Tag: NaNoWriMo

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words October 1, 2011

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of vectorolie at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Siren of Writing

Voice sings through writing, the voice of the author, the voice of the novel, the voice of the character. Defining Voice, though, is like trying to explain Ella Fitzgerald’s voice, Louis Armstrong’s trumpet, or Carlos Santana’s guitar. But at the same, editor, publishers, and readers search for the elusive siren. 

Kalayna Price delineates one aspect of voice in a Magical Words post “On Voice and Timing”, that being, as indicated in the title, timing. If you think about the greatest musicians, their ability to pull us into the music isn’t about their ability to precisely recreate the musical score like a clockwork machine, but their ability to change things. A trill here, a note held a second longer there, a staccato snap to end a phrase. It’s all in the timing.

A big thank you to Ms. Price. I believe I finally “get” voice now.

See if her explanation helps you (also scroll down for the comments): http://www.magicalwords.net/kalayna-price/on-voice-and-timing/

Other Cool Blogs: Liana Brooks June 26, 2016

Erin Penn

50,000 words, Christmas. Hope that fist can type.

Writing meme created by Erin Penn

The Good Guys

Way back in 2014 Liana Brooks created a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWritMo) boot camp. When she migrated over to her new blog in 2016, the boot camp disappeared including Day 3: The Antagonist, which is perhaps the best ever explanation on how to create several levels of bad guys in a book. I contacted her, and she immediately dropped the material in her new blog, because she is awesome like that.

From her boot camp I have previously made posts about the Antagonist and Establishing a Baseline. As NaNoWritMo rears its head again, I thought to dip once more into the well of goodness and touch on Day 4: The Protagonist.

She has five exercises to help a writer define a hero. Not every manuscript needs every exercise, but someone thinking about writing a novel next month might want to try out one or two to level up their hero.

Exercise 1: Weaknesses; Exercise 2: Strengths; Exercise 3: Backstory (specific to strengths and weaknesses); Exercise 4: Personality; Exercise 5: One Thing

Of the suggested exercises, I found exercise 4 and 5 the most useful over the years. Knowing the characters Meyers-Briggs personality helps me come up with a decision-making process different from my own. Sometimes I post to my list asking for someone with the appropriate personality to contact me so I can run choices by them.

And “The One Thing” part is just pure gold. If you would like to see it, go here: http://www.lianabrooks.com/nanowrimo-boot-camp-day-4-the-protagonist/

WRITING EXERCISE: Choose one of the five Protagonist exercises suggested by Ms. Brooks, and implement it for your present Work-in-progress (WIP). If you are participating in NaNo next month, consider that your WIP.

Other Cool Blogs: Just Publishing Advice Nov 2, 2016

Erin Penn

Cover by Erin Penn

If you were around in November, you may have noticed how my novel for NaNoWritMo went south. All October I thought and thought about Internal Lies based on a dream I had during the 2016 holiday season, carefully not writing a word down. I jumped on the computer on November first and typed up all the notes I had from the original dream – close to 1,000 words.

Then nothing on the second.

On the third my brain said “Let’s write a blog post.”

Now? Really? You haven’t wanted to work on the blog but in bits and pieces all year and you want to do one now. … Oh well, at least it is writing.

Yeah. The result? Nearly “won” NaNoWritMo by catching up on my blog – 35,568 words of blog postings. This was the most productive writing period I have ever done outside of writing Honestly. Actually more so, since Honestly is only 15K.

Anyway, I’ve long been thinking about maybe doing a collection of my flashes or putting the writing exercises together for something I can sell on Amazon. You can even see a cover above made for the Writing Exercises. The challenge is transforming the blog into a coherent how-to. Like taking a novel and changing it to a movie, the mediums of blogging and ebooks are different with different requirements.

“How to Turn Your Blog Into a Book” by Julie Petersen (2016) and updated by Derek Haines (2017) on the Just Publishing Advice website gives some excellent advice I plan to use. If you are thinking about going this route with your blog, you might want to review it as well. While focused primarily on non-fiction, the biggest take-aways are reaching new readers, monetize your work without turning your website into advertising central, and hiring professionals for the professional bits.

Look for the four book series on Writing Exercises to come out this year: Write Good a taste, Write Good, Write Gooder, and Write Goodest.

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words April 1, 2017

Erin Penn

Acquired from the internet hive mind

NaNo – Well, This Isn’t Going As Planned

So much for my science fiction thriller I planned in my head all of October and attacked the first day of National Novel Writing Month. The second day I did the “Butt In Chair – Hands on Keyboard” … and I got a blog posting. In fact I got several blog postings. Sunset and sunrise saw me return for the BIC-HOK, and, well, I have a blog for today.

If this keeps up, my blog for 2017 may get completed before the end of the month and 2018 could have a great jump start.

Novel, not so much.

It breaks the rules, and I hate breaking rules. NaNoWritMo is about writing Novels – fictional pieces, long-form. Most of my blogs, and that is what my brain is providing right now, are neither. 

On the other hand after nearly two years of brain-to-keyboard disconnect, I am happy with ANY production. I just would have been happier to have salable production.

The plus side is I will have the basics for the Writing Exercise non-fiction book I have been thinking about.

Writing is a weird thing. The biggest discipline is “Butt in Chair – Hands on Keyboard”. Forcing your mind to stop thinking about writing and actually doing writing requires will-power; depending on the day and how long the habit has been in place, a great deal of will-power. After directing the will-power to the initial task of BIC-HOK, discipline in directing your mind in specific writing tasks can be lacking.

Sometimes it makes magic. Rarely does it meet deadlines.

Melissa Gilbert-McArthur wrote a Magical Words on the combination of BIC and deadlines, and it can be found here: http://www.magicalwords.net/melissa-gilbert/friday-fundamentals-deadlines/. Power to her for having the will power to pull off both at once.

Me, I am going to take the writing bug and get a little more blogging done.

WRITING EXERCISE: Butt-in-chair. Sit in your writer seat for half an hour today and write something. Do it again tomorrow. Do it five days in a row. Half an hour in your writer seat. No internet, no facebook, no twitter. If you live with someone, hand them your phone and walk to your seat and start. BIC-HOK and write. There you go -the first five days of the twenty-one days to create a new habit. The rest is up to you.