Tag Archives: fiction

Snip! It’s Sunday! 11/20

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I haven’t done this for awhile, but since I am writing a new story over at the archive, I decided to post a snippet for today. The new story is called Schizophrenic. It uncurls a tale of interruption of the idyllic life of a former popstar who still has one ultra devoted fan. Not only is she obsessive, but she is mentally ill and believes that the pop star is talking to her through his music.

This scene is from Chapter 1. My main characters have just returned from their anniversary dinner to find something not quite right about the house. They’re in the car, waiting for the police to arrive and check it out.  This story is in progress over at the NF Archive.

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The Sunday Snippet: Trapped By Everything He Is

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Haven’t done this for a few weeks, so here’s a snip!

 

This is from All I Wanna Do, a novel length serial about the ultimate fan girl fantasy– meeting, dating, and falling in love with a member of the band… except that it’s not as glamorous as one might imagine.  In this scene, my lovebirds have had their biggest blowout yet and Serena has temporarily moved out, expecting JC to come after her. But he doesn’t and now she’s stuck. This conversation is between her and his brother:

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Snippet Sunday 9/4: The Nature Show. The Rain Dance

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The image of rain has been rolling around in my head for quite a while. I was trying to figure out if it was supposed to be metaphoric or symbolic, but it just wasn’t coming to me. I guess I was trying too hard, because last night I cued up Youtube and listened to the sound of rain (my writing soundtrack lately) and started writing. Still not quite what I was going for, but it has been haunting me for a long time, so maybe now it’ll leave me alone!

Check it — The Nature Show, The Rain Dance:

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Writing Lessons from Fanfiction #2: How to Take the Good With the Bad

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Yesterday I introduced this week’s topic, “What I’ve Learned About Writing from Writing Fan Fiction”, with the first lesson that anyone with a talent for writing will have to eventually convince themselves:  Fan Fiction writing is real writing.  While we don’t produce material that can be bought and sold, it is writing all the same. Anyone who’s writing fan fiction should consider their pieces to be their novellas, their novels, their short stories and be as proud of them as if they were being bound and printed. Today’s Lesson can be a hard pill to swallow.

Lesson #2: How to Take Your Lumps, and I’m not talking about the Lady kind.

They say we are our own worst critic, and that adage applies to every writer I know. The pages of this blog are full of whining and moaning about my writing not being as good/deep/prolific/magical/life changing as I’d like it to be. Once I’ve edited a piece to the nth degree, there is nothing so nerve-wracking as putting it up for public consumption and hoping that people don’t hate it.

What If They Hate It?

I always try to measure negative reviews against positive but the lone dissenting opinion can weigh heavily, especially if you don’t really get a reason as to why they don’t like your latest work. If readers hate your work and are so bold as to tell you so, what do you do?

I’ve read post after post about what to do about negative reviews. The answer is NOT to fly off the handle and get into a comment war. My personal rule is that a negative review has to have merit. This sucks and so do you doesn’t tell me much.  If they don’t expound upon why they think it (or I) sucks, I delete it. Criticism should be constructive, otherwise it’s simply childish meanness that I have no use for. Help me get better or shut it.

Or go into further detail about the suckage… exactly what part inhales wind?

What If They Like It?

But what if they don’t hate it? What if they ooh and aaah and swoon and you sit back and *squint* your eyes and say ‘Really? Because… I mean, it’s totally weak from here to here and I obviously flubbed this and that and I can’t believe you actually like the ending…’

Well. Don’t do that. A few lives ago, for a very short time I was a Personal Assistant for a fledgling Christian Music group. And yes, even Christian groups have groupies. One of the first thing that group members are taught is to not downplay themselves in front of fans. When fans fawn, don’t insist that you’re not like, totally awesome and you don’t like, totally rock. Say thank you. Smile. Express your appreciation. Sign whatever they want you to sign. Don’t make them feel stupid for thinking you’re great.

I think this is a lesson that any artist or writer could take to heart. It’s tough when we’re so supercritical of ourselves. And we want to stay humble– no one wants to be the pompous ass who thinks s/he is the greatest in the world. Trust me– if you were a pompous ass, it would have become apparent long before you wrote a great story/book/ chapter.

Bottom Line: Try to take something from everything, the good AND the bad. You never know when ‘this sucks because…’ might help you in the future.

Do you have a hard time accepting praise or criticism? How do/did you battle it?

Writing Wednesdays 8/24: In which I am featured at StoryFix!

