NaNoWriMo RE: Commitment to being a “Writer”

RE: Commitment to being a “Writer”

BrettRox

Commitment to being a “Writer”

52,401 / 50,000 Official Participant Joined: Nov 2, 2006 Location: Baton Rouge Posts: 6 Posted on: Dec 12, 2009 – 08 08

I’ve done NaNoWriMo for four years now. I’m still editing my ’08 effort with help of local critique group, hope to one day edit my ’07 attempt and still need to finish the story for ’09. Let’s not talk about ’06, okay? At any rate, my challenge over the next 11 months is to write every day. At least 500 words. This is my commitment to becoming a better writer, and a way to work toward one day doing it for a living, perhaps. My 500 words a day will focus on fiction, but on rare, once-a-month-or-so occasion I have to submit a movie review for my freelance gig, I’ll count that as well. So far, so good. I’m 11 for 11, and 41-for-41 if you count all the days of nanoing in November. Add all those words up over the course of the year (assuming 50k+ in November), and that’s about 220,000 words a year. And that’s assuming the minimum. The other day I wrote almost 1,400, so that number could be a lot bigger. I figure this should put me well on the path to honing the craft, maybe publishing a few short stories (here’s one from earlier this year: http://www.emuse-zine.com/Jun2009/page36.html) along the way. And eventually selling a manuscript or self-publishing. Any way I look at it, this crazy adventure looks and feels like the way to becoming a real writer. The hard part will be finding readers, I suppose! Follow me on twitter, if you’d like (http://twitter.com/brttrx), and join me on this big, scary adventure if you like! ———- “You’re pretty good with words, but words won’t save your life.” NaNo ’09: Best Served Ninja (won) NaNo ’08: Parallel Misfortune (won) NaNo ’07: Finding Allison Wu (won) NaNo ’06: Taijitu (won) Subscribe

I’m doing a similar thing, only my goal is 1,000 words per day, 5 days per week, not including the words I’ll write during April and November (Script Frenzy ans NaNoWriMo). So that’s a minimum of 260,000, plus the aprox 20k for Screnzy and 100k for NaNo, putting my grand total for word count in 2010 at: 380,000 words by December 2010.

I tend to write about 3,000 words per sitting and usually twice per day. So reaching my goal in that respect is not a problem. The problem I have is the EVERY DAY part. I tend to only write one or two days per week. So, in the end, for me, this goal is not so much about word count as it is about getting into the “every day” habit. So I figure if I aim at writing smaller word counts each day, I should, in theory at least, end up writing more than if I continue with large word counts once or twice a week. The theory being that I’ll keep right on with the high counts, just more often.

Also, secretly I’m hoping that I’ll get into my twice a day 3k kick every single day, and thus end up writing a million words by the end of 2010, but that’s a pretty tall order, so I’m not officially committing myself to that goal. However, if if by the start of Big Scary 2011, I have succeeding in writing at least 1k each day, than next year, writing at least 3k each day WILL be my goal giving me an end total of 1,095,000. So if I don’t do it this year, I try for a million next year.

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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NaNoWriMo RE: the “what are my characters doing?!?!?” shoutout!

RE: the “what are my characters doing?!?!?” shoutout!

yes – for the second time this year, my characters are not doing what I told them to do.

In my first book of the year, I was supposed to have Jack Frost and an army of frozen zombies taking over the world. For some reason Dracula showed up in town before Jack Frost did. I have no idea why, because Dracula was not even supposed to be in the book at all! Than, the house Drac moves into is next door the 3 kids who are Scooby Doo rip offs and like to investigate things. What the hell? Where did they come from? Than the 3 kids take over as the MCs, Jack Frost has still yet to arrive in the book, and while investigating Dracula’s house, the kids meet up with an FBI agent who’s chasing UFOs and talks strangely an awful lot like Fox Mulder. Next thing I know the kids are chasing a flock of vampire chickens and chase them right out of the book and are never seen again. A new MC shows up washing windows on a sky scraper where he witnesses a murder, but no one believes him, because he says the murderer was Dracula. Than he runs out of the book and yet another MC takes over, only this guys is like Author Dent meets Dracula but is too stupid to know that he’s got a vampire after him, and unknowingly defeats the vampire by eating rancid yak butter. Jack Frost never did show up, and I have no idea if those kids ever caught any vampire chickens or not. And it took me 52k words to write all of it, and when I got done I had some thing that looked like Salvador Dali had written it! LOL!

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So than I start my second book of the year and I’m going in completely plotless and characterless this time, basing my whole idea on this writing prompt: After years of dead end leads a tabloid reporter finds evidence of a legendary small town monster. I decide my home town is the perfect small town for a monster and my monster of choice will be an Incubus and than I start writing. And for about 30k words I’m writing mostly interviews between the reporter and the townsfolk. Than the reporter uncovers a series of murders that have happened over the years. The Incubus makes several attacks on teenage girls. A new dead body shows up. All fingers are pointing at the Incubus. No one really believes the Incubus is real, but they blame him any ways. Pretty much the story is going along great. I’m nearing my 125k goal, my characters are pretty much behaving as they should. . .

Than today I join a word sprint and I write fast as hell and one hour and 2,055 words later, my characters have all switched places:

My tough hard knocks (female) reporter has been kidnapped by an unidentified person, and suddenly reveals that she’s a classic Mary-Sue Damsel in Distress and in need of rescuing. My evil monster Incubus villain for some reason is the one who rescues her!!!!!! My creepy scary villainous Incubus has started pulling heart strings and has become a sympathetic character that I can no longer see as evil. ACK! How can I kill him off at the end now????? Why did my book just do a King Kong cliche`???? Oh dear, there goes my villain! Oh wait – who was that guy who kidnapped the girl anyways, and what the heck did he kidnap her for??? We find out as he’s fleeing the scene, when she sees his face for a second and – what the hell??? It’s the guy that was only seen on the very first page of the book? A fisherman that had taken her from the dock to the island and isn’t in the book again. ??????? WHY?

I was doing so good sticking to my plot and than this happens? Now I got to figure out who this fisherman is and why he all of a sudden wants to be one of my MCs and why did he kidnap the girl? And why in one scene does she hear him plotting ANOTHER murder. Another one? What, you mean he killed some one else already? Really? I didn’t write that.

Than I remember those bodies – wait, you mean it was the fisherman who killed them . . . but . . . .but . . . but . . . my villain . . . my monster . . . the Incubus . . . .I thought it was him . . . . I thought he killed those people. Hey! Who’s writing this book any ways? Me or my characters? Why aren’t my characters doing what I told them to do? Why is villain becoming Romeo and mt MC becoming Juliet and where did that fisherman come from and why is he killing people? And why is this all happening in the last 15k of my book?????????

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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NaNoWriMo RE: What Fish Could You, uh, Fish for in the East Coast?

What Fish Could You, uh, Fish for in the East Coast?

[quote=Bootscooper]In the East Coat, around the tri-state area, what edible fish could you get to eat?

[/quote]

Tri-state – my homeland And me living right on the ocean, I’m surrounded by rifle toting lobster man, and get to see the lobster war shoot outs all the time. Fishing is our # one source of income, and it’s big business. If you are not a fishermen, you are related to one, married to one, work for one, or at least know some one who does. Maine is 73% water and has the longest coastline of any other state. Yeah. Every one around here has fish on the brain.

