A Little from the Musical Archives

This week I thought I would share something from my creative musical archives. The video is off Muddy Waters performing "Got my Mojo Working".

A super challenge

I read across several different genres and sub-genres but when I write paranormal is home base. It's what I love, I think (hope) I'm good at it, and it's a comfortable fit for me. Sometimes writers have to step out of their comfort zones and find a way to challenge themselves. Trying your hand at a different genre is a good way to do that.

This week Samhain Publishing announced a new special call for submissions for a superhero romance anthology. They're looking for novellas submitted by September 1 for publication in the spring of 2012. Read more about it here.

This fired up my imagination like nothing in recent memory. I spent three hours crafting a skeletal outline for a science-based futuristic superhero and even have a small amount of word count. I've pulled my husband's copies of The Dark Knight Returns, Kingdom Come, and Superman Birthright off the shelf to read and study. I'm not a comic reader but I love superhero stories and wish there was more of the genre in (non-comic) book form. Superhero movies run the gamut from amazing (Nolan's Batman movies) to really good (Iron Man) to stuff you only watch for a laugh (we made fun of Wolverine all through the movie). I've added a few superhero movies to the Netflix list too. What will probably wind up being my biggest guide is Joseph Campbell's model of the hero's journey. While its true that in a lot of ways every story is a hero's journey, the superhero genre let's you turn that journey into myth writ large. I'd like to try my hand at telling a story like that so I'm going to see what I can do with the outline I've got so far. Even if I don't make the word count or time restriction, stepping out of my usual genre and trying something new will be good for me as a writer, and it will be fun too.

Is the superhero genre something you'd want to write? If not, what genre outside what you normally write would you like to try?

Layering your writing

One thing I've learnt in the publishing industry is that you never stop learning and improving. If you think you've reached your apex, get off the boat now. You're not going to become a better author.

Something that I've been working on for a while has been layering. Some of the critique I received from a literary agent and some of my betas is that they wanted to care more about my characters, and that I need to find a way to get readers deeper into these characters' mindsets. But how?

Some of my fellow crit partners have also had similar feedback from their editors. I've struck on a method I'm going to try to see how it works for me but first I'm going to share a little secret.

We interact with our world in three main ways: emotionally, physically and intellectually. When you revise, show, don't tell your readers how your character feels about others, herself, her environment, her hopes... about the music she hears floating across the garden at night. Add colour by showing her world, the hues of the flowers, what the cocoa smells like, the way her lover's hair feels when she tugs her fingers through it... How does your character think about her past, present and future? She doesn't just stomp through life but she thinks about the world within and without. And these thoughts effect her actions.

Emotions, the physical and intellect ineract with each other to create a cohesive experience. Granted, you don't smoosh them all up in EVERY pargraph, and there are times when you need to trust your dialogue to progress the plot... but consider your layering and use these three aspects of Self to explore your world and your character.

Allow your story to flow through each method as a filter as such. As for how I'll be approaching my edits. I've decided to do an editing round with each aspect in mind for my next project, an urban fantasy novella entitled What Sweet Music They Make. And I'm quite looking forward to this as an exercise. **cracks knuckles**

Endless Editing

I'm entrenched in the editing process for my forthcoming release DEATH SCENE. Currently working on the fourth set of edits. Or is it the fifth? To be honest, I'm starting to lose count.

With this, my second published novel, at least I know what to expect. When SUFFER THE CHILDREN was going through the editing process, everything was new and exciting. Even when I got to the point that I'd read my own manuscript so often I though my eyeballs would start to bleed.

When the final finished version of SUFFER THE CHILDREN dropped into my inbox, a zipped folder containing all six formats, I was so excited to see my first published e-book I tried to open all six formats at once. Of course this was more than my old laptop could cope with, and it promptly crashed.

But apart from skimming through the first few pages to read the dedication, and the acknowledgements, and the blurb, and basking in the glory of being a published novelist, I never actually read that final version. I had read it so many times during the editing process I just couldn't bring myself to read it once more.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN is now loaded on to my e-reader, but still I haven't read that final version. Part of the reason is because of the aforementioned 'reading fatigue'. But another part is because even up to the galley stage I was still finding mistakes. In spite of the endless editing process I am sure mistakes still made it through to the final version, and I'm not sure I could bear to find them, now, when I can't do anything to correct them.

I understand the need for many rounds of edits. Each one makes the novel better, and picks up errors that have been missed in previous rounds. But the process can be exhausting - I have read this manuscript so many times now the characters are appearing in my dreams at night.

I wonder how long it will be before I can revisit SUFFER THE CHILDREN and actually read it, without the editing reflex action kicking in? Perhaps it might be a good thing to do when I'm finally done with edits for DEATH SCENE and want to take a break from it.

Expanding My Reading Horizons

Like many Goodreads members, I'm participating in their reading challenge. My goal: 100 books in 2011.

I'm also challenging myself to make sure at least 50 percent of those books are by authors I've never read before. Same goes for reading a variety of genres and sub-genres.

To help me reach my goal, I'm noting authors and/or books that pique my interest. For example, a review of a Sebastian St. Cyr mystery sent me to the local library to check out C. S. Harris's Where Serpents Sleep. Another site, devoted to steampunk, had me checking out a copy of Boneshaker (Cherie Priest) and The Iron Duke (Meljean Brook). A fellow writer recommended Jim Butcher's Dresden Files and the novels of Mike Carey.

Fellow writers are also added to this list. After all, supporting each other is a win-win situation. :-)





 

This is the best advice on writing ever

Found on Tumblr, originally from Etsy.