Mummy Episode sighting! I found a way to watch the Acorn TV series of Agatha Raisin novel adaptations and saw "The Fairies of Fryfam" last night. It's been a long time since I read the M.C. Beaton novel, but I know for sure I was pronouncing the town name wrong. I'm not equally sure if the ending was the same.
Agatha goes to a small town with a mystical obsession with fairies. Agatha sees twinkling lights and hears bright laughter in her garden near a wishing well, but the closemouthed townsfolk won't tell her anything.
I don't think I'm spoiling anything (much) to say that at some point, her compadres lie in wait for the fairies and discover young boys operating Christmas lights and hiding behind the well to laugh at the newcomers. Toward the end of the episode, though, a villager says that the boys just try to obscure the fact that there are real fairies to give a plausible explanation to outsiders. Um, ok.
The last scene is a zoom to the wishing well, where tiny lights fly out and around to the sound of tinkling laughter.
FAIRIES ARE REAL.
Definite Mummy Episode, though with a fairy twist. Set up a logical world where there's a discernible explanation for every phenomenon...and then throw it away at the last minute.
I mentioned in my post on winning NaNoWriMo this past year that one thing I noticed in writing the second book in my mystery series is how hard it is for me to keep track of minor characters' names and settings. I realized I needed a system in place to handle all these details.
Why make character sheets?
You're chugging along on your work in progress when suddenly your mind blanks. Were your protagonist's mom's eyes blue or brown? Rack your brain no more! Simply consult your handy-dandy character sheets, scroll to the appropriate box, and there it is in print: Oh, right! They were hazel!
If you're writing a series, it's even more imperative to keep track of these pesky details from one book to the next. Remember how long your characters have lived in a certain place, or what jobs they had in the past. Note down when they first met a new friend.
You can make the same type of notations for settings and other details in your stories. Then you'll know where their favorite diner is located, what its name is, and who the surly server is they love to hassle.
The other benefit of having character sheets (also known as character profiles, character questionnaires, character charts, etc.) is that it inspires you to include more description. If you're like me and description is locked into your head but rarely makes its lethargic way onto the paper, having character sheets staring you in the face with slots for eye color and height and so forth makes you want to make decisions about those things and figure out interesting ways to include them. Clever descriptions will bring your novel alive, so it's a boon to have an avenue for mindfully considering what to add to your writing.
So, now that I've convinced you you need them…
How do you make character sheets?
Some writing software, such as Scrivener (a Mac program I used for one NaNo), has built-in capabilities for crafting character sheets. I wanted something more mobile, though, because I often work on my novels (and blogging) when I'm out and about. Most comprehensive writing software (including Scrivener) doesn't have a mobile component that works on my (Android) phone.
I already am writing my current novel in Google Docs, and I transferred my earlier writing there as well. (FYI, I blog on the go using Chrome and the horrifying Blogger app, but I don't recommend either for publishing, just for drafting. They both truly suck for the job, and I will take any suggestions for improvement over them.)
For my character sheets, I also considered Evernote, since it's also readily available on both mobile and computers, but I have problems with the Evernote app being finicky, and I understand and like the functionality of Google Drive. Plus, I realized I could best organize the data in — nerd alert! — a spreadsheet!
Google Sheets to the rescue!
Hope you can kind of see that. You can click on it to embiggen a bit.
I hadn't been planning to do National Novel Writing Month this past year, but Tree of Write On, Mom! asked if I was going to, and so I did.
I am very suggestible.
The idea popped into my head that I could use the opportunity to do something I'd been meaning to, which was write the second book in my mystery series. And so I did! And now I feel so much better!
It's still a crappy first draft, because I'm working on finishing up editing the first one right now instead of fixing the second, but it's nice to have the story written and sitting there ready to edit. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.
It makes me think I should write a novel every other month or so. Maybe every three months, with two off to edit? (This isn't going to happen, but apparently it could!)
