Tag Archives: Writers Resources

April 27, 2012 · 17:06

The Practice of Inspiration

A woman searches for inspiration, in this 1898...

Professional artists, whatever their medium, say with good reason that ‘inspiration is for amateurs’. Deadlines, word counts, record companies or editors don’t care if you’re having a good week or not. They just need your product delivered when you promised it.

Nevertheless, even the most organized, disciplined artist (which excludes me!) needs and looks for inspiration to stimulate their process or refresh their brains. If a long-term goal is equivalent to reaching a mountain-top, and motivation is what keeps us on the trail, inspiration is the impulse that started us on the hike to begin with. It could have been something as simple wondering what the view from that particular peak looks like. It’s also the moment when an unexpected vista opens in front of us as we make our way upward. It’s something to savor and take a picture of. You catch your breath and rest, and then get back on your way. Inspiration makes you eager to see what you’ll discover next.

What refreshes you and gives that little zap of energy may not do a thing for your neighbor. Just check out all the different boards on Pinterest if you don’t believe me. What we love is as individual as we are. It could be visiting a botanical garden or window shopping at the local mall. The main thing is to find out what you love and take the time to indulge it. As long as you don’t wait for your Muse to drift down on a golden cloud and sprinkle fairy dust on your head before getting back to work, you should be fine. Maybe something wonderful that you can use right now will come to you. Maybe you’ll get a cool idea that you can’t use at the moment — make a note of it somehow so you don’t lose it. Or you might not see anything that really inspires you. That’s okay, you’ve still got your long-term goal to keep you on track.

One nice thing about looking for inspiration on a scheduled basis is that it opens your heart and mind. It can come from anywhere: spiritual readings, the rock you kept since you found it on the beach at age seven, a science journal. Like anything else, finding inspiration becomes easier with practice. And you find out what things inspire you for different tasks.

Lately, I’ve been looking at a lot of Georgian houses and listening to movie soundtracks. What gets your brain cells off and running? If you don’t know, take a few minutes and see what strikes your fancy!

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April 20, 2012 · 18:34

Cross-Training for Writers

I was asked in an interview once what I’d write if I couldn’t write romance. I didn’t have to think twice; the answer is fantasy. As in Old Skool, Middle Earth, build-up-your-alternate-universe-from-the-Void fantasy. I devoured the works of Tolkien, C. J. Cherryh, Orson Scott Card, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Isaac Asimov, among many others, years before I attempted writing a word of my own books. I loved the chance to escape into another world while I read those books. The best of the romances I gobbled up by the pageful provided the same effect. My entirely unscientific theory is that good writers care passionately about their own creations, whether it’s a planet or a pair of feuding lovers.

I write romance because I enjoy offering hope in the form of happy-ever-afters. I love writing smart heroines and the hunks they deserve. (And okay, this is the only genre that allows me to look at man candy and say with a straight face, “It’s research.”) But I do engage in a form of world-building. Mine is different from speculative fiction writing because I am constrained by the laws, customs, technologies and events of actual past eras. I can tweak the rules and bend them, but if I break them, the reader will be jerked right out of the story and might not be able get back into it.

Fantasy readers are familiar with maps, spaceship diagrams and/or genealogical charts in the front or back of books. I use those tools too, as do most other writers serious about their craft. Maps are a sticky issue for me. The posh area of London isn’t large now, and it was smaller in the 19th century. If we had to squeeze in every London mansion, gaming hell, bordello and alley devised by historical romance writers, the metropolis might have taken up as much space as it does in 2012. On the other hand, I do write fiction. It’s kind of my job to make stuff up. While scholars may howl if I place someone’s home where a tobacconist’s shop existed according to the census of EighteenWhatever, if I make the rest of the street historically accurate, and the furnishings and design of the house, most readers will be okay with that.

