I discovered 2 things this morning. First, the long awaited title for book 2 in my novel series is finally here. It will be called, The Cross’s Key. Second, since I started book 2 I have been having placement issues. I was never happy with the order in which I put each chapter, and just when I think I have it right, I find I don’t like the order at all. So I continued to rearrange. THEN…….Then, this morning I realized that it isn’t necessarily the chapters I have out of place. It’s that the chapters I have written should be in Act II not Act I. Nothing like starting in the middle. HaHaHa, at least now after I create Act I and get to Act II, I’ll be a step ahead. Gotta love writing.
Also, book 2 features Kyle Stevens, who was a main side character in book 1, as the protagonist. He has been given a most exceptional gift. Will he be open to its mysteries, or will he ignore it and rely on his own merits?
What do you do to relax to get away from it all? Some people enjoy outdoor activities such as swimming, exercise, boating, fishing, hiking, traveling, sightseeing, just to name a few. I love doing all of those things, but what I LOVE most of all, what I enjoy most often above all other things to do, is writing. Yes, writing is my passion.
Why do I love it so much? When I was a kid, my teachers always complained to my mom that I was a daydreamer. Hahaha, well, they saw it as a detriment, but it wasn’t and isn’t. Even now I daydream, because that’s what writers do. So, for relaxation I write. As I’m writing, I can open my mind up to anything and everything and make it come to life (inside my head). It releases those endorphins, those feel good chemicals inside your brain that, when released, gives you that peaceful feeling of satisfaction.
There are other writerly activities that are just as fun. I keep a writer’s notebook for every novel I’m working on. If all I do is write in that notebook, that’s fine. It’s still progress. Sometimes I need a boost, so I’ll go for a walk. This is where I do much of my idea generating. Everyone has their idea generating avenues, that’s mine.
So, again I ask, what do you do for relaxation? I would love to hear all about.
Tora is a headstrong career driven woman who sets out to find the truth about her parents and discovers a family secret going back to the Magi. What is this secret?
Sometimes we all feel like we’re floating along. The wind is blowing but your boat is going nowhere. It’s stagnate. You put your oars in the water and stroke, but instead of moving along, you go in circles. Life is funny. At times we think there is nothing out there for us. You want to write a novel, short stories, and/or poetry, but you don’t know how to get started or how to expand on what you already have. I’ve been down that road. Let me tell you, I wanted to be an author, but I had so much to learn. The problem was I wanted it NOW. Well, life doesn’t happen that way. Some things are a process and believe me writing is a process. What I learned though over the years of writing my first book was that it isn’t necessarily the finished product that is the most important. It’s important, yes, but there is another aspect to it that is even more precious. It’s the journey, the writing you do everyday, the process itself, the getting from point A to point B in your manuscript/story that plays a certain kind of music in your insides. THAT is what matters most. The finished product, when you hold it in front of you, speaks volumes. You end up saying to yourself, “It was all worth every time consuming minute.”
So much goes on during the holidays, and it’s either good, bad, or in between. One year I was rushing around to get all of my Christmas shopping done. It was evening, so it was dark not to mention busy. The traffic standstill gave me a headache, but I had to get things done. I’m sure you can identify. I was in Toys’R’Us, which was crowded to the max, and it was my last stop. Dinner was next, so I was on the homeward stretch. I paid for my purchases, put my things in my car, and went to KFC to pick up my dinner. I was in the drive through waiting to give my order, when I reached for my purse and discovered it wasn’t there. Now, those of you who have discovered your purse or wallet missing while in public, can relate to this. My blood ran cold and my heart stopped. I still had over $400 in it. I got out of line and retraced my “steps”. I went back to Toys’R’Us to the exact parking spot I had just vacated. My cart was there but my purse wasn’t (I burst out into tears). However, there was a car in the spot I had been parked in and the people were still in it (A mom and her teenage daughter). I knocked on their window and inquired about my purse. THEY HAD IT!!!! What luck. They had my purse and were looking at my driver’s license to see whose purse it was. The woman gave me back my purse, and, upon seeing my distress, got out of her car and gave me a big hug.
Sometimes in our writing the story, process, characters and what have you can be just busy with so much “going on”. You can see the story in your head and it’s all coming at you at once. What does one do with such a rush of information that is out of order and disorganized? It almost seems as though you’ll forget this valuable information if you don’t rush to get it down. All I can say is, RELAX. Take the information that is rushing through your head. Do a free write and get it all down on paper or computer screen, then go back and organize it. When you organize it, prioritize it. What piece of information, according to your project, should get more attention? Work from most important to least important.
What do I mean by importance? All of your story elements are important and the importance of each depends on what you are working on each day, so this will change daily. Those of you who like to write by the seat of your pants have your own way of staying organized without planning ahead. Those of you who plan everything out in advance will do just that. Every writer’s process for writing is different, which is why I’m not going into detail here. I will say this though, what I do is keep a binder with dividers. Some sections are identified according what the story is.
In a nutshell don’t let the bombardment of your story fluster you. Take it in. Inhale it. Relax and place the information where you want it.
You can take a piece of something intoxicatingly boring and mundane and give it that creative flare. I call it “dressing it up”. Take the pictures above for example. Yes, I agree. They go on forever, or so it appears. Some would see beauty in them; some would see lack of an appeal. I see both actually. I didn’t grow up in an environment such as this, so the vast open plains give me a sense of beauty and allure. But there isn’t a whole lot to them. They’re just a road that goes on for miles, some hills, a sparse amount of trees, grass, and sky.
