Tools of the trade

Let’s talk about …

by with 2 Comments Musings

Get your mind out of the gutter. I was going to say “pens.”

I spent an hour or so with the notebook and a pen this afternoon, hand-writing what turned out to be a good scene. It was full of both love and laughter — what more can you ask?

Tools of the trade
Tools of the trade

When I left my makeshift office at Burritos Fiesta, I started to think about the tools I write with — mainly because my favorite pen had run out of ink the night before, and the one I started using just didn’t have the same feel or flow.

Don’t get me wrong: I love writing utensils and have quite the collection of pens, in a rainbow of colors. But some do write better than others. In college, I was a Pilot girl. I bought Pilot fine-tipped ballpoint pens in every available color because I loved the way they wrote.

Even now, I’m a Pilot pen lover. But today I use the G-2 gel writers (still in many colors). In fact, my pen that bit the dust Friday night was a standard blue G-2.

I love everything about the G-2: The way it feels in my hand, with just the right weight and heft … the way the ink flows from it, making it easy to capture my thoughts quickly … the way it doesn’t smear …

I’ve used my share of pencils, too, mostly mechanical ones. My favorite was (and still is) a Scripto refillable pencil with thick lead. I can’t tell you how long I’ve had mine, or if the lead refills are even available anymore. But I can tell you that words flow pretty well for me with it, too. And that lead, unlike a lot of mechanical pencil lead, rarely breaks.

So tell me, what are your favorite writing tools? Any other G-2 fans out there? Surely I’m not alone!

Sneak peek

by with No Comment Meg & MattMusingsStories

I’ve had a busy Friday. I not only wrote about 800 words on Meg & Matt’s story, but also finally readied the talk I’m doing on dialogue at next Saturday’s NARWA meeting.

I know, I know. I’ve been procrastinating. A more conscientious person would have started preparing long ago. Actually, I did start gathering info on what makes great dialogue a couple of weeks ago. I just spent tonight finding examples from my writing to illustrate each point.

Here’s a sneak peek of the things I’ve determined make for great dialogue:

  • It moves the story along, intensifies characterization or both
  • It must be true to the character
  • It doesn’t necessarily sound like we talk in real life
  • It can include all the witty comments we don’t think of until it’s too late

Am I forgetting or missing anything? What do you guys think?

Another confession

by with 2 Comments Musings

I have another confession to make: I have trouble with my follow-through.

This is true both in life (I think it’s why I can’t seem to reach my goal weight or balance my checkbook) and in my writing.

More than one mostly finished manuscript languishes in my collection. Two of them that I thought were done are still several thousand words short of even the shortest category-length novel. (Being some of the first things I wrote, they’re also full of head-hopping and other annoyances I’ll have to go back and fix if they’re ever to see an agent or publisher’s desk.)

The ones that trouble me more, however, are the half-finished ones. I start out writing and for a while it’s great. The words are flowing and I’m in love with the characters and situations.

But then, I always hit a wall. I stop writing … for days, weeks, even months at a time.

When I go back to read through what I’ve written, I find myself in love all over again. The great metaphors and interesting characters make me wonder why I ever stopped writing it.

I think it’s because I get to what the gals at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood call “the sagging middle.” When I can’t think of what should happen next, I abandon the story and start a new one. And the result is a bunch of really good starts.

Because half-finished novels do me no good, I need to figure out how to get around this problem. I don’t want to write at a frenetic pace for a few weeks and then hit a wall.

I suppose plotting beforehand would help. (I tend to be more of a pantster, making it up as I go along.)

Writing something every day also seems to be helping. (I did finish “Blind Date Bride” because I signed up for the NaNo and started writing much more regularly.)

Any other suggestions? I’ll try pretty much anything once. (I plan to do some pre-plotting on my 2010 NaNo story in October.)

Confession time

by with 2 Comments Meg & MattMusingsStories

Hello. My name is Arlene, and I have a confession. Meg & Matt are real lookers … and I don’t mean that in a good way.

I’m not kidding. I’ve noticed that Meg & Matt spend a lot of time looking — at each other, at the ground, at whatever is around them. Whenever they don’t know what else to do, they LOOK.

Needless to say, I’m going to have to work on that. Admitting there’s a problem is the first step in fixing it, right? 😉

I owe my (not so) startling revelation to one of my RWA sisters. As newsletter editor for NARWA, I have the privilege of receiving articles from all the other RWA chapter newsletters. I review them to decide whether to include them in ours, but I also find myself learning from them whether they end up in our newsletter or not.

One of the articles did include in our most recent issue (in e-mail in boxes today, for those of you looking) was “Hunt those pesky repeated words” by Missouri RWA’s Shawntelle Madison. She confesses to using “snapped,” “noticed” and “saw” too often.

That made me think about the words I use more than I should, and “look” topped my list. At least in “Beauty and the Ballplayer,” they seem to be looking all the time.

At least it’s a problem specific to Meg & Matt. I think I’d have noticed if Kari & Damien or Brad & Erin spent all their time gaping at one another. (Erin spends a fair amount of time staring at Mike, at least at first, but that’s another story!) 😀

What words do you find yourself using more often than you might like?

