Here I... recline

I've been sick for a few days now and as I reclined here in my bed with my new laptop, something occurred to me. After four years as an English major, including one very intense semester in Advanced Grammar, I still, STILL, don't remember how to conjugate the verbs "to lie" and "to lay". Am I lying in bed, or laying in bed? Did I lie down or lay down last night?  I have no idea.  I used to know.  In fact, we had to correctly conjugate one of those two words to be admitted to an exam once.  But now?  Gone.

For almost every other tricky grammar thing, I have a mnemonic device.  I love sharing them with my class.  But when it comes to this one, my memory fails.  I guess this is where being a writer comes in handy.  Why use a word I don't know when there are so many lovely synonyms out there?

And so I will set my computer down, curl up in my bed, and peruse my thesaurus.  And if anyone out there has a handy mnemonic device for me, please share!

Last chance!

If you haven't got a copy of my book, Spanish Summer, for the amazingly low discount price of $8.50, let me know. I've only got two copies left. After that, I'm temporarily pulling it so I can correct a few typos. So this is a special, limited first edition. I'll even sign it for you!

Spanish Summer ready for purchase!

So here's the deal:

As my "prize" for finishing NaNoWriMo this past year, I got to submit my novel to CreateSpace for publication. It is now, finally, ready and can be ordered here.

BUT WAIT!

If you buy it online it's $9.99 plus $3.18 shipping. I, however, can get discounted copies. So here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to buy a case of books and sell them to my friends and family for $8.50 INCLUDING shipping. That's right. I'll even sign it for you if you want.

So if you could leave a comment letting me know you want one, I will order them. Once they're in I'll contact you by email and you can use my Paypal account to pay and give me your address. If you live near me and want to pick it up, I'll even take another dollar off! $7.50! Really, how can you pass that up?

My book is out

If you happen to own a Kindle (the coolest device ever), you can now purchase my first novel, Spanish Summer. The print version should be ready soon, and I'll certainly let you know when you can order it!

Why?

My husband asked me this morning why I haven't been blogging. I guess I don't have any one good answer for that. The short answer is I haven't had anything I felt like blogging about. It's not that nothing is happening around here, just that I haven't felt like writing it down.

I guess the things that are heaviest on my mind are not things I feel like discussing in a public forum.

I've also been busy trying to revise one of my NaNo novels into publishable form, which admittedly takes up the majority of my creative energies. And it seems the more I revise, the more I see that needs to be fixed. I'm giving myself a deadline of the the last day of March and then I'm calling it done.

In the meantime, I will probably be talking books and television a lot because I don't have to think too hard about those things.

I am a famous American author (?)

I can't believe it's only Wednesday. I feel like I've already lived through five days this week. Maybe it's because Hubby's out of town. I don't know.

I gave an assignment to my class yesterday to start a research paper. The thesis must be that an American author of their choosing holds a particular philosophy on life (chosen from the different philosophies we have studied this year). For example, a thesis could be, "Nathaniel Hawthorne is an example of the romantic view of life as expressed through his literature." Well, that's not very good, but you get the idea.

I gave several criteria: it has to be an author not covered in our book (can you believe a text on American literature doesn't have F. Scott Fitzgerald in it?), it has to be someone who has at least two published works (novels, preferably), and it has to be an American writer.

Almost without missing a beat, one of the boys asked if he could do his paper on me. Me. Yeah, nice try, but I don't think a couple of newspaper articles about Rockapella are going to reveal my philosophy on life. Granted, it would be a lot easier to get quotes from me as opposed to Fitzgerald.

I'm excited to see who they pick to write about. How much do you want to bet at least one of the girls will pick Stephenie Meyer?

New IB post!

I have a new post up over at Inspired Bliss! Come check it out!

NaNo-vember

NaNoWriMo starts Saturday. If you take a peek over in my sidebar, you'll see that I've not only participated the past three years, but I've completed a 50,000+ word novel every time.

I enjoy the discipline of it. I really do. To make myself sit down and write at least 1,667 words a day for the entire month makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something.

My biggest problem is revision once I'm done. I've spent hours and hours trying to rewrite things that seemed not quite right and still don't have a finished work to show for it. But that's okay. Sooner or later I will, and then it will all be worth it.

So, are you thinking of participating this year? What are your strategies for "winning"? Do you have a plot? An outline? Or do you wing it like me?

Talking about teaching

Pardon me while I gush about how much I love teaching my high school English class.

About half the kids in there don't really care that much. But the other half make every Tuesday morning a pleasure. I have been so HUGELY impressed with their writing, the thought they put into answering the literature questions, and even, on occasion, the discussion (though this is still slow in coming).

