Tag Archives: Writing

How Did They Build the Pyramids? One Brick at a Time.

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

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So I’m frantic busy trying to finish the first draft on the fourth Ellie Gooden/Coffee & Crime mystery.  It’s due to my editor at the end of July.  The clock is ticking.  I was making steady progress until Wednesday when I was slammed with Stupid Real Life Stuff and I got totally derailed.  I began to wonder if I was ever going to finish this one.

dog and keyboard

Made me wonder how those poor Egyptians felt, staring up at the empty space that would one day be the Great Pyramid, then looking at the seventeen or so stones laid on the ground and wondering how on earth they were ever going to create what Imhotep drew out for them.

pyramidbuidling

But, Sunday I pulled myself up by my boot straps and planted my butt in the chair and managed to put down 2100 or so words.  It felt good, and suddenly that pyramid I’m building didn’t seem quite so daunting.  I might only be halfway to the summit, but I can see the gleaming golden cap over the brilliant white sandstone blocks, shining like a beacon to the heavens… just like this newest Coffee & Crime mystery will outshine all the rest of the cozy paranormals out there for sale on the ‘Zon this fall.

Or…  maybe I’ve just been out in the sun too long and I’m starting to see things.  At any rate, the way those poor, loin-clothed, bare-torso’d wretches built that pyramid is the same way I’m going to write this book.  One lousy brick at a time.  Yes, I’ll probably need some sledges to haul the stones, and some water to quench my thirst and maybe even a foreman or two to crack the whip over my head (hey Nano pals, you hear that?  You get to play with my Indiana Jones whip!).  But I got this.

 

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Gratuitous Indy Pic!

Anyhoo.  I haven’t been in touch in a while and I just wanted to let you know that I’m still here.  Still dragging the stones up the slanted ramp, all Sisyphus-like.  Still sweating under the hot Egyptian sun for the glory of Ra.  Heh heh.  Or something like that.  Keep on, keeping on, fellow babies.  And as always,

Illegitimi non carborundum!

What Weight Do You Normally Fight At?

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

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I’m ba-a-a-a-ack!

im-ba-ack

Greetings fellow Earthlings!

As some of you know, I took a rather spectacular fall just before Thanksgiving. Face-planted onto concrete right in front of a bunch of people from the Evil Day Job.  It was spectacular.  Blood everywhere, broken bones, including my hand and nose (and my pride), sprained things, even had to have stitches. I looked like I’d gone a round in the ring with Mike Tyson. Worst part? I spilled my entire large Coca-Cola, my special treat for that week!

I’d include a picture but you might bust something laughing – or try to blackmail me. Anyway, sorry to have been MIA for so long, but I’m back (just when you thought it was safe to go back on the internet!).

On the plus side, I’m once again able to type (and write), and Book Three in the Coffee and Crime Mysteries is due out in early spring, so there’s that to look forward!  I think this is the best Ellie book yet.  THings heat up for her both in town, with Charlie and even in terms of the death of her parents.  Lots of fun!  And the cover!  Oh, the cover.  My cover artist, Raven Blackburn, has knocked it out of the park again.  I’ve shared it on my Facebook page and here’s a sneak peek for all of you as well!

coverrevealbanner

Anyhoo, now that my tippy-tapping fingers are back in action, you can look forward to more idle ramblings, pithy musings and giddy babblings soon.  Oh, and as always, the peasants are revolting.

revolting-peasants

Illegitimi non carborundum!

How Carving a Pumpkin Can Change Your Life

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

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Yes, it’s true.  Carving a pumpkin can truly change your life.  Especially if you’re using a really sharp knife and it slips…

But seriously.  I spent some rather unproductive time last night attempting to create a pumpkin masterpiece.  Now, we ALL know I have no artistic ability whatsoever.  I can draw neither a straight nor curvy line, cannot paint, cannot sculpt, and am not in any other way artsy or craftsy.  I wasn’t only a pariah in gym class… art class was my second least favorite subject.

