"Writing is easy. Just open a vein." Writing is so hard sometimes. I'm almost at the 35k mark in Deep Embrace. I've had a bit of writer's block this past week. I've probaly done a little over one thousand words. In two weeks. I know some writers who can pump out over 10k in one sitting. Talented bastards. I am a very slow writer. I don't know why. Most of the time it does not bother me. One a good week I can do between 200-500 words a day, sometimes more. On a REALLY good day I can do almost 1000k in a single day. That's a rare event for me. If I can write between a paragraph to half a page day I am usually happy. I would love to be able to write tens of thousands of words in a single setting. I probably could if someone put a drip in my arm and I locked myself in a dark room for 24 hours.
I managed to churn out 200 words today and it was not fun. It was like ripping off my fingernails one by one and giving birth to a watermelon. I am happy that I was able to get SOMETHING down on the page. I made some baby steps towards the end of my chapter. That is the important thing. At the same time though...part of me cannot help but to feel irritated and fed up...I want to be able to write more. I do not want to force it though. I CANNOT force it. I've tried. Believe me. You cannot make your brain be creative. It has to be a natural act. The words have to flow from my fingertips like water. If the flow is not there, if it is nothing but a drip, I could try and torture myself to do more, but if it would be just that. Torture.
Sigh. Hopefully I will be able to do some more tomorrow and maybe finish my chapter. I did not write much today...but damn it I wrote something. That is better then nothing. So positive thoughts. I am 200 words closer to the words THE END.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
What the fuck is wrong with character's swearing?
So many writers worry themselves to death about swearing in their books. I've lost count of the number of threads I've seen on message boards from writers asking if it was all right if their characters swore or said a politically incorrect word. I have no problem with characters who swear, fart, drink, or say things that are politically incorrect. I think it makes them more realistic.
Human beings are flawed. We swear, we get angry, we laugh at the wrong moment, we fart in public and try to pretend that it was not us. Characters should do all of these things as well. When I get angry I swear like a sailor. I will scram and tug on my hair and shout naughty words until I'm blue in the face. I actually think it's healthier to scream the dreaded F-word at the top of your lungs then put your fist through a wall or break a window.
I love it when characters swear. A swear word inserted at the right point can make a scene much more emotional and paint a vivid picture of the character and how they tick. I don't get people who don't like swear words. I mean, yeah, they can be offensive, but they are just words. Remember that phrase 'Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me?' the reason I swear so much is because I don't have a problem with it. I accept that other people do though. I try not to swear at work or in front of children. When it comes to adult fiction I do not understand why so many authors get so worried about swear words and wonder if they should censor their characters or if a publisher will have a problem with swear words in their manuscript.
We are all adults, aren't we? Surely people should be able to handle the F-bomb being dropped in a manuscript. One of my favourite lines in the Harry Potter series is when Molly shouts "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" Oh my God, what a powerful line. It was so shocking because it was the first swear word in the entire series and came flying out of the blue. No one expect THAT WORD to appear in such a popular kid's series. But there it was. And how awesome did it sound? It was realistic too. It made the scene a litle more shocking, a little more emotional, and very memorable.
I hope they keep it in the movie!! I'll be very annoyed if they cut it out.
Human beings are flawed. We swear, we get angry, we laugh at the wrong moment, we fart in public and try to pretend that it was not us. Characters should do all of these things as well. When I get angry I swear like a sailor. I will scram and tug on my hair and shout naughty words until I'm blue in the face. I actually think it's healthier to scream the dreaded F-word at the top of your lungs then put your fist through a wall or break a window.
I love it when characters swear. A swear word inserted at the right point can make a scene much more emotional and paint a vivid picture of the character and how they tick. I don't get people who don't like swear words. I mean, yeah, they can be offensive, but they are just words. Remember that phrase 'Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me?' the reason I swear so much is because I don't have a problem with it. I accept that other people do though. I try not to swear at work or in front of children. When it comes to adult fiction I do not understand why so many authors get so worried about swear words and wonder if they should censor their characters or if a publisher will have a problem with swear words in their manuscript.
We are all adults, aren't we? Surely people should be able to handle the F-bomb being dropped in a manuscript. One of my favourite lines in the Harry Potter series is when Molly shouts "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" Oh my God, what a powerful line. It was so shocking because it was the first swear word in the entire series and came flying out of the blue. No one expect THAT WORD to appear in such a popular kid's series. But there it was. And how awesome did it sound? It was realistic too. It made the scene a litle more shocking, a little more emotional, and very memorable.
