Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

literary wedding August 13, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:03 pm
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I’m still thinking of weddings and anniversaries!  Yesterday our niece Sara married Mario in a simple backyard ceremony.  Congratulations,  you two!  We were unable to attend due to my high school reunion, but apparently it inspired some writing.  That’s the thing about real life.  It tends to show up in our writing, though often with extensive imaginary embellishment!

A month or so back, I posted the start of a story called 479 which is set at a wedding.  I asked for some suggestions.  I also learned that if by any chance I wanted to enter the piece in a short story competition at SIWC I can’t post the rest of it.  So…

I did finish manage to finish it yesterday, though.  So if you’re wondering what happens in the next 1500 words, I will tell you that there are two fires, a murder, a hidden room, and a polygamist involved.  For the rest of details, you’ll just have to wait until October 23!

(I did say extensive imaginary embellishment!) 🙂

 

help guys! I need some male vocab! August 4, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 5:38 pm
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I was once told, “Guys don’t say ‘cute.'”  That’s a problem, because I’m editing Grace Awakening Myth, and Ben thinks ‘cute’ and ‘adorable’ rather frequently.  If I need to kill the word cute, but somehow get the same idea across, what words should I use?

What do you say when the girl you adore is so uncoordinated around you she can barely walk?  When she blushes whenever she sees you?

When I was that girl, I remember a lot of knowing grins, and I’ve got that, but what word would be in his head to describe his affectionate amusement?

Help!  Please leave your suggestion in the comments below!  Thanks!

 

How to write a book in 6 weeks August 2, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 1:23 pm
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My first thought when I saw this title of a Bookbaby blog was, “You sit down and keep typing!”  While this is definitely true, Beth Haydn’s guest blog has some other contributions.  🙂  Go check her  How to Write a Book in Six Weeks over at Bookbaby.

 

 

inspiration August 1, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 11:16 pm
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I have been asked to do a reading and discuss the inspiration behind my writing with a group of seniors.  That has me pondering a bit.

I have a lot of inspirations.  There’s a common “be careful or I’ll put you in my novel” sort of thing with novelists.  It’s true that there are several plot elements that reflect events going on around me.

For example, when my Communications 12 class was regaling me with some of their more foolish adventures, they described the infamous time that one of them had leapt from the top floor down into the open atrium below- some 20 feet.  That  became a scene in the book.  An evil character leapt to attack Grace.  At the end of the semester when they convinced me to read it to them, the young man in question laughed and shouted, “That’s EXACTLY what happened!” even though I had merely taken the fact of the jump, and imagined how it would play out.

One scene happens at a wedding.  The events described are true.  I attended that wedding, and experienced that strange radar.  The context of the event is different, as it fits into the story to explain something about a character.

Of course, I’ve already explained to you the germ of truth behind the concert scene.

Then there is the whole use of mythology, which came after reading Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, and realising that  incorporating mythology solved all my plotting  issues.

What about the inspiration to actually sit down to write?  That was that niggling saying, “Those who can, do.  Those who can’t, teach.”  That aphorism has ticked me off for years.  Finally I thought, “Well then, I guess I’d better ‘do’ and prove it wrong!”

So many inspirations!

  • personal experiences
  • stories from others
  • desire

To be honest though, there is something more than all of that.  It’s as if the characters needed to live, and they asked me to record their voices.  They came into my breath and became part of my world.

 

 

 

sex scenes July 24, 2012

Filed under: OUTLANDERishness,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:16 am
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I have been writing a brand of YA that leaves sex scenes safely out of the picture, and firmly entrenched in the reader’s imagination.  But eventually the time will come (reasonably soon in the process of writing Grace Beguiling, I think!) when I will have to write a real scene involving sex, and I can only hope that I will do it as well as Outlander author Diana Gabaldon does.  I will be following her advice from this article, because Diana Gabaldon is a master of honest, well-crafted, realistic, brilliantly steamy sex scenes!

 

beginnings July 23, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 3:15 pm
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I met with my editor last weekend.  She was feeling a little grumpy.  There are so many new characters, both mythic and modern, in Grace Awakening Myth, she was trying to find something to grab at the beginning of the story to put them into context of Dreams, and she hadn’t.  She offered some suggestions.  Essentially, I needed to go back and start the book a little earlier than it does in the parallel story (Grace Awakening Dreams). I came home and wrote the prescribed scenes thinking ‘I need to more clearly establish the main conflict’ for the reader and ‘I need to grab the reader right away.’