Now, take these same views, turn out the sun, and watch the stars come out. Now that is truly jaw dropping. Here there are no city lights to drown out the night’s sky. Here it is pitch black outside at night. You can get a blanket, lay it out, lay down and gaze up at the stars for hours. Better yet, the moon. I once saw a harvest moon out in the open like this. I was driving at night on I-70 through the state of Kansas. I looked out my driver side window and saw the biggest moon I’ve ever seen in my life. Talk about spectacular. I wanted to reach out and grab it, it was so huge and close.
In writing, we want to capture these beautiful scenes on paper. We want to capture the boring ones too. Either way, we writers can spice it up if it’s lacking or keep it as is. That’s one of the things I love about writing. We create and it’s anything goes. If your imagination sees it, your hand can write it (or type it).
The first draft of your manuscript can be rather turbulent. I get it. Really I do. When it’s finished, you look it over and think, “Uh oh, I don’t like this at all.” Two things you can do here. You can either chuck it altogether, or you can use it. Whatever you do, DON’T CHUCK IT. Why? I say this because, even if you don’t use some of it, part of it you will/can use. You can also use the whole thing but polish it up some or a lot. Only you know your story, so only you know how to fix it. In the end, you will have learned more as a writer, and your story will have grown and developed in ways you would not have imagined. If need be, walk away from it for a while. Take a break, think of other things. Then, go back to it.
I remember when I lost part of my manuscript when I was transferring if from my desktop to my new laptop. I was blindsided and distraught. I put the whole thing down and vowed I wouldn’t go back to it. Eventually, I did go back to it, and I made it better. The ideas flowed, big changes were made, and the story became more clear as it relates to where I wanted to go with it. So something bad can turn into a blessing if you let it.
I know what you’re thinking, “A picture is worth 1000 words”. Well yes, it is. But go that one step further. Go inside the picture. In other words look at it in real time. Sit on a park bench or on the beach or wherever you feel most comfortable, and watch people. Throw some what if scenarios around in your head and make up stories about who you are observing based on what they are doing. If you’re not within earshot of the conversation, make one up. Have a journal with you to jot down your ideas. You would be surprised how much this exercise awakens your creative side.
All at once the ideas start to flow. An Idea enters that river of creativity. It picks up speed as the current of thoughts continue to take it down river. It picks up more ideas as it flows along. A mile or two down river you have something BIG, HUGE even. All at once your pen is flowing and you can’t stop. The current has taken you and there is no turning back. One plot twist leads to another and you now come to a fork in the river. Which one do you take? Hmmmmm. You decide to take all of them by making each one a subplot. Aha!!! Now you have story that will take your reader on a spellbinding journey.
When I was in the U.S. Navy Reserves back in 2005, I did my annual training on the USS Bohomme Richard LHD 6. At that time smart phones weren’t really a thing yet. A lot of my friends including myself had the flip phone and there was no camera on it. So, when I went on this AT, the ship sailed from San Diego, CA to Seattle WA. Since I didn’t have a camera on my cell phone, I had to take with me a couple of disposable cameras. Well, I really wish I had taken more of those cameras because I ended up running out of film. Here I was sitting on a park bench looking out over the bay in Seattle watching cruise ships and viewing the vast and majestic Mt. Rainier feeling the light breeze and enjoying a rare blue sky and sunshiny day, and I had no camera to capture it all. What did I do? I took my journal out and painted my own picture of it with words.
Think outside the box here. Do this your way. Free write this description and get down any and all words you can that describes everything you see and go back later and cut and change what you don’t want. On the other hand, you can slow down, breathe, enjoy the fresh salty air floating up off the water being carried by the breeze. Close your eyes, listen to the sounds, smell the scents and then take out your journal and pen/pencil and ‘paint’ your picture(s). You will be surprised at what your brain comes up with. These two methods are what works for me, but I much prefer the latter.
Keep this and all writings you have because they can be used later in a short story or a novel or two. Doing this also allows you to see how you’ve grown in your writing as time goes by. I recently went back to one of my journals in which I ‘took a picture with words’ and reread it. It was from a vacation I took with my husband and kids in 1997. As I was reading it my mind began making some mental changes to what I wrote that would make it better. My thought here? OMG I can use this in my next book. Oh the discovery of it all. Writing is truly fun.
Action is action, or is it? I consider creative writing to be equal to painting on a canvas. Just like a paint brush glides across a canvas, so too does a writing utensil move across a sheet of paper and fingers type words across a blank screen. In each case a picture is created. The difference lies in how we see it; words vs. a literal picture, but words create images in our mind that we see as we read them. How easily we see these pictures depends on how well we use the words that create them. Also, both ways create feeling, but they do it in different ways.
There are two ways to create pictures with words. One way uses adjectives (or descriptive words), which I’ll talk about in future post. The other way uses action words (otherwise known as verbs). In so doing, there are different ways to describe one particular action, but you want to do it in a way that allows the mind’s eye to see it and focus on it better yet create feeling at the same time. Note the sentences below.
Sentence 1: John walked slowly to his car after a long day at work. Sentence 2: John trudged across the parking lot after a long day at work.
The first sentence is weaker because, even though we see the action, it doesn’t give off any feeling. Not only that, but using an adverb, such as slowly, weakens the action. We can’t feel how tired John is as he’s walking across the parking lot. However, sentence 2 is stronger and more direct because we are better able to not only see the action clearer, but we feel how tired John is as well. I’m pretty sure most of you can identify with this after a long day at work yourselves.
This isn’t something you are going to up and do right off the bat as you’re writing your scenes, chapters, short stories, etc., because you don’t want to stop the flow of creativity. So this is what I recommend: write first, inspect second, fix/change third. Everyone is different, so work it in a way that makes sense to you.
If you need assistance finding stronger action words, there are a wide variety of resources out there to look at. Below are a few of them.
WRITE TIME AND AGAIN 