Want some novel reading to go along with your Olympics watching? As the women's figure skating finals come into view, read up on the world behind the scenes in Alina Adams' hilarious and entertaining mystery, Murder on Ice.
Granted, Murder on Ice is set at the world championships, but close enough. For those of us who follow figure skating once every four years, this is all a fun new experience.
Full disclosure up front: I happened to tell Alina Adams on Twitter (I think? It was awhile ago — I am anything but prompt!) that I loved her book (the paperback version) and was going to review it on my blog, and she offered to send me the multimedia Kindle version as well. So this isn't a sponsored post, but I did get a free enhanced e-book out of it!
So, this all makes me want to review Murder on Icefirst as a reader — and then as a writer. It's an inspiring book in both categories!
Reader's review
Bex Levy is a researcher for the TV series 24/7, and she's in charge of knowing everything — absolutely everything — about the figure skating competition that the famous commentators might need for their patter and that the show might need for choosing camera angles and interview opportunities.
I came across the term micro-niche, and I love it. As a reader, it means you can find something written specifically to your interests: In this case, you can enjoy a peek into the world of figure skating and the world of being a professional TV researcher, as well as enjoy a cozy mystery along the way. I suppose some readers choose interests that already align with what they know; I actually love opportunities like this, where I get to see into a life I've never led.
It's not enough just to have an intriguing setting, though — fortunately, the book comes through with a clever mystery and plenty of funny. An Italian judge is murdered — and Bex's boss decides that, as a researcher, Bex is the perfect person to find the killer in time to reveal on air at the finale! But no pressure.
Bex, underpaid and generally beleaguered, sees no choice but to agree. She does already know all the players and quickly becomes adept at nosily sussing out their secrets.
One of my favorite passages is when Bex considers the lengthy and detailed descriptive travel passages in mystery fiction. I've often wondered about the same thing.
"As a reader, Bex had assumed the technique was nothing more than filler. […] However, now that she was a sleuth herself, Bex decided to give all those poor, maligned writers the benefit of the doubt and guess that the interminable itinerary listing was actually a sensible way of organizing their thoughts in a linear fashion, the better to make sense of the knotty puzzle before them."
She decides to give it a go:
"She noted that they seemed to be driving down Nineteenth Avenue. The street was … street colored. Concrete colored. Gray.
[… ]
And, anyway, now they had left Nineteenth Avenue and were driving through Golden Gate Park, which was pretty and green, as parks are wont to be. Finally, they pulled out of the park and alongside the Pacific Ocean. It was blue and big and, presumably wet."
Actor Emily Deschanel and author Kathy Reichs on the set of Bones (image courtesy Fox)
I just checked out Bones Are Forever, by Kathy Reichs, from the library and realized it had been a long time since I felt that pull of a well-written novel. I found myself seeking out excuses to slip away to read, and I carried the book around with me in hopes odd respites would present themselves and need to be filled with a good book.
The TV show Bones, based on Reichs' work, is so goofily overwritten that it's astonishing it came out of the Temperance Brennan novels. I even like Bones, but it's so cringe-inducing for how two-dimensional the characters are and how painfully obvious each emotional revelation becomes.
It was refreshing to dive back into the original world of Tempe and enjoy Kathy Reichs' dry, exhaustively detailed, but fascinating peeks into the world of forensic anthropology — with some shootouts and kidnappings along for the thrills, of course.
I told myself I'd be better about making periodic progress posts for NaNoProgMo this time around. Easy enough, considering I haven't been making any progress!
Ok, that's not strictly true: I'm 1 hour into my 15-hour goal. Still, I haven't been working on my writing every day as I've meant to. I think setting my goal so low this month has made me feel like I can get behind, because catching up will be relatively easy. I was hoping I wouldn't take my half-hour a day as a maximum but as a minimum to get my momentum going. Um … yeah … I should have known me better.
Well, there's always next month!