I hope they keep it in the movie!! I'll be very annoyed if they cut it out.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Books that end with a cliff hanger
I finished a book recently that ended with a cliff hanger. It was the second book in a very, very successful series. I don't think I have ever read a book that has ended in a cliff hanger before. I always thought it was one of those things that authors should never, ever do. It just goes to show authors do not have to always follow the "rules" of writing set down by their peers.
As I was growing up, I did alot of research about writing on the net and I learnt many things. I was told not to "head hop" between characters (writing from one persective and then changing to someone else) or to start a scene with description, write in first person, to avoid certain words and of course to never, ever end a story with a cliff hanger.
I have followed most of these rules and I have found that my writing has improved. I am so much better now then I was years ago. Some of the rules I think are stupid. For example the do not write in first person one. One of my favourite series is the Stephanie Plum books and they are written in first person.
I love it when writers "break" these rules and chose to be different. I have written books where the author has done the opposite of 'show don't tell' and written pages and pages of backstory or an 'infodump' as writers call it. I have read books that had chapters that were a single line or a paragraph long. I've read stories that were one endless paragraph with no commas or full stops. When authors break the rules they stand the chance of creating a written work that is terrible and difficult to read or something so different, so outrageous, it will become a beloved classic. Maybe one day I will write a book with a cliff hanger and see what happens.
As I was growing up, I did alot of research about writing on the net and I learnt many things. I was told not to "head hop" between characters (writing from one persective and then changing to someone else) or to start a scene with description, write in first person, to avoid certain words and of course to never, ever end a story with a cliff hanger.
I have followed most of these rules and I have found that my writing has improved. I am so much better now then I was years ago. Some of the rules I think are stupid. For example the do not write in first person one. One of my favourite series is the Stephanie Plum books and they are written in first person.
I love it when writers "break" these rules and chose to be different. I have written books where the author has done the opposite of 'show don't tell' and written pages and pages of backstory or an 'infodump' as writers call it. I have read books that had chapters that were a single line or a paragraph long. I've read stories that were one endless paragraph with no commas or full stops. When authors break the rules they stand the chance of creating a written work that is terrible and difficult to read or something so different, so outrageous, it will become a beloved classic. Maybe one day I will write a book with a cliff hanger and see what happens.
Update on the Trolls
I posted a couple of weeks ago about the big shit storm that erupted after a self published author threw a hissy fit after getting a slightly critical review. I've been keeping tabs on the thing out of interest. This morning I checked her book on Amazon and someone had posted two pictures of big mounds of pooh on her Amazon page next to the front cover of her book. I was disgusted. Yeah, the woman acted like an unprofessional crybaby, but putting pictures of shit on her Amazon page is not only childish but its cyber bullying.
Eventually, all of this will go away, but in the mean time I feel sorry for the author. I thought all of this would have gone away by now. If I was her I would complain to Amazon and get the offensive pictures and "reviews" taken down. Most of the people who posted on her page did not even read her book. Most had read sample pages. From what I could gather very few had actually bought the thing. I have noticed that her book's ranking is getting higher. It's still very, very low, but it has been climbing the scales. Maybe in the end she will have the last laugh.
Eventually, all of this will go away, but in the mean time I feel sorry for the author. I thought all of this would have gone away by now. If I was her I would complain to Amazon and get the offensive pictures and "reviews" taken down. Most of the people who posted on her page did not even read her book. Most had read sample pages. From what I could gather very few had actually bought the thing. I have noticed that her book's ranking is getting higher. It's still very, very low, but it has been climbing the scales. Maybe in the end she will have the last laugh.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
It's Alive!!
My current story Deep Embrace is progressing nicely. It has breeched 33k and looks like it might even go past the 60k mark which would make the rough draft a decent sized little novel. I know that after editing the final word count is going to be much, much lower, because as I get further into this book the more I realise how much it is going to need a damn good edit.
Deep Embrace has really come alive. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. When a story evolves past its outline and goes in a new direction you can either end up with great stuff you never intended to write or hundreds of pages of babble that will need to be ripped out like weeds.
I think most of DE is good. I spend some days worrying about it. I ask myself 'Does it all make sense? Is that scene crap? Have I written myself into a hole here?' The problem is that as I get deeper into the story I am following the outline less and less because I like to let my characters grab the wheel and go in the direction they want to go in.
For example: Perse has been given Tethys's trident to use in battle. She is told it will not work too well for her because it is not her own and yet she manages to use it expertly not long after although she is rough with it in the beginning. I'm starting to wonder if this is a big honking red flag and will piss readers off. I'm considering revealing that the trident is in fact HER OWN and that her mother only lied and said it was hers...but I'm not convinced that is a good idea. I might just keep on plodding on in the direction I'm going and make Perse state that she was able to do things with the trident that she could not imagine and it was all instinct somehow.