There’s something about a notebook

by with 2 Comments Musings

I love my iBook and wouldn’t trade it for anything — well, except perhaps a bright, shiny new MacBook Pro like the one a couple of my NARWA sisters have. 😀

However, I’ve discovered something this week: I still like writing things out longhand, with a spiral-bound notebook and a smooth-writing Pilot G-2.

I was at Starbucks Tuesday. Not planning on being there long enough to set up the laptop, I instead whipped out a notebook and started writing. Nearly an hour later, I realized I’d filled several pages.

Now, I’ve practically given up writing with a pen and paper when it comes to my manuscripts. I write at the computer … like most of you do, I’m sure. It’s easier to edit, and when I’m on a roll, I can get a lot more accomplished via typing than handwriting.

Plus, there’s the problem that my handwritten pages are sometimes too messy to read, thanks to too many years of scribbling madly to get people’s quotes down during interviews. My writing started deteriorating in college and continued on the job. Now, sometimes I look at a page and there’s a mere scribble where a word should be. If I’ve waited too long to transcribe my notes, I have to guess at what was said …

Luckily, my writing tends to be just a little neater when I’m not taking notes. Still, I have to watch it. When I get on a roll, it gets progressively messier. At least I usually get to transcribing it within a day or two, before I’ve forgotten what I was trying to say.

Why do I consider that lucky? Because I’ve realized there’s something about writing it out by hand. The way the pen glides over the paper, leaving behind  words as long-lasting as you want them to be is somehow satisfying.

Plus, it is easier to pull out a notebook and pen than it is to pull out the computer, start it up and open your word processing program. By the time you do all that, you could have written a quarter-page! 😉

Need for speed?

by with No Comment Blind Date BrideMusingsStories

I didn’t get much writing done this weekend, opting instead to spend a romantic weekend with the Boyfriend. I did, however, get the chance to do a little reading.

The February issue of RWR contained an intriguing article titled “Speed as an Antidote to Writer’s Block.” The gist is that writing quickly — and regularly — helps us beat that devil procrastination.

Since I often find myself afflicted by that particular demon, I paid particular attention to that article. (In fact, it’s still the only thing from the issue I’ve read word-for-word. I’ve skimmed the rest, but not settled in to digest it yet.)

The article points out that speed writing is done:

  • Without a lot of distractions, such as the Internet or reading back through a MS to “check” facts.
  • Simply, as opposed to being a perfectionist looking for quality above all else.
  • To be shared. Apparently, fast writers share their drafts ASAP, seeking feedback. A perfectionist, on the other hand, will revise, revise, revise (or stop writing at all) rather than let someone else read their “weak” effort.

Over the years, I’ve been more the perfectionist type. I stop writing when I hit that wall … and sometimes don’t go back to it for months.

Participating in the NaNo last November really helped me see the benefits of speed writing, though. I might not have written as quickly as the others (I never once won the “word wars” we had at write-ins), and I didn’t finish all 50,000 words.

But sitting down to write almost daily did help me get a lot accomplished, and I was able to ride that writing high to the end, finishing my story in early December, shortly after the end of NaNo.

So you have my pledge now that I’ll do the NaNo again this fall. I already have a plot marinating in my head for it, something I started working on after my NARWA group did a “Book in a Month” talk a couple of years. (I stalled out in the research stage, around Day 6, because I’m not much of a researcher anymore.) I do, however, have a basic outline for the story, which stars one of Brad’s brothers … Brad being the hero in this year’s GH entry, the one that apparently STILL doesn’t have enough conflict.

Until then, I’m going to keep  plugging away on “Operation Treat Writing Like a Day Job.” Right now, that seems to be enough to keep me writing, so why mess with success?

Readin’ & Thinkin’

by with No Comment Kara & GarethMusingsStories

It’s better than wishin’ and hopin’, I guess.

I did spend more than an hour writing today, so “Operation Treat Writing Like a Day Job” is still going strong on Day 3. The bad news is, it took me more than an hour to write about 550 words. I’m definitely not on a roll at the moment.

As usual, the dialogue comes easiest for me. (I’m giving my first presentation on writing good dialogue in March, to my NARWA sisters. Time to start doing some research on what makes good dialogue so I sound like I know what I’m talking about!)

When I finished writing the 500 or so words, it was after 1 p.m. — time for a lunch break. After lunch, I started looking for a paper I wrote for my English novel class my senior year of college. It compared and contrasted the heroes of “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights,” and theorized about the effects the Bronte sisters’ brother, Branwell, had on both. The book club was reading “Jane Eyre” and I thought it’d make a good addition.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a hard copy. I think it’s on disk somewhere, if I can find a computer that reads small floppy disks anymore.

I did, however, run across something else: The first novel I wrote that I consciously tried to make NOT a romance. The “hero” — if you can call a drunken 20-year-old who occasionally slaps the heroine around  a hero — is dark and tormented; the heroine has her own demons.

