Do You Want Your Name In Lights?

Write your first draft with your heart.  Re-write with your head.  ~From the movie Finding Forrester

 

Of course you do!!

Whether we tell ourselves that we want to be published or not is irrelevant. Deep down inside we all want the same thing. Thankfully, there are choices and different paths we can now take to achieve that end goal. I have something for you that will help- a writing contest.

Before you dismiss this because you’re self publishing, or you’re already published in another genre, you better check this out. The Lone Star Writing Contest gives you tangibles that you won’t necessarily find anywhere else. No matter how you decide to publish, an author always needs outside help. I’ve yet to meet a writer that could spot all of their mistakes. For a very small fee, your pages will be read by two published and one non-published judge. If you final, your story will be sent to an agent, an editor, and an e-publisher editor. (Wow- three for the price of one!)

How is this any different? Well, besides providing training for the judges, revamping the score sheet to reflect the writing not “romance” rules, this contest also offers a few bonuses! If you win your category, you will receive a banner for your website, FB etc. This is worth its weight in gold! Free advertising screaming how good you are! If you final, you will receive a seal that you can use in the same way. How cool is that?

Everyone who enters also has a chance to win a 50 page critique by a published author whether they final or not. This is an open playing field where all have the same chance to win. There will be a drawing for each category and the winner’s name will be drawn irregardless of how they placed!

I know I’ll enter this year. Don’t miss the Early Bird Special which ends in a few days!

 

 

Northwest Houston RWA announces The 20th Annual Lone Star Writing Competition.

Along with awesome feedback and a new and improved score sheet, the Lone Star offers a NEW Special Prize!!!

All entrants will be entered into a drawing for a 50 page critique by one of NWHRWA’s published authors. There will be 7 winners, one for each category.

Romantic Suspense: Teri Thackston
Historical: Melinda Porter (Anna Katherine Lanier)
FF&P: Suzan Harden
Inspirational: Carla Rossi
YA: Christie Craig (CC Hunter)
Single Title: PJ Mellor
Contemporary Series: Cheri Jetton

The Lone Star Writing Competition is one of the few contests with two published authors and one unpublished author judging the first round. Finalists will be sent to BOTH an agent and an editor for judging. In addition they will be sent to an e-publishing editor.

EARLY BIRD ENTRY FEE: $5 discount on all entries submitted by midnight May 26, 2012; $15 for NWH members/$20 non-NHW members.

Entry fee: After May 26, 2012 – $20 NWH members; $25 non-NWH members.

Winners will receive a custom made sterling silver pin and a website banner !!!! Finalists will receive a seal to put on their website.

For more information including rules, the score sheet, and entry form, see our new, updated website at www.nwhrwa.com.

Dead Babies In A Suitcase

It’s good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there’s more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.- Charles De Lint

Good morning Muse Trackers!

I’ve thought quite a bit about The Artists Way especially since our Link Of The Week brought you to a wonderful tool based on one of the exercises found in that book. The premise is that you are to write three pages (preferably handwritten) every morning. The tool that I found creates a platform for you to do it electronically and store your pages to be retrieved when you need them. I was excited that many of you chose to comment and share your own spin on Morning Pages. Based on that, I thought you might like a spark. Give it a try, who knows what might happen

 

Today I would like to share a story with you. It’s so intriguing and has the bones of a fantastic novel, but it’s real life. Someone once told me that you just can’t make this s*** up- and I believe they’re right. This proves the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction.

Two women made a shocking discovery when they began to clean out their apartment building’s basement. It was full of items left from tenants long gone and forgotten. As they made their way through the piles of stuff, they came across three suitcases obviously left there for decades. The women brushed away years of dust and mildew and flipped the latch on the top two cases. They were empty. Disappointed, they went for the last case on the bottom. No one could have prepared them for what they would find hiding inside the leather luggage.

Stacks of books were neatly set on the left side and on the right side were two doctor’s satchels tightly wedged into the small space. You can imagine their excitement when the books proved to be copies from the 1920s and 30s. Surely, they had found a time capsule from a long ago era. The ladies carefully pulled out both satchels and opened them up. They seemed to be stuffed with newspaper also from that time period. They each took a bundle from the bags and unrolled the ball of paper. One discovered a mummified infant and the other unrolled a fetus about 20 weeks along.