The problems with DE are not that bad. I have alot of scenes in the beginning that need trimming, which is not surprising considering I wrote them almost 12 months ago now. It's common for the beginning of a book to be crapper then the end of it. At least for me anyway. I take so long writing a book my style changes and evolves from start to finish. When I look back at the start of DE now all I can see is long, choppy sentences and too many commas that can be taken out. But for the most part it is all okay.
I reckon at the end of the day I will cut maybe 20k out of DE give or take. I am hoping that the final copy will be above 30k which will make it a decent little novella or a small novel depending on who you talk too. I just hope that I will be able to stifle my inner editor between now and the end of the book. It's terribly distracting and frustrating to see a badly written paragraph. I get compelled to go in and fix it. A few weeks back I decided to touch up the beginning of DE and ended up tweeking the first 20 odd pages before I forced myself to back away from the computer and turn the damn thing off.
I think I have written a good fantasy novel. I just need to let it finish growing, ignore my fear and self doubt, and then get out the pruning shears.
Deep Embrace has really come alive. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. When a story evolves past its outline and goes in a new direction you can either end up with great stuff you never intended to write or hundreds of pages of babble that will need to be ripped out like weeds.
I think most of DE is good. I spend some days worrying about it. I ask myself 'Does it all make sense? Is that scene crap? Have I written myself into a hole here?' The problem is that as I get deeper into the story I am following the outline less and less because I like to let my characters grab the wheel and go in the direction they want to go in.
For example: Perse has been given Tethys's trident to use in battle. She is told it will not work too well for her because it is not her own and yet she manages to use it expertly not long after although she is rough with it in the beginning. I'm starting to wonder if this is a big honking red flag and will piss readers off. I'm considering revealing that the trident is in fact HER OWN and that her mother only lied and said it was hers...but I'm not convinced that is a good idea. I might just keep on plodding on in the direction I'm going and make Perse state that she was able to do things with the trident that she could not imagine and it was all instinct somehow.
The problems with DE are not that bad. I have alot of scenes in the beginning that need trimming, which is not surprising considering I wrote them almost 12 months ago now. It's common for the beginning of a book to be crapper then the end of it. At least for me anyway. I take so long writing a book my style changes and evolves from start to finish. When I look back at the start of DE now all I can see is long, choppy sentences and too many commas that can be taken out. But for the most part it is all okay.
I reckon at the end of the day I will cut maybe 20k out of DE give or take. I am hoping that the final copy will be above 30k which will make it a decent little novella or a small novel depending on who you talk too. I just hope that I will be able to stifle my inner editor between now and the end of the book. It's terribly distracting and frustrating to see a badly written paragraph. I get compelled to go in and fix it. A few weeks back I decided to touch up the beginning of DE and ended up tweeking the first 20 odd pages before I forced myself to back away from the computer and turn the damn thing off.
I think I have written a good fantasy novel. I just need to let it finish growing, ignore my fear and self doubt, and then get out the pruning shears.
Attack of the Internet Trolls
The saga of the Greek Seaman continues. Over the past few hours Jacqueline Howett's online hissy fit about a bad review she has got has become an internet sensation. She is like the new Rebecca Black now. I've been googling her name out of interest and she is all over heaps of blogs, message boards, there's a YouTube cartoon video making fun of her comments, and she has gotten 65 bad reviews on Amazon that are pretty mean. Alot of people are saying that this thing has gone too far and that people should not be posting one star reviews of her book on Amazon just to be mean or to criticise her AGAIN on her lack of manners and professionalism. The link to her amazon page is here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Greek-Seaman-ebook/dp/B003ZSILSW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301471555&sr=1-1-spell
Someone said they would not use the book as toilet paper. Another person said they knew pre-schoolers with better grammer. Is this too harsh? Is this taking it too far? Maybe. Alot of the "reviews" that have been posted in the past few hours seem to be from people who read sample pages and that was it. I don't think its right to post a bad review of a book that you have not even read from start to finish. I've read heaps of books that started off crap (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) but got really good in the middle. Ms Howlett is suffering the wrath of Internet Trolls.
This is what happens when you act like an ass on the net. You bring out all the haters. You start finding videos about yourself on YouTube. You start getting pizza deliveries in the middle of the night. Weird phone calls. Hate pages turn up on Facebook. You get death threats and bitchy emails. Its amazing how quickly flame wars can spread and develop. This woman acted like an idiot. No one is not disagreeing with that fact. But she does not deserve 65 vile reviews on Amazon. I hope she has learned a lesson. When I first heard about this thing, I thought 'Her career is over' that blog attracted a hell of a lot of attention. Agents and editors and other authors heard about it! I've even heard people using the phrase 'Now don't go all Greek Seaman on me' over the net today.