We're now getting to the part of the book with 19th century writers. These are some of my favorites - Hawthorne, Poe, Emerson, Longfellow. I hope the kids can sense my enthusiasm, that perhaps it might even be a little contagious.

And the writing assignments have been so fun! There is some real talent there. I'm going to put together a literary magazine full of their work at the end of the year so they all have something to be proud of. I know I'm awfully proud of them!

I'm sure if I had to teach every day of the week it would get old, but this once-a-week class is just perfect for me. I'm loving every minute of it!

Awesome new online magazine

On Monday September 15, a new online magazine is launching. Inspired Bliss promises to be a place of great inspiration and fellowship. And guess who's a contributing writer? Yes, yours truly.

I was able to group chat with a bunch of the ladies who will be contributing and I am so very excited about what each and every one of them has to offer. Make sure you check it out - you're not going to want to miss a single post!

Death by pole vaulting?

Yesterday, the main character in my novel got shot with a bow and arrow. I didn't plan it, it just came out that way in the writing. My first Nano novel had a character who got hit by a javelin. I'm beginning to sense I have some sort of deep-rooted fear of track and field events.

Next year I bet I could do a lot of damage with a shotput.

So You Think You Can Pun?

I had this friend in college who used to challenge me to pun. It usually started by accident. One of us would take whatever subject the group had been discussing, and make a really bad pun. Then we would look at each other and the challenge was on. Back and forth we'd go, and the first of us to not think of one would lose. Once we went through something like 30 puns about cows. I don't remember who won, but in games like that you tend to remember the match and not the winner.

Yesterday when I was writing, I had a scene where the two main characters are playing off the names of television shows. He's a singer being stalked by a fan, so we had "CSI: Concert Scene Investigations," "Law and Order: Special Vocalists Unit," "How I Stalked Your Father," "Stalking With Celebrities," you get the idea. I had fun thinking of new ones. So here's your assignment: combine stalking, singing and t.v. show titles and give me your best shot! Alternatively, if you want to use cooking instead of singing, my other character's a chef.

Have fun!

NaNo Tips - really this time

Many of you know my background in writing, and specifically that I have a BA in creative writing from a college with a well-known writing program which has produced more Pulitzer Prize winners per capita than any other college in the country. While I am relatively certain I will not soon be added to that list, I do happen to know a thing or two about writing. So today, I'm going to offer some actual tips on getting through NaNoWriMo.

The problem I keep seeing all over the blogosphere is that people get stuck. You reach a point in your story and have no idea what should happen next. Assuming you didn't write an outline before beginning, the first thing you should do is sketch a quick outline showing where you want things to go. Skip the next step in the plot (since if you knew that, you'd be writing it!) and pick up the story somewhere down the line. Then brainstorm different ways to get your character over that gap in the plot to where he/she needs to be.

And while we're doing that, here's an essential tip that really helped me the first year: no one says you have to write these 50,000 words in order. If you already know how a particularly dramatic scene is going to happen, go ahead and write it. You can cut and paste later, but for now you're writing, and writing something that is presumably exciting is a great way to kick-start your novel again.

A fun thing to do if you can't figure out the next scene is to introduce your character to someone he/she has never met before and have him/her reveal his deepest secret, either on purpose or by accident. Then imagine what might happen because of it.

Another good way to get back in the groove is to figure out what your character's lowest point is going to be. When is he/she going to be closest to giving up? Then make a list of things he/she will need to get back out of that hole. Does he need to learn a lesson first? Will he need some vital piece of information? Is there a prop she's going to use to escape? Whatever it is, write the scene in which he gets it.

And finally, if you know where your novel is going to end, go ahead and write the ending. Sometimes your characters will surprise you and reveal their own stories, and then all you have to do is go back and write it. Happy writing!

Some NaNoWriMo tips

Stuck on your NaNo novel? Here are some tips for reaching 50,000 relatively painlessly.

1. Do not use contractions. It is perfectly normal for people to speak without them, is it not?
2. Give your characters four-part names. Think about it: every time Felicity Ann Holton-Smith talks to Garrison James St. Cloud, that's eight words just for the names!
3. Likewise with place names - set your story in Littleton-on-the-St.-John, and have your characters go out of town a lot, so they can say they're returning and use the name again.
4. Become well-acquainted with "well..." It's an all-purpose word you can use almost every time a character speaks. "Well, I don't know." "Well, she said she would be here." "Well, this is ridiculous." You can go back later and take them out, but they'll get you to 50,000.
5. Um, people say "um" in real life, so they definitely should in your novel. Um, I think.
6. Have your characters sing a lot. Inserting song lyrics will bump your word count nicely. And then you can remove them later to avoid any possible legal entanglements.
7. Adjectives are your friends. Why just drink coffee when they can drink a hot, bitter cup of joe? It's not just a room, it's a small, cramped room. You get the general idea.
8. If you really get stuck, you can always have your character go nuts, a la The Shining. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work...