Investigators determined the luggage belonged to Janet M. Barrie who had emigrated to the U.S. from Scotland in the 1920s. She was the home nurse for a Los Angeles dentist and died in 1992. Her belongings had been packed up and stored in the basement- apparently forgotten until these two decided they wanted to clean things up. The cause of death for the babies has not been determined. (I don’t know if the cause of death has ever been determined or not.)

The rest of her belongings did give a slight picture of the women who harbored this grisly secret for so many years. Janet Barrie appeared to have an interest in J.M. Barrie who wrote Peter Pan. There was a copy of the book as well as a membership certificate for the Peter Pan Woodland Club, an upscale resort. They surmise it’s because he was also from Scotland and carried the same initials. They also found postcards from exotic places like Korea and South America sent to Janet bundled together in the case. The mystery deepened when they pulled up a ticket stub from the closing ceremonies of the 1932 Olympics at the L.A. Coliseum

At the time when this article was written, the authorities had tracked down some of Janet Barrie’s relatives living in Canada and were DNA testing the remains of the babies.

 

If this doesn’t get the writer juices going, I don’t know what would! Why did she keep those bodies all those years? Who are those post cards from? Did she meet someone at the Olympics? Is there more of a connection to the author Barrie? Was she a killer? Did she hide them for the dentist? Are they her babies? Why didn’t any of her relatives claim her belongings? Why? Why? Why?

 

What is your take on this story? Who is Janet Barrie?

 

Keep on writing!

Link Of The Week

http://750words.com/about

I’m so excited I found this link for this week! It was based on an exercise given in The Artists Way called Morning Pages. The idea is to write 750 words everyday about anything- no censuring. It’s a daily free for all! Your words could be brainstorming something from your project or it could be about anything rumbling around in your head.

What about a blog? Tumbler? Well, these are possible avenues but what happens if you forget to push the “private” button? This site allows you to write and keep it to yourself but all in one place where you can check back over your words. Enjoy!!!

“I’ve long been inspired by an idea I first learned about in The Artist’s Way called morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in “long hand”, typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It’s about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day. Unlike many of the other exercises in that book, I found that this one actually worked and was really really useful.

I’ve used the exercise as a great way to think out loud without having to worry about half-formed ideas, random tangents, private stuff, and all the other things in our heads that we often filter out before ever voicing them or writing about them. It’s a daily brain dump. Over time, I’ve found that it’s also very helpful as a tool to get thoughts going that have become stuck, or to help get to the bottom of a rotten mood.”

Learning to Write Smut – MuseTracks Guest – Juliana Ross

Historical erotic romance author Juliana Ross is our special guest today, and she’s going to give us a lesson in writing sex. Not just any sex, but GOOD sex.

Welcome, Juliana!

When I began work, early last year, on the novella that would eventually become Improper Relations, I was hoping to push myself. Throw out the rule book. Write a story that stretched—even demolished—the limits I’d been setting for myself as a writer.

I wrote in the first person, something I’d never tried before. I set the book a half-century earlier than anything I’d ever written. And I decided that the heat level had to be off the charts. Not just hot, but “turn on the fan, it’s boiling in here!” hot.

There’s a big difference, however, between planning to write a smoking-hot sex scene and actually doing so successfully. As I wrote, I learned—usually by watching my sister do exaggerated spit-takes while reading my latest draft—that writing about good sex is really difficult. In fact, it’s really, really hard. (No pun intended.)

By the time I’d finished the first draft of Improper Relations, I’d learned a lot about what works—and what doesn’t work. And I’m still learning!

Here are just a few examples:

Use anatomical terms that don’t awaken your inner 12-year-old boy. If you can’t read a word without smirking, it’s likely your readers will have the same reaction. Humor can be wonderful in sex scenes, but readers should be laughing with the characters, not at them. This can be a tall order when writing historicals, since common 18^th- or 19^th-century terms often sound silly to modern ears.