I'm feeling discouraged about my mystery novel, the one I thought was almost finished last NaNoProgMo. I'm having Sam read it through for his second time after major revisions. I thought he might have some thoughts for tightening it up.
Well, be careful what you ask for, because he's only a third or so in, and he's already given me ideas for changing the whole direction of the novel.
I'm with Dori on this one. The most important rule of writing, particularly something massive like a novel? You've gotta just keep going.
I've been remiss at keeping up with my novels of late, because I've been expending my creative energy blogging (and parenting). When I opened up my files to get back to work, I winced at how long it had been since the date of my last save.
Sometimes you need a little space to breathe between drafts, but here's the problem with taking too much time off:
It's so, so, very hard to get started up again.
You think about your novel, but you don't quite remember where you were. You know you had some ideas in mind for edits, but what were they again? You kick yourself for not making better notes, but at the time they were so fresh in your head, they didn't seem necessary. Now, though — ugh, to read through it all again, to try to remember what you wanted to remember. Such a chore, such a dragging waste of time.
Maybe you'll just put it off for another day or two...
Here's a kick in the pants for you, if you're anything like me and need one: Get your manuscript out. Start somewhere. Whether it's finishing or editing or writing the first page, start again. And then keep at it.
One of the problems of being a creative writer without a book contract or editor looking over your shoulder is that getting your work finished is completely up to you. If you're highly self-motivated, there's no problem there. But, for the rest of us, there's usually always something else you could be doing, maybe even should be. So it's a challenge to fit writing into your schedule of work, household tasks, parenting, fun, and you find the days, weeks, months, years going by without your pet projects being completed and sent out for publication.
Or maybe that's just me.
I've discovered that a fun and inspiring way to finish work is to have someone else set the deadlines for you.
My husband was intrigued that a simple PDF certificate was enough to keep me pushing through the intense month of NaNoWriMo. He also noted that I willingly wrote a poem a day for the PAD Challenge hosted by Robert Brewer at Poetic Asides, which this year is also handing out completion certificates.
So he set a deadline for me to finish the second draft of my mystery novel, and promised me a special certificate if I got it done in time. He wondered if that would be magic enough to make me finish.
Well, my friends, he got his answer. I love me some pointless writing certificates!
The wonderful news, then, is that the second draft of my NaNoWriMo mystery novel is done, and we're calling it my reader's draft, because it was finally ready to be read by someone besides me. The grand kinks in the plotting had been worked out, whole sections moved around, and new transitions added. It's much improved, plotwise.
Sam was my first official reader, and there were two pieces of good that came out of that:
First of all, he read it really quickly, because he enjoyed it. Yea! He particularly loved the character based on him. ;)
Secondly, he had a wonderful host of suggestions for making it even better, most related to character building. He pointed out fundamentals of novel writing, like the fact that my main character should have a specific goal in mind from the very beginning, something to drive the story forward before the murder solving gets under way. Since it was a mystery novel, I was shorthanding it and allowing the mystery itself to be the only goal; I think it makes sense that that's the main goal, but since my character is an amateur detective, she needs to have something else going on in her life, some problem she's trying to solve, and ideally it should all relate to the murder in the end as well.
I can foresee a lot of thematic revisions ahead, intwining different threads and adding more character development and backstory, and it excites me at the same time it scares me. Maybe another certificate, Sam?
If you want to accomplish a writing project, you could use this tactic to your advantage. Find a person who will hold you accountable and who will present you with a prize if (and only if) you complete your mission. Unless you're closely related to this person, it should probably be financially inexpensive (e.g., PDF certificate) and not too much work to pull off. Or you could always buy yourself something but have someone hold it ransom until you turn in your manuscript. And it doesn't have to be a thing — it could be a fun outing or experience.
Alternatively, as with NaNoWriMo and PAD, you could find a group that's already doing what you want. There are blog posting and photography challenges out there, for instance, and presumably more besides. If you can't find a group you want, create one! There have to be other procrastinating creative types just aching for a kick in the pants.