Along with hunting for man candy, I do research actual maps, and furnishings, and when people stopped using quills and started using pens, and the beginnings of railway travel in England. Most of the time, I enjoy research, but when I can’t find a crucial piece of information, I wish I could make up my own rules!

I do get to make up my own genealogy charts at least, and that’ s another part of writing prep I enjoy. Speculative writers have to come up with naming systems, and I don’t envy them the task. It’s hard enough to find the exact match of first, middle and last names that scans well and conveys the character’s status as hero or supporting character. Throwing in issues like spaceship allegiance or Elvish naming customs would make my brain explode. Genealogy tells us a lot about family culture and values, personal traits that may be encouraged or not and even diseases that can affect a character. Take a page from fantasy writers and make a family tree or two for your manuscript.

I learned about the importance of creating a historical background for one’s books from the Appendices at the end of The Lord of the Rings. They fascinated me; I would go back and forth from them to favorite passages. I realized that such a deep background gave Middle Earth its breath-taking vision. My history is based in fact, not speculation, but it’s crucial for writers to understand the places and times in which they place their stories. Timelines and calendars are an essential tool of all writers, either to track fictional events or intertwine fictional with real events.

So, writers and readers out there…what do you enjoy about your second favorite genres?

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March 30, 2012 · 22:55

It’s All About the Hall…

Apethorpe Hall, Northamptonshire

…or the manor, castle or house. I live in suburbia, but I learned my love of old houses early thanks to aunts who lived in homes built in the early part of the 20th century. My aunts’ houses had features like huge screened in porches, high ceilings, socket doors and sleeping porches, all terribly exotic to my youthful mind. The kleenex-box sized bathroom on Aunt Bert’s first floor that had no insulation and was always freezing cold in winter and the old fittings in Aunt Helen’s kitchen struck me as insignificant. Mind you, Aunt Bert and Aunt Helen, and their families, probably felt differently since they actually had to live with these inconveniences. But I loved those houses. I can still recall the layout of each of them.

Apethorpe Hall interior

One of the most important parts of my process is figuring out where my characters live. I could never be an architect, as my math skills stop at basic geometry; nor do I have a great eye for interior decoration, but I study floor plans and hunt down drawings and descriptions of historic houses, furniture and textiles. Here is a Jacobean interior, similar to some you’ll find in To be Seduced.

When a house was built influences its exterior, but how it’s furnished and decorated inside is a matter of the owner’s taste. I had great fun in Her Scottish Groom comparing the tastes of Diantha’s family with their new money and Kieran’s much older house. I used photos from visits to England, Scotland, and France to get ideas for details of the Rossburn seat. To emphasize the ‘old money vs. new’, I also looked for ways to make the Scottish house sound older than the book’s 1875 setting. Their antiques, for example, would date from 1775 to 1825. And they did not, to the heroine’s dismay, have indoor plumbing. (I don’t have plans for a sequel to HSG, but if I ever do, I will find a way to mention that one of the first improvements made with Quinn money was the addition of bathrooms. Lack of modern bathrooms would be a huge drawback to time travel.)

Marble House, Newport, Rhode Island

For the Quinns, I studied mansions in Newport to see how ultra-rich Americans of an earlier era spent their money. Opulent, dripping with gold leaf or frivolous fake oriental details, they provided an idea of the mind-set of people who could buy whatever they wanted, including an aristocratic bloodline for their descendants.

For my current WIP, I’ve gone online to explore English Heritage houses, London townhouses and the homes of the working poor. As always, I am fascinated by the different designs and styles, each lovely in its own way. I am quite happy in my suburban house, since it contains my family, but the pleasure of creating dream houses for my characters never fades.

What about your dream home? Is it a modern loft or an 1800s Queen Anne mansion or a 16th century farmhouse? If you need inspiration, visit http://www.english-heritage.org.uk to find more house like Apethorpe Hall, pictured at the top of this post.