You didn’t say what type of fishing you plan on using so I’ll list both:

Off the coast/deep sea:

Lobster is #1 (the #3 source of income in Maine, after Tourism and Blueberries. Potatoes and Milk are 4 and 5.) Marlin Shrimp Sea bass Atlantic Salmon Pollack Sea Urchins Halibut Flounder Eels (big ones) Skate (what we call Sting Rays) Octopus Squid Manta Rays (big ones – big, big, big ones – 8 foot wings are not uncommon) folks don’ fish for them, but once in a while one will get caught in a net. People don’t eat them, btw. Shark (lots of types, Sand, Nurse, etc, keep in mind though the Great Whites are extremely rare, so you can mention them, but it would be a fluke to see one around here) Humpback Whales, if your story is set before the anti whaling laws. Whaling was a big business around here in the 1700′s ish. and also Scallops, Clams, Mussel, Crab, and several assorted snails but technically that’s not called “fishing” it’s called “digging”. Also, we are in the “Man o War” region. Man o Wars are giant killer jelly fish, that can get 30 feet long. In warm summers they get washed in along the coast, by the gulf stream. People don’t fish for them, but fisherman do once in a while get killed by them. Areas have to be closed down if any Man o War are sighted, and wait until they head back out to sea again. This only happens once every few years though, and is not that common an event.

Inland – river/lake/pond/stream:

Eels (small ones) Brown Trout Rainbow Trout Catfish Salmon

Sorry, afraid I don’t know many inland fish, I live right on the ocean and rarely leave town.

I’m afraid I can’t help you with any details or specifics. Ive never been fishing in my whole life! LOL! My boyfriend is a hobby fisherman and my neighbor is a lobster men (every one’s neighbor is a lobster man around here.) and these are the fish they commonly catch and or mention seeing, or have known others to catch. They are the ones I just always hear getting mentioned around town and such.

Also, Harbor Seals are every where, and commonly get caught by mistake, and have to be released. But if your story is set old enough, like before the 1950′s, fisherman used to shot every seal they saw on sight, hundreds and hundreds of them, because the seal attack the nets and traps and lines and steal the fish.

Pretty much every one eats fish, most every meal, every day of the year.

Here in town we have fishing shacks on every street corner. A fishing shack is like a dinner that is run by the wife of some local fisherman, and all they serve is fresh fish. The Clam Bake, Bailey’s, WormWoods, and Ken’s Place are the biggest ones, and attract tourists from all over the world. The Clam Bake is a giant restaurant now as a result.

Hey – why don’t you just read what they sell off their menu? Or ask them on their FaceBook page? Plus all those actual picture of what the stuff looks like cooked should give you plenty to work with. That should help you out:

http://www.clambakerestaurant.com/ or http://www.clambakerestaurant.com/dinners.shtml

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scarborough-ME/Kens-Place-Seafood-Restaurant/64297093127?v=info (2009 was their 82nd year in business)

These two are right across the street from each other (more or less) and I live right behind them on the beach.

and this one is right next door to Ken’s

http://bayleysseafood.com/ and is the one I personally like to eat at most often. I like their Seafood Platter, which is a little bit of everything that got brought in that morning. Usually it includes Haddock fillets, scallops, shrimp, clam strips, etc.

and they make the best Lobster Rolls in Maine. You can’t visit Maine with out trying a Lobster Roll and drinking Moxie.

and here’s one from Portland:

http://www.portlandlobstercompany.com/menu.html

and Moxie btw is this:

http://www.moxiefestival.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie

your Maine readers will think your Maine characters are weird if they are NOT drinking Moxie.

You know, you might want to head to the Maine Regional Forums and ask there. Some one might have more info for you.

And writing this list up for you . . . wow! You just gave me some great ideas to add to my story, which, happens to be set in a fishing villsge off the coast of Maine – couldn’t imaging why. =P

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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NaNoWriMo RE: Who publishes?

The question and my answer:

Who publishes?

[quote=Esmeralda_m]Do any of you go on to publish your books later? [/quote]

Always. I started writing short stories in 1978. All of them published via indie-press chapbooks. Though most never had more than 12 or 15 copies made. =P I moved on the adding novels in 2006, and started writing non-fiction stuff in 2003, but didn’t start pubbing the non-fiction stuff until 2007, which I publish both in print format and online.

[quote=Esmeralda_m] Do you self publish or go through a company? [/quote]

Both. It depends on how you look at it. Some would say I self publish, others would say I don’t. Explanation: I own a publishing house (The Twighlight Manor Press). I publish my own work through said publishing house. Therefor my work is being published via a company, but it is also self published because, I just happen to be the owner of that company. =P

I submit some of my work to the big publishing houses too (Harlequin, Scholastic, etc.) but not very often. Usually I just stick with my own publishing house.

I also am under a work-for-hire contract to write scripts for copyrighted characters (The Duck Family aka Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck) through Edgmont (Disney Comics). This means technically I work for Disney and can write Disney “fanfic” so long as I follow Disney’s really rigid super strict guidelines and send every thing I write to them.

[quote=Esmeralda_m] Has anybody considered it but not followed through? Why not?[/quote]

I always consider EVERY THING I write as publishable. My theory is there is a market for every thing and every thing that is written, can be edited to make it marketable. (Some stuff just needs more editing than other stuff.) With that thery in mind, every thing I write eventually gets published some where, some how, though in some cases it may take several years of editing to make a piece publishable.

[quote=Esmeralda_m] I’m curious what the statistics are. Who goes “further” than the 30 days of writing and does a 2nd, 3rd, and final draft? Who takes that to a publisher and says “Lookit what I got!” and either gets turned down or accepted. Who opts to Lulu their book, and who takes it to the copy machine at kinkoes. [/quote]

My stuff usually goes through 4 edits, before reaching the final draft. This process can take a few weeks for shorter works, to a year or more for longer works.

Where I send it and how it gets published depends on what it is I wrote.

I taught myself bookbinding and so from the 1970′s through 1980′s my books were hand bound. Papers hand cut. Pages hand sewn, with olde fashioned needle and thread book binding stitch. The words themselves hand done in calligraphy. That’s why there were usually less than 15 copies of each book. It took about a month just to make a single copy. I was like a 15th century monk or something! LOL! =P

I went the desk top printer road in the 1990′s. Quality sucked.

Tried a local print shop once. eeh. Quality still sucked.

In 2005 I switched over to using http://www.LuLu.com for my publishing house’s printer. Quality has skyrocketed. I love it, and will likely stick with them as my printing house from now on.

As for where do I send stuff when I do send it out to an outside publisher?

Well, right off the bat, EVERYTHING I write with a Disney character, gets shipped to Edgmont and from there it’s Disney’s problem. Getting published with Disney, let me tell you – NOT EASY! Pay sucks. It’s not worth it unless you are mega super obsessed with whatever character you are writing about, which I am, so it’s not like I’m going to stop writing Duck stories any time soon. =P

My Harlequin quality stuff gets shipped off to Harlequin for consideration.

Short stories head out to various random magazines depending on genre.

My unagented attempts with Scholastic continue to fail; yeah, I know, I need an agent for Scholastic. Someday when I can afford an agent, I’ll hire one.

What I am most well known for however is my trademark long running, banned, M rated series. My Twighlight Manor series, has since the 1970′s been sent to various publishers, and I get back lots of nice rejections, telling me that my unique writing style is wonderful and they’d really love me to write a different book for them, but my subject matter is just too outside of what can be published main stream, could I tone it done a bit, try to be a little bit more politically correct, use a little less gore, make my teenage rape victims over 18, make my rapists not always elderly men, and could you TRY to write a Happily Ever After ending . . . just once? Hey! I write what I know. Older men rape teenage and preteen girls. Been there. Done that. I was the teenage girl. I’ve known others. It happens. It happens a lot. These girls don’t get peach scent happily ever afters with rose colored glasses. I write about it. I write about it a lot. I write it like it is in the real world, older men, 8 year old girls and all. I’m not going to glamorize it and make it into some pretty happy romance story because that’s what people want to read. This is not romance, this is a girl traumatized for life in a world that would rather look the other way and protect the false integrity of their beloved church leaders. You know what? Life for these girls is hell, in a world that doesn’t care, why should I tone it down and make it more digestible for the reader when it isn’t digestible for the real victims? No! I won’t do it. Some one has to speak out for these girls, and I’m not changing these books just because you don’t like it.

