826

I don't know how many of you guys know about 826, but it's amazing.  It's a non-profit organization whose main focus is to teach kids 6-18 how to write.  During the school year they offer tutoring and in-school residencies (which I did) where you help teachers teach about things like grammar, punctuation, and how to use good adjectives.

Come summer, it's a bunch of writing workshops.  I helped out an one where the students were to make a board game based around their favorite book, and then signed up for help at a regular feature on revisions that I started at today.

It was a little different than I expected, I was thinking one-on-one time with students as they were writing to help with plot, characterization, and answering/posing 'what do you think should happen next questions'.  As it turns out, it's essentially like my adult writer's group, more like my creative writing classes maybe.  The kids submit stories ahead of time, read them at the workshop, and then we critique them.

We did two stories in an hour and a half, meaning these kids are getting a lot of attention, and I was surprised by how eager, and effective, the other kids in the group were about talking about the strengths and weaknesses of the pieces.  Never mind the age gap, I could hang with these kids all day! It wasn't all up to the facilitators.

And despite the similarity between this group and my adult writer's group, the environment is different. It may have to be with the ages (I'm the youngest in my tues group and I think the average age is 50, a big difference from my 22), or maybe because I'm not scared by these kids.   On Tuesday, I really admire everyone there.  They've all been writing a lot longer than me, some are published/have agents, and I guess I see them all as be much better than me.

Here on Wed, I'm at the top of the pack with college classes under my belt and years of self research into all things of the writer craft. But the kids aren't that far behind me, and even just being with two other facilitators and intelligent kids I feel like I'm much equal ground. (the workshop is for those 13-18, but most of these are 15-17 by the looks of things)  And as a facilitator I'm not meant to be work-shopped, so it's a much more relaxing feeling for me.

That, and I don't think the head guy knew I was a new facilitator instead of a student.  I don't know if the fact I could pass for 18 is good or bad.  But if it allows me to trick or treat w/o question, I'm gonna say good!

Worst Spelling Mistake Ever

I realized a huge horrible mistake today.  My URL is actually spelled wrong and I can't believe I didn't notice it! Or anyone else.  Or maybe you did and just declined to tell me.  'Fulfiling' and 'fulfilling' do look really alike though, and sadly the correctly spelt one is already taken as a blogspot URL.  As is the .com and .org versions of the name.  So, sadly, while the site itself is full of the correct spelling (as of today), my URL remains a typo.

I figured coming out and saying this might be better than having someone point it out later down the road and laugh at my expense.  *sigh*  I really am a spell check child.

Rewrite (which coincidentally also is the title of a song I really like)

I personally find that for stories that I need to write, but aren't all shiny and new, it's best if I set aside time to specifically work on them.  Preferably without Internet access.

So, my project the other day was a rewrite.  I typically like to redo and polish every scene I bring to my writing group within in the week so I don't have a massive amount of stuff to fix once the project's finished, and for the past week I decided to completely redo a scene.

I don't get along with massive rewrites.  I much prefer to polish things, maybe at a paragraph here, change what happens in that one, and spell check the hell out of thing.  It might also have to do with the fact that most of my rewrites have occurred after I a) lost the document and my self-taught computer magic skills were useless and the rewrite occurred after I was so depressed I couldn't type for days or b) my computer was out of commission, my file inaccessible, and my prof wanted something the next morning so I was forced to use a public computer sitting in a backless chair. 

But, while working out this scene I found that I really don't mind the rewrites.  I mean, it makes me feel all writerly.  If that makes sense.  It might not. I'm weird that way.  But it just seems to speak of dedication, and the willingness to work around problems, and seems to be a kernel of the romantic starving artist notion, in a stereotypical kind of way.  But doing stereotypical things makes us feel as if we are that stereotypical, and I love the idea of being a writer.  I'm hoping to skip the starving part, but last I checked the fridge in the co-op I live in had only one gallon of milk.  There's 43 of us.

...

Breakfast matters aside, as much as I don't like feeling like what I originally wrote was just shy of useless, rewriting feels right.  Feels real. And I'm glad for that, cuz I can see many, many more in my future.

