Writing Info Sites

There are two writing sites that I really like that I'd like to recommend to people. WritersWeekly is one that I mentioned back in 2006. It is an on-line magazine in the best sense. It updates regularly, maintains its focus on helping writers learn to make more money, and pays writers for articles. Best part? The vast majority of the content is free. They also sponsor on-line classes that I have found beneficial. Those, obviously, are not free.

Another site I like is called MediaBistro. A lot of its content is free too, but my favorite parts of the site are not. To reach my favorite parts, you have to join AvantGuild. It has a reasonable yearly fee, which not only gives access to the proprietary sections, but also gives discounts on the classes that they sponsor. One of my favorite parts of the site is the "How to Pitch" section, where there are interviews with the editors of different magazines focusing on how to pitch to each of those mags.

Once more into the brink...

The new creative project is developing, though more slowly than I would like.

Well, that's such a cop-out line, isn't it?

I have total control over the new project. It's one of the reasons I've chosen to be a writer...no collaboration necessary, unless I request it. Especially these days, in the days of self-publishing.

I majored in theater in college, then worked in the film and television industry for fifteen years or so... Those art forms require so much collaboration (unless you are doing a one woman show, but even then, a performer can't be her own audience member).

But back to the new project--I have interviewed two very inspirational people as the basis of the first endeavor, and will soon be putting together a--- well, I don't really want to let the cat out of the bag. (Yes, this is a teaser...)

But it is a lot of fun to work on!

Timing!

So, I'm working on the creative project that I've mentioned before. I am getting awesome support from some of my creative friends.

However, I find it frustrating when THEIR time schedule conflicts with mine. I mean really, people. Don't you think MY goals and intentions are more important than YOURS? Can't you make time when I want?

Obviously, I'm kidding...sort of. I am so enthusiastic about my project that I want to move forward on it quickly, and other people have the things they need to take care of.

I ended up freaking out a friend whom I want to interview by sending her multiple messages through multiple channels. I'll try to calm down...sorry, Samantha. And thanks for agreeing to be interviewed!

Big step!

I took a big step forward on the journey of my new creative project yesterday, with the help of a supportive writer friend. It is always so good when friends are supportive of what you do.

Is there anything worse than someone you love and appreciate standing there and giving you the skeptical eye when you announce you are going to become a writer/painter/sculptor/dancer/musician? No. There is not!

I admit, however, that I have been guilty once or twice in my life of being the skeptic, when other people have announced their grand plans. Then, the skeptics looked at me, and I realized how bad that feels. I have learned a) not to talk too much about my plans unless they are well under way and b) to be loving and encouraging of others, even if I think that my friends' plans are too grandiose. Who knows what knowledge and reserves of strength really lurk in the hearts of men and women?

Hope all of your creative projects are going well!

Time to write

Sad news, at least sad to me.

My relationship with my boyfriend has been rocky over the past month. And last Friday, I think the final bell rang.

So, in attempt to look at the bright side...I now have lots more time to write, and nobody to make me feel guilty if I take time to write.

And that guy I saw at a party last March or so...? The one whom I might have like to go out with if I didn't have a boyfriend...? I saw him at church yesterday....

Wish me luck!

I have come up with a creative idea that I am very excited about. Please wish me luck in carrying it through.

Don't worry, I won't keep you in the dark forever, but this idea is in such a new stage that it's not ready to be talked about. You know how it is: women who are pregnant don't tell people about the baby until several months into the pregnancy. NO! I am not pregnant. This is just a metaphor. You know how it is...when you get a creative idea, it has to grow and develop a little before it can survive out in the big, bad world.

Recommended article

Angela Hoy, owner of Booklocker, a print on demand publisher, and Writersweekly.com, has written a great article on publicizing your books and writing. I think her site is one of the best on the web for writers and really recommend your bookmarking it.