And so, my Twighlight Manor Books, continue on published via indie press and remain to date, still not mass produced. And I am being excommunicated from my church for writing them, because well, it’s a big No-No to say anything against one of their priests.

Actually, I’m being excommunicated for writing my autobiography, the 433 page story behind the story of the Twighlight Manor books. My autobiography was what I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2008. It took a year to edit, went through 4 drafts, and was edited online with the help of some of my online friends. The draft had been posted on my blog, which, unknown to me, my bishop reads, and when he read what I had to say about several of the leaders in our local church building, he just flipped out, and called me into his office and DEMANDED that I not publish this book or else. Or else? He’d rather hide his head in the sand and protect the criminals in his church, than stand out in the open and protect the innocent victims????? Well, that book got published a month ago, and so I got called in again and told I was being excommunicated from the church. Oh well. Such is life. My NaNovel 2008 has become some what of a local controversy, and really, I don’t see why my bishop is going all freak out like this, but whatever.

As for this years NaNovel, yep. It’s being published. At the moment I’m planning on going through my own publishing house. (Which currently PODs books via http://www.LuLu.com btw, no more hand bound books for me! LOL!)

[quote=Esmeralda_m] I’m just kinda curious since I’m thinking of persuing more than a one month fling with my characters. I have a professional artist, willing to do the cover, and a professional editor even, but I’m intimidated by the prospect of tranforming a nanobook into a “real” novel. Can a nano even BE a real novel?

[/quote]

Every year, about 3 or 4 NaNovels get accepted through Harlequin. They even have a place to submit special NaNoWriMo submissions to them. (Check out their web site, info changes each year). If you are writing romance, Harlequin is very open to reading NaNovels.

and one word: Eragon.

Look up the Hal Spacejock series. Long running series of best sellers, every volume was writing right here on NaNoWriMo

Every year hundreds of NaNovels get published. A few through mainstream big publishers, but most through small press, indie press, and self published POD (LuLu and CreateSpace).

So, yeah, a NaNovel can be a real novel. All you got to do it edit, edit, edit, polish, polish, polish, and submit, submit, submit! EVERY THING you write, can be published, it’s all in the amount of time you are willing to put into editing it after you write it.

There are probably a lot more mainstream published NaNovels out there than we realize too, because a lot of authors, don’t tell you here on NaNoWriMo who they are and just come on here, write their draft, and never tell any one they wrote it via NaNo. Besides, when you submit it to a publisher, there is no reason to tell the publisher where your wrote the book. The publisher couldn’t care less wither you wrote it on NaNoWriMo or in an igloo on top of Mt Everest. All they want to know, is will our readers want to read it?

You will only need a cover artist if you plan to self publish. Authors have no say or control when it comes to cover art on their books, unless they are self publishing the book.

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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NaNoWriMo RE: Hi I am… and I tend to write a lot of…

I like this writing exercise. It helps you to focus on what you write and what you need to work on, as well as helps you to see what your “style is”. The entire original post is very very long, so you’ll need to click on the link to read the whole thing, as I only quoted the very start of it, so you’d know what I was responding to.

Hi I am… and I tend to write a lot of…

[quote=Kimberly Dawn]

Move at will… but I think this is on topic…

I’m not sure how to get out of the rut of these principle scenes I tend to write tons of. But I thought if I shared what I tend to write a lot of, someone else out there will have another crux and I can try to bum off of them their weakness for writing those scenes and we can help each other…

I tend to write a lot of pet scenes. This has to do with dogs, snakes, whatever pet is on hand. Don’t have a pet I make up one. Dogs are the most useful for me, but I take horses, dragons, etc.

Lots of scenes on food. Almost every book I’ve written has ….READ MORE… [/quote]

And here is my answer about my own writing:

The weather – lots of it. Wind. Fog. Rain. Thunder. Lightening. Hurricanes. Blizzards. I’m really good at lengthy (2000 words or more) descriptions of weather related things. Tonight I just wrote a 2k scene where my MC gets caught walking during a thunder storm, I spent most of the 2k describing the black clouds and lightening bolts! LOL! And even when I’m not writing long descriptions of weather, the weather is there: wind in her hair, wind in the trees, she can smell the fog, he hears the rain on the roof etc, etc, etc. Boy, I should have been a meteorologist or something. I’d be good at writing weather reports for the meteorologists to read on TV! LOL!

Aghasty men who brood about dead wives, and usually have dead wife’s coffin in his bedroom or dining room or some place else in the house so he can sit there staring at it and going all Vincent Price/Edgar Alan Poe monologuing about death and eternity and soul mates and lost love. Yep, I was raised on Vincent Price movies and Edgar Alan Poe books, one look at any thing I write will tell you that in a flash.

Monologuing. BIG TIME! My MCs are prone to sitting themselves down and than talking to themselves about the way things are, the way things should have been, and how cruel and wicked life has been to them. I can make one of my male MC’s drone on like that for 9k words without stopping to take a breath!

The ocean. It’s always there. My characters can’t get away from it. They are drawn too it. Mesmerized by it. Often I have mermen, guys who’s dead wife was a mermaid, silkies, kelpies, eels, and all sorts of other real and mythical sea creatures in my stories. I have writing hundreds of stories over the years and every single one of them was set on a beach, in a cove, on the cliffs, on a ship, under the sea, etc. Always the ocean is there. The ocean is so in your face in every thing I write, that it is almost a character itself.

Pretty much everything I write has a big gloomy stone house overlooking the ocean, owned by a broody goth guy morning a dead wife, and there are lots of dark gloomy clouds and thunder storms rolling in off the ocean. It’s like everything I write, no matter what the story is, that is the basic setting or backdrop for the story.

I did grow up on the shores of the cold, stormy North Atlantic Ocean, and being farmers weather effected our lives a lot, and Vincent Price was my fave actor and Edgar Alan Poe was my fave author, so, yeah, I guess you could say I’m one of those people who writes what I know. =P

Most of that stuff, isn’t all that bad, seeing how I write creepy goth horror, and those things all fit in with the genre well. I do have one problem that I get stuck on real bad, and it is that I write like this:

Dialog, dialog, dialog, MC sits alone and monologues to self for 30 pages, dialog, dialog, dialog, dialog, BOOM! CRASH! BANG! (weather), looooooooooooooooooooong pointless narrative about haunted house-ocean-weather, MC sits alone and monologues to self once again while hallucinating about ghost of dead wife haunting him, dialog, dialog, dialog, dialog, dialog . . .

Yeah. All that dialog is my problem. I’ll have two characters start talking, back and forth – for 100 pages. Not a word of narrative, not even any “he said/she said” tags! Just straight dialog. It’s like reading a play. The only time they stop talking about the MC is when the MC starts monologuing to himself.

It’s not that I can’t write descriptive narrative. I can. I’m wicked good at it too. My problem is shutting up my characters long enough so that I can add some narratives between all that dialogging!

And than there’s one other problem. Sex. Smut. Erotica. When I finally do get my characters to shut up, they all jump into bed together. Usually every one of them all together all at once too. Except for the gloomy MC with the dead wife. Gloomy guy + dead wife – yep necrophiliac, got a lot of that in many of my stories, LOTS of it. I had one guy who was a necrophiliac first gloomy widower later, and ended up with 70 dead wives in his attic, just so he could have sex with a different wife each night. My gloomy guys usually should be in a metal institute, but live so far off in the middle of no where (on a cliff over looking the ocean. . . . the middle of no where is always over looking the ocean no matter where it is.) that no body knows they are out there doing the weird freaky things they are doing while they mourn dead wife. If I could keep the sex scenes a little less freaky deaky, I would have a lot more mass produces books and a lot less indie press books. =P

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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Grade School Series? (NaNoWriMo NaNoRebels)

Well, now that I’ve started writing, I know where my story is going, and surprisingly it’s heading in a way I did not expect at all! It has become a series of Grade School Chapter Books! (70 page books for kids ages 8 – 13) The way I figure, it’ll end up being four separate books each about 13k words long (a total of about 52k more or less).

