Tag Archives: plot

It’s ONE MONTH til Christmas!

25 Sunday Nov 2018

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Are you ready?  Are you starting to get ready?

As I start to write this I don’t know, for once, what title to give it!  Of course most of my written work starts off without a title and gets a title at the end when I can summarize… so today will be the same!

What a productive weekend! Yesterday was my first Saturday off since I started the new job and it was amazing!  I did all my laundry and got out to see the horses and my daughter and I decorated the tree… yes, my decorating is done for the year and you can check it out…

Christmas_Tree_1

This morning I got my Christmas cards written and just need stamps.  Most of my shopping is done too.  Of course wrapping is another story!

I have been falling behind, as usual, on my writing.  My blog posts are picking up again and, once more, I’m trying to decide if I want to push myself to do a month of daily blog posts.  When I did that last time it was incredible and it helped my brain get back into the thought processes related to writing.

Of course I could decide to do that starting January first… New Year, New challenge for myself.

I’m also still working on a short story and might have another one in there, possibly a new full-length novel and that’s an incredible feeling as the characters start to form in your mind.  It’s a little like knitting or crocheting when you are merely setting the stage by creating that first link meanwhile it doesn’t look like anything, it’s not going to do anything to keep you warm and you have no idea how many stitches will get dropped and how many times you’ll end up backing up to do repairs or how many repairs you’ll have to do when you’re done.

You hope for no holes to fix or dropped stitches but I think ALL writing will have the same plot holes and require edits/repairs before the story is presentable.

Second-to-last it looks like I’m going to really be able to get into the blogging game with the wellness studio and start getting some real health-related blogs going up on their site.

Lastly, I’m trying to find a time to put my books on Amazon on sale.  I need to also get Changes in Time back onto my website and Lulu.

As soon as I know when I’m going to do the sale I’ll be doing a blog post about it and posting it on my Facebook page.

We’re so close to the holidays it’s like being able to feel hope in the air!

By the way, as you noticed, I found a title!

The Finish Line

15 Wednesday Nov 2017

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That’s the title for tomorrow!

As I go through my day today, the last with crazy cells in my body, I keep picturing tomorrow as the finish line.  That dawned on me yesterday as I was talking to patients for the last time before my day was done that it really is a finish line of sorts.  I have spent just shy of a year wondering, worrying, going from procedure to consult with, seemingly, no answers.  “Just one more procedure”.

Of course I lost my grandmother and my boss of 11 years in the first six months of that year and I can’t say whether that made a difference to this or not but here I am.

Tomorrow by this time, if everything goes on time and I respond the way I should, I should be settled in my room.  I will have a fresh 12″ incision in my lower abdomen but the there will be no further threat from those bad cells.

And then I will pause in order to recover.  I will rest, I will read, I will write and address Christmas cards.  I will have others do all the things that need doing… laundry, cooking, dishes, vacuuming, etc… and I will heal and I will get stronger.  Then I will move onto the starting gate… the start of, well, I don’t know.

I have to try to negotiate that.  Stress, anxiety, worrying and not-great test results have become all I know.  Where do I go from here?  I don’t know.  What do I want to do?  I want to get back to my writing.  I want to feel that pleasure of putting words on the page and planning story arcs and creating characters and letting them live in my mind and tell the story while I become the mode of telling that story.  Just writing about that doesn’t even bring me much pleasure right now.  There’s a twinge.

Perhaps this will be the time for starting that job search all over again.

Well, no matter what the New Year brings, I hope that it is positive and filled with magic and wonder… exactly what this year has not had!

I will post an update as soon as I feel up to it.

Officially Sick!

14 Saturday Jan 2017

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It has been another two weeks since I’ve written.  I’ve fallen off the schedule.  The new job has thrown me off kilter!

For the last two weeks, at least, I have been struggling through the school’s delivery program as everything is electronic.  First I had the wrong shell.  I only got the new shell on Wednesday evening.  I have also ended up having two 12-hour days this week as I was attending professional development workshops.  I was supposed to attend a third this afternoon but my back is soooooo sore (most of you know the history there so I won’t go into it) I just can’t fathom sitting there another three hours when all that will do is make it that much worse.  The staff is great and don’t care if I stand but that wasn’t working so well on Tuesday and Thursday… obviously!

To add insult to injury, I ended up catching a cold!  The last few days I have had a stuffy and runny nose.  I woke this morning to that feeling of ‘my head is going to explode’!!  So, I am officially sick.  Another, and probably better, reason to not go this afternoon.  That’s okay, I have a year to get four of them in.  I think I can manage two in the next eleven months.

As for my writing, well, you know that I published Confessions on New Year’s Day.  That’s the last I have done.  I do want to get it up on Amazon but that will take a bit more time.

