11/21/11
It’s November, which means I’m one of a gazillion who joined the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is a yearly nationwide event (in fact, I think it’s international now) where writers of all stripes attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the month.
10/19/11
I was sitting in a local coffee shop recently looking at people’s shoes. It didn’t dawn on me that’s what I was doing until I thought “never figured her for a boot type person. Can I use that in a story?”
Don’t know if I’ll ever actually write a story about shoes, but I thought what a wacky place to go for inspiration although, it seemed to work for Donna VanLiere and The Christmas Shoes.
As I thought more about it I realized I had been making judgments about the character of each individual I was watching based on their shoes. For the flip-flop wearing young woman, my thought was “It’s 48 degrees out here. Don’t you know any better?” For the standard all-white Nike wearers ‘Glad to see you’re wearing sensible shoes to help with your balance.
Only the sleek, brown, square-toed leather ankle boot had me thinking “odd-choice for you.”
It turned out to be a fun exercise in character observation.
What about you? Where’s the wackiest place you’ve gone for inspiration?
09/8/11
I was at a family wedding this weekend. My cousin’s daughter got married in Minneapolis. We were kind of determined to go because it’s probably the last wedding for a number of years for our family, and the bride’s grandfather, who is also my uncle, is beginning to show signs of dementia.
06/22/11
How do you create a reader out of a non-reader? More specifically, how do you turn a “too cool” teenage male who refuses to show much interest in anything into a some time reader?
I’m not going for anything huge here. I’d settle for a book a month and a thin one at that! He did read Shattering Glass in his junior English class this year and finally admitted the characters were “. . . kinda interesting, but stupid.” I wondered why such a violent book was being taught to our supposed angst ridden, depressed teens, but got over it. At least he read it.
06/8/11
This is officially a rant. It’s something I seldom do, but off I go.
It’s contest-judging time and, for me, it’s been a struggle. Judging coordinators placed a special emphasis on being “nice” to entrants. It’s not that I’m promoting being overly critical and I’m definitely not a “your baby is ugly” type. Some of the things I’ve been told judges say would never occur to me, but as a former English teacher and professional writer there are, let’s call them “rookie mistakes,” that set my teeth on edge.
05/25/11
I’ve been thinking about friendships a lot lately. Probably because I lost two of my best friends during the month of May. One from cancer five years ago and one from heart failure four years ago. None of us had reached our 60s at the time. One I’d known since pre-kindergarten, we attended the same church, and the other since we were sophomores in high school.
Bev and I began swimming at about the same time. We exchanged family news and general conversations as we dressed in the locker room after swimming. Bev is one of those very social people I admire, the kind that has never known a stranger. She even brought me a rose once to celebrate my successful completion of my self-styled half-triathlon.
Over this last year, we’ve only seen each other a couple of times. She started swimming at 5 a.m. and I stuck with my noon swim. The YWCA where we exercise announced it was discontinuing its health and fitness programs recently. I made a mental note to attend one of those ungodly 5 a.m. sessions to say “bye” to Bev.
She beat me to it. She came to an afternoon session last week saying she had hoped to see me. She wanted to say “bye.” “It’s been a good friendship,” she said. Which kind of surprised because I’m not sure I saw her as what I would call a friend.
That got me thinking about friendships and their purposes, especially among writers. From McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale to Bushnell’s Sex and the City, relationships, especially relationships among strong women are the foundation for a good chunk of the market. And how many of us, while we were unpublished, heard some version of “Why are you still hanging out at that writers’ group? You haven’t published anything.”
Or once we get published, it’s some version of “You’re home all day doing nothing. You can do . . .” And no matter how many times we post our work hours, refuse phone calls or ignore the doorbell, there’s always one or two folks that we expect to be supportive that just aren’t. I wonder how many serious injuries, if not outright murders have been averted because of those “writers’ groups.”
Who else understands when we start talking about things like dogs that show up in our manuscripts, when we didn’t plan to have a dog in the story; or a secondary character that keeps trying to take over the story? Non-writers likely don’t know what a secondary character is let alone why we writers can’t control those characters we put on paper.
So we need our writer friends for motivation, for encouragement, for sanity. I treasure my writing friends.
05/11/11
Keeping Those Pesky Resolutions Part 2
Back in January I blogged about techniques to use to keep my New Year’s resolutions. One of the suggestions was to review my goals often. Something I promised to do at the end of the quarter but didn’t, so thought I would review them now.
Normally, I’m so far behind by now, I’m feeling pretty hopeless. That’s not quite the case this year. Hopefully, it means either I’ve gotten better at developing goals or the techniques I used helped. My fear is, it’s just luck.
The “Seinfeld” calendar lost its novelty for me in late February. I did, however, leave it up on my wall to encourage me to recommit to that daily goal.
Specific writing goals I’ve met so far include: finished three revisions of my wip; brainstormed 12 article ideas; took a plotting on-line class and read three (Save the Cat; Plotting & Writing Suspense Fiction; and Goal, Motivation, Conflict) of the six craft books I wanted to read by the end of the year.
What might be more important are the goals I’ve delayed or deleted for the year. Most of those are my technology goals like building a web page and author Facebook page. I did take an on-line class on building a web page. It taught me that I should hold off until I have more content to post on them. They’ll come back much later in the year.
Using a daily prioritized task list did get me back in the pool three days a week and did get me writing 500 to 700 words a day.
Those are the tricks I’m using to keep my goals/resolutions for 2011. How about you?
04/20/11
Kimberla Lawson Roby
New York Times Bestselling Author, Kimberla Lawson Roby, has published 17 novels including her debut title, BEHIND CLOSED DOORS , which was originally self-published through her own company, Lenox Press. Her novels have frequented numerous bestseller lists, including The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Essence Magazine, Upscale Magazine, Emerge Magazine, Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, The Dallas Morning News, and The Austin Chronicle.
Her novels deal with very real issues including social status, gambling addiction, infidelity, single motherhood, infertility, sibling rivalry, corruption within the church, domestic violence, sexual abuse, childhood sexual abuse, care-giving of a parent, racial and gender dicreimination in the workplace, sexual harrassment, overweight issues, and female illnesses to name a few.
04/6/11
I thought I loved books too much to go the e-reader route. I thought I’d miss the feel of paper as I turned the page. Heck, I thought I’d miss turning the page! But I’m something of a realist, and after watching the publishing industry change, the proliferation of e-readers and digital content, and finding a silver lining in the closing of my local Border’s Superstore, I decided to take the plunge.
I’d like to say I’m frugal, but the fact of the matter is I’m flat-out cheap! And I couldn’t convince myself to invest $200+ (I was considering a color Nook) in a device I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy. But when my local Border’s put their e-reader (Kobo) on sale for $60, a price point that made sense to me, as part of their liquidation sale; I purchased one. My plan was to play with it for up to a year and see if I wanted to make the personal switch.
03/16/11
Francis Ray
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Francis Ray is a native Texan and lives in Dallas. A graduate of Texas Woman’s University, she is a School Nurse Practitioner with the Dallas Independent School District. Her titles consistently make bestseller’s lists such as Blackboard and Essence Magazine. Incognito, her sixth title, was the first made-for-TV movie for Black Entertainment Television (BET). She has written more than forty titles to date and has received numerous awards including Romantic Times Career Achievement, EMMA, The Golden Pen, The Atlantic Choice, and Borders 2008 Romance Award for Bestselling Multicultural Romance.
The Turning Point, her first mainstream novel, was a finalist for the Holt Medallion Award. She used the release event to establish The Turning Point Legal Fund to assist women of domestic violence restructure their lives.