I just checked out a bunch of grade school chapter books from the library and did a run down of word counts, and found that most of them are between 11k to 15k each, (65 – 90 pages) so my 13k figure will fit in nicely.

So, I guess that makes me a NaNoRebel because instead of writing one 50k novel I’m writing four 13k grade school “mini-novel” books.

Any one else here planning a set of grade school chapter books this year, instead on one bigger novel?

All Hail Bela Lugosi!

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Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

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Rancid Yak Butter (NaNoWriMo)

The Dares return every year. The Shovel of Death Returns every year. Death by Plastic Spork returns every year. Jello in the White House is back for a second year. I’ll bet Dolphin Cheese comes back next year. . . . wait . . . one of the annual NaNo threads did not return this year? ACK! What happened to the Rancid Yak Butter?!?!

Every year several of us use Rancid Yak Butter in our NaNovels. Every year I plan to use it, but to date I’ve never found a reason for one of my characters to have Rancid Yak Butter. Than this year, without warning, Rancid Yak Butter jumps into my NaNovel full force and is become the center of the plot . . . and there is no Rancid Yak Butter thread for me to shout out – I DID IT! I used Rancid Yak Butter in my NaNovel this year!

I couldn’t find the original rancid yak butter dare/thread, and I couldn’t remember which year’s archive it was in, so I don’t remember the exact words of the dare or the reason it got started, but at the Saco meetings we’ve been talking about a million and one ways to use rancid yak butter – it’s like been the main topic of discussion at every meeting so far! LOL!

We’ve talked about using it to build Igloos with, filling the White House with it instead of jello , ways to use it as a weapon, etc.

I couldn’t figure out what to do with it until last night when midnight struck and I started writing. My plot I was going to write was about Jack Frost and a Frost Zombie apocalypse. But it was Halloween and my shelves are full of Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi DVDs and I spent 3 days watching nothing but.

I was still watching them when midnight rolled around and I got to start typing. And that’s when something strange happened – I found myself writing about 3 kids who saw this box being delivered to a deserted house and it turns out to be Dracula’s coffin, and they meet up with Bela Lugosi and for some odd reason one of the boy’s mother has joined a Tibetan yoga group that is lead by a monk that raises yaks and makes yak butter and so, the kids come home from discovering that Dracula has moved in next door to find their mom cooking garlic bread with rancid yak butter! LOL!

OMG! I have no idea where any of that came from, except I spent 3 meetings talking about rancid yak butter followed by three days of vampre movies and ended up writing that. I think the kids are going to end up fighting Dracula with Rancid Yak Butter Garlic Bread – and the way it’s going right now, rancid yak butter is going to be a MAJOR plot element this year! LOL!

So, long thread starter short – how will you be using Rancid Yak Butter in your NaNovel this year?

Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

So how’s NaNoWriMo going?

I logged in at 7PM and than went on Twitter and did a count down all over the world – It was like New Years Eve – watching folks in New Zealand shout out that midnight hit; than Australia folks started screaming it was midnight, and it just keep going on like that – I started getting really freaked out when the UK folks started writing, because I’m on the Eastern most point of the USA and that meant I was next in line to start screaming midnight. At midnight I was logged in and typing and freaking out and I did not get any sleep last night at all because once I hit 1667, I rushed back to Twitter and was shouting out word counts with every one else. OMG! Twitter and NaNo at the same time is so much fun. and Twitter and NaNo at midnight all over the world is just amazing!

I had my plot all ready to go – outlined, character bios, world created – spent 2 months writing it all up, was all excited and ready to go. Than midnight strikes and I start writing a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT plot all together!

I stayed up all night (seeing how it was Halloween) watching Bela Lugosi movies. The Devil Bat ended at 12:13 and I started writing and before I realized what I was doing I found myself writing Bela Lugosi/Dracula fan-fic instead of my plot! Now I have no plot, no characters (except Bela Lugosi), no world created, and yet, here I am writing away at the seat of my pants with no idea where it’s going, and I’m actually liking it and it’s surprisingly really good – damn good! YAY! I may have something worth publishing when I get done!

Just breezed past 2500 words! YAY! Hoping I can reach 5k before the end of the day. Looks like I might make it too. Going good.

It’s only the first day and I’m already procrastinating.

yep – I hit 2900, my goal was 5k for day one, but I got close to 3k and went, I gotta go shout out on Twitter and FaceBook and the forums and my blog and my other blog and call my boyfriend and tell him about it and oh look I need to play Vampire Wars to try to get the extra Halloween prizes I didn’t snag yesterday and oh I need to plant more pumpkins on Paradise Island before the limited edition seeds expire and by the way I need to check my FarmVille cows to see if they need milking and oh yeah I better see what my writing buddies are doing on the forums and I wonder what their word counts are and maybe I should grab some more Dares while I’m there and by the way . . . .

yep, I’m already procrastinating big time.

My inner editor is winning this year – YIKES! I’ve been correcting and editing as I go – my word count would be twice as high if I didn’t stop rushing back to fix things every other sentence! ACK!

Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

The “I Just Completed a NaNoDare!” ShoutOut

It’s the attack of the NaNoDare thread – I’m doing a NaNovel heavy on the Dares this year, and I know lots of you guys are doing the same, so here’s a thread to crash on and shout out each time you completed one of your dares!

I’ll go first -

I’m 4 hours and 2,964 words into my novel and already I’ve got dare shout outs coming left and right. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

- my MC is wearing yellow socks with pink bunnies on them

- his mom is making garlic bread out of rancid yak butter

- his best friend keeps saying “Oh my strawberry Pop-Tart of joy and spectacularly worn T-shirt of sexiness” at the end or beginning of every sentence

- a famous celebrity has made a cameo appearance – my celebrity of choice was Bela Lugosi

- the villain (Bela Lugosi) just sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” at an unexpected moment

yep – the dares are coming along fine, and surprisingly, so far they have all made perfectly logical sense for my story! YAY!

- the first line of your story must be: “Where the hell are my pants?”

It was through my MC looking for his pants, that he ended up accidentally putting on his sister’s yellow socks with pink bunnies on them, so I ended up using 2 dares in one with that! YAY!

and an update on the rancid yak butter – part of the dare was to use it as a weapon, well, I haven’t used it as a weapon yet, but the fact that my MC’s mom is using it to make Garlic Bread in a story about vampires – yeah, there’s a good chance of my using rancid yak butter as a weapon at some point before Nov 30th rolls around! YAY!

I couldn’t find the original rancid yak butter dare, and I couldn’t remember which year’s archive it was in, but at the Saco meetings we’ve been talking about a million and one ways to use rancid yak butter – it’s like been the main topic of discussion at every meeting so far! LOL!

We’ve talked about using it to build Igloos with, filling the White House with it instead of jello , ways to use it as a weapon, etc.

I couldn’t figure out what to do with it until last night when midnight struck and I started writing. My plot I was going to write was about Jack Frost and a Frost Zombie apocalypse. But it was Halloween and my shelves are full of Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi DVDs and I spent 3 days watching nothing but.

I was still watching them when midnight rolled around and I got to start typing. And that’s when something strange happened – I found myself writing about 3 kids who saw this box being delivered to a deserted house and it turns out to be Dracula’s coffin, and they meet up with Bela Lugosi and for some odd reason one of the boy’s mother has joined a Tibetan yoga group that is lead by a monk that raises yaks and makes yak butter and so, the kids come home from discovering that Dracula has moved in next door to find their mom cooking garlic bread with rancid yak butter! LOL!

