just start the scene over. Fresh page, new document, whatever - just start with a clean slate and get the new ideas out there. My plan is to later merge the two and keep what I like from both.

We'll see if that works. :)

Cruisin' back to life

Had a blast - the weather was fabulous, the water was an incredible color blue, the food was plentiful and delicious, and my mom and sisters and I were able to complete whole conversations with no interruptions from kids or hubbies - did I mention it was fabulous?

But I'm back to the real world now and back to working on craft and content. I'm still reading Jack Bickham's book (took a break for a bit), plus I'm reading another on characterization. Plus I'm studying scene & sequel a little more closely. And trying (but failing!) to get some actual new words in my WIP. I just re-joined our chapter's writing challenge to help me get my booty in gear, though.

Stay tuned for progress...

Uh, hi, May...

When did you get here?

Although I can multi-task most things, I can't seem to do it with writing and blogging. I'm either writing or blogging (which is also writing, but not making progress in my manuscript!). I've been writing. Kinda.

Mostly I've been learning. Scene and sequel is great stuff! I'm planning edits, making a few here and there, and plotting out the rest of the story using this technique, so I haven't been blogging.

Hope all is fine with you - I'm going back to my manuscript, but I should be back next week to tell you about the cruise I'm going on this weekend!

Have a great week!

Hello, April!

Hee, hee!

What's so funny, you ask? Well, I was reading a friend's blog and really liked her idea so I copied the link and came here to post about it. Then I realized I haven't posted since the second week of March, so I wrote the title to welcome the new month, then realized it's April's blog I'm posting about.... I'm so easily amused.

Anyway, as always happens when I get to someone's blog, I tend to read back a while (maybe a lot of whiles) and I usually end up finding something that really resonates with me. This time was no different. April is a writing coach and in the few times I've talked to her about my books, she's asked some question that is so right on that it nearly takes my breath away. In the post I'm posting about April wrote about characterization - something I'm struggling with right now - and I really liked her ideas, so I'm going to use them. Boy, every shopping trip is going to be different from now on. :)

In other news, I'm currently reading Jack Bickham's Writing and Selling Your Novel which is a re-write of his earlier book, Writing Novels That Sell. The first chapter is about professionalism and how important it is to set writing goals, specifically output - a number of pages you will write each day - and sticking to that goal. So, of course, I set a goal. And blew past it today, even though I haven't written in ages - or perhaps BECAUSE I haven't written in ages. It's all dammed up in there and I finally put my butt in the chair and opened the floodgates. A lot came out. A lot of crap, I'm sure, but hopefully some fresh, clean ideas I can use later. One of the quotes I've run across in this book that I love is:

Good novels aren't written -- they're re-written. ~Jack Bickham

Words to remember.

Confessions

I just want to come clean and confess that the idea of looking for quotes to put in last week's post came from my friend, Romantic Girl's posts about love and motivation. She includes some quotes and that got me to searching and so on and so on.

Whew! I feel better having gotten that off my chest.

Next up: Reading, not writing. Actually that's not even true. I've actually been listening instead of writing. Another friend, Jane Sevier, mentioned Harlan Coben in a post and how much she enjoyed listening to one of his books so I figured I should give him a try. I have about a 30 minute commute to work so I've been borrowing books on CD from the library to help pass the time - and keep me awake - and cross some of the TBR books off the list (it doesn't do much to clear out my shelf, however).

I just finished Lady Killer by Lisa Scottoline and started Back Spin by Harlan Coben today. So far I'm enjoying it immensely. He's got a sense of humor I can relate to - sarcastic. I'll let you know how I like it as it goes on. I also recommend Lady Killer. Ms. Scottoline's characters are smart and strong and I enjoyed the story quite a bit. I've read one of hers and listened to two and have enjoyed them all.

On the writing front I have made some progress. I came up with some scene ideas and am a little bit closer to completing that elusive first draft. This is my third book, yet it's so different from the first two, it's like it's the first all over again. I'm finally enjoying it again, but getting distracted with all these audio books. They're really only supposed to help make the drive to work go more quickly, but they tend to consume me, just as if I were reading a real book. :)

This time when it feels like I've missed a week it's because I have

How many posts can I use the tag "excuses" on? This would be why there's no book out there in the stores with my name on the spine. :)

February is a month of many celebrations in my house: birthday, V-day, anniversary, birthday. Each week holds something new. By the end of the month I'm wiped. But it's a new month now, so I'm back. Not very exciting, but here and ready to blog some fascinating tidbit.

Right after I come up with it.

Where my mind has been lately:

Happiness - how do you acheive it? is it long-term or a fleeting thing you have to chase daily? what do you to be happy? what makes you happy? does happy = contented = joyous ??? they somehow seem different to me, on the scale of contented, happy, joyous

Do the right thing, people - what would the world be like if everyone did the right thing? boring, probably, but heck, it seems like I hear more and more stories about greed, corruption, theft, murder....you get the idea. as part of my job I get these daily summaries of all the bad news all over the world - every day. I need some sort of counter balance that sends me all the good news that's happened. Oh, but wait. For some reason that's not news. Yes, there's some out there, but most of what you see is bad.

And now to counterbalance that vibe I'm going to leave you with a few quotes that resonate and bring me that fleeting happiness...

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath
-so get over it.

Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it. ~Jules Renard
-totally relate to this - heck, it's perfect in my head. If I could just do a Vulcan mind-meld with the computer I'd be set.