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March 16, 2012 · 17:01

The Cheapskate Writer

In a perfect world, I would write in an entirely separate wing of my house, which would include sound-proofing and a stocked fridge. My housekeeper and personal chef would eliminate the need to deal with interruptions like vacuuming and assuaging my family’s ridiculous desire for regular meals. My vast personal library of information would sit on shelves lining every wall.

Aaaand then there’s real life. And my real budget. Since getting published, my goal is to keep writing expenses out of our household income. One, that’s how I can justify to the Internal Revenue Service that I am a professional writer. Two, it makes me feel like, well, a professional writer. But since most authors only know what their income is when the advance or royalty check arrives, or when the month’s sales hits the Paypal account, this means I squeeze my writing pennies until they’re crumpled on the floor begging for mercy. Like Pseudolus, the protagonist of A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum, my favorite word is ‘free’.

Here are a few things I do to save a buck (or more):

1. Free anti-virus software: I know, this sounds like the Worst Idea Ever, but hear me out. I have used the free version of AVG Anti-Virus for at least the last three years. It blocks viruses, warns of unsafe sites, scans my laptop daily and gives me summaries, and alerts me to problems. They offer yearly updates, FREE, and I have not had any problem with malware. And now that I’ve reached a point where I can pay for a security program, guess who’s going to get my business?

2. Free online backup service: One of the smartest things I ever did was to sign up for the free version of Mozy. I don’t know if the free version is still available for new customers, but here is a list of alternatives. Just be sure to get one! When my computer conked out last summer, I lost only a few hours work instead of a full day’s. Or — horrors! What if I’d lost an entire WIP? Yes, you can and should back up your work on an external drive daily, but with automatic backups twice a day, it’s that much more peace of mind.

3. The Library: Until I make the kind of money that gives me unlimited funds to spend on research, I fall back on my local library. I am looking at a biography of Louis XIV, a history of marriage, a book on gardening that I picked up for the gorgeous pictures, and a book about Ellis Peters’ Cadfael mysteries. And those are just the ones I can see right this second. On my Nook I have more.

So, would any of these suggestions work for you? I have more. Better yet, do you have any ideas for tightwad writers to save money? Tell us about them!!

And since tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, which in my part of the U.S. is an unofficial civic holiday even for those of us with hardly any Irish blood, I added a link about one of my favorite Irish instruments, the bodhran, followed by a few more links. Enjoy!

How to Play a Bodhran

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September 14, 2011 · 08:33

The Play’s the Thing

I earned my bachelor’s in Theatre Arts and I’m not sorry. As a writer, I still use what I learned in acting, criticism, and theater history. Playwrights and actors, like writers, are storytellers at heart, and books, screenplays and stage plays all share similarities. But the best thing about spending years during and after college immersed in theater is that I learned how to talk.

Yes, I could speak before I started college. But plays depend on the spoken word for every aspect of the story: character development; setting up Goal, Motivation and Conflict; description; and back story. Most actions on a stage are rooted in the dialogue between characters. (The italicized stage directions are, in most cases, notes taken by the stage manager of the play’s original production.)

Each character in a play has his or her own voice, made up of vocabulary, speech patterns, and slang; influences include but aren’t limited to education, economic status, occupation, gender and historical era. Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire speaks differently not only from Stanley Kowalski, her brother-in-law, but from Stanley’s wife Stella, who is her sister. In Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, three actors play the same character at different stages in her life. You will think, and thus speak, differently at 90 than you do at 52, or than you did at 26, as Albee’s dialogue for A, B, and C makes clear.

Whether it’s on the stage or the page, dialogue shows how a character thinks or how they respond to other characters. If a conversation or a line of dialogue — especially interior dialogue, a luxury playwrights don’t have — doesn’t convey something about the characters or advance the plot, cut it. Tight writing keeps the reader engaged in the story and turning the page.