OMG! I have no idea where any of that came from, except I spent 3 meetings talking about rancid yak butter followed by three days of vampre movies and ended up writing that. I think the kids are going to end up fighting Dracula with Rancid Yak Butter Garlic Bread – and the way it’s going right now, rancid yak butter is going to be a MAJOR plot element this year! LOL!

I must rush back to the Dare Thread and find more dares. OMG! I love Dares, I’m going to try to have at least one dare on every page of my entire novel this year.

Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

testing tags

having a problem getting posts to show up… testing to see if tags are working yet

An Autobiography of a car…

Shot at 2007-04-04

Hello! I am a 1964 Dodge 330 4-door sedan, VIN 4142216364, my name is The Goldeneagle. This site was created by my owner Wendy C. Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to save my life.

I am the main character of the original Twighlight Manor book, and a major supporting character of more that 30 other books and short stories by Maine author Wendy C. Allen.

I started out in life as a silver undercover Police car in Maine. In 1975 I retired from my job as a police car and was sent to Marcot Motors of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where I was painted gold by some fool with a paint brush. He totally ruined my lovely silver paint job and left me streaked with brush lines. I was only there a few months before I was bought by the Allen family, who sanded me down and painted a lovely shade of metalic orange.

I remained the faithful family chauffer for the next ten years. Together we drove on many roadtrips throughout the NorthEast. In 1978, I took them to New York where we croosed the Brooklen Bridge during it’s major repair construction. That same year we went to Washington D.C. I took the Allen family to Arcadia in Bar Harbor to see The Thunder Hole in 1981. Every year I drove them to New Hampshire where we visited The Old Man on the Mountain and Story Land and The Swift River. Three times I climbed Mt. Washington.

I’ve brought home puppies and baby chickens. I waited in hospital parking lots and veterinary clinics. I remained forever and always a faithful friend. The only friend who was always there, steadfast and unmoveble, silent and unjudgmental. My red plush seats always there like a shoulder to cry on when no one else would lend and ear or a shoulder. I alone remained to one true friend, the only friend to the child who loved me and defend me when no one else would put up with my break downs and failrues.

Over the years I grew old and tired, my engine weak and my transmission failing. My last trip was a desperate trip to the hospital, one dark and stormy night in 1985 when a hurrican flooded the town, sending the Atlantic Ocean over the Peir and up Maine Street. My last trip came when abulances could ride faster than my Mopar engine and Mrs Allen had to be rushed to the hostpital at 3AM. We speed through Old Orchard fatser than ever before, through hurrican floods that went higher than my door panels seeping water into my interior and flooding my floors, filling my transmission and engine with icy salt water, we made it to the hospital with Mrs. Allen, but I did not make it back home on my own and was towed home by a friend’s little VW Rabbit.

In spite of my loyalty, with a dead trasmission and an engine full of salt, I was usless, and parked in the yard, put up for sale for junk.

I was rescued from a trip to the junk yard in 1985 by 9 year old, Wendy C. Allen, after my trans died. Since 1985 I have remained a decoration on the hill in her rose garden, where she sits in my seats or on my hood to write the stories in which I appear. Without me, she can not write these stories for I am the one that inspires them. I have been happy in my life of peace and rest here in Old Orchard Beach these past 30 years. That has now changed.

New town ordinances and zoning laws have been set in Old Orchard Beach. As a result the police, the code enforments officers, and the town manager are now in attempt to see my death and destruction, with threats of stealing me from my rightful owner and sending me to become scrap metal in the junk yard.

This is an outrage! They well not listen to reason.

My profile now comes to you to spread the word and ask for your help in saveing my life. An entire network of websites devoted to my plight are now in the works and links to them well be added here within the next few hours.

Please join the protest and put an end to the Old Orchard Beach reign of terror. Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty, they have no right to take me from my home and kill me!

PLEASE DON’T LET THEM KILL ME!!!!!

To read more, please visit my profile: http://www.myspace.com/savethegoldeneagle

Shot at 2007-04-04

Narration for Writers Explained

Attention writers! Have you ever wondered what’s the differance between one type of narration and another? Look no farther, I shall explain them all here. Check it out.

http://www.squidoo.com/Narration-for-Writers/

My Website ranks at 32!!!!!

OMG! My Squidoo lense now ranks in at 32 on the Squidoo top 100 list! 32 out of 220,000 lenses! I can’t believe it!

Here it is if you want to check it out:

http://www.squidoo.com/PublishingMethods/

Why I Write Horror

It has been asked of me, more than once, by multiple peoples:

“How can someone like you, who loves peace, non-violence, and animals; how can you write the horrible things you do in your books?”

This question is most often presented after someone reads about either The Lansquin or The Red Dragon, the two vivisecting blood crazed villains from The Twighlight Manor series.

My answer to that question: As writers we write what we know. Every writer will tell you that they get their ideas from events of their own lives. I am no different than they. As my fans, friends, and family all know, I am more outspoken for animals rights than the average animal rights activist.

Ask anyone who knows me personally, and they will warn you to stay clear of that subject with me. They warn you for good reason. I was only 6 years old when I began my early protests. I lived on a chicken farm. We ate chicken. One day when I was 6 years old it occurred to me that my beloved babies in the yard and the food on the table were both called chicken, because they were in fact the very same thing. I stopped eating chicken and turkey that same day. About a year later I found out that steak was cow, and I stopped eating that as well. By the time I was 8 years old I had become a devote vegan, and have been so ever since. What does this have to do with me writing horror? I’m getting to that.

As most of you know, I had already written the first 2 volumes of The Twighlight Manor series by the time I was 8 years old. Those early stories of cute talking animals and Herbie-esce living cars, were markedly different from the later rewrites that dripped of horror and blood. Friends Are Forever, originally written in 1978, has undergone 3 major rewrites since it’s first creation, each more grim than the last. Why?

By 1982, I heard news stories of a young girl who refused to dissect frogs in science class. The school expelled her, even though she was only 12 years old. The story mesmerized me. It was one of the few times in my life that I became truly interested in watching the news. I began to tell anyone I could about the evils of frog dissection.

When I was 12 years old, I was with my mom, while she was visiting one of her Avon customers. Who was also one of Maine’s most dramatic and outspoken PETA members. I listened for 2 hours as she retold her latest adventures of rescuing a circus donkey, followed by her latest craze: she was hell bent on telling the world about the horrors of a company known as Proctor & Gamble. It was the first time I had ever heard of them. At this time, almost no one knew anything about P&G’s vivisection and Draize testing, as the horror of this fact had only been just discovered that same year. My mom and me went home that day with a carload of pamphlets about PETA and animal rights and how evil animal testing was.

Over the next few months, I sent for every free pamphlet, brochure, magazine, and catalog I could find about the animal rights movement. By the end of the year, the first revision of volume one of The Twighlight Manor series, Friends Are Forever, had been written. Into the series had been added a new set of characters. The cars were no longer living cars, but now had owners who had taken on the characteristics the cars had had. That same year I would start writing The Wild Years.

the new characters included also a new planet into The Twighlight Manor solar system: Planet Diona, and its formidable scientists who had infiltrated the earth. Testing lab scientists on Earth, were no longer humans, but now aliens. A later, rewrite would change this, and instead of animals, the alien scientist would do word for word everything that P&G did, only my scientist would do it to humans.

In 1993, The Twighlight Manor series took its final turn, becoming what it is known as today, when the addition of a prime villain known as The Lansquin was added to the series. The Lansquin was everything in my book that Proctor and Gamble was in real life. Every bloody glorified horror straight from the laboratories of Proctor & Gamble went straight into my books, under the guise of a deranged madmen bent of torturing every human to cross his path. His reason? For the good of science. For the good of mankind.

And that is how I came to write horror.

