Heptadecagon

I sat in the front office, grading papers. My colleague, Ken, walked in, the usual coffee cup in hand. "You write that Great American Novel yet?" Ken knows all about my "other" life as a writer. In fact, he's been a great champion of the cause, since he himself dabbles in photography. Over the last several years, we've been co-conspirators in a plan to bring creativity and arts to the scientific world of the Biology Department. "Nah," I said. "I've never had plans to do that." I stated the truth. A long time ago, when I first put pen to paper and began writing, I never even considered that one of my stories would ever become the next Great American Novel. My intention then was to write something that somebody enjoyed. At the time, my mom read what I wrote, and she liked most of what I produced. Her approval served as an incentive to keep writing. So I did. As I progressed in my years, I still wrote, but again, not in pursuit o...

I've had a great time putting together blog posts everyday for these first three months of 2017. And I do believe I said I'd blog each and every day for the entire 2017 year. But I have realized that by blogging each day, I'm not finding the time to revise my work, nor am I finding time to edit other people's work. Both of those scenarios NEED to happen in order for my work to grow. So here's the new plan. Starting tomorrow, April 1, I'll post a couple of times a week, and I'll keep up the Scenes from My Week post, since I enjoy collecting those photos as a way to keep memories in tact. Once I figure out what days work best for me, I'll try to let you faithful  readers know that posting schedule. FRN, I know you'll be disappointed, but I also know you'll understand. And maybe (just maybe), if I spend a bit more time on my actual writing, I'll eventually be able to tell you that I 1. found an agent, or 2. made the decision to self-publ...

I had the wonderful opportunity to benefit from my writing group the other night. I gave them the first 20 pages of my newest WIP, Just Be . This is the novel that bounced around in my head for ages and then appeared on the pages during NaNoWriMo 2016. It has a long way to go, but my friends enjoyed reading it. They urged me to continue with my revisions. Encouragement like that is always welcome. Because the characters have been with me for a long time, I know a lot about them. But I think sometimes it is useful to write down the characteristics of these people I hold so dear. So, it's time for another character sketch . This time, it's of Matt Bennet, one of my POV characters. The other main character is Emme McCarthy. She comes up in the list only because of her entanglement with Matt. Matt is . . . A 26-year-old male. About 6'3". A musician (some would say rocker) who barely earned his HS diploma. A soccer fanatic. A man who draws people toward him, whethe...

This semester, Tuesday is considered a day off from teaching. But as those of you with children know, there's no day off from parenting. Of course, you don't need to be a parent to know that really, there's no day off from life in general, right? So on Tuesdays, instead of heading in to enlighten 40 bright minds with the details of the body, I take care of the things that I don't have time to do on the other day so of the week. Like volunteering at the library or... Going to the grocery store or... Putting in at least one load of laundry or... Any other errand that falls into my lap. And then, it gets to be about 1 p.m. and I look at the clock and think, where did all that time go to write? Where? Since my plan for the year involves revising and writing more, I finally realized--a month into the new year--that what I need to do in order to actually get the writing done is to schedule it into my day. So instead of leaving my Tuesday open, it's now going to l...

Two weekends ago, a post popped up on a Facebook group page I'm a part of. It said, "I just upload my first book on amazon." Not trying to be harsh, but the lack of correct grammar did have me hesitate. So I clicked on the link and went on over to Amazon, where I found the book and the description. It looked a little like this (but not exactly, as I don't really want you to find it): Six young children get abducted by men. Follow their journey. Are they escape or not? Yeah, more worry. And then, I did the unthinkable. No, I didn't buy the book. I simply looked inside the book with Amazon's handy little feature. I cringed at the first sentence, which seemed amateur, at best, but then, I made my way to the dialogue. "Do you have to do your makeup right now?," I asked. She stopped applying foundation on her face as she gave me a hatred look. "What?," I asked. Gasp. Sputter. What? I started to write a simple post on my Facebook time...

Let me say this: Someone who says that anyone can write a book is just plain wrong. Because even if you write the book, every time you open that file on your computer, you think, "What can I do to make this better?" and you're sucked into a vortex or time warp and hours pass and then, you have a new version which could be better, or maybe you actually made it worse, but you can't know for sure until readers actually read it; and even then, after you've gotten fabulous comments from friends, you must find an agent, relying on one little devil of a query letter. You wait and hope and pray and get comfortable with rejection and ask yourself, "Why in the hell am I doing this?" and the only answer you have, because you don't have a published book in hand, is that you love it, love it, love it and can't see not writing, ever. And I think if you don't love it, it's harder to go through all of that and not fold like the proverbial house of cards....

