Does your blog represent who you are?

Ah, the wonderful world of the blogosphere! You love to pour your souls on the pages of your blog. But, are you doing yourself a favor or disservice? Your blog can be seen as your public persona, a representation of your professional self. Blogs nowadays are your reputation so guard it well. If you use the blog for fun, make sure that your posts are not going to compromise your personal or professional life in any way. You often read in the newspaper about Facebook horror stories such as houses broken into, pedophiles befriending children, teens exposing themselves, and employees badmouthing their bosses just to mention a few. Like Facebook, your blog is a double-edged sword. Be mindful of what you say and how you say it. You don’t know who’s reading your blog. When in doubt, remember the Six Degrees of Separation Rule which refers to the idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps or fewer. And with all the “followers” you have in your wonderful blog, hmm you’d better think twice before you publish the next post. Our private lives should be, well, “private.” Don’t you agree?

Is your narrative smooth sailing or failing?

Last night I read part of a short story I found on a website. The story had typos, was cliché-laden, and the narrative was stagnant. This was a reminder to both my friend and me as we continue to edit each other’s work. We hate editing but after discussing how on earth this story made its way online, we definitely realize how crucial editing is.

Historical novelist, Sara Sheridan reminds us of some techniques that help the narrative of a story.

1. Think of your story as a storyboard, like a comic or graphic novel. Run through it action by action. Anything in your text that isn’t part of the storyboard simply isn’t pacey enough. If you have pages and pages of description, you’re asking a lot of your reader. They won’t stick with you. But give them something to see happening, and they’ll stay up all night with your book.

2. Consider the tone of the narrative voice of your story.
What vocabulary have you used? Ornate language can distract a reader or evoke a particular place or time, so it’s a tightrope of which you have to be aware. Also, what is the balance between prose and dialogue? To assess this, read chapter endings in isolation to check that the narrative voice is compelling. That might sound odd. After all, no one is going to only read the endings of your chapters. But this is a great way to get a sense of the narrative voice of the whole book.

3. The easiest way to improve narrative drive is to simplify your verbs as much as possible.
In English we have a huge amount of tense formations and a high proportion of irregular verbs. It’s astoundingly easy to use three or four words where one will do. Keep it simple—make every word count. Stick to the simple present, past, and future where possible. If you can write in the present tense your prose will have especial immediacy.

3a. Be very careful of deluging your reader with adjectives.
It is far more evocative to use the action to create a description and a reader, in any case, can only process so much description at once. Choose your adjectives carefully and use them sparingly.

4. Editing.
Unlike writing itself, publication is a team activity. You have to edit. I have learned more from working with editors than from reading or going to any kind of course. There is a sense in which the act of writing the book often makes you less able to comprehensively edit it. Novice writers are often ambivalent about editors, and think their book is perfect. No one’s book is perfect. I’d say that it’s absolutely worth getting an appraisal from a professional editor. However painful it’s going to be, ask for any criticism, and ask about suggested changes to narrative drive specifically. Your book won’t sell without it!

Does your narrative have what it takes? Ask fellow writers and friends and when in doubt, hire a professional editor. I have! Boy, did I learn tons in the process.

Original article appears as a guest post in the Writer’s Digest on August 17, 2010.

Make your writing a fun workout!

Today was Writing Day for me. After a two-week hiatus, my hand was a slug, dragging the pen over the paper leaving a blue trace of nonsense. This is the reason my fellow writers and I meet twice a month. It helps us get our creative juices flowing. As I’ve written in my previous posts, my writing group is my fun workout (No dumbbells involved!). Today we had three writing prompts and we chose two. We timed ourselves: fifteen minutes max. We read the stories out loud and gave each other feedback. Then we repeated the process with another prompt. This served as our warm up and, boy were we ready! The rest of our meeting was used to continue our work in progress.

Fellow writers you can have fun doing this exercise even long distance. One of my best friends who’s an aspiring writer asked me for writing prompts. I told her I’d include her in today’s Writing Day group even if she lives in the US. Well, it worked! She sent me her work via email. I printed copies of her story for my group to read and we later gave her feedback.

So, because we had so much fun doing it together, why not let you in the fun as well. I’ll share with you the three prompts we used. Choose one and give yourself fifteen minutes (No cheating!). You’ll be amazed at your own creativity. Remember: Absolutely NO editing!

I want to hear from you. Everything! Let me know if this was a good exercise, if it was fun, and if it gave you energy to write some more (e.g. your WIP).

Writing Prompts:
• Write a story about an empty glass.
• Write about the color of hunger.
• Write from the point of view of a clean sock that was mistakenly placed in the hamper.

HAVE FUN!

Do you research your facts?

A fellow writer asked me to read one of her short stories. She told me she was having a hard time finishing this one because she needed to do a lot of research on the topic (one that she is not familiar with). Like her, I find myself in the same predicament. My latest tale involves some medical terminology and illness that I have little knowledge of.
I was lucky to find “Three Strategies for Solid Research,” an article by bestselling novelist, Gayle Lynds. She says that before you can incorporate your research into your writing, you first need to be as smart as possible about the research itself. Ms. Lynds reminds us of the following research strategies:

1. Develop a system for tracking your legwork. “Take a digital camera with you, photograph everything, dictate notes … never lose anything. Never lose anything,” says David Hewson, international bestselling author of the Nic Costa thrillers. “I keep a journal on every book I’m writing that notes down ideas, locations, characters, themes—and I keep a running diary on the book as I’m writing it. This is separate from the draft, so it acts as a left-brain perspective on the whole exercise.”

2. Get in the habit of vetting your research as you go—particularly research conducted online. Verify facts from multiple reputable sources before you record them. This way, you’ll already know that all your notes are accurate when it comes time to incorporate them into your work.

3. Be wary of cutting and pasting research nuggets directly into your manuscript. You don’t want to become guilty of plagiarism by letting someone else’s words get inadvertently mixed in with your own. If you do feel the need to paste in a block of research while you’re writing, be sure to highlight the copied text in a different color so you can go back and remove or rewrite it entirely later.

(Article reprinted from the Writer's Digest, July 20, 2010)

THE RESULTS ARE IN: The winner of the Summer Writing Contest is…

I would like to thank all participants in this year’s Summer Writing Contest. Since this was a privately organized contest, there was no monetary compensation. However, the prize was a great opportunity to work with Canadian author and poet, Michael Mirolla who’s also editor-in-chief and publisher of Guernica Editions. He was kind enough to donate his valuable time to work alongside the winner.

The contest was a great success and some emerging writers have asked me if I’m having another one in the fall. I am working out details with possible sponsors in order to have cash prizes. I’ll keep you posted so keep reading my blog.

The winners were chosen by author Michael Mirolla.
1) First Prize Winner: “A Walk in the Snow” by Colette Vidal
2) Second Prize Winner: “Brian’s History” by Dan Saragosti
3) Third Prize Winner: “Garbage Day” by Marijke Vander Klok

Although there were a lot of good stories, we could only choose the best three. Thanks for your submissions and keep writing!