Though I write a wide range of other things, including children’s books and romance, it is for my Twighlight Manor series and it’s M rated graphic tales of horror that I am most well known. Yes, I love animals. Yes, I hate war and promote world peace. Yes, I abhor fighting and violence. And yes, I write some of the most graphic tales of gore ever written. Why? It is because I love animals and hate fighting that I write what I do: to open readers’ eyes, so that they too, may come to hate fighting and love peace. Peace for all, including peace for those who cannot speak for themselves. I speak for the animals. I write the tales they themselves cannot tell. I write in memory of those who died for the name of science, for the good of mankind. That is why I write horror, so that the animal who have died at the hands of P&G scientists, may not have died in vain.

~~Wendy.

Birds and Roses: My cure for writer’s block

My writing goal is to write between 1,000 to 2,000 words per day. My average per day, is much less… more like 400 – 700 per day, once every three days instead of every day. Well, it’s better than nothing, and I’m still inching my way to my goal.

My problem seems to lie in that I get the urge to write at times when I just can’t write, but than at the time I set aside to write, I’m to bored or restless or want to read or whatever… anything that is not writing basicly.

I’ll be right in the middle of something, say walking my dog, or cleaning the catbox, when this great idea well pop into my head, with not a pen or paper in sight. Than an hour or two later, I’ll finally get to some paper, and I find I can’t think of what I wanted to write down, or else I can’t get it worded right, or worse I’ve forgotten it all together!

I write amazing outlines. You should see the detailed historical timelines I can come up with for my story ideas… than I sit down, my outline in hand, ready to type the story itself and nothing. I’ll just sit staring at a blank screen wondering what to write about.

Than I’ll start typeing away, got a 1,000 words before I know it… WOO-HOO! I’m done for the day! Than I read what I wrote. Not one word of it goes with the book I’m working on; instead it goes with some book idea I gave up on 4 or 5 years ago.

sheesh! Now I have to start all over again, cause those 1,000 words didn’t count!

I find myself doing this all the time… the result is I end up working on 4 maybe 5 stories at any one given time, and never finish them on deadline.

The up side: When I do get finshed, I have 4 or 5 stories finished at the same time.

I’ve got a flower garden… with tall rose bushes over 13 feet tall. There’s one on each side of the path, and they grew up entwining to make a natural archway. Little songbirds sing and twitter all day long. It’s so peaceful and relaxing. There’s these old mossy logs, I sit on to do my writing. I find that if I’m stuck on my typeing on the computer, that the best way for me to get back on focus is to pack up a few pens and a lot of paper and head out and sit in the garden. By the time it’s dark I’ll have 30 or 40 pages written and I get to stay up all night typeing them into the computer. For me that is the best cure for “writer’s block”. I can’t explain it, but I do my best writing and my highest word count writing when sitting in the garden, listen to song birds and writing in longhand.

~~EK

See more progress on: write and publish a book

What do you look for in a book?

I’ve been reading through the threads on the net, and saw a lot of comments about wither or not certain books are worth reading. Well, that got me thinking, we want to write what people want to read, right?

Our goal is to improve our writing so that readers will enjoy what we wright, right? How do we go about improveing our writing? Well, I think the first step is to look at what we ourselves read. So, what is it that you read? Why do you read what you do? What is it that makes certain books enjoyable for you?

When you head to the library or the bookstore or even Amazon.com, what do you look for in a book?

What makes you choose to buy one book and not the other?

Try this excerise and see if it doesn’t help you to become a better writer. Sit down and think about what it is that makes a good book good to you, and write it down. I have just done this, and here is what I came up with:

When in the bookstore or library, the first thing that catches my eye is the cover art, I think about half of my 10, 000+ books I bought for the cover art, without ever reading the blubs or the book for that matter.

For books I actually read, the cover could be a blank white page for all I care… if it’s a good book, I’ll buy it regardless of the cover.

What makes it good for me: characters. I have to have at least one character that I can identify with or fall head over heels in love with or whom I can root for. I tend to favor male MCs over female, prob’ly because I’m a female and I like “falling in love with” the MC.

Second to the characters, I like good “life like” dialouge, and a lot of it. You can’t have a character driven story without dialouge. However, not all dialouge is good dialouge… you start harping out in barely legable ye old English and the book’ll get shelved before I finish the sentance. Make it sound real. You don’t speak in perfect grammar and neither should your characters.

Settings. Settings influance your characters. Settings should be well written and clear, free of confusion. Settings should not take the lime light though unless the setting itself is the MC. Remember that your story is about your characters not the setting, so keep that in balance.

Stories need a beginning and middle and an end, but I like stories best that “don’t quite end”, by that I mean, it leaves an opening hole so that there could be a second, third, or fourth book… in other words it alows the option to continue the story at a later date.

That brings us to what I find most important: a series. I love to read five, six, ten, twenty books about a single character, esp if it’s a character I can identify with.

Another factor that weighs in heavy is the genre of the story; if it’s a gothic romance with a terrified girl and haunted house on the cover, I’ll buy it no matter what it is, just cause I collect gothic romance books, eventually I read them, saddly only a few are actually worth reading, but the cover art was worth the price of the book.

The genre I enjoy reading the most is science fiction, followed by mystery, than horror, and lastly romance. Action and adventure stories are great, but there are so few writers that can really pull it off. Fantasy I like IF I can find any that is original… they all seem to be rip-offs of each other, they all sound alike, like they were all written by the same author… it gets boreing after a while.

~~EK

See more progress on: improve my writing

Self Publish? Vanity Press? Traditonal Publisher? Something Else?

A question I see time and time again is: Is *name of business here* a self publisher, vanity press, or traditional publisher? How do I tell the differance?

While there are many branches of the publishing tree, these 3 are the big limbs, from which all the branches shoot off of. Here is how to tell them apart:
a self publisher, is an author who gets a business license, buys the ISBN #s, hires a printing press (print shop/printer) to print the books, than sells them themself… the author keeps 100% of the profits, because no one pays royalities; you keep 100% of the copyright (which btw, does not cost a penny)… you market the book and distribute it through local bookstores and Amazon.com

a vanity press is a print shop/printer/printing press, that does that for you, they usually ask you to pay money for them to edit your MS, they also chagre you if you want a color cover, (often they charge you for such things as “the right to keep your copyright”, or the ISBN #, in addition to the cost of everything else they chage) and than pays you a percentange (royalty), after you first pay them for the books… the royalty they pay, though it may sound high, is actually very low, because you don’t see that money until after they have deducted what you “owe them” for printing the books… in short, they make money, while you go broke, and you may or may not get to keep the rights to your book, depending on how much money you paid to buy your own rights back from them… you market the book and distribute it through local bookstores and Amazon.com

a traditional publisher, hires editors who read your MS which you send to them; they recive thousands of MSs each week, so it may take up to 2 years before they get around to reading it; after they read it, they either reject it or accept it; if they accept it, you well be sent a contact (and often with a recommendation that you go over it with your literay agent/lawyer before you sign it). Once you sign the contract and send it back, than the publisher’s laywer checks it to be certain that all is in order (and done legally). The publisher is given the tempory copyright allowing them to print and distribute your book to the public… they hire and editor to type set and spell check your MS, than they hire an artist to create the cover art, they distribute the book to bookstores worldwide, you never own them a cent, they pay you royalties

in other words:

self publishing is you starting your own business (a publishing house) and earning an income

vanity press is you doing a lot of hard work, getting your book printed, and getting scammed out of the money that should be yours, while they get rich and leave you with nothing

traditional publishing is you hireing a business to to the work for you and you both earn an income

I hope this helps

~~EK

The Slush Pile

I just read this:

The shocking truth about the slush pile, where she tells her horror story of having to read the junk that makes up what editors call the slush pile.