In related deadline news, the PAD Challenge is wrapping up in a couple days. With racing to get my reader's draft finished, I have been haphazard at writing a poem a day. I more often write a few poems every few days! But it all counts in the end. I love that I'll have 30+ draft of poems by the end of the month (if I get cracking at catching up!). You still have time to get yours in as well. Remember to post in the comments on Robert Brewer's blog if you want your certificate! I know I'm geeked for it!
I’ve been deep in the throes of editing my NaNoWriMo novel. It’s such a muddle to wade through, 50,000-plus words, and I do understand that that’s on the short end for a novel. In the end, being a cozy, it will be at least 60,000.
But whether 50,000 or 100,000, that’s a lot of words to edit!
I have three murder incidents in my book, as most mysteries do, and I realized after I’d written it in that crazy month that numbers two and three needed to be swapped. It just made more sense that way, and allowed the main character to get to know beforehand the person who’s killed last.
But, oh, dear — that means rewriting and rearranging fully two-thirds of the stupid thing. Even those wonderful, witty conversations I was so proud of will now have to fall, because the characters will all be talking about something else now.
But as someone on the NaNoWriMo boards consoled (and I can’t remember who it was now — sorry), you can’t edit nothing. At least I have a truckload of words to edit!
I thought there might be some computing help out there to make my life easier. Microsoft Word is dismal when it comes to the demands of fiction writing. There’s no easy way to outline or to rearrange whole sections.
I started researching writing software for the Mac, reading reviews and comparing demo videos, and I settled on two that sounded promising — Scrivener and Copywrite — before a review for one of those led me to a third possibility — StoryMill. I looked at other options as well, but those three sounded like the best fit for the kind of writing I do, which is to say, novel-length fiction. Some other programs seemed to have more use for non-fiction writers or technical writing.
Intriguing features of these types of fiction-writing word processors (not available in all of them) are the ability to create timelines that link to your scenes, chapter views, the ability to save multiple revisions and revert to an earlier one if necessary, character description files, virtual corkboard for rearranging index cards that contain parts of the story, multiple windows to see various drafts simultaneously, inherent outlining, etc., and everything’s theoretically linked to everything else — so if you, say, moved a section on your corkboard, it would move that section in your novel as well, no tedious searching, cutting, and pasting necessary.
I have links from Amazon just for StoryMill, so I went ahead and put up screen shots that were available to give a general idea of the sort of experience you’d have with one of these writers’ word processors.
I won’t go into the details of each one, because ultimately I decided to hold off. It was when I was reading StoryMill reviews and one reviewer’s words really spoke to me:
May 15 2008 MSWWSM —
I can’t give this product any kind of fair review as I can’t quite figure out what it’s for. If I had to guess, I’d say this — and the similar Scrivener — are for writers who may indeed have the prose chops to get the job done but can’t get a handle on how to organize longer manuscripts in their heads …
Foremost, StoryMill and Scrivener are not models for how novelists I know actually work. We have various loose “processes”, we keep notes, we do research — not too little research on-the-fly, so to speak — and we may rough out in a notebook, on an index card, or on the back of the power bill, overarching plot lines, concepts, perhaps brief character sketches, snippets of especially pithy dialogue or metaphor we just have to use, that sort of thing. But everyone I know merely takes something that’s been stewing, sits down one morning, or evening, or dead in the middle of night, and begins writing; then we go back and eradicate, illuminate and, well, prevaricate, as required to make the story whole. …
As for aspiring novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, etc., I can’t help but advise you’d be far better off just sitting down and writing, ignoring the confusing disorganized mess you may create — because you CAN — and WILL, if you stick at it — develop a process for sorting things out, making sense of disparate parts and gluing them together into a coherent story. The bottom line is, called upon to take 60,000 - 120,000 words or more, vet this draft for grammar, style, continuity errors, etc., it’s never going to just wrap up nicely, and it’s always going to degrade into a brutal grind at times, whether you write on legal pads with a blunt pencil or with these sorts of computerized writers toolkits. It’s never easy, no matter what.
