All future proceeds from book sales of Red Clay and Roses will be donated to The Russell Home for Atypical Children. Most of my readers know that my mother died when I was age eight, I lived in foster homes, and then The Ethel Home for Children and Youth in Cedartown, GA.
For several weeks, I searched the Orlando area for a similar type children’s group home and found none. There is a thrift store run by The Russell Home near my daughter’s house. We shop there and always buy our Christmas trees from them. I got information from them and toured the facility last week.
Ideally, atypical children are best served in their own homes. I worked pediatric extended care for eight years as a registered nurse and know that there are some situations when that simply is not possible. Foster Homes for children with special needs are not…
The theme for this week is ‘Author Life’, which I’m guessing I wrote up while I was exhausting or a little buzzed. I figure part of the challenge here is to figure out what I was talking about. Anyway, there are many aspects to the life of an author. These are pieces of our day/existence that might make us stand out from non-author/artist life. I’ll touch on a few this week like style, time, confidence, ‘big moment’, and influences. There’s a ton more, but these are the ones I want to bring up.
The biggest part of being an author is finding your style, voice, or whatever you want to call it. This is how you sound on paper/screen when you write. It’s a complicated aspect that is hard to describe because every author has their own interpretation of what it is. This is why every author is truly unique. Even if you’re going to try to emulate your favorite author, you’ll have your own tiny twist on it. This is why it can be hard to explain your style in simple terms. For example, I write in a present tense, 3rd person POV, dialogue and action heavy, flourished style. That is what I’ve developed over the years and I couldn’t really tell you where I got it from. Different parts appeared at different times.
A key point in a style is that it evolves over time. What you are doing now might not be what you do in a year or two. You could find a piece of writing that appeals to you and add it to your repertoire to make something new. As strange as it sounds, think of writing style as a Pokemon. It develops over time through experience and discovering new moves. It can evolve into something bigger and stronger than before too. Just don’t try to go out and have your style battle other styles. Also, do NOT put tiny creatures into air-tight balls and throw them at people. There might not be specific laws against it, but it falls under animal cruelty and assault . . . I guess.
Here is where you will find ‘trouble’ when it comes to style. There are many people out there who feel their style is better or that certain ones are bad. True, an author who couldn’t spell their way out of kindergarten or has the grammar skills of a wombat earn the criticism. Yet, those are not part of style because they tend to be across the board. You can’t say that misspelling words is how you roll, but you can say that using 1st Person POV is your zone.
So, when you find yourself being told that your style is wrong or crappy, what do you do?
Well, you could cry, eat enough ice cream to get your own zip code, go for the world record in nonstop swearing, or do something productive. I suggest that 4th option. It’s not even that difficult if you calm down and think about it. The person is entitled to their opinion, but that is what it is. Maybe your style can evolve from their criticism, but you shouldn’t change it entirely to suit a handful of people who enjoy a certain style. I did that once and it was terrible. This is why I say to stand by your style and let it grow in the way that you want it to grow. In the end, you have to be happy with what you wrote and the key to being proud of it is to claim your style.
I’m not going to put anything here about how to find your style or evolve it. I will talk about how mine came about and hope other authors share their story. In high school, I wrote ‘Immortal Wars: The Summoning’ and let some people read it. They told me that I swapped tenses all the time and to pick one. Well, I chose present tense because it felt natural and stuck with it ever sense. I found I was good at dialogue and action, so I put a focus on that. With every book, movie, or show I found, I added new ideas for characters and stories. So I couldn’t tell you where every piece came from. I did stumble a lot as I stated earlier. I rewrote ‘Beginning of a Hero’ once to appease some critics and it felt like I torn its heart out. Took me years to get it back to what it once was and I think I grew stronger from the incident. I realized I had to be me and I’ll play with other styles on the side like with ‘The Hopeteller’ and ‘Catalysts’. Yet, my core style will be what gives birth to Windemere and I stand by that.