Here is my answer: 

I know what you mean. I own a publishing house. Our books are all written in-house (by staff members) so we never had to worry about having a slush pile of submissions before. Two years ago we planned on adding a fiction magazine. To date we have yet to start the magazine. Why? Because of the hundreds of emails we get, we have yet to get a single submission that:

1) meets our guidelines

and

2) is legable enough to publish

I’t's pitiful really. We had such hopes for our fiction magazine. If only we had enough good stories submitted so we could go to press with it.

The problem I’m seeing is that most writers start out with:

<i>”I posted this on my blog and my readers loved it so I’m sending it in for your to publish.”</i>

or

<i>”I write for this great RPG and I can do stupendous first person accounts for my super great characters, that I just know you’ll love, even though they are from Harry Potter, I’m sure it’ll be alright if you publish my story.”</i>

Okay, first off, we don’t publish fan-fiction and secondly, how many people read your blog? Your mom and a few friends, right?

The problem I see (at least in our slush pile) is that every Tom, Dick, and Harry who owns a blog, thinks they are a writer, and, though they can post on a blog, they have a long ways to go before what they are blogging, can even begin to pass off as a great novel.

The hardest part of being an editor (for me anyways), is haveing to tell people this. I mean, I know what it’s like to get rejection slips from editors, I’ve got a stack of them myself. I was writing long before I was editing, I know how much it hurts to hear the truth about what you’ve written. Now I find myself being the one writing those rejection letters, and believe me, it’s not fun.

~~EK

FAQ: What is Space Dock 13?

What is Space Dock 13?

Other than my web site you mean?

The name Space Dock 13, like everything else, comes from the Twighlight Manor stories. As I said before, the Twighlight Manor is some what of a base camp for the aliens who live there. The #13 figures in strongly with the Manor’s history. Constuction for the Manor began in 1313, after a space craft was sent off course and crashed on Earth. During it’s construction 13 workers were killed when one of the walls crumbled. The Manor was abandoned and went unfinished. Years later, construction resumed, and it was the first Emporor Swanzen, who officaly made the Manor the space dock of planet Earth. His son Vielder added to the Manor, what would become one of the key elements behind the Manor’s curse…a giant floor clock. The clock sits in the front parlor, and at eight feet tall, it towers forbodingly over all who enter the front doors. The clock was said to fore tell doom, predicting the deaths of those who had at some point set foot in the Manor.

Vielder, was a merciless tyrant, his reign was one of terror. Vielder’s most famous additions to the Manor were two grizly rooms now boarded up…the first was known as “The Head Room”, and as it’s name implies was the room which stored his human head collection. Vielder saw the planet earth as a primative planet, and humans were nothing more to him, than alien animals waiting to be slaughtered and added to his ever growing trophy collection.

A second room added by Vielder, remained undiscovered for nearly 400 years. Upon aquiring the Manor in the late 1800’s, EelKat had every room, every item, every book, and every artifact cataloged. During that time, was discovered a room that EelKat cataloged as “The Wax Museum”. It was quite simply a room filled with what on first sight appeared to very life like waxworks. They were, in actuallity, taxidermed creatures from around the galaxy, many humans and earth animals make up part of the collection as well. Oddly though, while the room and the older figures were put there by Vielder in the 1400’s, EelKat’s scientists claimed that most of the human figures had been added in only the last 100 years, during the 1700-1800’s. And in the 150 years since the room’s discovery, it’s collection has nearly doubled in size. “The Wax Museum” remains one of the Manor’s darkest mysteries…who are the bodies? how do they get there? and who is continueing to expand Vielder’s horrid collection 400 years after his death? Since I’m writing the story, I know the answer to that….shockingly, the story’s darkest villain, is also one of it’s best loved heroes.

So what does any of ths have to do with Space Dock 13? Vielder’s reign of terror was the bloodiest ever seen, though not nearly as horrific as the murder’s comited by the book’s as of yet unidentified vilain…known only as The Lansquin’s most devoted follower: The Red Dragon The people began to call the Twighlight Manor, Space Dock 13, after the death of King Vielder. Vielder’s death marked the end of his reign of terror, and the beginning of a series of murders, marked by their horrific, yet artist, public display, and a madman’s riddles written with the blood of his victims. While Vielder’s murder was not the first, it was the first to include the now trademarked blood riddles. This first riddle told of a lost key, a cursed rhyme, and a 3′O clock chime of death. The words had no known meaning, until the next death that soon followed.

After the mysterious murder of King Vielder, the giant floor clock stopped working properly. Many clockmakers have since been brought in, the clock taken apart, even it’s gears removed in order to stop it from running at all, but nothing has ever stopped it from it’s new funtion. Upon Vielder’s death the clock began running backwards, keeping time as usual, just now in reverse. It no longer chimed on the hour, it makes no sound at all. No one ever winds the clock, and after having it’s gears removed, no one knows how it contiunes to run. Posessed is how it’s explained. Exorcists were brought in, and the clock still kept on running, keeping perfect time, going steadly on, ever backwards.

Than one day, it stopped. A small clattering sound was heard, and the inhabitants in the parlor at the time, figured the gears had finally run down…but it had not, the hands of the clock began to move ahead rapidly until reaching 3 O’clock and for the first time since Vielder’s death, it chimed, 3 simple chimes, than began to run just as normal as any other clock. Normal that is until, when twelve hours later it reached 3′O clock again and chimed thirteen times instead, than went back to running in reverse once again.

The curse of the clock, was thus seen for the first time…for death had stuck yet again, now in time with the thirteenth chime. Since that day, every person who sets foot in the Manor, even for a second, the clock knows the time of their death, and tells all who are in the parlor to hear. If ever you hear the parlor clock chimeing 3″O clock, than keeping time in perfect order, you know that some one somewhere will die twelve hours later when the clock chimes thirteen. And because of the clock’s thirteen chime, came the name Space Dock 13.

Topics: King Vielder, The Twighlight Manor, The Twighlight Manor Library

Writing Career

Writing is what I do more than anything else. I’ve got one novel complete, several started (some near completon, some just started, others at points in between.), and I’ve got about a hundred short stories (some finished, some not). Writing is my passion, but so far, I’ve not been paid in money/cash to do it. My goal is to change that and not oly get paid to write, but get paid to write on a steady basis so that I can make a living with my creativity.

See more progress on: get paid to write

Anyone got any ghostly advice?

well, I came on here today, because I am working on my novel… the one for this chalenge this time! it’s a ghost story, about a haunted house with several assorted ghosts living in it.

the “prime ghost” is the ghost of a black cat

the secondary ghost is a spirit possessed tree in the front yard

other ghosts include a hell hound, a bride, and a group of “little people” (not yet sure what to call these guys, they are somewhat like drawves or gnomes or leprechuans)

basicly I’m looking for any ideas, anyone might have, that they think would be useful in writing a ghost story; I’m looking for ghost cliches, urban ghost stories, how ghosts came to be, why do they haunt the places they haunt, how did they become ghosts, how can they escape from being a ghost, why might they haunt one person and not another, why are some ghosts goos while others are bad, how do ghosts kill people and why, and just about any ghostly idea you can come up with.

thanks for your help.

See more progress on: write and publish a book

Best thing for any writer!

Joining an online writer’s group was the best thing I ever did to boost my self esteem as a writer. I ended up joining about 20 differant online writing groups, I visit most of them only once every 4 or 5 months, however NaNoWriMo.org is one that I am on almost every week. The folks there are great, we share ideas, set writing goals, and of course there’s the NaNoWriMo 50k writing challange each November.

My advice for anyone looking to join an online writer’s group is that they must check out NaNoWriMo.org.

~~EK

See more progress on: join a writing group

Update on My progress

Well, I’m 2 weeks into May, and not sticking to my schedual very well. I’m getting about 700 words a day, done at a rate of one in every 3 days! I need to at least try to write more often or maybe write more when I do write. I did so much better during NaNo 06.

Well, my long-term goal for this project is to have it in print via LuLu before October, so I guess I can let it continue the way I’m going, cause at this rate I’ll still get finished in time. I may have to give myself 2 months to write instead of one.

