A Week with Snow and Shovels

Posted on December 19, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Okay, this week didn’t go exactly as planned.  I can’t even be sure of how I fell a little behind on the writing side of things.  Not enough that it destroys me, but I’m simply confused.  Time may have gotten away from me here.  Yet, it also had long moments of going slow.  Did I sit on my butt more often than I should have?  Not like I can do anything about it.   Still, it was a week . . . Seriously, what in the world was I up to?

I think stress is partially to blame.  Work was busy, but in a way that didn’t make me want to scream.  It just didn’t give me much thinking time.  The quiet moments were met with almost a serene meditation in preparation of the next move.  Also, getting stuff ready for the future since we’re heading into holiday break next week.  Work stress was just enough to have me slightly unfocused when I got home, so I ended most nights falling asleep before I was ready.  That’s been the norm since the weather got cold though.

I didn’t have my son this week, but we spent last Saturday together for Hanukah and Monday evening for our usual father/son night.  Had a lot of fun both times with cartoons, making latkes, homework, studying, watching ‘The Grinch’ from 2018, and playing some Super Smash Bros.  We’re both waiting for them to put Sephiroth in the store because I’ve been hoping for him to be a playable character for years.  Now, they only need to do the same with Alucard from Castlevania and I’ll be 100% happy.  Beyond all of that, my son and I had a fun time.

Although, there was the issue of him having two big tests this week.  On the same day too and he has a third next week.  With him being with his mom, I couldn’t do anything to help him study once Monday was over.  This was a first for me, so I was getting really antsy about things.  It’s really hard to know your child is going through a really big challenge and you’re not even on the sideline.  This gets doubled when you’ve been with him for every other obstacle in his education.  From what I can tell, he did good, but the worry definitely took its toll on me.  I’m planning on us taking it easy tomorrow with maybe some movie time even though we have to study too.  It’s always a quiet first day back.  Although, I promised him a scavenger hunt for all of his Hanukkah toys since he was with his mom for the holiday.  That should be fun.

My big goal was finishing the first big section of Do I Need to Use a Dragon? since I was 13 entries away.  Figured it was possibly since I had 7 days.  The plan was to write 2 each weekday and 3 last Sunday and today.  Well . . . things didn’t work out.  I got 3 written on that Sunday, but the next 3 days only had time for 1 entry.  Of course, we got a snow day in the Northeastern U.S.  That should have put me back on track, but there were two issues.  It was really cold and shoveling wore me down.  I only got 2 entries done before I ran out of energy.  Yesterday was another 1 and I doubt I’m going to get the last 4 done today before my son gets home.  Next writing period for me will be Christmas day, so I’ll work on getting blog stuff done to clear my plate of those things.

Another thing that got in the way is that certain people keep dropping things in my lap or calling me away from my laptop.  I should be used to this, but it’s a lot more disruptive when it comes to Do I Need to Use a Dragon?   With a fiction book, I can slide back into the mentality by looking over my outline or glancing at the screen.  Here, I’m speaking with my own voice and fighting against doubt in my own knowledge.  It takes a lot of time to craft the sentences to get my point across.  If I’m shaken out of my thoughts mid-paragraph then I have to read through the entire entry again because I need to get back on track.  It’s been really bad this week.  So, a section of this book takes longer than one of my fantasy books even without distractions.  At this rate, I’m guessing end of February or middle of March is when I’ll be done with this.  Got 45 sections to go.  Be nice to get it down to 41 by Monday, but I’m doubting it.

That’s been my week really.  Enjoyed some wine and learned red doesn’t really sit well with my senses.  Definitely more of a white or rose person.  I finished watching ‘Yu Yu Hakusho’ and got HBO Max set up on my Roku.  Been making my way through the rest of ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and I think I’ll finish that up this week.  I want to watch the ‘Harley Quinn’ cartoon, but I might save that for the first week in January.  My son can hear the names Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy from across the house.  If he starts to wake up across the hall and hears that then he might come to check it out, but it’s not for his age.  Safer to pick a short anime or something.  I really do have too many shows that I want to watch.