And in a completely unrelated manner, how do twelve year olds act? I've been told my little Margret acts 7 :/

Gimmicks

I tend to hoard a lot of things, usually items I can get for free.  And as a result, I have so many free books I've snagged from my public library I'll never be able to get to them.

I also have way to many writing podcast episodes that I'm always way behind.  For most of the podcast shows I watch, I could delete a lot of the episodes from my feed - they're usually interviews with other authors or editors, and as interesting as those stories are I know I wouldn't be lost without them.

Writing Excuses however, is not one of those. With a tag line of '15 minutes long cuz your in a hurry and we're not that smart', it's a great round table type show where three authors, Howard Taylor, Dan Wells, and Brandon Sanderson (guests too sometimes) sit around and talk craft. I love every episode, they're all so informative and really wish there was a book published that was entirely transcripts of this show.

As the show is now on season 6 and I'm just now reaching the ending of season 2, I know I have a lot of catching up to do.

Anyway, this morning while flitting around and preparing the library I work at to open this morning (a medical library sadly, as it means I don't get access to cool new fiction releases) I was listening to an episode that dealt a lot with gimmicks.

They talked a lot about what gimmicks are, but then made a really good point that while books based on gimmicks can do really well short term, they don't help long term success. I mean, will people really be reading Twilight in 20 years? Or any of the plethora of vampire books that followed? Or in films, movies that rely on special effects and not story telling, can those really turn into movies we'll watch 10 years down the road? 

What does lead to royalty checks later is really good craft, which really, should be common sense.  But it got me thinking if my current WIP is gimmicky.  Well, maybe :/  It could be pitched as one ( The world destroyed in an alien version of cow tipping just screams gimmick, doesn't it?) but the story doesn't revolve around that per say. And this episode got me thinking, do I want to come out with short term popular work that makes lots of money now (like Dan Brown or such) or work that will last but will gain wealth through time and not necessarily in a 'blockbuster weekend' so to speak (like Mercedes Lackey). Not that people really know short story authors anyway...

I mean, at this point I just want to make money writing period, so I hadn't even thought of what type of money I want to earn.  But I guess I'd rather gain the wealth through checks that come years after the book is published, because I kinda like the idea about being known after my fingers are too crippled to type.

But first, I gotta get on the map. So I have to thank Annalisa loads for convincing me to enter a contest.  Which I did earlier today. ^_^

That alone makes this day productive.

When the Waiting Game is *Supposed* to be Over

So, I'm actively submitting my short story Coward to magazines.  It's essentially a long waiting game -_-'

However, in my current market the game should be over.  The magazine's website said I'd get a response in 12 weeks (which is such a long time I'm never submitting to something with a wait time like that again!), but those weeks came and go.  So I sent a letter to the editor, whom I also sent my manuscript to, politely asking for the status of my manuscript.

It's been almost a week now, and I haven't gotten a response :/

Should I just assume that this is another rejection and move on to the next market? I'm all for it, it'd mean I'm no longer sitting around and waiting.  But I don't want to send my story off somewhere, only to have this first market respond positively *fingers crossed* and have to pull it from the second market I have lined up that I know doesn't take simultaneous submissions.  Editors hate that.

I just hate this extra prolonged period of inaction, and want to do something about it, but I'm rather stuck. :/

Thoughts, my dear fellow writers?

Character emotions

I met with my writing group last night, and realized one of the benefits of bringing different sections of the same work on a regular basis is that you don't just learn how to improve a scene, but the story as a whole based on the similar comments you get each meeting.

That being said, I discovered that I lack emotion.  As in, how my characters react to each other, to situation.  When writing, I get caught up in the idea of 'what's going to happen', the action plot, and the more subtle nuances of characterization escape me. Which is funny because in the derivative works I write everything is always over emotional and the stories are labeled as angst. I guess that's just the difference that come with writing original fiction.  There's a lot more work involved.

