Share The Love

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Love Heart

Image by Pink Poppy Photography via Flickr

{This post is part of a continuing feature on my blog. It represents what I love most about Twitter: sharing great content, no matter the source. I love promoting good books I’ve discovered, passing along great advice I’ve heard, and recognizing awesome people I’ve met. So, I’ve translated that love to my blog, and simply called this feature “Share The Love.”}

I traveled around the blogosphere this past week and loved these posts:

I played on twitter and loved these tweets:

http://twitter.com/#!/feedmespeed/status/125057348304764928

http://twitter.com/#!/Zen_Moments/status/125364469953085440

http://twitter.com/#!/Mak_pk/status/126002948118552576

http://twitter.com/#!/emmofittipaldi/status/125704199261536256

(The news of Dan Wheldon’s death was heartbreaking. Prayers go out to his family.)

I borrowed these books from the library, and would love to read them before they’re due back:

  • The Death Cure, by James Dashner
  • Lola and the Boy Next Door, by Stephanie Perkins
  • The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau
  • The People of Sparks, by Jeanne DuPrau

Speaking of books, I’ve had two books on my to-read list for quite sometime: XVI by Julia Karr and The Vespertine by Saundra Mitchell. Coincidentally, the two authors were speaking at a local library this past Monday.

Unfortunately, I was late driving in from my pay the bills job, so I didn’t catch ALL of what they said, BUT, the part that I caught was a fun and interactive Q&A filled with anecdotes about their books, publishing journey, and writing process.

Love the energetic hand gestures! I can't speak if my hands are still!

I really enjoyed the story about the cover model for XVI tweeting Julia and letting her know that the photo was a self-portrait she took when she was 16.

Telling the story about the cover model

And, of course, I got to buy their books and get them signed! Here is Julia, signing my copy of XVI. Notice the ARC of Truth sitting next to her?? All the teens there feasted on the cover and back copy!

"Seek the Truth!"

Smile!

I LOVED this pretty gold marker that Saundra used to sign…

Shiny ink! me likey!

…AND, I loved jibber-jabbering with her all sugarnated (that’s a word)! 😀

Saundra: "Let's do duck faces!"

Thank you ladies for an entertaining end to a seemingly never-ending work day!

*hugs and (duck) kisses*

😀

So Tell Me: Do YOU have any LOVES to share from this past week?

Writing is a Sanctioned Form of Insanity. Embrace It.

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Writing is an exercise in insanity. Day after day, I bang away at the keyboard hoping for brilliance, and getting mostly word vomit.

But, I keep writing anyway.

Because…

…I know that I probably have to throw down ten words, sentences, scenes, to get to the one worth keeping.

…I know that after the vomit leaves my brain, I won’t be distracted by it (even if more vomit threatens to fill the void that the previous vomit left behind).

…I know that each word, sentence, scene added to the WIP gets me closer to a finished story.

And, I know that sometimes, if I’m very, very lucky, I will write a scene that surprises me, one that just makes sense, and opens to many more possibilities and choices for the character.

The moral of the story? Embrace the insanity of this process. The muses may be fickle and capricious. But they can’t resist a working artist. Especially an insanely focused one.

Image: By Feuillu

A Writer’s Guide To A Healthy and Happy Marriage

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Five years ago, my husband and I found ourselves faced with the opportunity to own a “fixer-upper” house, with the potential to make a profit if we ever decided to sell it. It looked like an easy decision at first: everyone was buying a home, and, supposedly, a home never loses its value.

Yet, instead of leaping at the opportunity, my husband and I visualized what the next few years would look like. We went over the building plans for the house, the financing we were eligible for, and the estimated time it would take for him to do the repairs. For financial purposes, he planned to do most of the construction work himself, which meant that renovating the house would be his full-time occupation, and I would be the primary breadwinner responsible for paying the bills.

After careful deliberation, we bought the house…

* * *

Please continuing reading the post at Courage 2 Create and *share your insights with me there!

(*The comments are moderated, but they’ll eventually appear!) 😀

Road Trip Wednesday #100: Your Writing Journey

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I haven’t participated in YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesdays before, but since I’m a sucker for milestones and round numbers, I felt like this Road Trip Wednesday was made for me. 😀

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway’s contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs.

This week’s topic:

What has your writing road trip looked like so far? Excitement? Traffic jams and detours?

Where are you going next?