And the spoken word has a rhythm all its own. Listen to the people around you next time you’re standing in line. We repeat each others’ words, emphasize points by slowing our speech down, and convey ideas with a brief phrase.  We use slang from our workplaces or ethnic backgrounds. Even geography affects dialogue. A New Yorker is likelier to start a conversation by stating what he or she wants right away, as opposed to someone from the American South, where even business conversations begin with “How are you doing today?”

The best playwrights of every nationality and era capture the language they hear (or heard) around them. The vitality of Elizabethan English lives on in Shakespeare’s plays, as do the drawls and flutterings of the mid-20th century American South in the those of Tennessee Williams. English plays one of my most valuable resources for grasping the syntax and slang of both the nobility and commoners through the centuries.

If you’d rather rent a movie of a play, that’s great! Although film is much more visual than stage plays are, many are a good introduction to dramatic dialogue and characterization. Plays were meant to be seen and heard. I haven’t tried looking on Netflix to see if any of my favorites can be streamed, but there are a lot of DVDs of plays out there. Some library systems have good collections. Or best of all, support your local community theater! Go see a play!!

If you could pick any play,stage or movie version, to see today, what would it be? Shakespeare wrote my all favorite body of work, but my all time favorite play is Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac.

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August 30, 2011 · 17:24

Will Volunteer for Food

Sunday, I had the pleasure of working the Nebraska Writers Guild booth at the state fair in Grand Island. I freely admit that my volunteerism was influenced by a desire to eat corn dogs as well as ice cream from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Dairy Store in the FFA/4H building. The prospect of air conditioning, a roof and walls encouraged me as well.

Although NWG authors are allowed to bring their books and sell them, mostly I just wanted to meet people. And I did! I worked with fellow writers Charlene Neely (poetry), Jerri Hauser (inspirational), Dr. Jean Lukesh (Nebraska history) and Mary Maas (Nebraska and local history). I had a blast talking up the guild with these women. The Guild is a statewide organization that includes journalists, fiction writers, non-fiction writers, poets, and family historians. In the next 12 months, the guild plans to hold a Young Writers Conference in Lincoln, NE.

Charlene Neely, Jean Lukesh and Jerri Hauser

A lot of people stopped because  they love to write and didn’t know the NWG existed. A lot of others stopped because they love to read and are excited at the idea of finding Nebraska writers, particularly on subjects of state or local interest, kids’ books and fiction set in the state. I even met a young woman who specialized in historical textiles and design in college. Hello, resource!

The location provided a great view of the 4-H pet presentation, and we chatted to passers-by to the background of kids describing the history, care and quirks of various gerbils, guinea pigs, cats and one ferret. We joined the applause as the judge awarded ribbons and grand prizes. I am pleased to say that all participants earned either blue or purple ribbons for their animals’ health and well-being.

My personal favorite was Princess the Cat, whose owner has a great narrative style and should look into creative writing.

Although I did sell copies of Her Scottish Groom and To be Seduced, I spent most of my time handing out bookmarks and booklets, aka ‘free samples’. My romances were upstaged by a 4th grade history book! Jean Lukesh, a former teacher, wrote what may be the most popular textbook in the state. Used by 85% of our school districts, it drew kids like a magnet. The ‘double-take, ‘hey-I-used-that-book’ ‘ response happened over and over. A lot of the kids asked for her autograph, and at least one wanted a picture with her.

Jean and Fans

To say that Jean is a talented local historian is like saying Einstein was kind of a smart guy. Her current project is a series for kids on Noteworthy Americans. The first in the series, Lucky Ears: The True Story of Ben Kuroki, World War II Hero recently won a Bronze Medal for Multicultural Nonfiction for Children/Teens/Young Adults in the Independent Publishers’ 2011 Book Awards. And she is hilarious and outgoing in person.

Before I forget: the UNL Dairy Store ice cream is so OMG FABULOUS that I passed on the corn dog in favor of their chicken bacon ranch wrap in a tomato basil tortilla. Yum. Next year, I may have to come back an extra day to get that corn dog in.