This is the 53rd edition of What Not to Do, which is a great weekly series done by the great John W. Howell. This week I’ve been permitted to join in the fun. This list will appear on Legends of Windemere post as well as on Fiction Favorites.
Top Ten Things Not to do When Writing with a Toddler Around
10. If you are trying to write your book while supervising a hungry toddler, do not give them the entire box of their favorite cereal in lieu of cooking dinner. At best, they will scatter the contents of the box around the room and give you an hour of focused vacuuming to do during your break. At worst, their cereal will be high in sugar and you will spend the rest of the week gluing all of your wife’s pottery back together.
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9. If you are trying to write your book while supervising a loud toddler, do not wear headphones to drown them out with heavy metal music. At best, you will find that they took advantage of your obliviousness and cleaned all of your underwear in the toilet. At worst, you will find that they started a ‘Pet Breakfast Club’ in the basement with the hamster, the bird, and a cat that you have never seen before.
8. If you are trying to write your book while supervising an energetic toddler, do not put them in the backyard to wear themselves out while you ‘watch’ from inside. At best, you will find them trapped in a tree, under the bushes, or at the top of their swing set. At worst, you will find that they drove the riding mower throughout the neighborhood and now you have to throw a BBQ to make peace with the neighbors.
7. If you are trying to write your book while supervising a sleeping toddler, do not fill the silent void with music. At best, they will stay asleep, but your concentration will break every time the music sounds a bit too loud. At worst, they will wake up and take screeching vengeance on the parent who dared disturb their slumber.
6. If you are trying to edit a print out of your book while supervising an imaginative toddler, do not leave your manuscript alone for more than a few seconds. At best, you will find that someone played ‘editor’ with a pink highlighter and left their sweating sippy cup on your chair. At worst, you will return to find the pages strewn across the office by a child who announces himself as ‘Princess Else’ and asks if you want to make a snowman. This is also when you realize that Microsoft Word doesn’t automatically put page numbers on documents.
5. If you are trying to write your book while supervising a talkative toddler, do not try to continue typing while holding a conversation. At best, you will write gibberish because your fingers have slipped one key to the left and you never noticed. At worst, you will unknowingly include the conversation in your manuscript and give your editor more embarrassing ammo to tease you with. Even worse, your editor doesn’t catch the issue and you publish with the hero and villain discussing why big boys don’t poop in their underwear.
4. If you are trying to write your book while waiting for the toddler to come home from school, do not ignore the clock and push your time to the final minute. At best, you will have to go running out to the bus without shoes and wearing your lucky ‘Hello, Kitty’ author shirt. At worst, you never hear the bus, your toddler is trapped for the rest of the route, and you get a delightful call from the bus company that they are not transporting your child.
3. If you are trying to write your book while supervising a curious child, do not scream at them for asking the same question 13 times. At best, they will get upset and throw a tantrum that signifies the end of your writing day. At worst, you will teach him several colorful words that he will gladly repeat to his mother, grandparents, teachers, strangers in public, and the head of your church/synagogue.
2. If you are trying to write your book while supervising an attentive toddler, do not read what you’re typing out loud. At best, you will be bombarded by questions about your book that will cause you to realize that you have no idea what you’re doing. At worst, your toddler will learn about what mommy and daddy do behind closed doors because you happened to be writing a graphic sex scene.
1. If you are trying to write your book while supervising a rambunctious toddler, do not duct tape them to the wall for a few moments of peace. At best, the child will get free and collect various objects on the tape while rushing around the house. At worst, your spouse will come home with parents in tow and you’ll wake up in the hospital with a police officer and divorce lawyer hovering over you.
Originally posted on S.K. Nicholls: I have been planning a summertime sale of Red Clay and Roses for over a month now and wanted it to coincide with a promotional I am doing with Ereader News Today. It took…
Now that that is out of the way, I can gleefully say that I finished the preliminary notes for ‘The Elysium Saga’. That means I’m doing the add on books for two series and apologizing for misspellings of this post. I’m writing this just after getting back from a big BBQ and I’m exhausted. I’d write it up tomorrow, but it’s a cleaning day for the reason I’m about to mention.