Character Creation

When you write characters, even if--especially if--the characters are fictional, how much do you base them on people you know in real life? I like to borrow names from my friends, as an homage to them, but I don't base the character named after them on those particular friends. But am I still setting myself up to be sued? It's not something I'm going to worry about very much, but then again, I'm not published yet, so there IS nothing to worry about. But suppose a publisher wants me to change a character's name. Once I'm using a particular name, I have a real problem changing it in the middle of the manuscript. My brain latches onto details like that and won't let go.

How do you handle character name and inspirational real people?

Keeping in touch

One of the amazing things about blogging is the ability to connect with people. I have been contacted by an old friend...no, that's not right. She's not old....--a friend I lost touch with many years ago. I, one day, would very much like to be able to bring all my friends, many of whom I have lost touch with, together for a big party, the Willena's Friend's Bash. That would be fun. Poker player Jamie chatting up poet Debra, epidemiologist Lou debating with writer Tim, all under a great big circus tent. What a fabulous idea.

I'd like to invite all my favorite writers to the party too, whether they know me or not. Don't you feel like the books you read are all old friends when you re-read them? I do. Which is why I have such terrible trouble getting rid of books, even if I no longer have any bookshelf space. The folks from Designed to Sell would have a field day with my home, since I have bookcases blocking the top and bottom of my staircase. Several times I have moved and given away some of my books, an act that I have always regretted. Always. Does anybody know the name of a children's book, set in London, the main character is a lonely little girl who discovers she is a witch. There is a scene in which she ends up inadvertently shoplifting candy from a store and she gets in trouble... I loved that book when I was little, and I can not remember the name of it. It drives me crazy, because I really would like to re-read it, but I gave it away over twenty years ago....

Updating my life

It's been since the first of the year since I last blogged. I've been bogged down in obsessing about teaching--remedial English and speech at a local technical college. I also tutor in the learning center. Sometimes it's the most frustrating job in the world. It takes a lot of time. Have you ever tried to grade essays? It is paid poorly, especially when grading time is figured into the equation. But I love it. I like working with students, although it is frustrating to me that they have missed so much of the foundational work--basic grammar skills--to be able to successfully write essays. It's rarely that my students can't think. Many of my remedial students come to me with full-blown writing phobias and do have trouble translating their thoughts into written form. I work really hard on getting them over that problem. It's the same with speech class. It's true that many people have phobias about public speaking. And it's hard to work with 25 students for only 10 weeks. They are barely out of the dead-beginner stage when the quarter is over and just don't have enough time to really get good at speaking in front of others. So, the job is frustrating, and time consuming, and I don't know what to do, since I really do feel as though I am contributing something to the world. And except for the poverty level wages, I'd probably be very happy doing what I'm doing.

Happy New Year

May all your writing and creativity resolutions come to pass during 2008!

Posting anxiety

I haven't been updating my blog lately, even after swearing that I would, due to what I can only call "posting anxiety." The belief that though this blogging medium is designed to be something different, to be less formal than previous mass communication media, my blog posts have to be perfect little essay masterpieces.

Obviously, my blog didn't start out to feature little essay masterpieces. I started this blog because I was forced to as a school assignment. But in a way, writing a blog is compelling. It's sort of like writing in a journal, but different because it is designed to be public. It's designed to be a communication to others, whereas a journal entry is designed to help one remember, or to sort things out, ruminate to one's self.

But I know that as a writer (future published writer), it's good to have a blog. Readers like them. Hey, I'm a reader, and I like to read author blogs. Especially Stephanie Bond who writes romance, romantic suspense, and romantic comedy. And Chad Darnell, who is a screenwriter. I check in with Tanya Michael's blog on a regular basis too. So, as they said in the recent Moonlight and Magnolia's session on author generated publicity, a blog is perhaps one of the best self-advertisements.

As I said though, I'm not yet published in book form. So I don't yet have any books to promote. And I'm going through this anxiety about posting--it must be good! It must be good!