With next week being half work and half the start of break, I’m hoping to get some stuff done and relax.  I have my son for most of it though, so writing isn’t going to be very high on the list.  Still:

  1. Time with son.
  2. Time at work/school.
  3. Write more Do I Need to Use a Dragon?
  4. Finish watching Schitt’s Creek.
  5. Maybe some outline work.
  6. Watch ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ next weekend.
  7. Puzzle work.
  8. Get pizza at some point.
  9. Stay warm.
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7 Tips to Outlining in Some Fashion

Posted on December 18, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

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I’m really surprised that I never did a post like this in all the years that I’ve been blogging about writing.  If I did then WordPress isn’t letting me find it.  Now, not everyone takes the route of planning their story.  So, there will be people who don’t get much out of this.  For those who do, I hope this helps because outlining can be one of the more frustrating stages of writing.

  1. There is no perfect way to do an outline.  It’s whatever way makes you comfortable and helps you remember things.  It could be single facts in a hierarchy, chapter breakdowns, or one big paragraph to give a general idea of the story.  You can even use multiple methods or change it up as you progress.  It’s all up to you.  Maybe your characters too depending on how rowdy they are in this stage.
  2. Look at the outline as if it’s a skeleton.  This is the framework of your story, but that’s really it.  Might not even be in the right order, so you can rearrange the bones until they fit correctly.  Looking at an outline this way can take the pressure off making it perfect because things will look different once you start adding the guts.  Oh, and the editing is the skin.
  3. Design your own shorthand if you want to be detailed, but have limited space or time.  If you’re going to write long sentences then you might as well get the writing part of thing.  There are no real rules to this idea because it’s something that you design for your own information.  The trick is remembering it because it may be a while before you get to the actual writing.
  4. Grammar and spelling don’t count when outlining.  Seriously, the key is to just get the ideas on the page before they fade into the mental vapor.
  5. While not an outline, it doesn’t hurt to do character biographies.  You can get a general idea of physical description, history, personality, and goals by doing this.  By focusing on the one character, you can really flush them out to a point where they may be easier to handle when writing.  Many subplots and character building paths will appear, which can be added to your outline in simpler notes. Will you use everything that you write here?  No, but it doesn’t hurt to have them and you can do a bio during a time when you can’t get to writing.  Just mark up a napkin when eating lunch at work.
  6. Do not believe that you have to perfectly stick to your outline.  Things always change once you start writing.  An idea that worked in your head might be terrible once you get it on paper.  Other things might turn out to be in the wrong spot, so you have to move them around.  More possibilities include: removing sections, adding sections, changing entire subplots, merging sections, and total rewrites of the outline because it’s a later book in a series where the characters tend to go off the rails.
  7. Know when to stop outlining and get to writing.  There is an odd sense of safety when working on this because it isn’t the part you’re going to show to others.  You can fix mistakes and nobody will know.  Grammar and spelling aren’t important.  Titles, characters, and everything connected to an outline is fluid.  It’s only when you start writing that things become much more real.  Many authors find comfort in the outlining/planning stage, especially when they do it alongside reading ‘how to write’ books.  It feels like you’re making progress and learning your trade, but you don’t take that final step where knowledge and outlines are merged to become a real story.  It doesn’t matter if you’ll tear it apart with editing too.  Just as long as you realize that it’s time to move on.
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Three Literary Elements: Symbolism

Posted on December 18, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Ciao, SEers.  Today is a two-fer. I’m writing the last of my posts on literary elements, and I’m also writing my last post of the year. And what a …

Three Literary Elements: Symbolism
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Check This Out: The Unicorns Who Saved Christmas

Posted on December 18, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

With me on the blog today is the marvelous Mary Winn Heider, another Secret Gardener classmate, who is here today to talk about her picture book, The…

Check This Out: The Unicorns Who Saved Christmas
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Questions 3: Your Favorite Pieces of Fiction

Posted on December 17, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Mary Poppins

We all have preferences and favorites.  Sometimes, we can be a little pushy in sharing these while other times our declarations are perfectly accepted.  In a way, these interactions can be considered a piece of promoting.  It’s usually for popular and well-known stories, but this can be a bump an indie creator.  I think.  Honestly, I’m not really sure how much it helps right now.  Anyway, let’s share our favorites here in a nice relaxing post:

  1. What is your favorite book if you had to pick one?
  2. What is your favorite movie if you had to pick one?
  3. What is your favorite TV show if you had to pick one?

