God bless us, everyone!

Merry Christmas dear friends! What a wonderful time of year it is. I love Christmas with all of it's great traditions. Drinking hot cocoa, decorating a tree, singing carols, and throwing gummy bears at all my brothers and sisters Christmas eve night when none of us can sleep. I look forward to it and it never disappoints.
I just wanted to tell you all that I have had a spiritual revival this year. My faith in Christmas has been restored from the cynical view point I had in the summer. Maybe it was doing Christmas Carol over and over again, maybe it was reading the Christmas story in the bible, I'm not sure. But I think I can safely say I know what Christmas is all about again. Sharing, giving, and love are all nice and good, but they are not what Christmas is about. Christmas is about hope and joy. Hope for our salvation. Christ was born to save us from our sins. Isn't that cause for, not only hope, but incredible joy? Here we have another chance! No matter what we've done, no matter bad decisions we've made, here we have a second chance! It came in the form of a baby. Sweet, pure, and innocent, just like how we can be. We can go back to the purity we had as children, clean of sin and ready to start anew. Christmas is a celebration of this and a chance to start over for the coming year. Doesn't that make you brim with hope and joy? Doesn't it make you want to run through the streets compulsively hugging people and shouting 'Merry Christmas' at the top of your lungs? No matter how old you are, no matter how many mistakes you have made, here is your hope and joy! Seize it! Make the most of this opportunity. In the coming year, try harder to prepare and prevent rather than having to repair and repent.
I may be preaching to the choir, but I was just aching to get this out. I make no apologies to any who don't believe in Christmas, or maybe those who feel I'm being self-righteous, This is for me as much as it is for the world. Joy to the world! God Bless you! I love you all and hope you have a very merry Christmas.

Query Holiday

http://cynleitichsmith.livejournal.com/132941.html

With details on a query holiday... ie, a group that wants to see gleaming first chapters without a query letter for a limited time. Go look!

NaNo 2

Who all that participated in NaNo finished?

I finally did today! WOO! A finished novel, 50,225 words long. :)

Bad Action Scenes

When people talk about books they've read I often hear the remark, "It had really good action scenes," as if the rest of the book were so-so, but the action really rocked.

Have you ever read a book that was the other way around, where the slow scenes were good but the action scenes were terrible?

I can't think of any. Maybe action scenes are easier to write well. What do you think?

I Sent it

I sent my manuscript to the editor today.

Wish me luck!

NaNoWriMo update

Hey everyone! Who all is participating in NaNoWriMo? Or, rather, who hasn't dropped out, and how is it going? :)

I'm writing a story about a girl struggling with nightmares and depression. It's actually the one that Carol told me to write back when I was taking a class from her at BYU. It's really fun so far, but I'm behind... only 3,500 words in so far or so.

I really want to succeed this year (finally). Anyone else?

Keeping your balance

So I was thinking about balance. Balance of the universe, balance of nature, balance of life. Most importantly, the balance of comedy and drama. It is incredibly hard to find good balance. Most stories are either one or the other, and when people are unsuccessful in mixing the two, the story comes out looking fake or too much of one or the other.
So how do you find a good balance? I know you can't have a blow for blow account of funny and dramatic scenes just to make sure you have an even amount, because it depends on the story. Some stories need more of one or the other, but how can you tell? Too much drama can make a book drag and too much comedy can ruin mood. I suppose it just depends, but I've noticed something about myself. A while ago I was reading over some old chapters trying to be unbiased (yeah. right) and I noticed that because of all the silly jokes in my story, I couldn't take myself seriously during my dramatic parts. It could be the type of humor I chose, (sarcasm and dry humor work a lot better with drama, I've noticed) but at the same time, it could be just an imbalance.
Don't get me wrong, I would rather have my story be way unbalanced in the comedic direction, than to take out my jokes just to compliment the few dramatic scenes, but I'm afraid my other stories (you know, the ones I'll probably never write) might be suffering in this way. tell me what you think and what you would do to fix it.