Emphasis mine, because man, oh, man.
Here’s a portion of the response from someone who liked the above review as much as I did:
although i am trying to write a novel with various timelines and therefore became interested in any computerized help i could get, i now am convinced that a dry erase board or a yellow pad with lots of revisions/erasures, as mswwsm notes, will work better.
a writer i admire once told an audience that when she teaches creative writing, she emphasizes B.I.C = butt in chair! there is no substitute and most of these apps are probably - at least for me - more of a distraction and an ill-fitted crutch than the solution and will probably never accomplish what mswwsm suggests. — rich ratzan
So, butt in chair, I have been doing the hard work.
I figured that spending any more energy than I already have on these software apps would just distract me from the task at hand. I would spend so much time copying my scenes into each demo version, then editing in each one to see how it works. I would type in character descriptions and obsess about details. It’s probably best just to use what I have and try to figure out a process for myself.
I think next time I write a novel, I will start off in one of these software options, to see if it helps. Ideally, I’ll start three novels simultaneously, so I can see which of the three options makes things easiest!
But for now — I have an outline of my original draft in OmniOutliner. I’ve rearranged it in the same app, checking my timeline by sketching it out with purple pen (hey, it was around) on the back of an envelope and drawing arrows to show which parts I wanted to change around or add.
I have another file in OmniOutliner for notes and revisions, which includes my character descriptions, painstakingly copied every time a character came up. Then I can make sure haircolor and age and the like don’t change throughout the story by referring back to my notes. I have listed things I want to add and things I want to change. I have ideas for place names and poisons. (Hey, it’s a murder mystery!) I chose OmniOutliner for this file, because I can indent subtopics to show that they relate to an above main topic, but also primarily because OmniOutliner offers little checkboxes all down the side. Whenever I’ve completed a revision task, I can check it off and stop worrying about it. Most of the boxes remain unchecked, but at least I know that they will get done, and I don’t have to keep it all in my head.
I’ve saved multiple drafts now in Word, and I’m going to start the annoyance of cutting and pasting according to my outline, and then … it’s rewrite time. I’ll just have to go in, read it through, and change what doesn’t make sense anymore. Which I’m assuming will be most of it. Sigh.
I came across this review in The Curator for a fantasy book, Cyndere's Midnight. The book is by Jeffrey Overstreet, and the article is by Annie Young Frisbie, titled "On Fantasy Fiction; Or, You Should Read Cyndere's Midnight."
Frisbie (or can I call her Annie? she sounds personable) talks about her history as a closet fantasy fan, her coming out, and now her advocacy for non-fans of the genre to lay aside their snarkiness and give a really good book a try. She declares: "I'm tired of seeing fantasy ghettoized. Genre was made to be transcended."
I'm one of those people who don't...quite...get fantasy. It's just not my thing. I love C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter books, and I hear true fantasy fans disparage them as bad examples of the genre, so...I guess I'm just not a fan, although this glowing review might inspire me to give it another chance. Truly, no offense intended; I think I just get tripped up by names I don't know how to pronounce.
Because in any case, I totally understand feeling marginalized for enjoying commercial fiction that's not considered prestigious, in my case romance and mystery novels, and in fact enjoying them so much that I write my own.
When Frisbie (and/or Annie) mocks people who read "to pad your Goodreads feed with Booker nominees in order to impress your Facebook friends," I remember when I signed up for Goodreads at a friend's request and then feeling twinges of...oh, no, was that embarrassment?...when I listed recent books I'd truly enjoyed but were nothing like what my other friends were sharing with the world.
