Aspiring Novelists

A couple of  months ago I entered a first paragraph critique contest co-hosted by Steena Holmes at "Chocolate Reality."   Needless to say,  it was an eye-opening experience. Although the reviewers described my piece as “gripping,” they also identified a point of view (POV) shift in the paragraph.  One of the critiquers indicated it was difficult to determine which character owned the scene. Of course, this was not the response I hoped for.  I was consumed by a rush of emotions. First came denial, I thought, w hat do they know anyway? One of the members of my writing group is an English professor and he didn’t notice the POV shift.  This feeling was followed by despondence and self-deprecation, i.e., I suck, I can’t even get past the first paragraph without a problem. I’ll never be published . Finally, came acceptance. Before tackling any changes to the paragraph, I decided to conduct a bit of ...

While venting about my work in progress last week, hubby asked me to explain the reason I had willingly taken on the frustrating and laborious task of writing a novel. He could not understand what drove me to stick with the process for more than a year. I could have given some cookie cutter answer like, “It’s in my blood, I love the English language, or it is a way to get rid of all the stories floating around in my head.” Yet, in truth, that would have been a load of crap. None of these reasons could have motivated me to suffer through the pride swallowing, painstaking process of writing a novel. After all, there is no guarantee my work will ever be published, so I wondered, am I a masochist? Could I be the type of person who invites and enjoys misery just to be admired for forbearance?  Naw, that wasn't it. I decided the reward is not the writing itself, that part sucks. What comes after sends the endorphins rushing through my veins. I take pride in my creation...

During my weekly visit to Books- A- Million I purchased, Getting the Words Right: 39 Ways to Improve Your Writing, by Theodore A. Rees Cheney. This is a book no writer should be without. It covers ways to reduce jargon, rearrange sentences, paragraphs and whole chapters. Theodore provides insightful suggestions on how to develop one's writing style and improve diction with shorter more active words. Last, but not least, he allocates an entire section to limiting modifiers.  Since learning and writing seem to be congruent processes, I’ve decided to share some snippets from the book in a series of posts.  In lesson number one I learned ,“Redundancy in writing” does not mean repetitiveness. It is a catch-all term for excessive and unnecessary words which can be eliminated from a sentence without changing its meaning. Although there are six forms of redundancies, for the sake of brevity, I will only touch on two which are most overused by writ...

Hello All, I hope life is treating you well.  Things have been hectic here in my neck of the woods.  I put my novel on hold for the last two weeks while completing an article for a local magazine. As seems to be my luck, the preliminary research and interviews wound up taking more time than I anticipated.  I finally finished the article last night.  Phew what a relief. After this experience I decided to put all freelance work on hold until the first draft of my WIP. is finished.    Next week is spring break so my children will be home.  Since I do my best work in the mornings I hope the bambino's will sleep long enough to let me get some writing done.  If not, then I guess another week will go by without adding to my work in progress.   I often wonder if what I am going through is normal, how do other mother's get the...