Breaking Rank

I know I'm breaking rank here by diverging from my literary posting pulpit, but I had to share with you all my latest purchase. I play a little bit of a few instruments and love to learn anything new that I can. I have been using a mid-range Martin Acoustic guitar for a few years and wanted to try my hand at an electric guitar for a while. I finally purchased a new electric guitar and amp. These are what I purchased.

Ibanez ART 100 Artist Electric Guitar

Line 6 Spider IV amp

I must say, they sound amazing! I am having a blast learning some guitar riffs and trying to get a feel for the lighter touch of the electric.

Just wanted to share.

Living Characters

I've written on this subject before and I'm sure it won't be the last words I say about this topic, but ultimately I'm having trouble reigning in my character.

Meet "Girl X" The love interest of my MC for my current novel tentatively called "Watchers" aka "The Awakening."


(for the record, she doesn't look like this, but I liked the expression for image sake)

Girl X, was supposed to be someone completely different than she is now. She is supposed to be nigh untouchable. She is supposed to be pristine, glass-like in her fragility, equally submissive in attitude and ultimately come across as weak. What she really is, is irrelevant. The problem I'm having is, her personality is shaping out differently. Is it detrimental to the plot, not so much, but does it bother me that I can't seem to fit my character's complex into the character... YES.

I had a similar problem with a character in Trueborn. The MC and his brother were swapping personalities and making choices that I had intended for the other to make. It feels like I'm trying to write a story about living characters who don't want to be written different than they really are. It's like they are rebelling against my finger strokes and key clicks. It's like they are developing themselves.

What is your experience with character development before and during the novel writing process?

I got nuthin

I'm fresh out of blogging energy today, so I'll just leave you with this drawing of mine. I call it "the shifty eye anime guy."



Enjoy your day!

Advice For the Writer

If you have a finger or two, access to Internet and a little time, you can stumble onto myriads of tips, tricks and bits of advice on how to organize your novel writing. There's a ton of great sources out there, many of them right here in the blog-o-sphere, which can set you in the right direction to make sure you efficiently and enjoyably write the best novel you can without taking years to do it. (Some novels do in fact take years to develop, even with efficient writing tools and schedules, but that's another beast for another day)

Anyway.

One thing that most people know is that achieving success is relative. Completion of a chapter may be success to me, while completion of a novel may be success to you, yet another person may have written a few novels, but doesn't feel successful until they receive a dignified award of some kind from the literary community. Success IS relative and subjective, but, setting up reasonable goals and reaching those goals can give most of us a feeling of success, which in turn will fuel our desire to continue. So, here's a little suggestion to help you reach those moments of success.

Try breaking your novel down into "acts."

For example:

Let's say that you are attempting to write a fiction novel with an approximate word count of 80,000 words. Try breaking that up into four acts.

Act 1 - 20,000 words
Act 2 - 20,000 words
Act 3 - 20,000 words
Act 4 - 20,000 words

Give each act a specific purpose.

For example:

Act 1 - Lay foundation and conflict
Act 2 - Develop characters and intensify conflict
Act 3 - Bring conflict to a climax
Act 4 - End climax and close the story, or tie up loose ends

This is obviously very generic advice and in your own way, you can determine how many acts you need to fully tell your story and how much of a word count each act will be given... Breaking it up like this and labeling the need of the act will empower you to truly use the appropriate words you've allotted for that act to get done what needs getting done. This can help you eliminate unnecessary information, can help you prioritize how much time you'd like to spend on each act. Ultimately, the best part is that, as you complete an act, you'll feel a sense of accomplishment and success. This should help fuel your desire to move forward and makes the whole novel seem less daunting. Rather than worrying about writing your 80,000 words, all you have to do is write your 20k word act at a time. Try it out. See if it helps you. I know it helps me.

Glimpse of Snippet

I'd had a novel in mind that I wanted to begin working on later in life. I had filed away the idea with the notion that it would take a lot of research to make it work. Then, my creative writing instructor asked that we compile a short story of fiction. I decided that I'd take my novel, tentatively called "Snippet," and just turn it into a short story for the class assignment.

Here's the premise of the short story.

A budding young author finds himself being sued by a host of angry literary professors, due to a possible plagiarism & copy write infringement. His novel, called "Snippet," comes under fire as it becomes a best seller, yet none of the story itself was written by the author. Instead, the author decided to take sections of some of the best literary masterpieces in history and fit them together to create an altogether new story. These snippets, while unrelated, come together in a literary puzzle of sorts and create an epic tale which captures the hearts and minds of readers around the world. The problem arises when an Ivy League university professor questions the legal validity of the novel. Though the author cites each snippet, he may need to justify the overwhelming magnitude of his bibliography and the impact it had on his novel's success.

Catching Up

So, a lot has happened since I took my hiatus to focus on getting married and I missed a lot of posts. I'd love to know what's been going on with everyone, but I just don't have the time to comb through the myriads of articles and posts that I've missed. That's where this post comes in. Please leave me a comment telling me if I missed anything major from your blog while I was in hiding (I.E. You were signed with a publishing house or agent etc...)

I'd also love to catch up on everyone to know what your WIP (work in progress) is. Please answer the following for me, if you don't mind.