How’s every one else doing?

See more progress on: write and publish a book

Shiver

My new book (Shiver) is well underway:

summary and outlines have been written up;
the plot is semi-worked out;
the cover has already been made and approved;
the first chapter is going along good

I’m striving to write 1000 to 2000 words a day. I figure that I can do that, cause I’ve done it before through NaNoWriMo; in that case the group’s goal was for it’s members to write 1667 words per day for 30 days ending with a short novel 50,000 words long or approx. 175 printed pages. In the end I had just under 200,000 words and almost 250 pages. I set that book aside though, and have yet to publish it. My NaNo entry was more of a “private book”, a personal challange to myself to see if I could push myself to write each and every day. I did and proved to myself that I could do it if I put my mind to it.

And so now I’m working on a book, using the same writing methods used by NaNoWriMo. This time I’m going at it with the goal of writing a publishable book, and to do it in three months or less, writing 1000 to 2000 words a day.

Let you know how it goes.

~~EK

See more progress on: write and publish a book

J.M.Barrie

“Always be a little kinder than necessary.” — J.M. Barrie

I wish more people would follow this advice. Life would be so much simpler, there would be nothieves breaking into your house, there would be no vandles destroying property, there would be no corrupt town managers cheering them on to fullfill his greed. Today is J.M.Barrie’s birthday. Answers.com has this to say about him:

J. M. Barrie

Sir James Mathew Barrie, Bt., Scottish author

Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937), more commonly known as J. M. Barrie, was a Scottish novelist and dramatist. Most people remember him for inventing the character of Peter Pan, whom he based on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys.

Born in Kirriemuir, Angus, the second-youngest of ten children, Barrie received his formal education at the Glasgow Academy and the University of Edinburgh. He became a journalist in Nottingham, then London, and turned to writing novels and subsequently plays. He is also accredited for the invention of the name Wendy, as only five records of girls named Wendy can be found before the 1910 census.

Made a baronet in 1913, Barrie lies buried at Kirriemuir next to his parents, sister, and elder brother David, who had died in a skating accident just before his 14th birthday.

Childhood

J.M. Barrie’s family were Scottish weavers; he was the ninth child of ten. When he was 6, his 13-year old older brother David, his mother’s favorite, died in a skating accident on the eve of his 14th birthday. His mother never recovered from the loss, and ignored J.M. His father would not interact at all with the children. When he would enter a room and see his mother, she would always say “David, is that you? Could it be you?” and when she realized that it was J.M., she would say “Oh, it’s only you.” Barrie’s mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her. This had a profound impact on J.M. Not only was he mentally scarred with the notion that growing up was wrong, J.M. himself stopped growing at five feet. Many have obviously speculated that Peter Pan is based on J.M.’s childhood.

Literary career

Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, London

Barrie set his first novels in Kirriemuir which he referred to as “Thrums” (his father worked as a weaver). Barrie often wrote dialogue in Scots. His Thrums novels were hugely successful when they were published starting with Auld Licht Idylls (1888). Next came A Window in Thrums (1889), and The Little Minister (1891). His two ‘Tommy’ novels Sentimental Tommy and Tommy and Grizel came in 1896 and 1902 and dealt with themes much more explicitly related to what would become Peter Pan. The first appearance of Pan came in The Little White Bird (1901).

Barrie also wrote a number of works for the theatre, beginning with Ibsen’s Ghost (1891), a parody of Henrik Ibsen‘s drama Ghosts, which had just been performed for the first time in England under the Independent Theatre Society led by J. T. Grein. Barrie’s play was first performed on May 31 at Toole’s Theatre in London. Barrie seemed to appreciate Ibsen’s merits; even William Archer, the translator of Ibsen’s works into English, enjoyed the humor of the play and recommended it to others. Barrie also authored the flop, Jane Annie (1893), which he begged his friend Arthur Conan Doyle to revise and finish, when he suffered the first of his many nervous breakdowns. Notable successes included Quality Street (1901) and The Admirable Crichton (1902).

Barrie’s most famous and enduring work, Peter Pan had its first stage performance on December 27 1904. In 1924 he specified that the copyright of the play should go to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The current status of the copyright is complex. See Peter Pan Copyright Status. Later plays included What Every Woman Knows (1908) and his last play, The Boy David (1936), which dramatized the Biblical story of King Saul and the young David. Like the role of Peter Pan the role of David was played by a woman — Elisabeth Bergner.

Barrie, along with a number of other playwrights, was involved in the 1909 and 1911 attempts to challenge the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain over play production in London.

Acquaintances

Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson were acquaintances from university. The three of them attended Edinburgh University and they also worked for the college newspaper. J.M. Barrie met Thomas Hardy through Hugh Clifford while he was staying in London.

The Llewelyn-Davies family

The Llewelyn-Davies family consisted of the parents Arthur (1863–1907) and Sylvia, née du Maurier (1866–1910) (daughter of George du Maurier), [married the 3Q of 1892 in Hampstead, London: GROMI: vol. 1a, p. 1331]; and their five sons George Llewelyn-Davies (1893–1915), John Llewelyn-Davies or Jack (1894-1959), Peter Llewelyn-Davies (1897–1960), Michael Llewelyn-Davies (1900–1921), and Nicholas Llewelyn-Davies or Nico (1903–1980).

Barrie became acquainted with the family in 1897 or 1898 after meeting George and Jack with their nurse Mary Hodgson in London‘s Kensington Gardens where he often came while walking his dog Porthos, and lived nearby. He did not meet Sylvia until later at a chance encounter at a dinner party.

He became a surrogate father to the boys, and when they were orphaned, he became their guardian. Some sources say that their mother will specify the nurse’s sister was to take custody and that Barrie forged or unintentionally mistranscribed the will. However, it was clear that he was the only one with the time and resources to bring them up together, and Sylvia objected to splitting the boys up amongst relatives.

Although there will always be those who find cause for suspicion in his friendship with children, there is no evidence that anything inappropriate happened, and the youngest of the boys, Nico, flatly denied that Barrie ever behaved in an unfit manner. Barrie was married to the actress Mary Ansell but it was a sexless and childless marriage and ended in divorce. He was godfather to Peter Scott.

The statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, erected in secret overnight for May Morning in 1912, was supposed to be modelled upon a photograph of Michael, but the sculptor decided to use a different child as a model, leaving Barrie very disappointed with the result. “It doesn’t show the devil in Peter”, he said.

Barrie suffered bereavements with the boys, losing the two to whom he was closest. George was killed in action (1915) in World War I. Michael, with whom Barrie corresponded daily, drowned (1921) in a possible suicide pact one month short of his 21st birthday, while swimming at a known danger-spot at Oxford with his friend and suspected lover Rupert Errol Victor Buxton. Some years after Barrie’s death, Peter Davies, later a publisher, wrote his ‘Morgue’, which contains much family information and comments on Barrie. At the age of 63 Peter committed suicide by jumping in front of a London Underground train.

Biographical Articles

• The Story of J.M.B. by Sewell Stokes, Theatre Arts, Vol.XXV No.11, New York: Theatre Arts Inc, Nov 1941, pp 845-848.

Film biographies

J. M. Barrie

The BBC made an award-winning miniseries by Andrew Birkin, The Lost Boys at the Internet Movie Database (also titled J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys), in 1978, starring Ian Holm as Barrie and Ann Bell as Sylvia. It is considered factual, includes Arthur Llewelyn-Davies (Tim Piggot-Smith), and confronts the issue of Barrie’s affection for the Davies boys. (The DVD is available in both the UK and USA)

A semi-fictional movie about his relationship with the family, Finding Neverland, was released in November 2004, starring Johnny Depp as Barrie and Kate Winslet as Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies. It omits Arthur and Nico.

Both films receive comment in the New Yorker .