Long distance family is coming on Monday and staying until Wednesday. This means I’ll be away from the computer for most of Tuesday. I’ll be using Hootsuite for tweets and doing some morning stuff, but I really won’t be on until that evening. That will only be to answer comments and personal email, so my presence on WordPress might be limited for that day. After that I need to prep the posts for Hype Week. I should also go over The Compass Key once to make sure I have everything down pat.
It’s really going to be a straightforward week with very little going on besides family stuff and writing. Last week was the same. My goal for the month is to get The Compass Key edited, covered, and formatted. I might have the blurbs up today or later in the week for a day to get input. As usual, I’ll be taking them down after 24 hours of getting feedback. This might not happen until later in the week when I have a chance to look over them again.
Here are the goals:
Clean a little for guest even though I did my part of the cleaning already. HA!
Work on the ‘Add On’ books for Clyde’s series and Darwin’s series.
Prepare some of the Hype Week Posts. Cover Reveal post and ‘Now Available’ Posts can’t be done until I have everything, but I can get the poems and excerpts set up.
Start reading over and doing a quick fix of The Compass Key while formal edits continue.
Move biking up to almost every day. Seems there will always be at least 1 day in the week where this is impossible unless I wake up before the sun. That is SO not going to happen.
Dump water on wife’s face after finishing this post because I’m pretty sure she feel asleep on the floor of the toddler’s room again.
I need you my dear readers to help me promote my latest book, Love: Lost and Found.
I’m setting up a mini blog tour that will start on July 20. Would you be willing to help me out? I will email you a file that you just have to copy and paste into your blog. I would so appreciate it.
If you can help, please email me at pamela984@yahoo.com – include your blog address please – and I will send you the file and your scheduled date.
World on the edge
Teetering toward ruin
With humanity dancing on the rim
All aware of what lies below
Yet unable to pull away
Have we done this dance before?
In a different life and form?
Push our world to exhaustion
And a frightening frustration
That reminds us we are guests
One day the darkness will consume
Leaving the scraps of the past
To grow and rebuild
Another attempt to get it right?
Or the endless cycle of our kind?
A big headache for genre writing is that nearly every reader has their own set of rules about how that genre should work. They have their favorite authors and all others get compared to those ‘elite’. Any deviation is met with disagreement or outright rage because god forbid you have two fantasy authors who take different approaches to the genre. So I’m going to have a little fun here and go over a few rules that have been hurled my way over the years:
YOU HAVE TO KILL CHARACTERS– No I don’t. Just because you have a disturbing blood lust doesn’t mean I have to give you a body count. We can’t all write ‘Game of Thrones’, which is actually a rarity in terms of death. 8 of the 9 Fellowship members survived Lord of the Rings. Drizzt is still kicking around since the 1980’s. Conan is still alive. Percy Jackson, Will Treaty, the Pevensie Children, Harry Potter, and so many others make it through their stories. Just because the popular series is all about characters not being safe from the author’s reaping doesn’t mean every author has to fall into line. Besides, I find it’s a lot more interesting to torment my characters and have them continue walking on until they are forever changed instead of saying ‘time for you to become worm food’.
TOO MUCH/NOT ENOUGH SEX– Make up your mind, people! When did we start thinking that graphic sex was part of fantasy? Well, one person said April 17, 2011 is when this occurred. This is a really silly thing to get on an author’s case about since every person has their own thoughts on the matter. For example, I don’t feel comfortable writing a graphic sex scene. I’ll do the making out and the afterglow, but I’ll never go into detail about the act. Some people say this goes too far and makes it erotica. Others say it doesn’t go far enough. Either way, the author and both sides of this coin are right. Just like death, there’s no rule about how much sex should or should not be in fantasy. So stop getting angry about it.