I didn't and don't want to fill this blog with apologetics and justifications and rants about how I feel ashamed or victimized by my preferences. I know other people just like me are out there, in large numbers, and I choose not to dwell on the naysayers' snootiness.
But I don't mind bringing it up once in awhile, just to discuss the phenomenon of creating a divide between "literary" and "commercial" fiction. (Isn't that a funny distinction all in itself? Literary meaning it's like literature, and commercial meaning it sells -- shouldn't both strive to be both? Kind of reminds me of "Republican" and "Democrat" -- shouldn't all Americans embrace the basics of both those words?)
I've been skulking agent blogs and writer forums whenever I need a break from revising my WIP (work in progress to those who don't skulk -- I've discovered all new terminology from all this procrastinating), and I found this uplifting A from a Q & A by the Evil Editor:
Authors don't get to declare what kind of prose they write. ... That's a job for critics, agents, and the people who make up the lies that go on the backs of books. Apparently you're unhappy with calling your book literary fiction. Don't be. Literary doesn't mean it's literature; it just means it's boring. My advice: add some sharks and a wolfman, and call it commercial fiction.
That made me laugh. I love that we have professional advocates out there to override any sneering voices.
I'll end with a great quote from Annie (I'm going for it -- I just read her bio and she loves LLL and cloth diapers [just like me, swoon]. Seriously, read her article; it's great, and here's a similar blog post she wrote):
Don’t let signs at Barnes and Noble or tags on Amazon.com tell you what kind of books you like to read. You’ll miss out on countless worlds of beauty.
Enjoy novels that tell a story! Enjoy characters you'd want to be friends with! Enjoy an adventure you'd like to go on! Embrace your chosen genre, and be happy.
I have officially finished one full novel and won NaNoWriMo08!
It's only a first draft, but I've planned out my edits and will get to work revising. I know, for instance, that I need to add scenes and descriptions, red herrings and clues, to get my novel up to the ~70,000 words expected of a cozy.
I've already put books on querying agents on hold at the library and will let you know how the process goes. I've been reading agent blogs to dip my toe in the water, and for once I don't feel like I'm just procrastinating from writing by doing that!
Right now I'm too excited to do much other than celebrate, but soon it will be time to work, work, work, and start writing the next in the series! For genre fiction like mysteries and romance, it's common to think in terms of series, and I am definitely on that train.
I highly recommend that you try out NaNoWriMo next year if you haven't done it already. Write 2,000 words a day, in little chunks if needed, and you'll have a whole fricking novel by the end of the month! What could be better?
I hope no one thinks I'm being disloyal for writing a murder mystery for NaNoWriMo08. I'm working on a romance novel in non-NaNoWriMo life, and those are my two favorite genres.
As a palliative to those of you who prefer romance over murder, let me tell you that I've included a married couple as my protagonist detecting team. The main character is Christine, a church praise team leader in her late 20s. She narrates the story. Her husband is Rob, a graphic designer by day and newborn sleuthing partner at night.
I love love. I love marriage. That's why I love romance novels so much. I adore the giddiness of finding true love, that first spark of interest, the rapturous wondering of "is s/he interested back?", the relief of finding out "yes!". and, of course, in novels, all the interesting barriers in between and/or after those steps.
But, having been married ten years now myself (sooo long, I know!), I will play the old wise woman and say that a committed marriage is just as fascinating, just as satisfying. It's a different emotional kick, but it appeals to me just as much. Obviously, or I wouldn't believe so strongly in marriage!
What I think is missing from most novels, movies, TV shows, and so on is portrayals of real, positive marriages. There's plenty of cat-and-mouse flirtatious bickering of an odd pairing, plenty of tingly first-kiss experiences, and, sadly, more than enough of sour and negative relationships, whether continuing or ending. Many popular sitcoms have made their married couple characters barely tolerant of each other, constantly sniping and undermining, rather than true partners on the same team.
