LOL. My first book hasn’t even been out a year and I have run into many of these comments.
Worth a read!
Arg! April 11, 2012
Your priorities are
not my priorities.
Your time is
not my time.
Your hopes are
not my hopes.
Your deadlines
are not my deadlines.
But all
of mine,
depend
on yours.
Like this:
on the muse… April 10, 2012
When the muse is dancing,
one plays her a tune.
Just thinking about inspiration. I try to keep my teaching work at school. I treat the job as ’9 to 5′ and mark and prep after school. I try to never bring any marking home with me, mostly, I confess, because there are so many other distractions at home that I’d never look at it.
Writing, however, is a different thing. I’ll have ideas simmering on the back burner most of the time, but when I sit down and the words are coming, sometimes it is impossible to shut them off. I might be stuck, writing frantically for hours. If I don’t, then the words will still be pouring out, while I’m lying in bed. There is no sleeping at such times.
So my metaphor is explained. When the muse is dancing, one must play her the tune, because she will keep dancing one way or another. If you don’t capture her inspiration, it will carry on without you.
Story cube #1- bed to bridge April 9, 2012
While on a flight to England recently, I discovered Rory’s Story Cubes in the Duty Free catalogue. The 9 cubes, embossed with images on all six sides, originate in Northern Ireland. The company suggests that we think in images, and thus stories are opened up to us by rolling the cubes. Intrigued with the idea of using such tools in my class room or to aid with incidents of writer’s block, I purchased a set. There are a number of ways to use the cubes, for solo or cooperative story telling, for inspiration or for competive story games. I can see using them in creative writing classes, and also in drama class. I am just beginning to play with them, but here’s an effort at a flash fiction (470 words) based on the following cube roll:
<!–[endif]–>
Story cube #1
Once upon a time…
It was a dream. I knew it, but it didn’t make it less real, or less terrifying. Whether or not I was, in fact, safe in my bed, the panic still engulfed me and I fought for wakefulness without success. I was trapped there, inside my dream. Aware, but helpless.
There were footsteps echoing around me. At first, it was just one person’s heavy tread, and I struggled to open a window that appeared as I wished to investigate, but then the treads changed and they echoed all around me, as if an unseen army was tromping through my bedroom.
I quivered in fear, coming to a terrifying awareness that whether or not I dreaming, I was not at all asleep. I was fully awake, and the noise was real. I was in danger.
In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a parachutist descends to the island to send a message from the grown ups. The message is lost, and the hope that his arrival may have brought becomes brutish superstition instead. That’s how I felt as the boot steps echoed, and a supersticious dread of zombie armies, heck, real armies, filled me.
Hope knocked on the door at that moment. “Hey! Anyone in there?”
“Yes!” I bellowed. “I’m here! Can you get me out?”
There was a fussing about with the lock and then a muttered curse.
“What happened?”
“I cut my hand trying to jimmy the lock. I’m bleeding all over the place here.”
I waited, with growing impatience at the noises emitted from the lock set, until there was a click, and an outburst of satisfaction from the other side of the door.
I grabbed the knob and the door fell open, revealing the stone walls beyond and an amazing apparition.
I stared.
She stared.
“Who are you?” I finally asked, recovering a bit from the dazzle of light beaming off her glowing form.
“I am, um,” she shook her head a moment before changing her mind. “No. Who are you?”
“I’m a prisoner. I’ve been locked in this room inside this pyramid for… well. I don’t know how long. Who are you? How did you get in?”
“I live here. I mean, I live in a house near here. I heard a noise. I came to investigate.”
Investigate?
“You’re not in a pyramid,” she added thoughtfully. “You’re in my head.”
“I can’t be.”
She nodded sagely. “Of course you can be. You are.”
“Can you get me out? Out of the pyramid, I mean.”
“I told you, you’re in my head.”
“Yes, yes. But if you think me out of the pyramid, perhaps I won’t feel like I’m in one?”
“Oh. That’s an idea. Are you expecting to get out of my head, as well?”
I shrugged. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime…?”
<!–[endif]–>
feeling guilty? April 5, 2012
Crystal Stranaghan was the publisher at Gumboot Books who signed Grace Awakening. Sadly, Gumboot is no more, but Crystal is still involved in writing and all sorts of other projects. In this blog post, she writes about feeling guilty about finding time for writing.