I had one of my past campers send me a manuscript to read through.  I did manage to get through about 10 pages of the 79 she sent!!  It’s a long story.  Her concern is there is no plot.

As we know, every story has a plot or it couldn’t be told.  It doesn’t necessarily  mean the plot is thick and multi-faceted though.  It could be very thin with very little happening outside the plot.  We all have those in our closet.  Most likely, my first few books are written that way.  There’s not much to put into love stories though I have tried my best to put some small occurrence in that leaves everyone shocked.

A plot can’t work without characters but characters can’t work without a plot.  Another great way to look at it is to look at your own life and all the bumps along the way.  What is the plot of your life?  We never know the ending.  Do we want to know the ending?  And don’t forget that among the main plot line are all kinds of little subplots.  Maybe it’s  drama from parents or siblings and maybe it’s drama at work.  All those little things have a profound effect on the main plot of our lives.  Eventually they will all get wrapped up in a neat little bow.  It will just take time.

So I will finish off what I need to do for my classes and spend a bit of time checking out this plotless story and see what I can come up with… I bet it does have a plot!

Happy Thanksgiving… We Won

11 Tuesday Oct 2016

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We swept Texas!  What a relief that was.  And it wasn’t easy!  Ended up winning in the 10th.

Yes, I had much to be grateful for, including that.  Why?  Because Canada has one Major League Baseball team.  Because a very long time ago before there were any sports channels and the Jays played outdoors at Exhibition Stadium my grandparents would take a TV outside, tune in what was then CKCO-TV (now one of the CTV channels) with the rabbit ears and we would sit around watching the game on a Sunday afternoon.  When they made it the first year to the World Series my aunt was getting married.  All night we ran back and forth between the hall and the bar to keep an eye on the game.  It’s something that I have shared with my dad for years and the one thing that I will always remember.

I have passed that on to my daughter because I know how exciting and exhilarating it was 24 years ago when they went to the World Series the first time.  She’s into and it’s something I can share with her.

Special moments.  It’s what we all look for isn’t it?

Well I got back to Confessions today.  Spent quite a bit of time working through the next leg of the novel.  Piecing in the old stuff and then adding filler to bridge the big moments.  And up until this moment, I never thought of it that way!  Sure, we all learn that the plot is made up of scenes each having a beginning, a middle and an end.  And we all learn that scenes move the story forward.  But never have I looked at my work that way.  Never have I looked at my own work from the perspective of scenes moving the story forward.  I’ve always just written the book.  I’ve edited it.  I’ve taken stuff out and I’ve added stuff in.  Never has it gone as far as me dissecting it because it’s not flowing right and the action doesn’t start until Chapter EIGHT!

The old adage is that we learn something new every day… that was my something new for today.

Well, we wait until Friday night for the next ball game.  I’m on vacation this week so it’s time to really sink my claws into Confessions and as much other stuff as I can cram into my days.

I also need to come up with a title for that short story I wrote before I can submit it.  I hate trying to come up with titles!  Sometimes it’s right there, but most of the time it’s not.

I’m going to go to bed now.  Probably watch some Netflix but I’m beat.  Those extra innings went until 11 something last night.  I’ve also had two very large suppers which make me sleepy.  I also had a glass of wine which is making me sleepiest.  Despite being on vacation, the old alarm clock is going to be waking me up tomorrow morning so I can be sure to get my daughter up and out the door.

Goodnight all!

Passions…

03 Monday Oct 2016

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Today was back to work after what was a busy weekend.  I lost Friday night and then proceeded to have heart palpitations through not one, but two, very close baseball games!  Fortunately the Jays won and will get a single chance at making it further into the postseason.  I hope they do.

It’s fun when you’re passionate about something.  I’m not into football, or hockey (yes, despite being Canadian), or any other sport.  Just baseball… just the Toronto Blue Jays.  It goes back to when I was in my late teens and they won the World Series back-to-back.  There was so much excitement in our household and at my grandparent’s.  Everyone was into the Jays then.  I lost touch for a while after that but my dad never did.  He’d talk about it but the numbers were so low it was impossible.  A few years ago I really got back into it.  It’s the one thing I get to share with my dad.  Talking about the players, talking about strategy and talking about what moves need to made… how they need to play the game… hit the ball on the ground.  Advance the players around the bases and score runs!

Does any of that ring any bells?  It should.  It’s the sports version of writing a novel!  You have your characters, you have your goal and your plot is how you get the characters there.  You develop wins and you develop losses.  You develop hurtles that your readers will cheer for and against.  You will have that one (or two, or three) antagonist that your readers will hate (for me it’s four because as passionately as I love the Jays, I loathe Boston, Tampa, Texas and New York (Yanks)) and love to hate.