In the space of a day this woman made an ass of herself in front of the entire global writing community. But that does not mean she cannot rebuild a career for herself. She could use a pen name or disappear from publishing for a few years, polish and relearn her craft, then come back with a killer book. I hope she grows from this experience and comes down off her high horse. I read some of her work and while I thought it was bad, it was not terrible. It had promise. It was just very, very, very rough. I wish her the best. In the mean time I hope the trolls back off.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Greek-Seaman-ebook/dp/B003ZSILSW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301471555&sr=1-1-spell
Someone said they would not use the book as toilet paper. Another person said they knew pre-schoolers with better grammer. Is this too harsh? Is this taking it too far? Maybe. Alot of the "reviews" that have been posted in the past few hours seem to be from people who read sample pages and that was it. I don't think its right to post a bad review of a book that you have not even read from start to finish. I've read heaps of books that started off crap (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) but got really good in the middle. Ms Howlett is suffering the wrath of Internet Trolls.
This is what happens when you act like an ass on the net. You bring out all the haters. You start finding videos about yourself on YouTube. You start getting pizza deliveries in the middle of the night. Weird phone calls. Hate pages turn up on Facebook. You get death threats and bitchy emails. Its amazing how quickly flame wars can spread and develop. This woman acted like an idiot. No one is not disagreeing with that fact. But she does not deserve 65 vile reviews on Amazon. I hope she has learned a lesson. When I first heard about this thing, I thought 'Her career is over' that blog attracted a hell of a lot of attention. Agents and editors and other authors heard about it! I've even heard people using the phrase 'Now don't go all Greek Seaman on me' over the net today.
In the space of a day this woman made an ass of herself in front of the entire global writing community. But that does not mean she cannot rebuild a career for herself. She could use a pen name or disappear from publishing for a few years, polish and relearn her craft, then come back with a killer book. I hope she grows from this experience and comes down off her high horse. I read some of her work and while I thought it was bad, it was not terrible. It had promise. It was just very, very, very rough. I wish her the best. In the mean time I hope the trolls back off.
Monday, March 28, 2011
How do some writers get so arrogant?
I stumbled across this link on a message board http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html?commentPage=1 to a blog that posted a two star review of a self published book released through Kindle. The reviewer said that the book was mostly okay, but had some serious grammer and sentence structure issues. The author went nuts!! Her responses were insanely arrogant. She claimed that her writing was fine, that the reviewer read the wrong version of her manuscript, she posted examples of five star reviews she had gotten on Amazon, demanded that the review be taken down, called the reviewer and his followers names and even dropped the f-bomb not once, but twice!! I was in disbelief as I read the comments. I know harsh reviews and critques can hurt. I've gotten more then my fair share. I've even sunk in to temptation and responded to a few and defended my work. It's a mistake, don't do it. It's unprofessional and ungrateful. When people take the time to read your work you need to thank them even if you privately thought their opinions were rubbish. Writers NEED to develop a thick skin. Writers NEED to be able to take the good comments with the bad. It can be hard but sometimes you need to hear that your plot sucks, your main character comes across as a bimbo, or that your grammer is terrible. It is that sort of brutal honesty that is needed to make writers take a step back and look at their work without rose-tinted glasses. Bad reviews are apart of a writer's life. We need them to be able to see what we did wrong in this story and how we can improve our next one. I had someone call my main character 'Too stupid to live' in a recent critique. It hurt my feelings, but I thanked them for their comment, and said that I would make changes to the story to make sure that she comes across with a little more brains in her head. It is important to always be professional on the internet. Once you write something on the net it is out there forever. This poor woman might have ruined her career. Her comments have gone viral and are all over facebook, twitter, and various message boards. God only knows how many New York agents, editors and publishing houses read her immature responses to all of those people on that board. I mean, seriously, how dumb could you get? Does this woman know the defination of the word professional? You cannot spit in the faces of your readers and the entire publishing world and then still expect to be taken seriously and with respect. The funny thing is it is not just unknown writers suffering from truly epic arrogance. Check out this snarky letter from Anne Rice complaining about bad reviews on Amazon: http://karenknowsbest.com/category/anne-rice/ Wow. I can't believe how rude she was in that. And not just to her readers but to her editors as well! How do some writers get this arrogant? How do they become so obbessed with their own work that they cannot fathom the idea that their writing might not be perfect and that heaven forbid someone might not like it? The problem with some writers is that they treat their books like their babies. They spend months and months working on them and over that time they fall in love with them so deeply they respond like a mother cat if someone dares to critcise them. The claws come out and they hiss and spit. Writers need to learn that their books are NOT their babies and that their writing is not perfect and can always be improved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)