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June 28, 2011 · 17:20

Cast Away! or Silencing your Inner Whiny Child

Notebooks

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I’ve just spent the last three weeks in a cast, thanks to a sore calf and ankle that turned into a partially torn Achilles tendon. Today, the cast came off. (And there was much rejoicing!) I’m still hobbling around in a big, ugly black boot, but I’m thrilled to be cast- and crutch-free. My shoulders are really thrilled, believe me.

While I was sitting around with my clunky leg and ankle elevated, I had a lot of time to think. And journal. I journaled because when I tried to be a good little author and work on my current project, all I could think about was why did my toes looked funny or how frustrating it was not to be able to just walk downstairs to the television, for Pete’s sake.

As long as I was so grumpy, I figured I would write out my frustrations in an old spiral notebook. Once they were off my chest, I could just toss the pages. There is never any reason to hang on to psychic garbage. This is similar to Julia Campbell’s ‘morning pages’ in her perceptive book on creativity, The Artist’s Way, although my pages were not written first thing in the morning and I didn’t care if they led to increased creativity or not. I just wanted my Whiny Inner Brat to shut up.

And for the most part, it worked. I could moan and groan as much as I wanted on paper, knowing that they were headed for the shredder and no one, including me, would ever see those complaints again. It helped to deal with a lot of the frustration of enforced inactivity.

Eventually, though, my subconscious got sick of the Whiny Brat and I started scribbling out occasional scraps of something useful. Like how to better arrange the linen/medicine closet and store the Christmas decorations. Nothing earth-shattering or award-winning, but helpful on a daily basis. I started writing about possibilities too, like what color palette I’d like if I ever get an office of my own. And ideas for future books, as well as a way to organize them before I start working on them in earnest. The latter is extremely helpful, as it drives me nuts when a new book wants to be written while I’m already working another one. I found myself saving a page here and there for later use.

So even though I’ll be in a hideous piece of footwear for several weeks and have a rather long ‘to-do’ list awaiting me, I am refreshed and ready to resume my usual routine. Which is a good thing, because once I ran out of complaints, words for my WIP started coming again, and my hero and heroine have an important scene coming up.

Has anyone else out there ever had a forced break from routine? How did you handle it? What, if anything, did you accomplish during that time?

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January 18, 2011 · 18:00

I Hereby Resolve….Not

A string of Christmas lights decorating the ed...

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January. Bitter cold. Gray skies and white snow-covered ground. The Christmas lights are down, the bills have come in and it’s time to buckle down and work on those resolutions. Kill me now.

Instead of making resolutions this year, I’m joining several other writers to set up goals for myself. Real, concrete, measurable goals that will leave me with something to show for my efforts in 2011.

I never did like resolutions. The day always came when I ate the cookie or spaced off the exercise regimen. Then that little voice would start in: “See? You can’t do this after all. You should have known better than to try.”  If I could, I’d beat the Internal Naysayer to death with the toilet brush. If I have learned one thing, it is that everyone fails at something, sometime. Accept this.  Then get back up, brush yourself off and remind yourself of why you made that resolution to begin with.

Why did you want to go to that yoga class three times a week? Did you want a stronger, more flexible body? To get toned up in time for bathing suit season? To relieve stress? The answer to ‘why?’ is the goal. It doesn’t matter if the resolution involves a diet, a budget, a class or time spent with loved ones. The reason why you made it is what you want to accomplish.

In 2011, I want to finish my WIP and hopefully one more book after that. Why? Because then I’ll have two manuscripts to submit to agents and editors. And if they sell, cha-ching! Money and another publishing credit. Put in those terms, why would I not work on my goal every day??