Have you ever read Kate Wilhelm's Constance and Charlie series? There's a wonderful example for me to live up to: a middle-aged married couple who like and respect each other. The tension is in catching the murderer, not in whether or not they'll stay together. Their commitment to each other is a given.
I like to think I'm doing my part to promote the naturalness -- the unostentatious joy -- of a good marriage, both in real life and now in fiction.
ETA: I forgot, and we're even watching them on DVD right now! There's also Hetty Wainthropp! I think my characters are a young, newlywed version of Hetty and her husband -- very grounded and very committed.
I'm halfway through the timeframe of NaNoWriMo, though not halfway through my word count since I started late. I have daily writing goals of 2,000 words that if followed (or caught up on...) will get me to 50,000 words on exactly the last day.
Now it's just down to two things: 1. that I have the story told by 50,000 words, and 2. that I remember to verify my word count by midnight! (I tend to fudge my "days" a little.)
As for #1, I'm trying to be bare bones about this writing assignment and make sure I get the plot told. I figure I can fill in all that fancifying description and character development later!
Here's something I didn't expect, though. As a huge fan of reading murder mystery novels and watching American and British versions of same, I thought of myself as hardened and jaded in terms of committing fictional murder. But in my first chapter, I had to kill off a character (otherwise it's not, you know, a murder mystery), and I felt guilty! She seemed kind of nice, and I'd barely gotten to know her before she was dead. In a horribly agonizing way, although not overly gory. (This is a cozy, so I'm going with things like poison and booby traps.)
I accept with no qualms the deaths of characters in mystery fiction I read or view, but somehow being the perpetrator of the death made me feel bad. I could see it being even more wrenching if I'd really "known" the character and become attached.
How have you experienced the death of a character? Has it felt necessary and acceptable, or has it upset you as much as it did the other characters?
November is National Novel Writing Month. You can visit the NaNoWriMo site to learn more about it.
The crazy goal is to write 50,000 words of continuous fiction in 30 days. Words and speed count; quality doesn't.
As you can see, I'm a little slow off the blocks. I had heard about it back in April when I was doing the Poem-a-Day challenge, and I resolved to file it away in my memory bank for November.
Apparently, I didn't too so well with retrieving the file, because I forgot about it this month until happening upon a fellow writer friend's Facebook page.
But I am not discouraged. Words per day aren't the requirement, as long as I get to the 175-page target by the end of the month. And I'm a pretty fast typist!
So...what to write? I was thinking a mystery novel, specifically a cozy, because that would be the kind of light-hearted thing that would fit a flurry of writing and a short novel length. I had thought about one set in Northwest Indiana, where I used to live, so I could dust off that idea.
Another path would be a romance novella, because it seems like publishers enjoy putting collections of those together, and I could see it as a good way to get some exposure and new readers. Hmmm...I'd better decide tonight. Maybe I'll just start typing and see where it leads me!
Want to join me? Let me know what you're writing, and post your word count at the NaNoWriMo site.
I'm Lauren Wayne, career writer, author of mystery & romance novels, professional blogger, and natural parent. Follow along with my tips for writing, publishing, and blogging.
I thought there might be some computing help out there to make my life easier. Microsoft Word is dismal when it comes to the demands of fiction writing. There’s no easy way to outline or to rearrange whole sections.
I came across 
. The book is by Jeffrey Overstreet, and the article is by Annie Young Frisbie, titled "On Fantasy Fiction; Or, You Should Read Cyndere's Midnight."
and the 
, and I hear true fantasy fans disparage them as bad examples of the genre, so...I guess I'm just not a fan, although this glowing review might inspire me to give it another chance. Truly, no offense intended; I think I just get tripped up by names I don't know how to pronounce.
? There's a wonderful example for me to live up to: a middle-aged married couple who like and respect each other. The tension is in catching the murderer, not in whether or not they'll stay together. Their commitment to each other is a given.
!
! I think my characters are a young, newlywed version of Hetty and her husband -- very grounded and very committed.
and watching 
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