Creating A Good Book - Creating A Good Writer

WIFYR brought about a major phase shift in my thinking. For so long I had focused on creating the one perfect book. I thought if I just kept at it long enough, I would get it right. It would be great. It would be publishable.

What I didn't see was that I needed to make myself into a writer. New concept! Instead of struggling and straining over the same tired old idea for years and years, I could toss off a new book in six months or less. So what if it wasn't perfect? I would write another one, and another one! I wouldn't just be writing, I would be creating a writer.

I used to sneer at books that weren't perfectly thought out, that had discrepancies, characters that didn't work, or silly bits that I felt should have been omitted. Okay, I still do, but now I feel more generous towards writers. You have to try a lot of things, and not everything you try will work. I shouldn't sneer at people for trying!

And, once I've created a good writer in myself, then hopefully I can find the good in what I write, preserve it and polish it gently, and make with it a good book.

My new web site and blog

My son Ben (web design) and my daughter Miriam (graphics) put together a web site for their old mom. I'd love for you to check it out and give me some feedback.

I have over in LiveJournal called Author Dene Low. Unfortunately, I've been too busy writing and getting ready for my daughter's wedding in less than 3 weeks (AARGH!) to go out and get friends. I'd love to have any of you check it out.

Thanks!

Great writing advice from Dave Wolverton--free

Every few days, Dave Wolverton/Farland sends out what he calls his Daily Kick in the Pants with great insights about writing as a craft and as a career. I've found it both interesting and informative. The latest is about the power of words, that I thought was especially good. If you want to subscribe, here are the instructions.


Please feel free to share this email with friends. If you would like to be added to this list, just email dwolvert@xmission.com and say, "Kick me!"

Writing for Charity

Amy and I attended the Writing for Charity event yesterday at the Salt Lake City Library. It was a great event---like a mini WIFYR! Apparently it's going to be a yearly event and I would recommend it to everyone. It's for charity after all!

We got some good advice on writing with children. We also got to hear Amy Jameson (she's Shannon Hale and Jessica Day George's agent) give some advice on dealing with agents. There was also a small workshop session where we read the first pages of people's novels. Amy and I lucked out and ended up in a group with Brandon Mull and his editor, Chris Schoebinger from Shadow Mountain. They had all of us give our pitches for our novels (and, gee, I wish that I hadn't been first and had some forewarning...) and then they critiqued our pitches and told us how to improve them, which was really, really helpful (and really, really stressful to be put on the spot like that). Anyway, Chris Schoebinger said that he loved my title before reading any of the piece and would have read my submission based on that alone, which was great to hear from an editor. He also told Amy and me when we asked him a question afterwards that we should feel free to submit our manuscripts to him. Too bad neither of them are finished yet!

Public or Private?

The RSS feed doesn't work because this blog is set so that only blog authors can read it. I could set it to public, but then everyone in the world wide web can read our posts. Not that any of those hacks out there would steal our ideas and publish them first, but maybe we want to keep things just among ourselves.

What's everyone's opinion?

On another note, I'm delighted to see that Chersti and Ashton have now signed in! Welcome!

RSS Feed Difficulties

I have been unable to access the RSS feed of this blog since the end of the first week which is odd since it used to work just fine. Imagine my surprise to find out the blog has been very active over the past month. The feed requires authentication now, which is puzzling since I'm obviously able to post to the blog, but my username and password are not accepted for the feed. I can't find any setting that affects this issue.

I was wondering if anybody else is having trouble accessing:

http://tolkiensgrandchildren.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

I am prompted for a username and password for both the Atom and RSS feed. I am using Safari on OS X 10.5.4. I will test the feed with Flock next, and wonder if others are experiencing the same problem.

I found the blog again!

Okay, so I didn't look all that hard for a while, but then Jeni from the writing group mentioned it several times and I knew I need to get back to it.

So, I've finally started a new story. Mid-grade Sci Fi. And I'm not just writing it because several editors mentioned they'd like to find a good mid-grade sci fi (though I must admit, that was a deciding factor of the age group I picked).

I've actually written 3 chapters! I'm at about 7000 words so far. That's a good chunk of a mid-grade book! Though I hope I've not made my idea too large for one book. I'm hoping it would be a good series, but definitely need it to stand alone so I can sell it.

So.. enough rambling from me. I'll post snippets here and there when I need help, or want to amaze you all with my writing ability. ;)