Z is for Zzzzzzzzzzzz

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!  I wrote today's post, and I hope it makes for a suitable wrap-up to such an amazing month!

Please consider supporting our Thunderclap campaign!

Your writing will be better if you’re well rested.  Our brains get fuzzy if we don’t get enough sleep.  I’m a complete hypocrite for saying that you should get enough sleep, since I rarely get enough myself.  My issue is that I tend to get most of my story ideas at night, and once I get swept up in a story, it’s hard to put it down.  And even when I go to bed, my busy mind can keep me awake for hours sometimes.  Night owls with children are bound to struggle with these things, I guess.

Still, if I don’t get a bare minimum of sleep, the writing I might manage to produce suffers.  So how do you find the proper balance that allows you to make the most of your creativity while getting enough rest?

Lately, I’ve tried to go to bed by a certain time, even if the ideas are abundant.  This isn’t always easy.  I find that if I take notes about the ideas I feel compelled to get down on paper, I’m able to calm my brain enough to fall asleep.  Most of the time, anyway.

Y is for Yell and Celebrate the Small Things-April 29, 2016

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

Please consider supporting our Thunderclap campaign!

There are times when we get so angry that we just need to vent.  We may feel like yelling or hitting something, as much as we know that such an action may only make circumstances worse.  Such physical expressions of anger tend to only alleviate the feeling long enough for us to see the consequences of them.

Listening to loud music may be an option, or it may simply annoy your neighbors.  Been there, done that.

Fortunately, there are other ways to express anger that don’t involve such backlash.  I suggest that you yell.  Yes, I already said you shouldn’t yell, but I only meant that you probably shouldn’t yell out loud.  Instead, you can yell on paper.

I’ve found that venting my feelings on the page can be therapeutic.  You can write in all capital letters.  You can use colorful language you may hesitate to say out loud.  You might write about the seething cauldron of bitterness inside you.  At the end of it all, this exercise may help you feel better, or it may not.  It surely won’t hurt to try.

You may even use what you’ve written to help enhance your writing.  It’s up to you!

It's Friday!  Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain!  Tonja Drecker and I are her co-hosts.

I finished the rough draft of a novella this week, which was a great feeling.  I still have a lot of work ahead of me, but feels amazing to get that part of it done.

I have a short story I'm also working on for submission somewhere, and it is nearing completion.  I'm hoping to get the majority of it finished over the weekend.

The April A to Z Challenge is wrapping up tomorrow, and I can hardly believe it.  Congratulations to everyone who joined in and made it through until the end!

The IWSG anthology Parallels: Felix Was Here comes out on Tuesday!  Is it really possible that release day is almost here? It feels surreal.  The Thunderclap campaign associated with it has surpassed its goal and is fully supported, so that's great!

I also have a lot of personal things going on right now, so life has been kind of crazy for the last week.  Don't worry, though. While I'm not ready to go into detail about it yet, it's good stuff.

What would you like to celebrate?

X is for X-Ray

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

Please consider supporting our Thunderclap campaign!

Every time we get to the letter X, I feel like I’m stretching the word I use to make my point.  Anyway, I’m using a medical metaphor to complete this post.

In order to tell an engaging story, you need to examine the bones of it, i.e. the plot.  X-ray it.  That means going over the plot structure with a critical eye.  You may have a strong plot that leads from a solid beginning to an equally solid ending.  There may be subplots branching off from the main one like peripheral nerves.  Check them all.

Perhaps I’ve taken this anatomical connection too far, but hopefully you’ll get my point.

You can write beautiful prose and solid characters, but don’t neglect the central structure of the story.  The plot needs to be coherent, and you can’t have any gaping plot holes.  Believe me, readers will eventually pick up on them, and they expect better from you than that.  People who don’t use a thorough outline, but rather go with the story as it unfolds, need to be especially careful.  Certain elements can get away from you if you’re not looking.  You don’t want any structural issues to slip through the cracks.

W is for Work

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

Please consider supporting our Thunderclap campaign!

If you want to make writing into a career, you need to treat it like a job.  Perhaps you can’t treat it like a full-time job due to work and family commitments.  That’s okay.  When you’re trying to gain traction as a writer, it’s going to be a juggling act.  Nevertheless, whatever else you need to do in your life, you need to make a place for your writing.

Set aside a block or two of time each week to write, even if it’s only an hour a week.  Treat that time commitment like another job.  During that time, barring illness or emergency, you need to work.  This is, after all, the career you want.  You owe it to yourself to make that commitment.  If you treat that time as dispensable, you’ll be cheating yourself.

As with any other job, writing requires dedication and discipline, especially since you’re the only one holding yourself accountable.  The good news is that writing, while difficult, can also be quite fun and rewarding.  It’ll be worth the effort you put into it, so you may as well give it the best you’ve got.

V is for Vacation

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

Please consider supporting our Thunderclap campaign!

Writers can go through stretches of great output, and these prolific times can result in lots of wonderful stories.  They can also, occasionally, result in burnout.  The words stop coming.  The story stalls, and you feel like you’re drowning.  You may find yourself at the point where you feel the pressure to write something even though you’d rather yank your hair out by the roots and run through the yard screaming.