Oh well, I'm really trying to get over that. I should accept the conventions of the medium. Write off the top of my head. So, that's what I'm doing now. Writing about writing once again.

I bring you:

The Tree Shepher's Daughter, a wonderful new young adult novel by my friend Gillian Summers, a fellow member of the Georgia Romance Writers. I admit, I'm sometimes hesitant to read my friend's books. What if I don't like it? So, even though this book was published several months ago, I have just gotten around to buying it and reading it. And luckily, I have had it signed by the author too! It's marvelous. I started it last night and I finished earlier today. (I decided to pick it up and read it when I woke up from insomnia. It was the wrong book to choose. I couldn't put it down, so I read from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. If you need to get up early the next day, don't pick up this book.)

The target audience for this book is preteens and teens. It falls in the category of fantasy, although it's not the sort of fantasy that is on another planet. In fact, it's set in Colorado! That's one of the things the author did very well. The setting, a Renaissance Fair in Colorado, is beautifully incorporated. The author doesn't go on gushing about how beautiful it is, but you understand that because of the way that the trees, the stream, the meadow are incorporated into the plot line. The leading lady is fabulously written--a real teenager with real feelings of loss and abandonment (and a real twist too). And the supporting characters--there isn't stock character in the bunch. Well, yeah, there is--the best friend, the dad, etc. But they all are written as real originals.

I'm really looking forward to the followup to this book. Hopefully, book 2 in the Faire Folk Trilogy will be out soon.

This week, I have been working on writing a new essay. I've been exploring essay writing since I took creative non-fiction at Kennesaw State. The interesting thing is that the creative non-fiction course should have been named memoir writing. We did nothing else in there except memoir. Now, don't get me wrong, I learned a lot in the class, but I still say it was terribly miss-advertised because miss-named. Anyway, we didn't study essays in that class, so I've taken on the study and practice of essay writing on my own. It's definitely a genre that I enjoy and admire a lot.

Have you ever noticed that when you learn a new word that it all of a sudden starts popping up everywhere? Well, since I've decided to start working on essays, I realize that I have all this information to refer to, but that I haven't paid attention to it until recently. For instance, I have a two-year old issue of Poets and Writers in my tub-side magazine rack with a lovely article by Sven Birkerts about memoir and essay writing. I suppose it's been waiting for two years for me to get around to needing it.

Today, I attended a good workshop/Q&A session given by the Georgia Writers Association. Marc Fitten, editor of the Chattahoochee Review, a 30 year old literary magazine, spoke on literary mags and what they are looking for...especially, of course, his. It was very informative. And he happened to mention that not as many people are submitting essays as are submitting fiction, so it's actually a little bit easier to get published with essays than with short stories. But of course, he also said that he gets about 6,000 submissions each year for a lit mag published four times a year. So the odds are long, for either essay or fiction. He noted poetry is easier to get published. Why? Because books, magazines, etc. are published with pages in multiples of 8. It has to do with printers, the size of the paper used, how it's folded and bound. (I'm temporarily blanking on what those booklets are called....some funky name...register, maybe?) So, if a story runs six pages, they fill in the other two pages with poetry.... Interesting, eh?

Here's a shout out to my friend Debra Ann Shirley who has a poem published in issue #36 of the Cortland Review. Here's a link to it: http://www.cortlandreview.com/ The poem really speaks to me, and is a great reflection of Debbie (as I new her when...) who grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of North Georgia.

Another shout out to my friend Chad Darnell, who has recently had several successes with his scripts. Check into his blog http://chaddarnell.typepad.com/runchadrun2/ to find out all about it. I read some of his scripts when he was in college. I can say that I recognized his talent way back when! Plus, he's a fabulous actor, although he doesn't seem to do any acting anymore.

Happy birthday to all my Leo friends: Karen, Sarah Jane, Kailey, Angela, Shannon... Lots and lots of my friends are born in late July and August! Must be something really there when they say that Aries and Leos are compatible.