It's just funny, because usually when I write I find myself looking at the story through the eyes of the viewpoint character I'm currently writing from, especially as this work (Cows for lack of a better title and something not long) is in 1st person.  And yet, it was the main character Belle that people wanted to see more from.  And the character I'm not sure of,  Don, every one got a solid read of.  >.<

I swear, writing is going to give me multiple personality disorder, and maybe I should take a week off and just really get to know my characters.  I mean, while talking about another authors work the question 'I'm not sure what she wants' came up.  It was only directed at the scene, but I had to stop and think, "What does Belle want?"  And blanked for a moment.  But I know what she wants, and now I just have to make sure that the reader want that.  But I now have to repeat that for all the characters I have so far (4, with more to show up).

It's times like this that I hope all this effort and work will pay off to be something salable.

Dealing with critiques

Hilary Smith recently posted a great tip article on how to make the most of the notes someone who critiques your work gives you. I wish I knew some of this stuff before! I've been critiqued loads of times before, in my creative writing classes, at my writer's group, reviews of some of my derivative works, from friends, from profs or GSI where are willing to help me out...I just realized that's a pretty decent list.  Well, we can't get somewhere on our own right? And I'm sure it'll grow larger before I'm published.

But, regardless, it's good advice.  Especially the mulling things over part. For two reasons.  One, I want the people I critique to do that because looking back I tend to critique pretty harshly (I fail to mention all the positive aspects I should).  Two, because I never do that XD

I haven't really had much time.  For my writing group, I take the comments I get, polish up the 6-8 pages I read for the group, and then write another section for the next group.  For my classes, I took all my notes (which were a lot more extensive and in depth, but we did spend 3x the amount of time on a story in class than in the group) and had two weeks to edit it and turn it in.  So I usually just look at notes, fix up my story/story part, and then continue on.

Which probably isn't the best way to go about things :/ As I'm sure it results in little things getting corrected, but not big things.

That being said, I have yet to apply this process to a novel length work.  (Though I did try.  I had 50K, sent it to a beta reader, but was really slow at editing and she only sent me the first two chapters :/ That was a failed adventure.)  I don't know if the process is that much different for short stories or novels, but I'm sure the time commitment is a lot more for a novel. And there'll be more mistakes, simply because there's the room for it.

As I'm always interested in what works for others to get some pointers from the fabulous people around me, how do you guys deal with the critiques you get? Does it depend on who gave it to you?

Writing Challenges/ MYWYN update

I love widespread writing challenges; large event coordinated online with a supportive community, lots of new people to met, and a goal.

I'm sure, my fellow writers, that you've heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  50K words in the 30 days during the month of November.  This totally singles me out as a writer, but my favorite and proudest accomplishment is winning NaNo the past two years. Not that I wrote a novel, it was more like I worked on this project here, that project there, but I did write 50K words in the month. 

The sad thing was, NaNo only happens once a year.

And then I was introduced to MYWYN (May- You Write Your Novel). (Also, I just realized that if you say that out loud, it's "my win". I love it!) Despite it's name, the event doesn't take place just over May, but the 80 days between May 1st and July 19th, with the goal of 1000 words a day for the result of an 80K novel.  80K, being the size of a salable novel, compared to the 50K from NaNo.

Instead of writing a novel, I figured I'd jump start my article writing, with the goal of writing one a day for the website Infobarrel.  80 articles is a good start I figured.

As it's now the first of June, I figured I should post an update of how I'm doing.

I'm falling behind >.<

I have only written 22 articles, not even half of which are 1K.  It takes effort to write them I've found - research on keywords to see what people are searching, then researching facts for the article, and then formatting it properly, finding pictures and linking to the sources, finding products I can link to (for I get paid for these articles based on ad commissions, be they from Google or Amazon), and proofreading twice.  Writing fiction, or at least a first draft, does not take nearly so much time.  For me anyway.  And with real life piling on and the concern for awhile I was going to be unemployed, or at least have my hours cut enough where I couldn't make rent, there were other concerns on my mind.

I've got a lot of writing to do, but I do hope to catch up to my awesome fellow...MYWYNers?  WYNers?

...

We need to come up with a name for ourselves!