After much dithering, I settled on a synonym (I won’t repeat it here) that was commonly used in the Victorian period to describe the male sex organ, and is still widely used today. Then and now, it’s not fit for polite company, but the alternatives made me dissolve into giggles every time I typed them out.

Avoid descriptions that are excessively clinical. In an early draft of another novel, I referred to the “clever surgeon’s fingers” of my hero, a doctor, in the context of foreplay between him and the heroine. This set off alarm bells for one of my beta readers, a lawyer who has more than a passing familiarity with medical malpractice suits. “You have to take that out,” she told me. “It makes him seem like some pervy Dr. Feelgood. Yuck!”

When it comes to descriptions of sex, I learned, neither of the participants should come across like a doctor—even if one of them actually is a doctor. Remember that clinical is the opposite of dirty. And dirty, in this context, is good.

Descriptions of how things sound can be problematic: Most readers don’t simply picture a scene—they hear it in their head as well. So restrain yourself when offering cues for the soundtrack to a sex scene, and when it comes to moments that might squick people out, turn the volume waaaay down. This is particularly true for anything involving, ahem, bodily fluids. (I find “moistly” especially troublesome.)

As I said above, these are only a few examples – but I’d love to hear your take on the principles of writing Good Smut.

Those of you who are writers: did you encounter a steep learning curve when first writing sex scenes, or was it smooth sailing from the beginning? And what about the readers out there? Do you have any suggestions on what writers should avoid if we want to keep you reading?

I’ll be giving away three copies of Improper Relations to MuseTracks readers this week—just leave a comment below to be entered in the draw.

An editor by profession but an historian by inclination, Juliana Ross lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and young children. In her spare time she cooks for family and friends, makes slow inroads into her weed patch of a garden, and reads romance novels (the steamier the better) on her eReader.

You can find Juliana on her website, Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook and—her newest obsession—Pinterest.

You can buy Improper Relations through Carina, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and All Romance.

Do You Want To Make Money? Help Yourself!

 

Write your first draft with your heart.  Re-write with your head.  ~From the movie Finding Forrester

 

 

Do I want to write as a business?

 

This is a question that has plagued my brain for quite awhile. I’m so very lucky because I don’t depend on writing for a viable source of income and that’s a luxury. I recognize that. While I struggle with wondering whether I want to put a passion to work, I’ve learned some very important things that an author should understand if they want to make a go in this industry.

 

The first thing to ask yourself is if you know your genre. I know a lot of you are shaking your head and telling me to start with something a bit more advanced. I’d like to, but too many authors haven’t studied their genre well enough and make basic mistakes that turn off readers. Have you read books written in the same vein as yours? Do they sell well? What aspects of one book make it a better seller than another? Are there things that readers come to expect and love in that genre? Is it in your book? I know we all want to write about the things we love, but let’s face it, if your book is about something that has a very narrowed window of interest, you might have a tough time making it into a viable seller.

 

I started this journey wanting to write a category romantic suspense, but my characters wouldn’t let me keep the story within the confines of a category book. (At the time, I didn’t even know it was called “category” and that it had all those rules attached to it!) I seem to write bigger suspense/thriller types of stories and with the encouragement of many people who read my pages, I started to swing towards all out non-romantic suspense. There was a problem. I didn’t read that type of book.

 

After jumping in and raiding my husband’s book collection, I discovered two things. Those books were awesome and I didn’t want to write one. I liked the stories, but I always found myself wanting more romance infused into the book. I finally came upon writers like Brenda Novak, Roxanne St. Claire, and Allison Brennan who wrote big suspense with a romantic thread running through the stories. I’m also happy to say that they sell quite nicely. Know yourself. Know your market. Do your homework.

 

Not all of you will agree with my next assertion. You need to spend money to make money. Spend some money on a professional editor and for a professional design of your book cover. Begin with your critique partners, have some beta readers give you feedback and then send your work to an editor. It will cost money, but it should be money well spent if you get a reputable editor. Don’t ever, ever, ever rely on just yourself to edit your work. I can almost guarantee that you will not have a polished product.