This is the point where you need to set things aside and walk away.

I’m not saying that you should walk away forever.  You should, however, allow yourself the occasional vacation.  Writing, like any other job, requires a little downtime so you can recharge your batteries and enjoy the other parts of your life for a time. This could simply mean enjoying some time at home with your family.  It could involve a short day long road trip to see something interesting near where you live.  Or it could actually involve some kind of extensive travel.

Whatever you do, try something new that interests you, even if it’s something small, and have fun.  Afterwards you can return to your writing rejuvenated and with new ideas.

U is for Undervalue

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

Please consider supporting our Thunderclap campaign!

If there’s anything that can kill your creativity more thoroughly than undervaluing yourself and the work you do, I’ve yet to see it.  Plenty of people operate under the assumption that writing is something easy and that anyone can just sit down and do, but they’re wrong.  They’re clearly not writers.  If they were, they’d know better.

Don’t let these naysayers get to you.  When you’re struggling to get the words out and you hear those negative thoughts in your head, they can douse the creative flame that keeps you going.

I think I, and many others, feel like impostors, from time to time.  There’s even something known as Impostor Syndrome.  Just look it up.   It’s easy to feel like the things we accomplish were flukes or accidents, and we fear someone will eventually see through us.  When we do this, we undervalue our own abilities and creations.  This is quite self-defeating.

There’s no easy solution to this quandary.  We won’t always feel good enough, but it might help to remind ourselves that other authors have struggled with feelings of inadequacy too.  Think of how sad it would be if they had allowed those feelings to silence them.

T is for Tone

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

Please consider supporting our Thunderclap campaign!

I wrote a little about establishing tone in my post about perspective.  The eyes through which you tell your story will play a critical role in establishing the tone of that story.  Still, there’s more to establishing tone than that.

One important way of establishing tone is description.  You need to consider how you describe the character’s surrounding.  Think about the words you choose.  For example, consider the difference between these two sentences.

It was a windy night.  She pulled her coat tight around her.

The wind swept around her with an unearthly moan, rattling the bare tree branches.  She pulled her coat tight around her, trying to suppress a shudder.

The first sentence certainly conveys some of the same information, but it does so in a much different way than the first.  The first is a fairly direct description of the scene.  The second paints a picture of a spooky night that you might expect to find in a horror film, and you get an idea of how the character feels at the moment.  Without knowing the specifics of what is going on, you get to know the tone of the story.

S is for Submit! and Celebrate the Small Things-April 22, 2016

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

Please consider supporting our Thunderclap campaign!

No, I’m not ordering all of you to submit to my will or anything like that.  You needn’t worry.  I’m merely suggesting that you take that frightening step of submitting your work.

A crucial part of becoming a published writer is enduring the submission process.  This could mean submitting a short story to a magazine, submitting a manuscript to a publisher, sending a query letter to an agent, sending a proposal to a magazine for an article, etc.  It’s terrifying because, once we submit something, receiving a rejection becomes a real possibility.  We look at all the great writers we know, and we find their personal stories of rejection.  When we look at the number of times our favorite writers have been rejected, we can choose one of two possible responses.  We can say “If they were rejected, there’s no way I’m ever going to make it.”  Or we can say “They persevered and it paid off, so I think I’ll do the same thing.”

Rejections can be badges of honor.  They prove that we’ve taken the risk.  We’ve put ourselves out there, and repeatedly submitting is the only way to get that rare and precious acceptance letter.

It's Friday! Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain.  Tonja Drecker and I are her co-hosts.

First of all, Michelle Wallace is featuring my novella Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family on her blog today.  Be sure to stop by and have a look if you're so inclined.

It's been a busy week, and I'm exhausted.  We visited some good friends earlier this week, and my kids enjoyed playing with their kids.  Everyone had a great time.

My husband and I went out stargazing with our telescope the other night and took some great video of the moon.  He edited it and it looks great.  Here are a few still images taken from the video so you can get an idea of how everything looked.

What would you like to celebrate?

R is for Revisit

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

There are times when we have a great story idea, but we can’t seem to get it to work on paper.  We write and write, but despite our best efforts, the story simply isn’t turning out the way we wanted it.  It can be frustrating, and part of you may want to toss the entire thing in the metaphorical garbage.  Or maybe you want to keep going with it in the hope something will change and the story will start cooperating with you.

I’m here to tell you that there’s a third option.  You can set the story aside and move on to something else.  This is not the same as giving up.  If you put the story away, you can come back to it later.  Maybe something several months down the line will inspire you, and you’ll be able to look at this sidelined story with fresh eyes and a renewed enthusiasm.

Revisiting something later on can also be valuable for stories that you have finished.  Maybe you tried to get it published and were unsuccessful.  Time can give you the distance you need to see what needs to be done to strengthen the story.

Q is for Questions

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

When you first start to seriously consider putting your writing in front of an audience, you’re going to have a lot of questions.  And trust me, the more you learn the answers to those initial questions, the more you’ll generate new questions you never knew you needed to ask.  That’s okay.  It’s a process we all go through.