I am thoroughly impressed by Diana Gabaldon who says she writes every day. Good thing, considering how huge her books are, and how desperate her fans are for her to finish them! I know that a little work every day adds up quickly, but I also know how difficult it is to carve out time to do the work. Gabaldon posts ‘daily lines’ almost every day on her website and Facebook, so it appears to be true. 
She is juggling a few different projects, but there is a little snippet of writing from something to feed the fans.
I seem to find time for the blog, but it takes a little more effort to fit in the novel work. The most words seem to fill my brain just as I’m about to drop off to sleep. This is not always conducive to adequate rest, I confess.
Crystal says she feels guilty for taking the time to write. By contrast, I feel guilty for not writing! ;-P I know when I am working on a novel, I am making an investment that will pay off in the future.
How about you? Are you guilty for writing or for not writing? How do you carve time to write in your day?
Like this:
Where’s Grace? April 1, 2012
Yeah. I know.
Originally I had posted that Grace Awakening Power would be released in November.
Next I posted it would be out in January.
At the moment the website says “It’ll be out in February,” but it’s now April, so clearly that’s wrong, as well.
What’s the hold up? Don’t look at me! ;-P The manuscript has been with the editor since the summer. I expected it back by the fall so Lintusen could have it out by the end of the year 2011. Plainly I was wrong.
I don’t think there are that many mistakes in it, but I guess the day job is interfering with the editing job. I’ve been trying to be patient, since nothing in the publishing world moves quickly or smoothly. I haven’t been in the business long, but I learned that within the first year.
Many people ask, “WHEN?” It always makes me a little embarrassed, because I’ve been giving out these dates, and they turn out to be wrong, so I look like I’m an idiot, or uninformed.
I can only say, “Soon! I hope.”
Keep your fingers crossed with me. (Though that does make it hard to type).
In the meantime, I hope you’ve been enjoying the snippets of Book three: Grace Awakening Myths that you can find here on the blog. I hope it’s a small consolation?
Soooooooooooooooon…..
Like this:
Another snippet of Grace Awakening Myth March 31, 2012
A little snippet from Grace Awakening Myth for your pleasure. Ben is narrating. ’She’ is…well… You’ll figure it out.
“Please?”
She shook her head. “It’s not our policy to interfere in such a way. The threads have been spun and the destiny is spun into them.”
“New people bring new thread though, don’t they?”
“Of course. Oh. Your thread, do you mean?”
I nodded. “Doesn’t it make me an important thread in her life?”
“Your thread is woven quite tightly into her tapestry so far, true. A thread can be continuous within a life. It doesn’t have to bring anything positive, though.”
“I’m positive.” I stared at her doubtful expression. “I’m positive I’m positive!”
She rolled her eye.
“You have no way of knowing that. You don’t know who she would have been without you.”
I stared at her. Better without me? How could Grace be better without me? What did she know about who Grace would have been?
“Your thoughts are on your face,” she said matter-of-factly.
I shrugged. My stomach was moiling. Would she have been better if I hadn’t been following her through time. I swallowed. “No.”
She gazed at me, sympathy warming the eye to tenderness. “Your wishing doesn’t make it so.”
“Can you show me?”
She wrinkled her brow. “Do you want me to pull your thread, so you’re removed from her picture?”
“If you pull it, can it go back?”
She shook her head, “No. Once a thread is out, it can’t be reintegrated the same way again.”
“Could it be better than before?”
She smirked. “Ah. Your optimism amazes me.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
She shrugged. “We’re artists. We use our skills and tools to create, but we only have the raw materials we’ve been given. The tapestries always reflect the life stories they tell. Some are ugly simply because the life is ugly. Sometimes the tapestry is strangely compelling for all its ugliness.”
I ponder that for a moment. “Wait.” Do you mean me?”
She guffawed. “Oh by Zeus no. Have you seen your thread? No, not you at all. I mean the lives of people like that snarly creep Ivan the Terrible or that miserable, greasy little Hitler.”
I blinked. I’d lost the rest of her words, frozen by her first statement. I whispered, “Can I see my thread?” In several millennia the audacity of requesting such a thing had never occurred to me. Both gods and men generally avoided interaction with the Moirae, their power was great and terrifying. But I was here, now. Clotho was in a pleasant enough mood. I might never have another opportunity like this. I whispered, “Can I see my thread?”