 

If you want your book to be placed next to a professionally published book and the reader not be able to distinguish any difference between the quality of the two, then find a cover designer. Unless you have a degree in marketing and are a computer genius, you will be able to spot a homemade cover a mile away. I believe this is almost more important in the virtual world of selling than in the real world. All you have to capture their attention right off the bat is that tiny picture showing up on their screen. Spend the money- make it professional. I know an author who put her book up for sale with a cover she put together for little to no money. It wasn’t bad, it was actually quite attractive until you compared it to others professionally done in her genre. Despite that, sales were fair and then she hired a designer and re-published the book with its new cover. Sales soared and she started receiving fan mail. Does a cover make that much difference? YES!!!!!

 

Once there’s a refined, sleek looking product the author needs to publish it. You have two choices at this point. You can hire a company that will do the work for you or you can educate yourself and do it. Most of my friends are doing this part themselves and saving money. If you don’t think this is for you, there are many companies willing to take your money. Some are quite reasonable and others will charge you a huge amount. It’s just like anything else. Do your homework and research the options. I’m of a mind that if you can figure it out, then give it a try.

 

This is the beginning of the business part. Are you still with me? Are you scared? Are you excited? The next two weeks will be spent talking about marketing, looking at actual authors’ numbers, and can you truy make a living doing this?

 

** Spoiler Alert** Yes, you can! It takes research, trial and error, and a whole lotta chutzpa. 

“Here’s Looking At You, Kid.”

How many of you sit down at your computer to write a new book thinking that it will be a great story? Excitement powers your fingers on the keys and everything is great…until it’s not. Ideas start to sputter, finally ending in a whimpering mess and you have no clue where to go next. You wonder if you have any talent at all.

Storylines are difficult to create and even more difficult to maintain throughout the course of events unfolding on your pages. Why can’t you write a great novel? Why can’t you create a classic like Casablanca?

It had everything. Mystery, intrigue, conflict, romance, tortured souls and redemption- they are all in the movie. It’s no wonder that it took so many awards and has remained a favorite for the last 70 years. This amazing story, made into a movie, didn’t quite start out as the gem we see on our screens. In fact, it wasn’t even a complete script while they were filming!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to see Casablanca at the movie theatre. It was terrific! Not only was it great to see a brilliant film on the big screen, like it was meant to be seen, but I got to go with Will Graham and Melissa Ohnoutka (fellow writers and guests on Muse Tracks). It felt absolutely decadent to shirk our responsibilities in the middle of a work week and enter into the magical world of Morocco during World War II.

The movie was adapted from a screenplay called Everybody Comes To Rick’s. It was shot on a shoestring budget and the lead male was best known for playing tough mob guys, not romantic leads. They had the essence of a story but when filming began, no one knew where the story was going nor did they know how it would end. (Hmmm-sounds like me while I’m writing my books.) In fact, Ingrid Bergman complained quite loudly because she didn’t even know who she was really supposed to be in love with and that made her job more difficult.

The writers, Julius and Philip Epstein along with Howard Koch, wrote and re-wrote the story almost every day. The actors had no time to learn their lines prior to shooting because it literally changed with every hour. To keep themselves on tract, they would review the film shot the day before otherwise they found themselves following wrong plot turns.

Did they know they were filming a grand classic? No.

Did they know that the writing would be quoted and misquoted for the next seventy years? No.

Did they know they had a great idea that deserved hard work and a million rewrites? 

Writers don’t often sit down and create a masterpiece on the first take. I guarantee all the greats from Ernest Hemingway to Shakespeare threw away their fair share of wadded up paper and broke a quill or two out of frustration. I’ll bet some of them thought their best known works were nothing more than drivel slopped down on paper. Being a writer inherently means being plagued by doubt. Will anyone like what I’m writing? Does it make sense? Is it even a story? Trust me when I say I’ve asked every question that has run through your head and probably even a few more you haven’t thought of yet! The real question is whether you let it stop you from writing.

If something as wonderful as Casablanca was created through sheer resolve, then we should all have the determination to push through the road blocks- self created and others- to finish our own masterpieces. They may not all become classics made into film, but that doesn’t negate their worth and the satisfaction of doing something everyone wishes they could. Do you have that courage? What will you write today?