I wrote a couple scenes and sent them off to her, wondering if I needed something with more action at the very start, and pondering how I was going to put it in there.  I hadn’t come to a decision yet.

What I call the “James Bond Method” of starting a work, is the leap into the action, immediately.  It’s common way to start action films or spy novels.  Sometimes this is an intense prologue of a scene that will be explained at the end of the book.  I had in mind that I had to somehow make that fit the beginning of Grace Awakening Myth, but I couldn’t figure out how I was going to make it work.

This morning I was reading through Tweets by agent Victoria Marini and she had posted a link to a blog by agent Kristin Nelson on this very issue.  Nelson argues that while the beginning has to grab the reader, it doesn’t have to be by ACTION, though the scene must still be ACTIVE.  Good stuff here, including clear examples.  The ‘active’ one seems definitely superior.    Check it out action vs active here.

Whew.  I’m on the right track, after all. 🙂

 

Bloggers Beware of photo copyright! July 21, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 2:11 pm
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WordPress encourages use of photos on every blog post.  They won’t use your blog in their featured section without a photo, as a matter of fact.  This means that lots of bloggers grab photos from wherever and put them onto their blog without too much consideration about where the images came from. Because they don’t make money from their blog, aren’t selling the image, or credit the source, they think they’re safe.

You may notice that my blog has very few photos.  This means that I will not become a featured blogger, but hopefully it means I won’t get sued for using material that doesn’t belong to me.  I have endeavoured to use only my own photos, public domain photos (OLD), or book covers on reviews which I am trusting are fair use.

However, a lot of bloggers are out there innocently using images, blithely unaware that they are infringing on copyright.  Roni Loren was one.  She used a photo, and was sued over it.  Here is her very interesting blog post about what she learned.  Thanks Roni for helping us to know what the dangers are.  I will now check through my blog and make sure there isn’t anything there that slipped through my paranoia filters in a moment of laziness!

 

everything in an instant July 15, 2012

Filed under: Commentary,Reading,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 6:32 pm
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“Everything that ever has been and everything that ever will be happens in an instant.”

Brian Keaney in The Cracked Mirror p. 15

 In an instant, everything changes.  You meet eyes with a stranger.  The baby is born.   The car swerves into your lane.  You make the phone call.  You send the email.  You drop the manuscript in the mail.  The child dashes into the street.  The news arrives.  A letter arrives.

Whether it’s real life or whether it’s fiction, in an instant, everything changes.  What happens next?  How you choose to respond creates the next chapter of the story.

In an instant, everything has changed.  What’s next?

 

9 simple ways to be a better writer from Catherine Coulter July 13, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:49 am
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CATHERINE COULTER has had 62 books on the New York Times bestseller list, so she knows a thing or two about writing.  Here are her 9 SIMPLE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER from her session at Thrillerfest:

1. Nix the adjectives.

2. Avoid other words for “said,” and avoid redundancies.

3. Excise the exclamation marks.

4. Forget the euphemisms.

5. Don’t fall into stereotypes.

6. Use caution in sex scenes.

7. Avoid endless introspection.

8. Skip over-the-top violence and language.

9. “And above all, don’t take yourself too seriously.”

Read the complete article on WritersDigest.com

 

pitching at a conference July 12, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:59 am
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There are 99 days before the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, and I’ve just remembered I have to prepare for my pitch.  I’ve been so excited about my blue pencil appointment with Diana Gabaldon that I’ve completely neglected the fact that I have an agent to meet with.  I anticipate having Grace Awakening Myth ready to pitch, or perhaps Number Eight, a high interest, low vocab novel I have had ‘just about finished’ for two years.  (Seriously, it’s missing about 2000 words, but Grace was a bully and completely took over).

The last time I pitched at a conference, I ended up with a contract for Grace Awakening with a small Vancouver publisher.  This time I’m meeting with a big time New York agent, and I feel a little out of my depth!  Writers’ Digest features a post this week on how to pitch to agents at conferences.  I am eager for the tips, and perhaps you’ll be interested, too.  See you in the appointment line!