My answers:

  1. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.  Love the psychological aspect of it.
  2. This is a tough one.  I would have to be with ‘The Matrix’ because I always stop when I see that one on TV.
  3. I think I get why it’s so hard.  People’s tastes change over time.  Still, I can think of one show that is currently my favorite.  ‘M.A.S.H.’ became a show that I binged right after the divorce because it made me smile.  I have trouble finding episodes when I’m free now and I don’t want to stream it.  Really enjoyed stumbling onto it.
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The Culmination – now on sale!

Posted on December 17, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

coldhandboyack's avatarEntertaining Stories

Let’s all welcome Gwen Plano to Entertaining Stories. She’s an author friend and one of my partners over at Story Empire. She’s here to tell us about an incredible sale. Don’t forget to use those sharing buttons so your friends can get in on this, too. Take it away, Gwen.

Thank you for inviting me to your blog, Craig, and for helping me launch The Culmination, a new beginning. It’s exciting to finally see it published on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To celebrate, the Kindle edition is on sale at 99¢ through December.

So, what’s the book about? The Culmination can best be described as a military thriller. It tackles difficult topics such as denuclearization, the power struggles over oil in the Middle East, as well as the ever-present danger of war. Readers will find themselves sitting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, walking in the historic Red…

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Season’s Readings: Christmas-Themed Stories

Posted on December 17, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Staci Troilo's avatarStaci Troilo

Ciao, amici! The year is winding down, and I haven’t even baked a single cookie yet. I’m so behind!

That’s probably why I haven’t mentioned these offerings yet. If you haven’t read them and you’re not running behind (like I am), you might want to check them out. The good news is, they’re quick reads. One’s a steamy standalone novella, one’s a short spinoff of the Cathedral Lake Series, and one’s an anthology with many contributors, so you can devour any of them fast. Even better? The novella and spinoff are only 99¢ each and the anthology is free, so they’re all absolute bargains.

Bright Lights and Candle Glow is an anthology with holiday-themed stories from eight different authors. I think you’ll find these aren’t your usual Christmas stories. I won’t tell you what my story was about, but I will say it’s a departure from my current “kill everyone”…

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When Your Story Is Stolen By Reality

Posted on December 16, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

I think many of us have seen the ‘Simpsons Predicted It’ articles and memes on the Internet.  Seems the show has been around so long that it’s bound to get a few odd things right from time to time.  We find it amusing and silly, but it seems to happen a lot more often than we realize.  It can be really awkward and disconcerting as you’re about to see coming up.

First, a story about myself.  Way back in the spring of 2015, I wrote a dystopian action adventure comedy called Crossing Bedlam.  Some people might remember this currently defunct series.  The premise was that the rest of the world joined forces to isolate the United States because it was causing trouble.  This idea stemmed from another idea I made in the summer of 2014 called ‘The Shattered States’.  Name and setting stuck, but I traded politics for a Rated-R adventure because I had just watched ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ and ‘Deadpool’ in one sitting.  Anyway, part of the history here is that there was physically isolation by heavily armed walls being on the land borders to keep the Americans inside the country.  International navy took care of the waters with extreme violence because this was going to be a silly idea.  I really enjoyed writing this and thought things were so bizarre that I was in the clear.  I mean, right?

I finished writing the book and put it on the shelf to edit later.  A few days later, I put the news on and hear the first speech about a wall to stop people from entering the country from Mexico.  Needless to say, I was a little confused because it did feel like it struck really close to the concept I was going for.  Even worse, I went through my notes for future ideas, which I made the same day I finished the outline for Crossing Bedlam.  What was the note?  ‘Nevada- Old billionaire and politicians take over state; Put bounty on Lloyd and Cassidy.’  I planned to have the billionaire working towards taking over the entire country to bring it back to what he felt was its greatest period.  He’d have family and loyal sycophants by his side.