1. Name of your current or most dedicated WIP.
2. Word count of that WIP
3. Genre it fits into
4. IF you are ok with sharing, please let me know the premise of you novel. Obviously don't give away too much, but just generally speaking.

P.S. This picture has nothing to do with the post, I just saw it and wanted to use it. N-Joy

Wrestling the Critique

Every so often, I like to run my manuscripts by an innocent bystander to see if I can glean any new perspective. Often times, I already know of screaming problems that need to be addressed or issues that I've yet to tackle, but I ask instead for that person to simply point out specific needs, such as not enough detail, too much detail, not enough action, dialogue etc...

So, when I get back my manuscript with some red notes and suggestions, I'm thrilled when I see what I was looking for. Unfortunately sometimes people go above and beyond and do a little extra critique. In the end, I'm glad to hear suggestions, because ultimately, whether I act on them now or later, or even never, it's a fresh pair of eyes and a new perspective.

BUT

Does it bug you when people take it upon themselves to try to be your personal editor and literally shred your work right before your eyes, when all you may have asked for was a perspective of "dialogue smoothness?"

How do you handle critiques?

Details

So, as promised, I told everyone I'd post the dirty details of the wedding. I'd like to preface by stating that the most important thing of the whole event DID happen: I married the love of my life. Now on to the fun part. My wedding felt like the very strands of fate were woven against it. If things could go wrong, they went wrong. This is a small list of some of the things that did not go well....there is more, but some of it I won't mention to protect the innocent LOL. All I can say is, if the old phrase "weddings that go wrong just mean that the marriage will be great," is true, then my marriage is going to be Freaking Fantabulous!

1. Wedding invitations were designed without saying "Marriage or wedding" or anything of the likes.
2. Wedding invitations never got to people. 80ish of them are still MIA at this point. Nobody knows what happened to them.
3. Friend who was going to throw bachelor party found out his dad got into a terrible car accident, broke nearly every bone in his body and was in a coma. Needless to say, he isn't throwing any parties, nor attending the wedding.
4. Best man couldn't get rental car, because his "temporary" license wasn't considered legitimate per the car rental company.
5. Father-in-Law, who was going to rent a 7 seater car for us to pickup family and such, couldn't get his own rental car due to a problem with his own license. His rental car was delayed for 2 days.
6. Mother-in-law became ill on Thursday and was taken to urgent care where she was promptly diagnosed with pneumonia.
7. When the flowers arrived, we forgot the ribbon, flower wires & pins for corsages and boutonniere, went to store to buy more, bought the wrong supplies. Wasn't enough time to get all the appropriate stuff, so we had to rig it with the ghetto stuff.
8. Mother-in-law got worse on Friday had to go to ER and was admitted, looking quite blue in the face due to lack of oxygen.
9. Mother-in-law's laptop was going to play ceremony music, but was left in her hotel room while she was in hospital
I Had to scramble to reload my laptop with ceremony music and inform my wife's cousin that he would be playing it for us (had to show him what to do, the day of the wedding...WHILE people were being seated)
10. Morning of the wedding, during a last minute run to the store for some missing items, I almost T-boned a truck due to the RAIN... yep, it was raining. Did I mention our wedding was supposed to be outside?
11. Both bride and groom forgot to bring the guest book
12. Both bride and groom forgot to bring the video camera, which had been purchased for the purpose of taping the event
13. The hotel's sound system for the wedding had a TON of feedback and was not working, up till 3pm. (the time of the ceremony)
14. Father-in-law arrived to the hotel promptly 10 minutes till the ceremony began, with the boys and her uncle.... Not a single one of them was dressed in their tuxes.
15. Father-in-law realized he left the camera man's camera at home. He had to go home to get it. The ceremony was delayed by about 45 minutes.
16. Due to last minute seating issues from the rain, nobody knew where to sit, or where to stand and our wedding coordinator threw in the towel... she lost all hope and was obviously upset with everything, thereby stressing us out.
17. Both mother's forgot to light the unity candle after being walked to their seats... I had to come down and remind them. :)
18. During the unity candle portion of the ceremony, my wife's wick wouldn't light... Eventually we gave up without it lighting.
19. After our grand entrance to the reception hall, nobody knew what to do because our wedding coordinator didn't fill us in or work with out DJ. She apparently upset our DJ.
20. We found out that all the music provided to the DJ, in advance, was not working.... the DJ had to stay up til 1am the night before to download all the songs, or re-purchase them,
21. The wedding certificate was placed somewhere after it was signed and was moved.... It was lost..
22. My blood sugar dropped by the time my wife and I got to our wedding room. I'm sure you can guess how that ruins the next part of the evening.
23. Next day, the wedding certificate was found, along with the party favors that had been forgotten under a table somewhere
. . .

WHEW!!!

Well..... We survived! We did it. We are married. I must say, it was beautiful, but man was there a LIST, and I do mean LIST in all caps, of snags along the way!!!! I'll definitely post a follow up with details here, but it's late and I'm really stinking tired.

Here's a tickler photo of my beautiful bride and I to keep your attention till next post.

Counting Down

I know you are all sick of hearing about it, but the official countdown is here. I'll throw this counter up here again so you can all watch for my impending doom... I mean impending bliss :)


I miss writing to you all and hearing from everyone. Hopefully things will settle down here soon and I can get back my crazy posts of odd'ness.