And yet, as Halloween is my favorite holiday, each year I desire to create that perfect, most sincere Jack-O-Lantern.  In my mind, I am imagining this:

awesome-jack-o-lantern

And each year, I pretty much end up with something like this.

ugly-jack-o-lantern

This year, I finally figured out how it happens.  It’s all about revision.  Yes, there, I said it.  A dirty little writer word.  See, what happens is that I keep feeling unsatisfied, so I keep trimming and deleting and refining and modifying, until… well, it’s like cutting your own bangs, isn’t it?  You want them to be even, but you’re not a professional stylist, so you keep making tiny adjustments when you find they’re not quite right on that one side and then you look in the mirror and you find you’ve got this:

bad-bangs

Yeah.  Stories, bangs, pumpkins, it’s all the same.  And it doesn’t stop there.  For me, anyway, since nothing is ever perfect, and I’m one of those people who need to fix/manage/control my world, I try to tweak everything.  Constantly.  Like, to death.

So I’m trying to teach an old dog a new trick.  Maybe, just maybe, my crappy pumpkin carving, while still probably crappy, is okay.  Maybe the heart and soul that I put into it will trump my relatively paltry skill at carving.  Maybe, by practicing pumpkin carving every day in the weeks running up to Halloween I’ll improve my skill.  Or maybe, just maybe, I need to learn to let what I create be whatever it is and be satisfied with it, knowing that I am my own worst critic and that it probably isn’t anywhere near as bad as I think it is.  (Although in the case of pumpkins, I might have to accept reality… )

I mean, yes, we always want to improve and that’s not a bad thing.  But if we’ve tried our best, constant cutting and trimming and correcting may just end up destroying what we set out to create.  Not just in art, not just in writing, not just in pumpkin carving, but in everything.

So this year, I’m going to go buy another pumpkin.  And I’m going to carve it the best I am currently able.  I’ll even post pictures.  It might not be a masterpiece, but I guarantee it will be sincere enough to make the Great Pumpkin happy.  And for once, this year, I will be too!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

A Pithy Quote for the Day

27 Tuesday Sep 2016

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I was reading a blog by Maria Popova, who was quoting Ann Patchett from her memoir.  It rang so true for me, as a writer, I had to share it.  You can read the full blog post here: BrainPickings, and I highly recommend reading Ann Patchett’s book (available at Amazon here: This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage).

“For me it’s like this: I make up a novel in my head (there will be more about this later). This is the happiest time in the arc of my writing process. The book is my invisible friend, omnipresent, evolving, thrilling… This book I have not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book, and my faith in it as I track its lazy flight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.

And so I do. When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing — all the color, the light and movement — is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book.

The journey from the head to hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write — and many of the people who do write — get lost… Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.”  Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Illegitimi non carborundum!

Don’t Think About Writing…

13 Sunday Jul 2014

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How Not to Think About Writing

How Not to Think About Writing


After last week’s momentous book launch, I decided I deserved a weekend’s worth of down time. I’d been going 4-40 since January and felt exhausted. All I was looking for was two days of doing nothing. Makes sense, right? Recharge the old batteries, gather steam for the next project. All good.

What was it Bobby Burns said? The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, wasn’t it? Yeah… turns out the old Scot was right.

So I blow off my WW meeting on Saturday morning because of a rum tummy. Tried to sleep in, but His Admiralship wanted breakfast at five freaking thirty. Got up, fed the pushy poodle, then tried to go back to sleep. Kept thinking about scenes I needed to add to Book 2 of the mystery series. Not wanting to lose the ideas, I grabbed my bed side notebook to jot them down — and promptly spilled my water glass into the open drawer of the nightstand. *sigh* Got up, cleaned up the mess (yes, thank you, Nelson, you were very helpful trying to lick up the water), then tried again to go back to sleep. Remembered I hadn’t made notes. Got up again and jotted down my ideas.

At that point, I was wide awake. But I had promised myself I wasn’t going to do anything writerly. So I went downstairs, put the kettle on, made some tea… and started thinking about a scene in my fantasy novel. Nope. Stop it. Not doing any writing today. Stood there for a moment and noticed that the kitchen cabinets needed cleaning. Got out the orange oil and did a spot of cleaning.

Two hours later, the kitchen gleamed. As did the bathrooms and the floors. And as I scrubbed I found myself wondering what my character Charlotte would use for degreasing since oranges weren’t available in medieval times… stop it. Stop thinking writer-type things! Maybe, I thought, as I got up off the floor, knees aching, I should take a little nap.

