nanodragon

"There’s a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living,..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 20:13:07 -0400

“There’s a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises, and you might not ever be able to uncompromise yourself. If you write for life, you’ll work hard; you’ll do it in a disciplined fashion; you’ll do what’s honest, not what pays. You’ll be willing to say no when somebody wants to play games with our work. You’ll be willing to not sell it. You’ll have a very strong sense of your work, your self-development.”

- Toni Morrison - excerpt from Black Women Writers at Work (1985) edited by Claudia Tate (via elctrcldy)

You know you’ve lost it a bit when you’re wandering around DeviantArt and you catch...

Tue, 07 May 2013 22:23:22 -0400

You know you’ve lost it a bit when you’re wandering around DeviantArt and you catch yourself right before you do a search for one of your original characters.

/sigh

In a way, this wee adventure animation describes what I want to...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:07:00 -0400

In a way, this wee adventure animation describes what I want to do as a writer. And what I want to do with my life.

Came across a quote today, supposedly from Oscar Wilde: Every saint has a past, and every sinner has...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:26:21 -0400

Came across a quote today, supposedly from Oscar Wilde:

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

And that pretty much sums up how I feel about my characters.

Hurray! Actually started writing the sequel to the book I finished last year. I’ve just...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 05:37:16 -0400

Hurray! Actually started writing the sequel to the book I finished last year. I’ve just realized this is the first sequel I’ve ever started. That’s not really momentous — it’s just another book, right? — but it kind of feels that way. Maybe because I’m continuing something for a reason other than that it wasn’t finished to begin with. ;)

I think it might be (at least partly) Camp NaNoWriMo’s fault, as I discovered (last week?) that it’s going on this month — woohoo for not missing it yet again — and signed up for the first time. Figured since the first novel got a big progress boost from NaNoWriMo, maybe it’d work again for the sequel.

Anyway, it’s 5:30 in the morning and I haven’t slept yet, so I’m not terribly coherent, and should probably go to bed. I just wanted to make a tinily squee-ish note here that some progress has been made. Squeeeeee … and done.

emptymanuscript: aetherial: theinformationdump: Body Language...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:49:00 -0400

emptymanuscript:

aetherial:

theinformationdump:

Body Language Cheat Sheet for Writers

As described by Selnick’s article:

Author and doctor of clinical psychology Carolyn Kaufman has released a one-page body language cheat sheet of psychological “tells” (PDF link) fiction writers can use to dress their characters.

This is something I have always encouraged people to consider when writing. If you can afford it, and you have one in your area - TAKE A BODY LANGUAGE CLASS. It will open your eyes to a whole new world of subtleties you never knew existed. SO worth it as a “Real Life” skill and for all those times when you’re writing and you need your character to react nonverbally.

There is also, in addition to these others, the writer resource book: The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

Is it sad that I want to publish my book solely because I want it to be in book form, so I can carry...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:46:16 -0400

Is it sad that I want to publish my book solely because I want it to be in book form, so I can carry it around and read it, instead of having to read it in a Word document?

I feel so narcissistic. ;)

Fantasy novels to read

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:02:22 -0400

A work by one of my favorite authors (who happens to be not so well known) made it onto Flavorwire’s list of best fantasy novels you probably haven’t read. *happy dance happy dance*

Her book is the #6 listing: The Death of the Necromancer. Her name is Martha Wells. Go and read. As a bonus, the author is a lovely person, too, so supporting her is a double whammy of yay. Good writing, good people. Not a whiff of fail. ;)

There’s also a bunch of other stuff on there that I’ve been meaning to read, and even some stuff I really haven’t heard of, which is always exciting. A trip to the library may be in order.

I Should Be Writing...: So naturally one part of my submission has no line breaks in it....

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 01:42:54 -0400

I Should Be Writing...: So naturally one part of my submission has no line breaks in it....:

i-should-be-writing:

Sadly, though the agents themselves are most definitely human, and probably understand, they don’t often have a lot of time. They get hundreds of emails like mine every day, and just to meet their own quotas so they can pay their own bills, they have to be ruthless.

I do agree with you though. Thank you for your thoughts. :)

I won’t get into how I think ruthlessness is a poor (but very human) substitute for efficiency, since that’s not the point here at all — instead, I’ll just say: You’re welcome, and good luck on future submissions! It seems like success in publishing is pretty strongly linked to perseverance, so here’s to keeping on with the keeping on.

There’s something posted over on i-should-be-writing that references the Bechdel Test, which...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 03:48:11 -0400

There’s something posted over on i-should-be-writing that references the Bechdel Test, which sent me off on a hunt through my lone finished novel manuscript to see whether the conversation I remember occurring between two female characters is focused around a man or men. (The answer is “no,” if you care. Or rather, the answer is more accurately “They have way more conversations than I remember them having, and while they mention men in some of them, they have quite a few conversations in which men are not mentioned at all.”)

And now that I’ve been sucked into re-reading bits of said novel and the accompanying notes, it amuses me to realize that there’s a group of five people in which only one person has a name so far … and she’s the only female in the group. ;)

Aaaanyway. I think I’m going to go read some more of the final battle scene, because, y’know. I like that kind of thing. Teehee.

I Should Be Writing...: So naturally one part of my submission has no line breaks in it....

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 02:40:00 -0400

I Should Be Writing...: So naturally one part of my submission has no line breaks in it....:

i-should-be-writing:

So naturally one part of my submission has no line breaks in it. (Query letter is fine. Synopsis is fucked up. Writing sample is fine.)