A friend of mine, (Ami, not her real name) who also participated in NaNoWriMo this year, sent me a text the other night. A friend of hers from college had requested to read what Ami had written in November. While Ami was slightly hesitant to send the piece, she plucked up her courage and sent it over to her ami, er, friend. (I'm cracking myself up here...) In response to having read the piece, Ami received the following reply: I'm at Christmas when the mom is away and it nearly made me cry. The imagery is great, sparked something in my mind. Ami I'm completely serious. THIS IS PUBLISHABLE. I wouldn't say this to you if I didn't really believe it. The text made me a million times happy, and it wasn't even my work that had been read. I'll be curious to see when and if Ami pursues publication. (I hope she does.) The things I like about this scenario, and the reason I'm posting about it, are these: Ami overcame the fire in her gut that urged her t...

I have yet to determine what my writing goals will be for 2017, so I won't bore you here with my ramblings on that topic (but expect a post soon). But my semester ends this Thursday, so I'm hoping that I will find a bit of time to get back to regular blogging until the insanity of Christmas hits. After that, of course, all bets are off. My plan for this month, then, is to take a page from Kelsey's playbook and go back through my blog drafts and finish some of what I have already started. Clearly I didn't take this photo. I found it elsewhere and then again here . That task won't be as easy as it sounds, though, because I have 133 drafts sitting in my folder. Can you believe that? I started something 133 times and didn't finish any of them. I find that number somewhat disheartening, because I'm the sort of person who likes to finish what I start. But my guess is that some of the posts are early incarnations of posts already published. At least I hop...

When I received my current work-in-progress back from my writing group, I noticed that one of the minor critiques by a writing mate concerned my use of names in dialogue. "It's not natural," she wrote, "to use names that often." So instead of writing, "Sadie, I know how distressing and probably exhausting that admission was for you to say those words," my partner wanted me to simply remove Sadie . It should be clear, if the piece is written well, who is speaking. (I'm not saying that sentence is either profound or exceptionally well-written; I simply use it as an example.) I found multiple other places in the manuscript where names were to be eliminated, too, and in the midst of revising, I started to slash them all. You can find a patch like this here . But as I went about taking out the names, I realized WHY I'd written my manuscript in that manner. I have names in my dialogue because...(drumroll)...that's how I talk around my...

If anyone had filled me in back in 2012 and told me how difficult and time consuming it would be to try and publish a novel, I don't think I would have believed them. But now, here we are past the middle of 2016 and I'm working on revising a novel I started on Father's Day of 2012. I remember the exact day because the inciting incident of this particular novel actually stems from an encounter I had that weekend. I drove home from the grocery store, a story brewing in my head, and furiously pounded out a few sentences. For months I went back and added a few notes here and there, and then, sat back to let the story percolate. During that time, I wrote and revised a second novel, and finished up a third book that, to this day, has been spending time on my bookshelf, collecting dust. The Father's Day novel, though, is special. It's been read by a published author, who gave loads of valuable feedback. It's been workshopped by my writing group partners, who gave e...

I wonder sometimes about our ability, as humans, to accomplish tasks. I'm certain I've spoken about this before, but the topic comes to light in my mind because I'm working on a project this summer. One that has deadlines imposed by me and a friend (we're working together). And while I know how difficult it is to get everything done at home and at work, I have to try each week to uphold my end of the bargain and get my work done. (As does my friend, and she's doing a great job.) What I find, though, is that not everyone else works that way, and I'm not sure why. Sure, I know we're all different and motivated by different things, but if I have a date on my calendar circled in red, indicating that I need to be somewhere or something needs to be done by that date, you can bet your last dollar I'll do my best to get the task finished. So I'm asking myself, and you, what motivates you to follow through with a task? Think carefully about that statement...

Dear Agent, I'm beginning to think that I should quit writing books and simply focus on letters. I find the act of writing them very satisfying, and I always feel better after I'm done. Much like the last time I wrote to you , I will try to be short. But again, I have a request. (I'm fully aware that this letter is actually the fifth in this installment, and that last time, I chose a more descriptive title. Just consider it part of my creative license, if you will. Sorry if I have confused you.) I'm okay with the fact that you cannot respond to every query letter . And yes, since you specifically state on your site something akin to, Due to the number of submissions we receive on a daily basis, we are no longer able to send out personalized responses to queries unless we are interested in your story. Therefore, no response means that we aren't interested, you've covered your rump quite nicely. Well done, I say. Well done. Why then, am I writing? Because ...

I prepared my coffee, opened up my lap top, and sat down to write. Well, I wasn't going to write, I was going to revise . But as I sat and looked at the words on the page, they--I kid you not--looked like they were dancing. I watched as the e floated by and the i leaped over the m and the n .They didn't feel like stopping, no matter what I did or what page I was on. And in that single moment--I have a lot of single moments where I realize sooo much--I knew what the problem was. I didn't want to revise yet. I wanted to write. (Much to my children's dismay, I did not make this image. But you can find it just about anywhere online.) So The Chocolate Garden is on the back burner for a bit. I need to step away and let the story simmer a bit more, I think. Fill in the plot holes in my head but not on paper yet. And my plan? I always have one of those, you know. My plan is to take After We've Fallen chapter by chapter, tweak each word if I have to, polish it until...