Oh, wait, not so fast. I needed to take the oriental carpet to this shop my husband found in Lakemoor for cleaning. Lakemoor? Where the devil is Lakemoor? Oh, says he on his way out the door to work, it’s just up 47, take a right on 120. Right around the corner.

Over an HOUR LATER, I finally located the small burb of Lakemoor, but the only thing at the address indicated was an autobody shop. I drove up and down the street for twenty minutes (I’m sure people thought I was either loony or casing the joint), but there is NO cleaners. So I drove back home. But the drive wasn’t completely wasted because I figured out the tricky escape bit for the fantasy novel. Oh damn. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about writing…

So I got home shortly after noon, at which point, it was time to rouse the teenager and get some food down her gullet before she becomes an unholy, crabby mess. That accomplished, I thought, okay, NOW I can sit down and do… um… work on the fantasy novel? No. No writing. Okay, I’ll um… oh I know, I’ll dump book 2 of the mystery series into Scrivener and… oh, yeah, no writing. So… um… er…

I dithered on the couch for about twenty minutes, trying to think of something to do that wasn’t writing related. I even pulled out my Kindle to read something. But I couldn’t settle on what to read. Except that book about how to writer faster… but wait, that was writing related.

Bottom line, I’ve apparently forgotten how to just sit and do nothing. Well, at least anything that doesn’t have something to do with writing. And you know what? I’m pretty okay with that. Turns out, I LOVE writing. Even the icky revision part. I’m actually itching to dive into the editing of Book 2. Maybe this revision won’t take me six months, like the last one, now that I understand the process!

So today, Sunday, I took a breath, allowed myself to think a few writerly thoughts, then did my usual Sunday errands (grocery store, making a few casseroles for dinner during the week, putting my lunch things together for Monday, etc.). And for dinner, the family and I went out to The Claddagh for a good old faux Irish meal. I even treated myself to a pear cider. Yum!

Tomorrow, however, it’s back to work. Both to the evil day job and as a writer. And I can’t wait!

Is there a hobby or avocation you itch to work on when you’re doing other things? Is there a project you can’t wait to get back to or consumes your thoughts at any given idle moment? I’d love to hear about your favorite things. And thanks for dropping by!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

Well, the way it started… And then… But meanwhile… So finally…

29 Sunday Jun 2014

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I’m finally getting through the last of my beta comments on my soon to be published mystery novel.  It has been so wonderful at the same time it’s been unbelievably hard.  Yet, the final set of comments were quite the most instructive.  The first few sets, while really incredibly valuable, mostly addressed spelling, grammar and those ‘well, duh’ spots, where I lost the plot, or made little (or not so little) mistakes.  All important stuff that I could not have lived without.  The final beta reader, however, honed in on my ‘bad writer habits’.  Trust me, when you’re confronted with those nasty things, there is a moment where you think, ‘oh dear heavens, I totally suck’.

After that initial reaction, though, you become eternally grateful to that beta reader for teaching you an invaluable lesson.

What, you may ask, are my nasty little bad writer habits? The biggest one is beginning sentences (sometimes five and six a page) with a conjunction.  Page after page after page.  You know those words.  And.  But.  Well.  So.  I even caught myself doing it in this post and had to go back through it and change them all (See, SW? I’m making progress!). 

Then there are the deadly “ings” – the overuse of “ing” words.  Dozens of those to plow through.  Or more.  I’m too scared to count them right now.

The prospect of going through every page in my WIP to find them and, in most cases, fix them, is daunting indeed.  Makes me want to buy a ginormous (jeez, that word made it through spell check… when did that become a real word?) bag of cheesy popcorn and eat the whole thing in one sitting. GAH!!!!!!!

I gave myself today off.  Tomorrow, however, is another day.  I will be using my trusty word processor’s “find” function to its maximum capacity – burning through the literary equivalent of dilithium crystals.  I hope the word engines can take it.  I may even have to call Scotty in Engineering for ‘more power’!  (Sorry, yes, I know, I had to reach for that one.)