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Photo courtesy Melissa Wilkinson | Photobucket.com

Good Wednesday Morning, Fellow Writers! I have an exciting announcement today!

After much nervousness and changing my mind and changing it back and finally just putting my big girl pants on and DOING IT, one of my pieces- Try to Say No- is featured on the Peer Review Page at Story Fix! Yay!

And I already have one comment in which someone does NOT hate it! Even more yay! (It’s pitiful how big my smile was when I saw that first comment.)

If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you’ve seen the evolution of this piece. I have reworked it since it appeared at Short-Story.net and I feel it is the best it has ever been.  Something about the past tense wasn’t working for me. I changed a bit of the imagery, revised the tense, punched up some scenes and removed some “explanation”. Sometimes it’s better to just let the words stand for themselves and let the reader figure things out. It really is a process, you know?

It is… nerve wracking to have your work posted for public consumption, especially on a site where so many will see it. It is not unlike that nightmare we have where we arrive at school naked and everyone can see our private bits.  Even worse than someone having something bad to say is no one saying anything at all, especially if you are kind of proud of your private bits. A piece generating zero reaction is… well. I mean. A failure. So I am at least hoping for really good or really bad comments.

But seriously, really good comments would be great. I’m also hoping for some constructive criticism on how I could improve it or what doesn’t work.

I want to thank my friend Sarah over at He Loves Me Not, who gave me a swift kick in the pants and made me submit after she was so kind as to review it for me.  I submitted it yesterday and I expected it to be a few days but it is already up and available to read and review. If you have a few extra moments, please pop over and take a read and leave a comment about how terrible awesome it is.

Snippet Sunday 8/14: In-depth Evaluation

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No rhyme or reason to today’s snippet. I picked a random chapter from a random story, copied and pasted whatever caught my eye. I’m kind of vain about this story though. I really enjoyed letting loose and writing this one. One of my faves.

From Same Time Next Week, enjoy today’s Snip!

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#SnippetSunday- 8/7: Rescue Me (Part Duh)

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I have no idea why I named it that, except the decision that my female MC, Gabby, needs to make is such a no brainer. Duh.

Here’s a snippet from that story, which will be posted in its entirety at the fanfiction archive and my personal archive.

“Your mom, she’s okay?”

“More than okay. It was just me and her for a long time, you know? She put herself through nursing school, put me through school. She made it work.”

“She must have given you your spunk.”

“If that’s what you want to call it, yeah. I’m proud of her. When I graduated, she went back for another degree. And then she married one of her doctors, so…” Gabby stopped to laugh.

A knowing smile broke across his face. He nodded. “So she’s doing just fine, huh?”

“Just fine,” she said, nodding back.

“So your… stepdad? Is he a good guy?”

“He’s the best thing to ever happen to her. He’s why she’s always after me to date and meet new guys. She wants me to be as happy as she is.” Gabby snorted a laugh. Like she could subscribe to the fairytale her mother tried to plant in her head.

“You sound like you don’t think that’s possible. People find love everywhere. Anywhere. You never know.”

Even on the Sunset Strip. Wait. What? 

Et Voila. I hope you’ll read the rest later on today!

Saturday Sprint (on Sunday): Making life hard

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Yesterday’s DIYMFA exercise was our usual Saturday Sprint, but after a very stressful week rife with personal issues, I spent my Saturday sleeping and generally lazing about. It was much needed rest, but I didn’t get anything done in the way of writing. I did a lot of thinking, but thinking isn’t writing.

I did my Sprint today, answering the following questions:

Character name:  I decided to go with a new character, Maxine Donovan. She is every selfish, pretentious, self absorbed and vain woman you know, times ten. The only relationships she maintains are those of her friendship circle, simply because they have known her for so long that they’re used to her. As she approaches her late 30′s, she is desperately seeking a man to provide the finer things in life for her and to take care of her and will stop at nothing to make this happen– even attempt to steal a man away from a friend who deserves to have someone good in her life.

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Warning. Brain Capacity Status: Full. Overload imminent.

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Uhmmmm. So, yeah. What a week.  So here’s the thing.

I’ve been writing for awhile and I’m a pantser for the most part, so I sit down and I jot out some stuff that’s in my head (cause it’s been writing itself for awhile) and then I get to a certain point and plot out the rest so that I’m not writing into oblivion. I write and I write and then I cut and I edit and primp and then contemplate and meander and what I like to call marinate.