What did my characters do? They ended up getting together anyway, but not necessarily in a good way. I never finished it, because I think to give it a satisfactory ending, I have to break them up and leave them broken because their relationship is so dysfunctional … but I can’t bring myself to do that. I want them to make it, and be happy.

The thing about it is, some of it’s pretty darn good. I have no idea where it would sell … parts are a mess. It tends to be superficial, and doesn’t do much more than scratch the surface of my characters.

There’s no head-hopping, though, because it’s told completely in first person, from the heroine’s point of view — until she goes into labor. Then I switch to his POV, and I think that’s part of the reason I’ve stopped writing. It’s much harder to be in Gareth’s head than it was to be in Kara’s — she was, as all my heroines are, somewhat like me.

It’s so different from what I normally write, too. I usually do lighthearted romantic comedy. This is much, much darker, with abuse on lots of levels, an incomplete trip to the abortion clinic and visits to see Gareth’s father in jail.

I’ve no idea what to do with it. Probably nothing. I don’t need to go back to the place I was when I was writing it. I don’t remember liking that place all that much.

Inspired

by with 6 Comments Musingsquest

Again, I went to my NARWA meeting … and again I was inspired by a great speaker. Jennifer Ashley talked about how to finish that manuscript and get it published. And as usual, I had to come back to Flagstaff and head straight to work when I wanted to go home and write.

Agents and the business of writing were on the table, but the most important take-home point for me was this:

Treat writing like it’s your day job and it will become your day job.

It sounds like such a simple concept … yet I’ve been guilty of writing only when “I feel like it” or when I’m inspired.

What I need to do is get in the habit of writing every day, whether I feel like it or not.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, discipline is a big problem in other areas of my life, too. I’m trying to lose weight, but I don’t always stick to my Weight Watchers plan — I do it when I feel like it. (That’s probably why I’m having trouble taking off the last few, eh?) …  All too often, I feel like eating something I shouldn’t, like gooey, cheesy Italian or Mexican food.

But that’s another blog! 😀

Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand: writing. For the next week, I’m going to try something different. Every day, I’m going to spend at least an hour writing — preferably before I do anything else. (That includes hopping online, one of my biggest distractions. Darn that Bejeweled on Facebook! I pull up the screen to play one game and end up playing for an hour …)

I’m also going to finally finish my query letter for “Operation Snag Mike Brad” and start looking for the agent of my dreams. I got some great feedback from out chapter president and will be using it to polish up my query.

It’s time for me to make writing my day job.

I’ll be logging in nightly to report how many minutes I spent writing, so please keep checking in to keep me honest.

Writing ‘guy’?

by with No Comment ContestsMusings

How is it that something I never thought much about before last week is now popping up everywhere?

I just checked out The Seekers blog, and their latest post is about “writing ‘guy.'”

Last week, after checking out another post, I found myself asking if guys really speak in shorter sentences. (It was something I’d never considered — guess that’s the curse of having a loquacious boyfriend.)

Apparently, most men aren’t so talkative … and they’re not as tortured by feelings as our heroines are. Who knew that while she’s torturing herself with a play-by-play of what went wrong on their latest date, he’s thinking about car repairs?

At least that’s Dave Barry’s take, as posted at Seekerville. I think I need to get his book … or some other one that’ll help my men sound more like men.

Hmm. Something else to worry about before I send off the manuscript to the Golden Heart contest. Aargh!

Well, at least I had a productive morning before our NARWA board meeting yesterday. And we had a great meeting. Now it’s time to get to work on the next issue of our chapter’s newsletter.

Oh, jeez … more stuff to do. Why’d I have to go and think about that?

More than I knew

by with 2 Comments MusingsProgress

I thought I was making good progress in getting my manuscript ready for the Golden Heart competition. I’ve edited 80 pages, trying to dig deeper into the minds of my characters and getting rid of a lot of “he said, she said” tags, replacing them with action tags instead.

I’ve even succeeded in making good, ol’ dependable Brad a little less boring — at least I think I have.

So I’ve been hard at work and I thought I was getting the job done. Then I read today’s entry over at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood. Now I’m not so sure.

Am I choosing vivid enough nouns and verbs, instead of relying on adjectives and adverbs? Sometimes.

Does each scene end with a hook? Well, maybe. I want to keep reading … but that may be because I know what’s coming up next.

Do my characters’ speech and interior monologues sound natural and appropriate to their backgrounds, interests, etc.? I certainly hope so, but I’ve never given it much thought.

Do their speeches take gender into account? God, no. Do men really speak in shorter sentences than women? I didn’t know that.

Do the syntax and paragraphing creatively showcase my voice and make it distinctive? Hmm. I just write and my voice shines through — I hope.

Have I used short paragraphs to speed up the pacing? Ha! I have that one covered. As a journalist, I’m used to writing shorter paragraphs.

Is my synopsis short and concise, focusing on the hero and heroine’s GMC? Short, yes. GMC? Not so much, considering the story was until recently short on that.

There’s so much to think about — more than I realized. I really do have my work cut out for me.