Funny Monday

Watch a driver change the rules of parking in a grocery store parking lot. I still can't figure out how the driver managed to screw up parking so badly.

Good Luck!

Good luck to all of you doing Nano this year. But above all remember to have fun!

For those of you not doing Nano this year, what's your focus for November: editing, writing, revising, brainstorming?

I'm still plugging away at my WIP. I hope to be done with the first draft by mid-January or early February.

It's Blogging Agent/Editor Appreciation Day!

I don't want to say I was clueless as a writer before I found blogging agents and editors, but well, I was only one step above clueless. Last year around May, I stumbled across Writers Digest's 101 Best Website for Writers. And the first agent's blog I visited happened to be the always opinionated Shark (And I say that with affection and admiration), Janet Reid.

The Shark runs two blogs:


http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/ and queryshark.blogspot.com

On her Jet Reid blog there's always a run down on the latest crime/mystery/thriller conference with pictures included and on the Query Shark page, she reviews queries and dissect them down to the bone. Query Shark is the best example I've seen on the web with examples on good versus bad queries and a break down on why they work or why they don't work.

Also, other blogging agents and/or editors who have been invaluable to my growth as a writer:

Editorial Ass
Nathan Bransford
Rachelle Gardner
Kristin Nelson
Evil Editor
Jennifer Jackson

Blogging Agents and Editors, Rock on!

Keeping up with book ideas

At the beginning of 2009, I focused on submitting my first novel, JUST CAUSE, to agents and at the same time I began writing my second novel, END OF FAITH. Originally, I got the idea for the second novel in December 2007, but I was in the middle of running chapters of JUST CAUSE through my critique group so I wrote a quick summary of the book idea on a Word document and put it aside.

I've never been one to work on multiple books at one time; although, if a publishing contract comes along, I will more than likely have to adjust.

When I get new ideas for novels, I tend to open up a new Word Document and write down the idea. Oftentimes, it's more than just an idea. A scene develops in my head that I must write down. After the scene or a rough draft of a summary is written, I put it aside in hopes of coming back to it later.

I have about ten or twelve book ideas on the shelf currently.

How do you handle new book ideas? Do you write a summary of the idea for safe keeping or do you stop your current project to start the new project? How many book ideas do you currently have brewing in your head?

Wildly Successful Queries

I'm not currently querying, but in my search for resources for writing, I came upon a series through the Guide to Literary Agents Editor Blog. On the site, Chuck Sambuchino is running a Successful Queries series, where he's posting queries that snagged agents and went on to publish. So far there are 16 entries in the series and a combination of fiction and non-fiction examples. As a bonus the agents representing the authors discuss why the query grabbed them.

Some of these queries, I have seen on blogs before, but it's nice to have them in one place along with the agent's perspective.

Some of the queries featured are:

(Fiction) "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet"
(Kids/YA) "Wake"
(Nonfiction) "Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon"

Hardest Part: The Beginning

When writing chapters, I find the hardest part is the beginning.

I'm currently working on a chapter and something just wasn't meshing in the first two pages of the chapter. I read and reread it. The flow was off, the word choices weren't the best.

But it wasn't until I recorded myself reading it that I discovered the true problem: I started the chapter with the first person narrator stepping back and analyzing the scene.

She had stepped so far back that she was almost absence from the environment she was describing. Could me, the author, be getting in the way? Seems to be the case. This may be okay or perfect in some books and even in some of my chapters, but it felt wrong in this chapter. "Felt wrong" is ironic since this chapter relies on the narrator's gut feeling.

Here's an example from the chapter:

Near the apples and pears, a woman reviewed the contents of her shopping cart. She paused, lifted her mask and sneezed. She rubbed her nose and began picking through the apples.

The rewrite so far:

I was bagging grapes when near the apples and pears, a woman lifted her mask and sneezed. I cringed as she wiped her nose and began picking through the apples, hands glazing over some in favor of others. I dropped the bag of grapes on the shelf.

The rewrite isn't perfect but methinks its a step in the right direction. The reader gets a better sense for how the narrator reacts to the scene.

What part of a chapter is the hardest for you to write: the beginning, middle or end?

What to say?

What to say when you don't have anything to say? Ask Stewie.



I haven't posted in awhile, but I am out there in the blogsphere, somewhere.