I'm a little over 12,000 words right now. Going for the three-peat! (which, by the way, counts as two words)

On your mark, get set, write!

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. The other day at co-op, I saw one of the teenagers in the common area wearing a homemade NaNoWriMo shirt, so I went over to talk to her. She hasn't participated before, but she has a friend who did last year. Her friend is going to be her partner and help her stay on track.

So I asked her if she had a plot idea, and she told me this wonderful tale of a female outlaw in the old west and her search for justice. My jaw just dropped. It sounds like a great book. And then she asked about mine. "Well, it's a romance. Sort of a romantic suspense thing. With a kidnapping." Man, how lame. "It's sort of a sequel to the one I did last year." Okay, she doesn't care, stop talking. "There's a music group with six guys in it, and last year's was about one of them, so this one is about another one of them."

Now I'm rethinking. There are so many stories to be told. Is this really the one I want to spend a month with?

But you know what? I really love this character. I once met a writer who told me he had to fall in love with his female characters to write them really well. I think this character wants me to write about him. And if there's one thing I've learned as a writer, it's to let the people in my head talk when they want to.

To NaNo or not to NaNo?

In just a little over a week, signups begin for this year's NaNoWriMo. That's National Novel Writing Month, a time when thousands of writers all over the world crank out 50,000 words in just 30 days. It's always in November, which always seems to be a busy time for me. But I've managed it two years in a row, and come out a winner both times. It really seems to help get my creative juices flowing and focused on a task. I just don't know if I should do it this year or not.

See, I'm still revising last year's novel. I love it, I think it has a strong story and characters, and I think it could sell. But it still needs a lot of editing and tweaking, and maybe I should spend two hours a night doing that.

On the other hand, I already have the second book in the series all plotted out in my head. I just need to write it. And what better time to write it than when I'm forcing myself to write new material every night for 30 nights? Except it would be more like 25 nights, because of Thanksgiving and everything. I mean, whose idea was it to do this the month of Thanksgiving?

So, what do you think? Should I go for it again this year, or take the time to "finish" (and I put that in quotes, because all writers know that nothing is ever truly finished) last year's novel?

A Cappella, Chapter Two

I finally have Chapter Two of my novel to the place where I want some feedback. If you go to my Writing.com portfolio, you'll find Chapter Two ready to view, as well as Chapter One if you missed it. I've been doing some major editing of the following four chapters as well, but they're a long way from ready.

I look forward to your comments! Are the characters believable? Are Ellie's actions believable, if not understandable? Do you sympathize with her or just think she's stupid? Is there enough description of the setting? Don't hold back on me - I used to be critiqued by grad students when I was a freshman in college - I can take harsh criticism.

Thanks!

Chapter One

Thanks for the comments yesterday. I know I'm a long way from being finished, but I like to get as much feedback as possible along the way. If you'd like to read the first chapter of my new novel, A Cappella, head on over to this link:

Visit My Portfolio @ Writing.Com

Then just click on A Cappella Chapter One. When you're done, I'd love some comments, either here or over there. And don't worry, I have a very thick skin. You don't have to be nice just because I'll be rich and famous one day

How do I know when I'm done?

I was up until midnight working on my novel. I'm getting pretty tired of the first three chapters, but I need to get them perfect. There's a lot of stuff that happens later on in the story that needs to be introduced in the beginning, but because I was writing it during NaNoWriMo, I didn't get it in there before. Now I have to go back and add it.

And then there's the question of how graphic do I want to be. There's a violent scene in chapter 3, but I'm considering editing it heavily to just get the general idea across. I mean, it becomes very obvious later exactly what happened, so do I really need to spell it out?

Being a romance, I'm also wondering how much description of the main characters should I go into? I want the reader to get a general idea of what they look like, but I don't want to get into ridiculous detail. It's important for me that the reader fall in love with the guy, too, but at the same time, he has ulterior motives for what he does that are going to surprise everyone.

Maybe I'm being too much of a perfectionist. I don't know. I think I'll post the first chapter tomorrow and get some non-biased opinions. The first chapter is the only one I feel is pretty much finished, so I could use some critiques. Watch this space!