Back to that failure thing. Life isn’t going to stop throwing curve balls (or hairballs, car problems, and extra reports) just because we want to go to yoga class, set aside money for a new car or meet a minimum word count.  The goal will still be there when the phone call or last-minute snafu has been taken care of. True, life does throw things at us that are so monumental all our goals need to be reassessed. But I’m talking about day to day nuisances, not catastrophes. Maybe there is so much going on in your life that a small adjustment is needed in your daily or weekly goals, say two times a week at yoga class instead of three. Just don’t give up your goal completely! Remember why you wanted to reach it in the first place.

I’m tracking my progress toward my goals this year in a $6 desk calendar.  On the days when I miss my word count goal, I write down why. For some comfort, I note what I do accomplish every day, writing-related or not. I can literally see where my time goes and keep myself on track.

Meeting a goal give a sense of accomplishment as well as the tangible benefit you wanted in the first place. We all deserve that feeling of success. Go for it!

What would you like to do in 2011?

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January 4, 2011 · 08:01

My Friend EDNA

I was introduced to EDNA the first time I ever read my work aloud to a critique group.  Despite my shaking hands and voice, the other writers received my first effort well. (I still belong to this group because its attitude is that 1. any writer willing to learn deserves respect, and 2. all writers can learn more about the craft.) Of course I made awful mistakes — passive verbs, telling instead of showing, and…the dreaded Info Dump. Instead of starting out with a good hook, I detailed the background of each character. I now know that readers do want background info, just not in great whacking chunks at the book’s beginning.

At the end of the evening, the group’s moderator took me aside and pressed a page of handwritten notes into my hand.  “Read these,” she ordered quietly. “They’ll help you balance your writing.”  The moderator is now my friend and mentor, Sally J. Walker, and the piece of paper introduced me to EDNA: Exposition, Description, Narration and Action/Dialogue.  These are four types of fiction and each helps pull a reader into the story.  It was the first writing lesson I ever learned and remains one of the most valuable.

I could go on for pages about each mode  — in fact, Sally teaches an entire course about them, but here they are in a nutshell, with definitions from my trusty Merriam-Webster.

Exposition: One of the definitions of the word is “discourse designed to convey information”.  When writing, exposition provides information the reader must have in order to make sense of the rest of the book.  It can be information about a character’s background, or about a situation unfamiliar to readers. In an example of the latter, the heroine of my first book reflects on how the laws of her day prevent her from claiming her inheritance

Description: “…an account that presents a picture to a person who reads or hears it.”  Or a sound, smell, taste or touch.  Description tells the reader what a character observes with his or her physical senses.  Good description draws readers in so they can visualize characters and imagine themselves inside the story.  Words like “click”, “clash”, “stench”, “fragrance”, “vinegary”, “sticky”, “tickle”, and “sting” conjure up concrete sensations.

Narration: Probably the least used mode, because its purpose is to summarize the passage of time or an event.  It is still necessary! Narration allows a writer to skip over days or weeks when no action occurs that affects the story.  Here is a masterful example from “The Hobbit“: “Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway. They stayed long in that house, fourteen days at least, and they found it hard to leave…Yet there is little to tell about their stay.”

Action/Dialogue: Yes, action is when characters are doing stuff and dialogue is when they’re talking.  The point is that the characters are actively doing something in the story to move it forward, which is why action and dialogue are linked.  “To talk” is a verb, just like “to run” or “to carry”. Or “to think”, “to ponder” and “to plot”. Mental activity is still doing something.  Actions and conversations show  the characters’ personalities and motivations and advance the story, so as long as there aren’t pages and pages of it, the reader is interested and again, drawn into the book.

The key is balance.  Long passages of any one type of prose will numb the reader’s mind, even if it’s a complicated action sequence.  Even a single sentence of description or exposition can give the reader a break from a kaleidoscope of action and refresh them enough to go on.  Similarly, passages of description need to be broken up with action or dialogue, or telescoped with narrative before the reader gets bored.

I still have Sally’s notes, although I’ve had to transpose them because I wore out the original page she gave me.  And yes, I still check my pages to be sure they have at least three of the four kinds of prose on each page.  It’s never wise to ignore EDNA.

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