Fun Facts About Casablanca:

Nobody ever says, “Play it again, Sam.”

There were no “letters of transit” used during the war and there were never any uniformed German soldiers in Casablanca.

It is never revealed why Rick couldn’t return to America because the writers never could come up with a good reason so they left it as a mystery.

The twin brothers who wrote this are the only pair of twins to ever win an Oscar.

Dooley Wilson who played Sam, the piano player and Rick’s confidante, couldn’t play the piano in real life.

There really is a Rick’s Café in Casablanca today. It was opened by an American diplomat and the piano player plays As Time Goes By every night. The musician’s name is Isam. (Pronounced I Sam) Now that’s something you couldn’t make up!

 

 

Link Of The Week

I’ve posted a site today that provides amazing help to writers. They offer a writers’ retreat that is unparalleled with instruction and guidance from some of the smartest people I’ve met in this industry. I’m hoping to be able to attend next year. (Must save up a bunch of pennies first!!)
Co-founded in 1987 by the late Gary Provost (author and internationally acclaimed teacher of writing for publication) and his wife Gail, the ten-day WRITERS RETREAT WORKSHOP is an intensive learning experience for small groups of serious-minded writers who are committed to improving and completing their novels for submission. For those who consider their writing to be a vital part of their lives, one they wish to develop as fully as possible, WRW provides the ideal experience.

This is where it's being held this year. Not bad, right?

(http://www.writersretreatworkshop.com/index.php)

Villains Can’t Be All Bad!!!!

By: Stacey Purcell

 

 

Villians. We love to hate them.

How do you make a villain truly memorable?

One of my favorite television shows is Criminal Minds. If you haven’t seen it, the show is about a profiling group within the FBI who get sent around the country to help on gruesome cases. There are so many villains running through that series that they all begin to blend together. However, there is one episode that stands out in my mind. It’s because the villain was so well thought out.

The essence of every novel is found within the conflict, two opposing forces set in the same time and space. That conflict is usually found between the protagonist and the villain. How much more fun would it be to create a really villainous villain! Let you imagination soar as to the dastardly things they can do on your pages, but be careful. If you let it run away with you, you’re in danger of creating a cartoon character instead of someone who keeps readers turning the page. They will put the book down in frustration because it has lost the reality edge.

The villain in this particular episode of Criminal Minds was doing some pretty intense stuff. He even captured one of the team and in doing so, we came to understand him a little bit better. His father was so twisted that he turned a sweet young boy into the monster on the show. The writers created sympathy and understanding within the viewers. We never condoned what he was doing, but it made you want to rescue the little boy trapped inside who had been branded by his deranged father. The show put us through an emotional wringer that haunts me still today.

That’s what we want for our novels. How do you do that? James Scott Bell in Conflict and Suspense has some great tips on creating unique and memorable villains:

1. Create a whole backstory for your villain. Let the reader know that he wasn’t always the psychopath killing machine, the back stabbing office worker, or the corrupt priest. Very few people are born bad to the bone- why did your villain turn out this way?
2. Just as it happened in Criminal Minds, give them a sympathy factor. When you do this, your audience bonds on some level with the villain. This is some powerful mojo! Create conflict within the reader. Their brain says he’s the bad guy, but their heart says that it’s not all his fault.
3. This next one can be difficult. Justify your bad guy’s actions. No matter how bad it seems to you, he thinks he’s in the right. Find some way to make it plausible for him to believe that. After all, he does what he does because he thinks he is entitled to his actions or what they will bring.

 

In my first book, I made my bad guy the result of a heinous grandfather’s torture. He was also terrified of the dark and was a gifted artist. Nine times out of ten, I received great feedback for my villain in contests because I made him seem all too human and my readers could relate to him. In my second book, the villain grows up in abject poverty and then loses his whole family in a massacre where he believes my protagonist has betrayed him. It broke my heart to write the scene where he ends up having to shoot his wife because she is in mortal agony. Hopefully, it will break my reader’s heart as well.