Once again into the breach...

In an effort to make my writing more meaningful, when I'm in this "minimally published" phase of my career, I've decided to start blogging once again. I started my blog due to a class I was taking in my Masters of Professional Writing program at Kennesaw State University, and found that I both loved and hated blogging. -

I have a friend, Chad Darnell, that blogs about his daily life. He is dedicated to a career that most people fantasize about, and he lives his life with a sardonic attitude that he translates beautifully into the words of his blog. But I don't think my daily life is that interesting.

I admire Stephanie Bond, a multi-published author of romance novels, who blogs about writing and gives advice to aspiring writers. I don't think that is my oeuvre either.

Although I initially named my blog "Musings on Creativity," it has actually developed into musings on the composing process. It's too late to change the name now, though. So, I will continue to blog about composing, writing, and the creative process, but I attempt to share more information about specific projects that I am working on, not just whine about my inability to write.

And with a fresh start on my blog, I have chosen a new template. I think it's an appropriate time to do that.

Tiger Woods

Last night on...I have no idea what channel, since I was doing my regular channel surfing thing--let's say it was ESPN--someone (Mark Richt?) was asked "if they could be a famous athlete, who would they be?" This person shocked me by replying that he'd like to be "the fastest person in the world--to win the 100 yard dash in the Olympics." Frankly, he shocked me. I have no idea why anyone would pick being anybody but Tiger Woods.

Yes, if I could be anyone else for the day, especially if the caveat was that it had to be an athlete, it would be Tiger Woods.

And I don't even play golf.

And I only sort of want to learn to play golf. I grew up thinking that golf was boring, but I went to a tournament one time and now I've changed my mind. Yes, I've actually seen Tiger Woods play golf in person...at least one hole. You know how hard it is to follow him? I'm too short to see over most of the crowd, so I ended up going to a hole several holes ahead and waiting for him. Good strategy--beautiful sun-shiny day, very relaxing--until the Tiger crowd came roaring up.

Anyway, back to being Tiger Woods--

I wish I had his phenomenal ability to focus.

I wish I had his ability to never give up, to come from behind.

I wish I had his ability to find, enter, and stay "in the zone."

How long does it take to develop these talents? Actually, how long does it take to get them back? I used to be able to focus and "be in the zone" but I have neglected that ability and it is a muscle that seems to flabby. Or has my brain chemistry altered and now I have "adult-onset ADD" ? I just don't know. But I'm working on it.

More musings

I am in a funk. I've been sick, and I hate the cough and sniffles and mild fever that I've had. I haven't been able to work, I haven't been blogging. Yuck.

I have been attempting to keep up with my e-mail, and when I log on, I check on several blogs. I am amazed that Tanya Michaels can keep up with her blogging while sick as a dog. She's been blogging every day. My goal is only once a week, and I'm not doing that very well.

Does dreaming count as being creative?

Although, come to think of it, I don't really dream much when I am "swd"--sleeping while drugged. Benadryl knocks me out cold.

Musings on Creativity

Really, I know that "musings on creativity" is kind of a silly title for this blog posting, since it is the name of my entire blog, but it is apropos today.

Creativity is not an idea, it's an act.

Don't judge creativity harshly. The act of creativity is sometimes more important than the quality of the product produced. Sometimes the only goal is doing the act.

The worst idea is the one not captured.

When capturing ideas, the simplest tools are the best tools. Thank you pen and paper.

Try new creative endeavors to feed new ideas in the ones you regularly work in.

Writing down, sketching out, recording your ideas, makes reality out of imagination. Imagination is great, but what if the Grimm Brothers had never written their tales down? They might not be remembered now, and the world would be lesser if we didn't have Cinderella, Rapunzel, or Sleeping Beauty.