What are your bad writer habits?  Is there a word or set of words you have to excise from your writing during revision?  Or are you the sort who can catch them as you write?  I’d love to hear about your bad writer habits – I’m sure I can learn from them.  Plus, it serves the purpose of making me feel not quite so incompetent!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

An Independent Woman

08 Thursday May 2014

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It is an amazing time to be a writer. When I was young(er), the publishing world had me by the throat. Find your story (but make sure it fit into the neatly defined categories set forth by the books sellers of the world). Then write it and ship it off to every literary agent worth their salt (but ONLY in the city of New York because they were the only ones that were said to “count”). Then pray that one of them would find you in their giant slush pile and agree to take you on. Then pray that he/she didn’t screw you in your contract. Then pray some more that said agent actually believed in your work enough to sell your work to a publisher over sparkling water and poached salmon. And finally, you got the word that you’d sold something… and started sacrificing teddy bears and Cheetos to the Book Store Gods to ensure your book sold enough to warrant getting a contract for a second book. And so on and so on. The only part that was in your control was the writing.

Today, with the rise of indie publishing, it’s a completely different world. Now, if you choose to go the path of an indie writer, your future is really in your own hands. And while this can be incredibly intimidating (okay, terrifying), it is also extremely liberating. A friend of mine recently published an AWESOME short in a genre that didn’t even exist ten years ago (zombie westerns). Check it out here: http://www.amazon.com/Massacre-Lonesome-Ridge-Samantha-Warren-ebook/dp/B00IRJ4MBY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1399576383&sr=1-1&keywords=massacre+at+lonesome+ridge
Not only is the genre startlingly non-traditional, but it isn’t a traditional “novel” length piece either. Ten years ago, even five years ago, no traditional publishing house would have considered it. Heck, they probably still wouldn’t. But Ms. Warren is not only a brilliant entrepreneur, she’s an amazing writer. She makes it work. And that, my friends, is the truly amazing thing about this brave new world we find ourselves in as writers. We can forge our own path. Create our own genres. Live our dreams on OUR terms.

In June I’ll be publishing my first novel as an indie author. I’m equal parts terrified and thrilled. But the best part is that I don’t need anyone but me to make this happen. Well… okay, me and a bunch of supportive friends, family members, beta readers…

I’ve known my whole life what my special gift was. Now I can use it – without any “authority” telling me it’s not good enough. And that is the most amazing thing of all.

Illegitimi non carborundum!

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Don’t You Hate it When You’re Wrong?!

01 Thursday May 2014

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So I’ve recently been more diligent about reading all the blogs about writing I follow.  Some are inspirational, some keep me motivated, some are just fun.  Then there are the ones that I actually learn from.  And sometimes that learning is PAINFUL.

I don’t know about you, but I HATE IT when I’m wrong.  I’ve been writing for a long time.  I’ve come a long way from those callow days of my youth when I thought my writing was perfect and editors would swoon reading it.  I’ve made lots of mistakes, learned to identify them, learned to fix them – mostly with the help of other sainted writers who have been gracious enough to give back to the writing community by helping others learn, but a lot on my own (proving, I suppose, that if you bang your head against your desk long enough something positive may come out of it).  So when I read Kristen Lamb’s blog on Flashbacks the other day, I was, in the following order, convinced she was wrong (before I read the post), aggravated, (because I actually START my current WIP with a flashback), infuriated (because DANG, I hate it when I’m wrong), and finally grateful (because I was given a gift I didn’t know I wanted).  Not only was Kristen’s advice about Flashbacks spot on, she really helped me understand WHY.  And that is the mark of a great teacher.  She got past my initial knee-jerk reaction, and in a very entertaining way, worked me round to her way of thinking.  Sneaky, this one.  But so right!

This, my friends, is how we learn.  Now, not only do I have to re-examine how I start my story, but her post also made me realize I needed to examine the story I’m really trying to tell.  And it was NOT the story I thought I was trying to tell.  Fortunately, I’m only 100 pages into it.  So it’s early days, and I have time to go back and reweave the tapestry.  If I hadn’t taken the time to read her post, revising on this puppy would have been H E double hockey sticks.  Cuz you all KNOW how much I despise revisions.

I encourage all of you to read Kristen’s blogs.  She’s amazing.  And the three blogs she recently published related to flashbacks won’t only teach you about the evils of this dreaded writing tactic, but will also give you some hints about story structure and pacing that any writer, no matter how seasoned, can benefit from, if only in the reminding.