A WIZARD DID IT IS NOT AN EXPLANATION– ‘A wizard did it’ is a comical response toward somebody asking too much about something that requires a level of disbelief. Massive dragons flying, fireball spells, flying cities, and a lot of the fantastical aspects of the genre come under scrutiny for being unrealistic. Try and really wrap your head around that one. People want there to be plausible, real world explanations for magic and monsters. Most times it’s not even everything that confuses them, but one or two aspects. Flinging lightning bolts in battle is good. Waterfalls that run up instead of down is a travesty. Goblins and elves are cool. Dragons wouldn’t be able to fly on those kinds of wings. Sometimes you simply have to release your inner child and go with it instead of tearing the magic out of the story. (Clarification Edit) And, Authors, this does not mean go wild with the crazy. Consistency and sense within the world is still important. At the very least, you can have an explanation to hand out to the question even if you can’t find a clear place in the book to explain it. Seriously, who stops a fight with a troll to explain their regenerative powers or why they’re as flammable as gasoline?
THAT IS SO CLICHE!– Fantasy has a lot of standard creatures, so using any of them can bring on this ‘rule’. Elves get this more than anything because they always tend to be the pretty, snobby blondes. Because of this mentality, you have a lot of authors avoiding monsters and magic races altogether. Those who continue get derided for not bringing in anything fresh. Well, this is a flimsy argument. Humans, swords, armor, battle, politics, religions, magic, and just about everything in the genre can be pointed at as a cliche. I think this stems from people having their favorite books and hating everything that doesn’t match those stories. For example, early on I had someone telling me that dragons are so cliche in fantasy and said I should write something like ‘Game of Thrones’. I pointed out that there are dragons in there and they promptly claimed that it was ‘different’. If it flies like a dragon, has scales like a dragon, and people scream ‘look out for the dragon!’ then it’s a FUCKING DRAGON!
THE THIEF SHOULD BE SUSPICIOUS– This is a strange one because it is promoting a cliche under the guise of the author missing an opportunity. Now, a thief that is worth his skills wouldn’t be suspicious unless the author wants to make it obvious. In that case, the reader either groans at the lack of suspense or keeps wondering if it’s a trick. Either way, a thief doesn’t have to be distrustful and on the verge of betraying everyone. Variety in character types is a good thing, readers and authors.
THE FEMALE HERO CANNOT ACCEPT HELP– This is a minor one, but it bugs me a lot. If you have a female hero then you get praise for as long as they remain independent and never need any help from a male hero. The moment she is saved or protected, you get people complaining about ‘damsel in distress’ syndrome. God help you if you have her cry. I’m all for strong female characters and those are something I strive for, but there is a limit for both genders. Some days it feels like you can’t have any character cry because they’re either a ‘wimpy guy’ or an ’emotional woman’. Bullshit! People cry when upset and they need help when in trouble. There is no rule that says you can’t have a strong female character getting saved when she’s being overpowered. It’s realistic and the same goes for a strong male character. Heck, take a look at Luke and Nyx in ‘Legends of Windemere’. They’ve saved each other countless times, but for some reason Luke helping Nyx is seen as weakening her character. If that is true then Nyx helping Luke should weaken his character, but people see that as ‘girl power’. And people wonder why so many fantasy books have all male casts.
Beyond 1,000 words here, so I’ll stop the rant. This went longer than expected because I was having fun. The key point here is that everyone has their own preferences and thoughts on a genre. You just have to accept that not everyone will agree with how you think a book should be written. Also, I may pick on ‘Game of Thrones’ a lot, but it’s only because I tend to get 90% of my flack from those fans. Early on, people were even telling me to change my books to match ‘Game of Thrones’. So that’s where most of the comparisons aimed at ‘Legends of Windemere’ comes from even though the two series are extremely different from each other.
Any ‘rules’ that I missed and you want to bring up?