But comparing baseball to writing was not actually where I was going with this.  I’ve done that before, I realize.  Where I was actually going is the passion for something, anything.  For me, the passion to write is the same as sitting down and watching a Jays game.  I have to do it!  I can’t not do it.  Sure, I can easily turn it off if they’re losing and have no way to get back but I’m with them every step of the way just like I’m with the characters I develop every step of the way through their challenges.

Find what you’re passionate about.  Of course it can be another sport, it can be anything.  Find the comparisons to how you feel about writing.  No matter what else you’re passionate about, the passion should be the same!

The Joys of Vacation

05 Tuesday Jul 2016

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So this week I’m on vacation… YAY!!

When you work full-time any time away from the office is heavenly because it gives you more time to do things you just can’t do when you’re working.  This includes planning months in advance to run a kid’s summer writing camp to only have a single registration.

So I made an offer to this young girl and her parents… two mornings this week to do anything and everything writing.  She emailed yesterday to ask if she could print off and bring along some work she’s been having trouble with!

“By all means!” was my excited reply!  I can’t do that with regular camp.  I can’t give what is really needed to them when there is more than one!

She brought it this morning and three hours flew by.  We hardly touched what I had done up for her–Deepening Plot, The Dark Side of Characters–but we did get more of her storyline dealt with.  We made a plot planner for her and we outlined her main plot and subplots as well as the characters and which ones belonged with which subplot!

I’m hoping she spends this afternoon, this evening and all day tomorrow just writing up a storm before we get to our session on Thursday morning.  That way we can iron out any remaining issues before she’s suddenly gone.

I too have been trying to get at things.  I had to spend three hours yesterday cleaning my house in order for this young person to come over.  I spent some time reading about writing but went to bed with an agitated tummy because I didn’t spend any time writing.  I’m on vacation, I should be writing!

Anyway, I did manage to do some writing this afternoon.  Not nearly as much as I wanted to but I tackled some at least.  And, of course, this post.  I think I was more excited about sharing the joys of sharing writing with another than I was about sitting and writing.

The weather is beautiful–it’s sunny, it’s hot and it stays light forever!  Soon it will all be another memory.  That’s the unfairness of summer… it seems to only give us a whiff and then it disappears.

I hope that my young student this morning has more success than I at sitting down and getting writing done!

Now, I must take my leave and go out to my daughter and her horse… ho hum… soon my week will be over and I will be sighing, wishing it was longer. Wishing I had a few more days.  There are never enough hours in a day!

 

Another Chapter Closes…

17 Friday Jun 2016

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Our lives our made up of chapters like any book we read.  Our life is the book.

Today my daughter is going to her last day of classes.  Yearbook day is Monday but it’s not like it used to be where you still went from class to class to get it signed.  Now they get their book and they run madly all over the school trying to find as many friends as they can to get their books signed and then they leave.

She has some exams to write but today the chapter comes to an end.  It’s the end of an era.  For fourteen years she has gone off to school every morning.  She has learned to read, write and do arithmetic, among other things!

She has grown and changed into a lovely young woman with her whole future ahead of her and I can only hope that I taught her well in the ways of the world.

I understand how she feels.  Twenty-five years ago I was in the exact same position she is now.  Half a decade has passed and I understand the feeling… leaving your friends behind to go on a new, and scary, adventure.  What will college bring?  What will college be like?  It’s scary not knowing what’s around the bend.

But she will prevail as we all do.  We work hard, we experience failures, but we come out of it all in the end.

I wish her the best and I will be with her through it all… I’m not going to abandon her, I will always be her mom and, as most parents say, will stand by her decisions even if they aren’t always the best and I will help her to find her way.

Sounds much like the makings of a novel… character development… do you make a mom supportive or not?  Do you make a child supportive or not?  Sometimes parents are overbearing and drive their kids away even though they mean well.  Other times parents don’t care and they still drive their kids away.

For her, the future isn’t written yet… there is no plot right now.

I get to watch her write her own story!

Show… Don’t Tell

14 Sunday Feb 2016

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I know, what am I doing writing on Valentine’s Day… well, I have nothing else to do!  I’m a romance author with no romance…

Moving on…

I’m not one to normally complain about another author, use them as an example… definitely.  Whether that’s still just a nicer way to say I’m complaining… that’s up to you to decide.  I often use these examples when I’m teaching though most of it is just a way to give examples for plot and characters so budding writers are able to connect what they are learning to something solid.

I, for some reason, enjoy reading Kate Morton.  I’m not sure why exactly because by my definition her work is more literary than I usually prefer.  I don’t need to know how many shades of yellow the sun is but she does weave good stories.  I’m a “just tell the story” gal.

However… what is the one thing we are all taught?  Whether you are a self-learner or have an MFA that one message that is driven home is SHOW, DON’T TELL!