No sense in hiding the real world connection.  I had scratched the idea off the list when Donald Trump won the nomination and didn’t publish Crossing Bedlam until the following February.  I was terrified that people would look at what I was doing simply by coincidence and think it was all on purpose.  I try really hard to keep my politics out of my stories, so this felt like a danger zone that I was steadily approaching. A few years later, I did write that book and put it up on my blog by sections as ‘Protecting Bedlam’.  This was more for catharsis and wanting to see how wild I could go.  The series wasn’t selling, so why not?  Even when doing this, I was really scared about the accusations that would fly and if it would hurt the rest of my books.  It can be paralyzing when you see reality imitating your story, especially if you haven’t published it yet.  So, what can you do?

  1. Trash the story and find something else.  This is the one that I see very often with new authors.  I’ve done it too.  We can be scared to connect our fiction to reality because it brings in certain expectations.  Those involved in events will want the facts to be right even if you didn’t intend for there to be a connection.  Many find it easier to junk everything and start over.  That way, you avoid any of the pitfalls that come from fact checkers that mistake your fiction for commentary on reality.
  2. Historical events can always be similar, so you may need to do some research to put your mind at ease.  Maybe what is going on has happened before, so your story isn’t connected solely to the modern event.  You may still junk it, but now you can see that there is a precedent (right word?) for what you’re thinking of.  Expect fact-checkers here too, but now you’re better suited for handling them.
  3. Stay the course and put the reality out of your mind.  Coincidences happen, which isn’t your fault.  By the time you finish the book and are ready to publish, people will have moved on to something else, right?  Even if they haven’t, you’re sure tons of other authors are going to pounce on the event.  This is the case at times, especially if you have controversy.  You could see yourself as being ahead of the game and maybe striking first.  This is a viable option.

Of course, all of this comes with risks.  People don’t always understand what came first or believe a person if they said they were working on the idea when reality stepped in.  I had plenty of people accuse me of taking inspiration from current events when I designed the ‘Shattered States’.  They didn’t believe that I created the world in 2014 for a failed idea and simply reused it for the newer idea that I finished in 2015 and published in 2016.  Just happened that way.  One could always point out that it takes a long time to create a story and get it to the public, so the chances of reality stepping in is actually higher than one would think.  Just that you’ll always have that group who doesn’t believe you.

So, have you ever written or designed a story that is suddenly mimicked by reality?  What did you do?  If it hasn’t happened, what would you do if it did?

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Meet Guest Author, Barbara Spencer…

Posted on December 15, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

However did I end up here? That is a question I frequently ask myself. Was I destined to become an author? If so the gods in heaven weren’t on my …

Meet Guest Author, Barbara Spencer…
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Music of Legends of Windemere: Family of the Tri-Rune

Posted on December 15, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

Welcome back to the musical fun!  Things are getting more difficult because I’m terrible at remembering songs and keep changing favorite artists.  A title or single line might make me think of a book, which isn’t good enough for this project.  Now, let’s see the trio for Legends of Windemere: Family of the Tri-Rune.

This one is mostly about Timoran Wrath who officially debuts.  For those who haven’t read the book, this is the powerful and wise barbarian of the group.  This is more about two men in a ring, but it still fits.  There are a few sparring and one-on-one matches mixed in as well.

Really big difference between the two songs.  While the first one is about the power and strength of Timoran Wrath, this one keeps mentioning a wise man.  I think it works for his more insightful side.  This book is also where the Luke Callindor/Sari/Kira Grasdon love triangle really kicked off.  All three grew out of this subplot and I played this song during a few of the more emotional scenes due to the somberness.

There’s a lot about identity and learning who you are in this book.  Well, also learning about who is really what they appear to be.  So, this one does come in as a shaky third.  Honestly, there weren’t any songs about mothers and fathers that spoke to me enough for me to touch on the family side of the story.

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