She glanced around, and then, assured of our privacy, she grinned mischievously and held out her empty hand. She rolled her thumb back and forth across her fingers in rapid circles. A line of sparkles shimmered like a trail between thumb and fingers. She rolled her thumb in quickening circles and the sparkles aligned themselves into a glittering opalescent glow. I stared, awestruck. I reached out for the glowing thread. She grinned at me as she dropped the strand into my palm. “This is just a sample, of course. If we cut thread from the actual tapestry…”
“Yeah. I know.” Mortality was held in the scissors her sister Atropos wielded.
I held an end of the thread and raised it to the light. In a milky whiteness blue, orange, green and pink flamed like an aura of hope. “This looks like a positive kind of thread.”
“It’s beautiful, obviously. One of the most beautiful we spin, actually, but beauty isn’t always good. You know Aglaea. And Aphrodite herself, for that matter.”
This was bold talk, but perhaps the old woman was beyond concern for love, and therefore beyond Aphrodite’s power of retribution.
“But…”
“Look, sometimes something this sparkly is a distraction. It detracts or endangers. What if her life requires camouflage? This kind of brightness is going to bring the guns on her.”
“Unless she’s trying to camouflage at the Academy Awards.”
She laughed. “Well, that’s true I suppose.
“Beauty, Radiance, and Joy.” The natures of the Three Graces.
“Yes.”
“They’re glorious threads, aren’t they?”
She shrugged and glanced away.
“You lying witch,” I muttered.
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s not the kind of thing you say to someone you’re trying to convince to give you a favour.”
“I am a positive element in her life.”
“You’re welcome to think so.”
“I am a continuity of love and acceptance, giving her strength,” I said firmly.
She scoffed. “You’re a continous source of pressure and obsession.”
“In a good way.”
She tried to look serious, but she had to stifle a snort of amusement.
“So will you help?”
“Oh, quit looking at me with those mushy, puppy dog eyes.”
“What if I write you a song?”
Her eye lashes fluttered. Perhaps she wasn’t completely out of Aphrodite’s influence after all.”
“Just for me?”
“Well. To keep you in harmony, I suppose I’d better compose a verse for each of your sisters as well.”
She sighed, “I suppose you must,” and gave me the most coquettish look I’d ever seen from a single eyeball. “But my verse will be the best one, aye?”
“Indeed. You will help?”
“All right. Come over by the door, and we’ll discuss the details.” She gripped my hand and pulled me along behind her. She was surprisingly strong, and I was reminded that despite her wizzened appearance, she was not to be trifled with. Her verse would have to be the best.
marking books February 29, 2012
It could be argued that it is antithetical for an e-book author to have promotional book marks. After all, e-books have electronic book marks, and a brightly colour cardstock is really not of any use with an e-reader. Nonetheless, I love my promo book marks! The omnibus of both books will be a print copy when it (eventually!) comes out, so can we call that the tie in?
I think they’re quite cool. What do you think?
In other Grace Awakening news: Awakening Dreams is FINALLY up on Kobo!! YAY
the other side of the pitch February 18, 2012
When I attended my first writing conference- the Surrey International Writers’ Conference in 2009- I was told about The Elevator Pitch. This is the 30 second blurb about your book that establishes the protagonist, conflict, theme and audience. You need one, because every time you’re asked, “What’s your book about?” you should be able to answer concisely, in a manner that catches the person’s interest. I worked with author Carol Mason to polish mine, and when I presented it to Crystal of Gumboot Books that afternoon, it earned me a “Yes, we’d like to see more!” and eventually a contract.
I wondered at the time, what is it like for an agent, publisher or editor at these events? They’re the ones being pounced upon by every would-be writer in the building. Everyone there has something to pitch, and the APEs are the ones being pitched at. The image in my head is someone standing in the middle of the room, frantically covering his head while baseballs rain down from every direction.
Mark Glenchur has written a delightful poem that gives a hilarious view from the APE side. Unfortunately, the writer in the poem did not have a 30 second elevator pitch polished and ready. Read and learn.
Yay! April 2, 2012
Tags: edit, Grace Awakening, Power, press
Happy news! I have been assured that by the end of the Easter weekend, Grace Awakening Power WILL be back for final final final view before release to press!
Dare I hope?
Fingers crossed!
This is how I’m feeling:
.
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