Create them bad, devious, sly, murderous, but create them human and you will have a powerful character that won’t be forgotten.

Link Of The Week

Practice practice practice!

This is a very cool site. Once you’re in, they give you one word and one minute to write about that word. That’s it! Simple, quick and a great way to get a shot of adrenaline and creativity pumping in the morning! Enjoy-

http://oneword.com/

PS. You have to sign in for it to work. It’s free! Press “read” and sign up.

God Got My Attention

 

God got my attention.

And it was difficult.

From January of last year to now, there have been a series of events that scream,  ”Here’s your wake-up call. Don’t be a moron!” Bear with me as I ramble.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the grind of day to day living that we forget about “living”. Our time is broken down into a series of tasks and micro managing our minutes. Meetings, children, bills, spouses, significant others, deadlines, housework, jobs (…and the list goes on and on) fight for our attention every single moment of every single day. It’s no wonder that we escape to our worlds on the page! But even doing that can take a toll on our brains and body.

I feel overwhelmed just writing that last paragraph. How do we do it all- it’s mind boggling. So what’s my wake-up call? Life is finite and things can change in the space of a heart beat. I don’t know why it took a whole year of events to get me to realize that statement. I mean, I knew it, but I would brush it to the side like an annoying fly.

This past year, my cousin was surprised by a triple by-pass and his wife had a double mastectomy, a young friend and her baby were killed in a car accident, my neighbor was diagnosed with sarcoma and has undergone radiation treatments, her husband has tongue cancer, a close friend was diagnosed with ALS and is in the final stages- we only have 15minute visiting windows, my best friend’s daughter had a baby and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer (she’s 22), my best friend’s mother was killed in a wildfire(it’s been a very hard year for her), and this week our very good friend and Muse Track guest blogger, Will Graham, had a stroke and surgery on his carotid artery. (He’s fine and recovering nicely.) The icing on this questionable cake is the fact that I turned 50. Not a bad thing by itself, but coupled with the events swirling around me, it acts like a very loud alarm clock!

Life is a gift from God. We don’t always use that gift wisely and sometimes do things to screw it up royally, but it is still our gift. Here’s the trick- we don’t know how long it will last. I know there are things I can’t control. I can, however, watch over my body and feed it physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s something the big guy upstairs has been nudging me to do for quite awhile. Nudging is putting it mildly- He’s been hitting me over the head with a baseball bat to get my attention.

I started with the basics:

-I’ve lost 26lbs so far. Weight Watchers is my new best friend and she’s been very easy to hang with.

-I walk 3-4 times a day. I found I enjoy moving better when I do several short breaks rather than trying to do a marathon.

-I take a stretch break every hour I’m at the computer. A few minutes of yoga stretching does wonders for the body and mind.

-I make sure I’m getting enough sleep. One of the first things Will said when we visited him in the hospital was that he was lightening his stress load and working on getting more rest.

-I’m meeting friends to simply visit more often. Visiting is a lost art in this complicated, fast paced world of ours.

-I’m kissing my husband more often. This one might sound strange, but it’s fun and brings us even closer when we take time out to have quiet moments.

-I love to laugh and smile. I try to take a few minutes on You Tube to watch a funny animal video, a comedian, or hysterical animal voiceovers. I’m cracking up and my day seems lighter!

-I turn off all noise makers and electronics in my house for 15 minutes most every day. When was the last time your house was totally quiet and you weren’t staring at a screen? This is when I try to listen to what God is teaching me. Not always easy, but so worth showing up for!!

This isn’t rocket science. This isn’t even new advice. It’s a gentle reminder for you all to be good, really good, to yourselves. It took a jarring year and a birthday milestone to rattle my priorities. I’d like to say that I’ve got it all under control, but that would be a lie. Hopefully I’m developing tools to “stop and smell the roses” and not get totally sucked back into the grind.

I wish for all of us to be happy, healthy, and peaceful every day. It’s a stretch, but it can be done.

 

PS. I started off wanting to write an article about how to stay healthy while being a productive writer, but this is what came out. I hope this resonates with some of you and we’ll get back to tips on being a healthy writer another time.