So now, back to the slog.  I’m giving myself until the middle of May to get the bones of this current WIP in place.  But come May 15, I need to get back to the final run through of my mystery, so I can meet that June 21st deadline for publication.  Wish me luck and please, if you can spare it, send along more of those vats of butt glue.  I don’t think I used enough the last time, I keep managing to pry myself loose to go in search of Cheetos!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

Ideas & Opportunities

04 Wednesday May 2011

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Seems like every time I get to working on the last little bit of a novel I’m writing, I come up with about a bajillion ideas for new novels. Novels that are ever so much more interesting and saleable than the novel I’m currently slaving over. I’ve heard from other writers that the last few chapters of their novels practically write themselves, that they’ve built up so much momentum that it’s an easy slide to the bottom of the novel-writing hill. For me, it’s quite the opposite.

And today, man, I am on fire. On fire, that is, with at least three great ideas for books I could be writing instead of the beast that I’m trying to finish. For that project, I have no enthusiasm left. It’s as though, since it’s the ending has all been hammered out in my head, it’s already done and thus the chore of putting words on paper has become drudgery. And being an Aries, new is always better. New. Fresh. Exciting. I should be a laundry detergent commercial.

All this leads me to a theory that isn’t really new, but is something I need to remember when I’m down in the writing dumps. The very act of writing itself generates creative energy. Even if I think I’m writing absolute crap, and I’m bored to tears, and I know in my very gut that I’m nothing but a hack, just the act of stringing words together, of putting energy into my fictional worlds, somehow generates enough creative juice to make my Muse sit up from Her langor on that Roman reclining couch She made me buy for my office, put aside the grapes (that She refuses to share with me), and wander over to see what I’m doing again. And bringing with her a whole slew of new and fun ideas. And while I know I have to stay focused on the work at hand (or I’d never finish anything!), I need to remember that the best way to get Her attention, to call Her back from Her self-imposed exile, is to sit my butt in my desk chair and force myself to put words on paper — no matter how much more appealing scrubbing the hard water build up off the toilets might seem at the moment. Writing begets writing. It’s just like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.

So next time I fall into a fallow period, because the writing is just so damn hard, somebody out there smack me upside the head with my old Underwood… or at the very least, re-post this blog, so that I remember the way back.

Meanwhile, back to the slog.

Are We There Yet?

28 Thursday Apr 2011

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Slowly, ever so slowly, the glacier that is my writing soul is melting. Unlike the polar ice caps, which comparatively, appear to be receding at light speed. It’s taken me literally months to lure the Muse back from Bermuda (that’s where She goes when She’s made at me – who can blame Her?) But I’m finally, regularly, getting words on paper again. At least 500 words a day during the work week. It feels reasonably good. But this particular story is still a slog at the moment. I want to be done with this novel. I want to move on to other projects. I have a whole crowd of them milling around like a bunch of needy undergrads with papers due clamoring outside my office door a la Raiders of the Lost Ark. But unfortunately, there is no back window for me to escape through. I must sit here and finish this dang thing.

I’m getting closer. I think. It took months, but I figured out where I went wrong. I went back, I rewrote what needed to be recreated, I figured out that the ending I thought was the ending was really the beginning of Book 2. And last night I think I figured out that the last three scenes I wrote need to be ripped out (again) to make way for what I’m calling “The Final Solution”. And no, I won’t be getting all genocidal on anyone. So now I have the ending in sight, I just have to get my group of adventurers from point A to point B, while making life increasingly difficult for them as we ramp up to the final confrontation. Not sure what that’s going to look like yet and before I write another word, I need to have that fixed in my mind. That’s what I’ll be doing at lunch today, figuring that bit out.

The best news is that I do have a whole ream of notes on revision. All this rework has shown me a lot about what I want my themes, where my character arcs are really going, and all the bits that I should have added but didn’t know that I needed to when I was doing the initial draft. So it’s all good. It’s all part of the process.

And thanks to my great virtual writing group (a shout out to YOU, Word Warriors!) I’ve also gotten unblocked on a fantasy novel that I started a couple of years ago, and have a new idea for a paranormal thriller.

So get ready for the sea levels to rise, dear readers. The ice is melting now. Soon Saskatchewan will be beach front property (note to self: buy property in Saskatoon). And I’ll have my first book published and available on Amazon before the Great Lakes become the Great Inland Sea.

Say… maybe this Global Warming thing isn’t so bad after all…