Posted by Christine on Jan 6, 2008 in Randomness |
I read an interesting post today on another authors blog. She comments that her novel is floundering and I have to admit I understand her feelings. I am currently on my third start of the same novel. Each draft is completely different from the one before it yet tells the same basic story. The problem I think is that I wasn’t sure where I was going with it at first. I had an idea, I knew where I wanted to end up but I had no clue how exactly I wanted to get there. So I sat and worked with my Jello Slime for a while, trying to reach in and pull out the solid bits and put them together into a pattern. It was messy work. However, I think I ended up with some good ideas. I know now which characters need to tell the story. I know now where they will start and where they want to end up. I know now where the story wants to end. I know what it needs to cover in the interim between when it starts and when it ends. I think that my third start will be the one I stick with. It is the one I started after my afternoon with the Jello slime and I think it is significantly better then the others. I guess I will see what my critic group says about the first chapter. Now all I have to do is finish a draft of this novel. ANY draft I just want a complete...
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Posted by Christine on Jan 3, 2008 in Randomness |
Sometimes I feel like the stories in my head are made of Jello, or slime, or Jello slime. The stories jiggle and wiggle and they float in my head in a state that is neither solid nor liquid. The trick is trying to catch them and mold them into something. I kind of thought I was crazy. Then I heard professional authors at the conference I attended talk about how they wrote. They talked about characters having their own personality how sometimes they had to change the entire direction of a story to accommodate these characters. I heard about people talking to themselves in the mirror in order to understand the story. I heard all about how other people write. Suddenly my Jello Slime didn’t seem so abnormal. As I write and sometimes the slime begins to congeal into something solid and a story begins to take a shape it can hold and grow with it. I love that feeling. Like I helped the slime find it’s permanent home. Sometimes the first shape I try seems like it will fit, only to find out as the story grows that the slime won’t hold the design I set. So I try another shape, and another, until I find the shape that fits the story. The shape that fits the slime and makes it something solid, gives it a home. Hmmm…. writing sounds kind of gross when put it in terms of slime. Sometimes it gets frustrating to keep fighting to figure out how the slime needs to look. What will make it comfortable enough to set and become solid. Still I love it. It kind of reminds me of motherhood. Kids can be slimy too, uhm I mean there is no set pattern and each child is unique, just like each story. Sometimes you have to reset the entire pattern of parenthood/writing, to accommodate the slime… er, I mean story/child you are working with. Motherhood and writing. My two favorite...
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Posted by Christine on Jan 2, 2008 in Randomness |
Here it is the beginning of 2008 and it’s time to decide what exactly I want to accomplish this year. I have to admit it will be hard to top last year. I mean being born and all is a big thing. However I have to try – after all if you don’t try you can’t do anything!!! So here they are my resolutions for the year 2008. 1) To write every day – for 30 minutes a day, or at least 750 words a day. This is real writing time, not doing crits for my critique group or doing editing, but really writing. After all I will never get anything finished if I never actually sit down and write. (Yesterday I did really well on this one, I wrote for about 4 hour and got out about 12,000 words!) 2) To have my novel completely clean and ready to pitch by October when I plan to attend the Surrey Writing conference again. 3) To write and submit at least three short stories for publication during the year 2008. I have one written and in critique already and I hope to be able to send it for submission to a magazine by the end of the month. So that’s my new years goals. How about you, any goals this...
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Posted by Christine on Dec 31, 2007 in Randomness |
The year 2007 has been a busy one for me. For starters I was born. It’s interesting to be born at age 30. I came into the world with a husband, children and bills to pay. Luckily I was also born with a passion and I didn’t have to spend years trying to discover it. My passion, the story. I love stories. I love to read them, to tell them and to write them. So this year I was born Christine Brant teller of stories. I have accomplished many things in my first year of life. I shopped a novel to some agents – about a dozen – and realized I was not yet ready to shop anything. So I stored the novel under my bed and let it die a peaceful and comfortable death. Instead of lingering over my poor dead story, one that will always have a special place in my heart as the first novel I ever finished writing, I began another novel. I decided to join an online Critique group and fell in love with it. The feedback and support I have gotten from them has been invaluable to me and is helping me develop as a writer in major ways. Next I tried my hand at short stories. I wrote “A Decade of Scottsdale” over the summer and entered it into the Surrey International Writers Conference storytellers competition. I won. I attended my first writing conference. The above mentioned Surrey International Writers Conference. It was the highlight of my year. I attended great workshops, met fabulous people, and got spectacular advise that I plan to follow as closely as I can. I participated in NaNo WriMo (Aka: National Novel Writing Month) and completed 29,000 words of the novel I am currently writing. Overall an eventful year. As 2008 approaches and I look back on 2007 I have to say I am content with the past year. In fact I am down right thrilled with it. What more could I ask from my first year of...
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Posted by Christine on Dec 25, 2007 in Randomness |
I just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Mine was great fabulous and fun filled. My kids had a blast, I had a blast… It was great and I am lucky to be blessed with such a wonderful. So I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Talk to you more about writing in 2008.
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