Well, I’m reading along in The Lake House and you have to know that the book does bounce from one era to another to tell the story and it tells the story from the perspective of multiple characters… fine, I can handle that.  BUT… at one point the elderly main character goes to visit her sister and the story shifts in the next chapter away from that.  When that character is waiting to meet the young main character several chapters later she flashes back to the entire conversation she had with her sister which led to the meeting! She’s TELLING the entire encounter rather than SHOWING it.

There’s at least one way she could have gone around that.  She could have gone back to the conversation in “live” time where she could have made the emotions raw rather than her telling how what she was told made her feel.

I will finish reading the book as it’s an interesting story and I want to see how it ends.  Then it will go on the shelf with the other four books she’s written.

We all do our best to show, not tell when we’re writing.  Perhaps it was one of those things that was merely overlooked in this example.  We all overlook things and we all look back and ask ourselves, with an eye roll, why we didn’t do that a different way… it’s just the way it works for us.

We just have to work harder when it comes to that rule and make sure we’re building our plots scene by scene as show, not tell.

We all have to tell sometimes!

It’s NaNoWriMo!!

01 Sunday Nov 2015

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The one time of the year that excites me the most… the day after Halloween! And no, it’s not because it’s All Saint’s Day either!

NaNoWriMo kicks off and I get super excited about pushing out another novel.  Maybe it will make it to editing and publication or maybe it will sit in the depths of my laptop for all eternity, unfinished because I just can’t bring myself to waste the time editing it!  I guess that’s the biggest thing about NaNo… you sometimes don’t know what you’re going to get, especially if you’re like me and you do little to know planning ahead!  I simply create a couple of characters in my head and let them take the lead and tell me the story.

It’s pretty amazing how, in all my teaching to young and old alike, how many actually write that way.  Then you go to the bookstore and you buy books written by great authors and they are telling you that the only way to write is to come up with a plan.  To sketch the entire thing out in advance, scene by scene, chapter by chapter.  Plan it from beginning to end not leaving anything out.  Then you sit down and write it…

Isn’t that much the same?  If you’re going to sit and plan the entire thing out where’s the surprise?  Where is ability to veer off course?  When I wrote Changes in Time I wasn’t planning on best-friend-of-main-character coming along pregnant!  She chose that!  A teen pregnancy in what I hope will be at least a 2-book series… when I get that far!  But had I done all that planning that little lesson would have been left out.

Each of us has our own way of doing things.  I’ve had to sit down part way through and put it all in perspective on the Plot Planner to actually pinpoint the beginning, end and climax but most of the time I’m most of the way through and it’s when I have to go back and tweak things that I have to do those things.

It’s important to do what works for us and to not fall into the trap of what everyone else does.  If it works for them, great.  If it works for you, great.  But this is what works for me!

I’ll leave you with a Story Starter today, just in case you want to join in on the fun of NaNo and don’t know where to begin…

On vacation for the first time in years, a fallen angel gets married on a whim.

The Joys of Editing…

04 Sunday Jan 2015

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I always excelled at spelling in school and was so-so with grammar.  From 2002-2004 I taught Medical Transcription and I had to mark the student’s transcriptions.  I learned a lot from doing that repeatedly for two years and that sticks with me today.  I can’t even read newspaper and magazine articles without picking out the bad stuff!  For me, editing comes easily but it’s not the same for everyone.

For starters, you do need to have exceptional spelling and grammar skills so you know where to put those commas and you’re not wasting time looking up the correct spelling for every other word.

It has been suggested that you put your finished manuscript away for a while–a couple of weeks at least if not months.  This allows you to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes once you do sit down to edit it.

My first time through I will edit spelling (when typing my eye, and Word, do not pick up everything) and grammar mistakes where I find them but I mostly edit the story.  This involves reading for characters, plot and action.  If it keeps you reading and you really like it then make sure you compliment yourself!  If it starts to lag in areas, then mark that too.

Don’t slow down action to describe something and be certain that when you do find a section you don’t like that it can’t be changed before you cut it… perhaps all it needs is some dialogue.

You must have courage to make cuts that are essential to the editing process.

Once you have got that next copy of your manuscript go through for spelling and grammar.  If you have troubles reading it through from the beginning because you get lost in the story then try reading it sentence by sentence from the end.  This will make you focus on sentence structure and spelling.

Remember to not rely on wordprocessing software–as long as some words are spelled correctly, it cannot decipher which word you were intending to use: they’re there and their is a perfect example of this.

Editing is a daunting task not to be taken lightly.  So take a few deep breaths and set yourself a goal–a chapter, a page (might be all you can tolerate the first few times), a half hour–stick to that goal.

You’ll make it to the end!

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