My blog is sort of an answer to this question, since I keep it as an accountability tool for myself. Ever since my first posts, (“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” “Prioritizing My Life” and “Music, Fitness, and My Muse“) (I just noticed they were posted on Star Wars Day, May 4, 2010…yes I’m a BIG nerd!), I have been focused on making the most of the time I have, and have challenged myself to finish a novel in a year.

After my declaration to pursue novel writing seriously, I have fumbled my way through my writing process, eventually participating in NaNoWriMo, and winning! My novel wasn’t complete at 50,000 words, but I eventually reached The End in December.

The satisfaction of reaching The End didn’t last since I knew my story was a Hot Mess. After a break in January, I tried to get back into the story and revise it. During that time, another story (Scrap Metal, aka WIP2) begged to be written. After scribbling down the first two chapters on post its and index cards at my pay the bills job, I dutifully ignored The Shiny so I could make my Hot Mess less messy.

I attended my very first writer conference, SCBWI. Though I enjoyed the experience of hearing from industry professionals, by far the best result from that conference was meeting local writers. (I’ve enjoyed many a business lunch with them since that conference. :D)

Then, I went to a John Green reading, and that was the aha moment that “gave me permission” to let go of my Hot Mess (for now) and start drafting WIP2.

With WIP2, I’ve learned the value of slowing down and delving into my scenes (“Stuck” “Stuck, Redux“), and that I can balance plotting and pantsing to design a story worth reading. (I’m still learning the rhythm that works best for me).

I’m currently in the Plotting portion to develop the Act 2 of WIP2. I participated in ROW 80 to keep me on track. My goal is to have a rough draft finished this month, and have a prettier draft by the end of this year.

I know that I have so much to learn about my process, but the best thing is knowing that when I’m creating stories, I am truly happy. All throughout my life, schooling, jobs, relationships, etc, everything seemed to come easily for me. I’m grateful for that, but when I look back at my life, the road seems kind of fuzzy; like, it’s all been one big dream. And then, I come to the point in my path when I committed to finishing a novel. The path from that point on sticks out in high relief. With that decision, I became aware. When I decided to follow my dream of writing stories, I awakened to the rest of my life.

I know I talk about writing in almost transcendent terms, but honestly, I don’t know how else to describe it other than an epiphany. A mindset altering, life changing decision. With writing, I have found my purpose in life. How can I treat it as less than a spiritual awakening?

*I couldn’t have gotten this far without my writing partners, alpha/beta readers, and cheerleaders. They keep me refreshed and motivated to keep pursuing my dream, and for that reason I’m ever so grateful for social media for helping me find my writing circle.

So, what has your writing road trip looked like so far? Where are you going next?

Creative Limitation

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Cover of "Story: Substance, Structure, St...

Cover via Amazon

{So, I decided to start yet another series of posts for the best reasons of all: because this is my blog, and because I can. It’s simply titled, The Magic of Writing—that indefinable, ineffable relationship between the writer and the muse.}

Over the weekend, I glutted myself on books on story craft and architecture as part of my ROW 80 goals. The book that I just finished yesterday was Robert McKee’s Story. I’ve read through that book last year, but it didn’t really speak to me then as it did now. Don’t get me wrong, I thought that book was genius last year, but I hadn’t finished my first WIP yet, and so I didn’t grasp the full significance of the principles then as I did now.

My main A-HA moment came from the principle of Creative Limitation. I’d been floundering for a while in my WIP2, not really knowing where I should go, and I’ve simply discovered that I didn’t know WIP2’s world enough. And, since I didn’t know the world (which is the first step toward a well-told story), I didn’t have internal laws of probability that my characters would follow (read: no conflict, stakes, or reason to read the story).

That may seem like a little thing, but once I started sketching out my world, possibilities, decisions, events started floating up in my mind’s eye. McKee wrote: “Talent is like a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies. So, we deliberately put rocks in our path, barriers that inspire. We discipline ourselves as to what to do, while we’re boundless as to how to do it.” (We were all teenagers once. The more rules set before us, the more creative we were at bending (but not quite breaking!) them.)

So, you see, creating a world with a set of rules has allowed me to create a list of possible scenes and events that may happen (FYI, list is still growing). Finding the boundaries didn’t kill my imagination, it awakened it. Sure, I like the idea that On The Spot Inspiration can take me through a story, but if I’m honest with myself, I realize that ideas taken from the top of my head are probably regurgitated stories of what I’d seen or read recently, and will come off as cliched or unoriginal.

Really delving into the world, and finding scenes from my brainstorms that are truest to my characters, to their world, and which have never been done quite in the same way, are the scenes that I want to write into my novel.

What has inspired your imagination lately?