Why do I get my best ideas in the shower? I've dealt with the "getting ideas in the car" problem by investing in an audio cassette recorder (I like the low tech stuff) but I haven't come up with a paper that won't get wet.

Musings on Religion and Good Thoughts for a Friend

Just a quick note to let you all know that I took a seminar with Barbara Winter, the author of Making a Living Without a Job and it was worth every penny I paid...which you can't say about every seminar. I'll expand on what I learned later.

Right now, I want to make a comment on all those people who say "oh, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." It's a phrase that makes me crazy. It has no meaning. Do they just commune with some fuzzy warm feeling? Hug actual trees? I don't know. And believe me, I'm no evangelist. Heck, I can't even spell it. (Well, let's face it. I can't spell without spell check anymore, even if it's just the word "a.") But here's the rub. There is very little in the world that is more heartbreaking and terrifying than when you are going through a spiritual upheaval, whether that is because you feel that God isn't answering your prayers or because the very human leaders of your church are failing in their leadership in some way. (As all humans eventually do.) Terrifying, depressing, anxiety-producing.

Will all of you say a prayer for my friend who is going through a spiritual upheaval right now? Just refer to her as "W" as you lift her up. (And no, this isn't a thinly veiled reference to me, but she might not want her business spread all over the internet through my blog. And there ARE other people in the world whose names begin with W.) Even if you aren't a regular church-goer, but are "spiritual" (and now mad at me because of my comment above), please send good thoughts her way. I do believe in Karma...although not necessarily in the Buddhist way--more like the connection all humans have through the Holy Spirit.

Thanks everybody.

Apologies

I try to blog every week, but this week, I've been resistant to doing so. I don't know why, except that all my creative energies have been diverted into finishing replacing my living room floor.

I love to decorate, and feel like I would have been a good professional decorator. My only problem right now with it is that I rent my second bedroom to a friend. He's a friend, so I agreed to allow him to add his some of his stuff to the living and dining room. His exceedingly modern stuff. My other friends can't decide if the chandelier hanging over the dining table looks like a spaceship or something that should hang over a conference table. Really, I keep wondering why those damn aliens invaded my home and not Wired's offices.

And then there's the blue-green chair in the living room. The one that looks, to me, that it was modeled after one of those acrylic commemorative baseball stands. And if I was 3 inches taller, it would be comfortable. But I'm not 3 inches taller. So I never sit there.

Ah well. It's been good to have the extra $$, and when he gets his PhD and a job and moves out, I will miss him. But not his furniture.

Writing exercise

Recently, I have had the priviledge of hearing from old friends that I haven't seen in over 20 years. One of those friends, who has stayed in touch with the others, sent me an e-mail (she found me from this blog) and I've gotten e-mails from the others as responses to messages that she's sent out. These are people that, although I'd lost touch with them, I thought of rather frequently. I was thrilled to hear from Debbie, and I'm thrilled to hear about Mark, Andy, Judge, and Mary Grace.

One of the writing exercises I do sometimes, to work on character development and to stretch my imagination, is to choose friends from my past and to create character studies of what they might now be...based on the little information that I have from rather impersonal e-mails...

Debbie is living in Colorado. She broke her leg last spring. She's a poet.

Mark lives in Illinois.

Judge lives in the capital city of the state he grew up in and works in the arts.

Andy...I really don't know from his e-mail where he lives or what he does now....Creative license!

M.G. lives in Texas.

So, how did these smart and creative people, who started out in a Southern state, get to where they are now? I get to make it up! And I really get to make up what they are doing now, since I don't really know them well anymore.

This is one way to help develop back story for characters you use in your novels, imagining how they get from one place and stage in life to another. And if you start with someone you know, but not too well, you ground those characters in truth and imagination both.

Quick update

I am in awe of my friend Elaine, who has a new job and is able to balance her life in a way that seems to guarantee she writes. I have been asked to critique the first few chapters of her new novel, so that she can begin the submission process by Friday. Good luck to you Elaine.