And then I edit and reword and send it off to brutal, vicious crit partners (not really, they are the sweetest, ever, unless you don’t make sense in a bit of dialog and then I get “???? I don’t get it???” and I’m all *scoff* ! “I get it!”) and theeennnn once I get it back I make recommended changes and then whew I am done. Post on the fiction archive and wait for the accolades to roll in.

I mean, that’s how it was before. You know, pre- Really Serious Original Writing Project Time For Serious.

Now I am trying to plan. I am trying to develop. I am trying to create fully rounded 3 dimensional characters with stories of their own. I’m trying to plot out a story and think of the important pieces and the lessons that have to be learned and the milestones that have to be uncovered. I’m writing ON PURPOSE.

Uhmmmm…..Ya know what?

 

Please tell me you remember the Vancome Lady from MADTV?!

This. is. hard. I swear, the few words I’ve written this week during our study of character for DIY MFA have been harder than the 8,000 word chapters I bang out for fanfiction. Making stuff up on the fly is real easy for me. THINKING ABOUT IT is hard. Planning and interweaving and creating a puzzle out is more difficult. Definitely gaining a lot of respect for the process.

So I haven’t been doing a ton of writing this week, not as far as story creating, but I’ve been up on my writing exercises for DIY MFA. We talked about images and how they help us shape characters, scene and setting; we did some Character Compasses to examine dialog and determine if we’re doing more telling than showing; we used 20 Questions and Character Interviews to round out our characters, give them backstory and depth. That was a great exercise! Today I’ll be trying to do an Acrostic Character bio for the same character I’ve been working with this week. As soon as I figure out what her middle name is…

See now, this is all well and good and helpful and important… but I have 4 other major characters and minor characters to do this for… so I’ve got some WORK to do. Not to mention these people inside my head are kind of screaming and angling for attention and they sort of want OUT and I won’t let them OUT and it’s getting a little ugly up in there.

I guess I’d better get to work… the sooner I finish the planning, the sooner the characters can come OUT.

#DIYMFA Writing Sprint #1- Breaking out of the comfort zone

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Today was the first Writing Sprint for DIY MFA. The theme today was breaking out of the writer’s comfort zone, breaking old habits that we settle into, so that when we aren’t comfortable, we can’t write.

I typically write at home, on my bed. I have a little lap desk that I set up and here is pretty much where I’ve written anything I’ve ever written. I don’t have a desk, so here I sit, day and night, writing. I normally have complete silence… if the TV is on, it’s muted. I also like to have some music playing, at least in one ear. And sometimes, even if I don’t have music, I have ear buds to cancel out any noise from outside, or my neighbor upstairs, whom I call THE STOMPER. One of these days, my prompt is going to be what THE STOMPER is doing up there, making all that noise.

Today, to break that comfort, I went to the Cafe at my local Barnes and Noble bookseller. And instead of writing on my laptop, I took a pen and a pad of paper. How did I do?

I’ll be honest, it was hard. My brain moves much faster than my fingers do, but I have to slow down while I’m writing so I can read it later to type it up. And then there was the finger cramping… I was able to push through and get down about 1500 words in about an hour and a half. On my laptop, once I get going I can get 1000 words in about 45 minutes. So it seems it took me twice as long, but at least I got it done.

I just typed up what I wrote, which is a scene from my next project. It’s also a scene from what I estimate to be about the middle of the book. I’m a linear writer, so I will actually write forever just to get to a certain point. I’ve been delaying starting this project because I don’t have all my ducks in a row.

No more. Today, the project started!

I got a total of  1,504 words in today. Great start.

A Thanks and Writing Update Post

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First of all, THANKS to all of the people who commented on my Sunday Six post! I am going to make it a point to get around and read the entries from yesterday.

I am not writing tonight because I finished my story! Yay. It ended up being a little over 40,000 words. It is posted at the Fiction archive and also at my archive here.

I’ve also updated my word count for March, since I don’t plan to do any more writing this week. I ended up at 105,742 words so far for the year. My goal is 350,000 for 2011, so uhm… I have a lot more writing to do.

I’ll be getting ready to fly to New York tomorrow and Wednesday! So excited! I hope I can make it to WORD in Brooklyn– I just really want to go there. Until then, I’ll be mentally prepping myself for my next adventure. I promised my writer friend that I wouldn’t write any more fan fiction until I wrote something original. SIGH. So I am going to spend April mapping things out and trying to start something new.  Original never comes as easily to me as fan fic does, but I have to get off the easy train. No one is going to publish my fan fiction.