IMHO? Unless the lack of line breaks literally makes that whole section unreadable and that section itself is terribly important, that doesn’t seem like it should be a dealbreaker. Unless someone is being extra obsessive, of course, but if that’s the case, any random old thing could be a dealbreaker. I mean, I know they say first impressions matter, and formatting is terribly important, and there’s validity to those ideas, but humans are humans, and they make mistakes. A reasonable editor or agent should be able to judge the worth of a submitted work for itself, not for a formatting issue that isn’t uniformly present. After all, technical difficulties happen.

Personally, if I were reading through submissions and came across one with, say, a page that had no line breaks, I would just add some line breaks and keep reading … unless I had already decided not to read the rest for reasons unrelated to formatting. By which I mean the lack of line breaks in an isolated section of a submission wouldn’t keep me from reading it if I was enjoying it, and it wouldn’t keep me from accepting the work if I thought it was worth publishing (or, imagining that I’m an agent, it wouldn’t keep me from choosing to represent an author whose work seemed worth representing). And if I had the feeling the work was worth publishing, but the line-break-less section did render my reading experience painful, I would outright e-mail the author asking for a re-submission so I could finish reviewing properly. That’s just me, but I can’t be the only person on the planet to think like this. (I’m weird, but not THAT weird. ;) )

Also, if I’d done something like that and I’d sent the submission through e-mail, and if guidelines didn’t expressly forbid this for some reason, I would seriously consider sending a follow-up e-mail with everything corrected, prefaced by an introduction written with as much honest, heartfelt apology as I could muster.

Anyone who’s not human enough to understand that kind of thing is probably not the kind of person I would enjoy working with even at a distance, I think. That’s just my two cents … and now I’ll shut my blabbering trap before it digs my grave. ;)

I’ve started writing something new, and I appear to actually be writing something for once...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 02:04:41 -0400

I’ve started writing something new, and I appear to actually be writing something for once that isn’t about a guy and a girl who will end up in a romantic relationship with each other. What what what???

I have no idea when I reached the universe in which this is possible, but here I am.

i-should-be-writing: I really hate drinking ground coffee that you buy...

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 00:42:31 -0500

i-should-be-writing: I really hate drinking ground coffee that you buy...:

i-should-be-writing:

i-should-be-writing:

I really hate drinking ground coffee that you buy in the stores because

1) coffee is more expensive than it should be,

2) it goes bad in like a day,

3) #2 again.

I mean, I can’t add liquor to my coffee every time it tastes bad.

Well I can.

But liquor is expensive…

I would so roast beans on my own if I could. I live in a really strange area though, where grocery stores are dinky and lack variety, so I’d have to buy them off the internet, which I generally refuse to do when it comes to food because of “oh god why did I take a training course on food safety” reasons.

But a $10 grinder and maybe being able to buy beans in smaller quantities so I don’t have to worry about the oils going rancid so fast? Hmmmm… I always forget about thrift stores when it comes to things that aren’t clothes. Thank you! :)

(Also, I second that notion that coffee is totally relevant to writing.)

-L

I, too, would have to buy green coffee beans off the Internet … unless I could wrangle some from a local company that roasts them, I guess. I also don’t live in some mystical area of the country where unicorns roam free and the normal grocery stores actually stock green coffee beans. I only wish I did. ;)

Here’s hoping your thrift store hunts turn up a grinder at some point, anyway! Crappy coffee is just not cool. Especially for the variety of writer that needs coffee like air or water. Maybe more than non-coffee-adulterated water. ;D

i-should-be-writing: I really hate drinking ground coffee that you buy in the stores because 1)...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:17:25 -0500

i-should-be-writing:

I really hate drinking ground coffee that you buy in the stores because

1) coffee is more expensive than it should be,

2) it goes bad in like a day,

3) #2 again.

I mean, I can’t add liquor to my coffee every time it tastes bad.

Well I can.

But liquor is expensive too.

So is a new coffee machine that accepts beans and grinds them up.

So is a grinder on its own.

So is a cup from Starbucks or any other café that claims to do coffee the correct way.

Can’t I just grow the berries in my basement?

I got a decent coffee grinder for $10 at a yard sale once … Maybe you could find one at a thrift store?

Alternately, you could buy the beans green and roast them in a pan or in your oven? Of course, I haven’t priced that out recently and I dunno what store coffee you buy, so it might not be cheaper, and roasting your own with DIY equipment tends to be smoky, but … It’s another option? ;) And at least the smoke will smell like coffee, I assume.

(I declare this conversation on-topic for this blog because writers need coffee. Yeah. That’s it.)

"What you read when you don’t have to determines what you will be when you can’t help it."

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 09:36:17 -0500

“What you read when you don’t have to determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”

- Oscar Wilde

"One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always..."

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 04:48:37 -0500

“One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.”

- Paulo Coelho

"O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention."

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 22:25:09 -0500

“O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.”

- William Shakespeare

Derailed

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 02:11:16 -0500

I was all hyped up to write, and then I got distracted by a Facebook meme, and now I’m derailed.

Thought I was going to start March with a bang, but looks like it might be a slow start after all. Whoopsie.

"When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a..."

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:18:55 -0500

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.”

- Ernest Hemingway

"Writers live twice."

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:09:28 -0500

“Writers live twice.”

- Natalie Goldberg