It’s important that you’re not afraid to ask questions.  Sure, I understand about being shy, because I’ve struggled with that myself.  I often feel silly even asking a question, because I worry that I’m showing my ignorance.  It might make me look stupid or silly.

Now, I know this fear of mine is ridiculous.  We all need to ask questions sometimes, and who better to ask than our fellow writers?  We’ve all been in the same boat, and in general, we want to help each other out.  If you ask us a question and we don’t know the answer, we generally know someone who will.  That’s the beauty of networking and sticking together.

So if you have a question, don’t be afraid to ask!

P is for Perspective

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

When you write a story, a crucial thing to consider is perspective.  How do you want to see the events unfold?  Should you choose the perspective of the hero who is striving to save the day?  Or do you want to look at things through the eyes of the villain?  Do you want emotional distance or the ability to follow multiple people (3^rd person), or do you want to get deep into their thoughts (1^st person)?

As you consider perspective, consider the tone you want to establish.  The POV character or characters you choose and the POV you use all determine which thoughts you’re privy to and how those establish the tone of the story.  When you inhabit the mind of the hero, you see their motivations.  You see the people they want to save and why.  You might see how their personal losses have made them who they are.  When you inhabit the mind of the villain, you get a front row seat to their dark thoughts.  You may learn whether a personal loss drives them or if they were born with these dark impulses.

Many writing choices are driven by the perspective you want to take.  Choose carefully.

O is for Organize

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

We all have our own ways of organizing our writing projects.  I think most people I know would label my own organizational scheme as “mildly ordered chaos” or something like that.  Nevertheless, I do actually have ways of keeping track of what I’m doing.  If I didn’t, I’m not sure I’d ever get anything done.

I’m here to share organizational possibilities with you.  At the end of the day, only you can know what organizational tools work for you and your writing.

-Consider using a planner.  This will give you something concrete to look at when you’re trying to remember what you need to finish and when you need to have it finished.

-On your computer, keep separate files for WIPs, finished works, and any stories that you’ve started but subsequently abandoned.  Keeping abandoned stories gives you something to raid when your creative well runs dry.  If you’ve lost these old documents in the shuffle, however, they won’t do you any good.

-Consider organizing your time by setting daily or weekly goals for yourself.

-Above all, use whatever organizational scheme works for you.  Other people may not understand it, but if it suits your needs, that’s what matters.

N is for Networking

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

Whether we feel comfortable with the idea or not, writers need to network.  When you network, you’re more likely to learn about good writing opportunities. You’re more likely to get useful feedback on your work.  These are good things.

When I first started blogging, the idea scared me.  Putting your words out there can be hard, but so can interacting with strangers for the first time.  I was more scared of making the move to introduce myself to new people.  I managed to overcome that fear, and now I have some helpful networking tips to share.

-If you’re a writer and you don’t have a blog, consider starting one.

-Don’t be afraid to leave comments on blogs for the first time.  Most bloggers cherish comments from new visitors.  Most of us don’t bite.  I promise.

-Join writing groups, such as the Insecure Writers Support Group.  Don’t let feelings of insecurity scare you away.

-Join blogging challenges like A to Z.   You get to polish your writing skills while meeting new people.

-Make use of sites like Twitter and Facebook.  Find writing communities on these sites and participate.

These tips are simple, yet effective.  Do you have any networking tips?

M is for Motivation and Celebrate the Small Things-April 15, 2016

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!  Today's post is another one of mine, and I hope you enjoy it!

Please consider supporting our Thunderclap campaign!

Writers have good and bad days.  Sometimes we’re so motivated that we manage to accomplish what we set out to do and then a few other things on top of that.  Then there are days when we keep thinking of other things to do instead of tackling the writing that needs to be done.  When we lack the motivation, the words won’t come.  We keep thinking of excuses.

There are a lot of things that can contribute to a lack of motivation.  Exhaustion.  Worrying about other things in our lives.  The internet.  This last one is a big one.  While the internet can be one of our greatest assets as writers, it can also be one of our biggest foes.

Here are some tips for getting yourself motivated!

1. Set small goals.  Something too large can scare you away when you’re lacking in energy.

2. Turn off any distractions if possible.

3. Decide on a reward for yourself if you accomplish a given task.

4. Set aside previous setbacks.  Dwelling on a setback can make you feel defeated when you need to feel strong.

5. Remember that your writing doesn’t need to come out perfect the first time.  Just write!

And remember this!

It's Friday! Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain! Tonja Drecker and I are her co-hosts.

As you can see from the top of this post, the IWSG anthology has a Thunderclap campaign going, and it's off to a great start! Anyone who can join in and help spread the word would be greatly appreciated.  We need 100 supporters by May 3rd (which also happens to be release day).

We had another round of illness sweep through our house this week.  Kids are germ magnets.  Everyone is getting better now, but I absolutely cannot wait for summer.

Speaking of summer, I signed my kids up for T-ball again. They loved it so much last year, and they're looking forward to doing it again.

I'm almost done with the rough draft of my WIP, which is pretty exciting.  No matter what else has been happening, I've managed to write at least a little bit of it every day.  I'm pretty proud of myself for that, especially with the way this last week has been.

What would you like to celebrate?