A dirge of bloated brass and gut-rattling bass is playing as I march a quasi funeral parade with Brandt Bogue to the Boneyard Bayou. Call of Bone is going to purgatory until I can figure out how to better make use of the story line. 

I'm not being lazy.

I promise.

I'm not blaming writer's block on the unwillingness to focus harder on the story. It's just that it simply isn't going to work the way I want it to. And if I'm going to keep up with my "make as many manuscripts marketable" for my Query...
Continue reading ...

School ruined me.

Once prolific, my creativity dried up into a bitter jaded raisin. After the pressures of writing 500 - 1100+ papers on the monotony of such entertaining subjects like organization communication, that blank page syndrome became more of a psychosis when I sat down to write for fun. The pressure and anxiety of having to purge out some type of acceptable drivel full of buzzwords such as paradigm shift, drilling down and thinking outside the box killed all innovation or hope to mu...

Continue reading ...

Wow. This is more rough draft than I thought. Call of Bone was written in outline form about a year and half ago. Not only have I progressed as a writer, but the outline was written so quickly based on a fleeting whim that as I flesh it out I see where some things are not working. Aside from blaring holes, it seems that it will be wordcount short--something I'm sure I can fix easily with my verboseness.

I am telling myself not to get too emotionally attached to the outline, as it's obvious it ...
Continue reading ...

I have to remember that this isn't a final draft I'm polishing. CoB was half-way finished when life interrupted writing a year ago. Now that I've been getting back into writing making my pieces marketable, when I'm completing the rough draft of CoB, I spend too much time rereading/revising and editing on the spot. I need to stop doing that or this will never get finished.

June has whipped by and I feel like I'm a little behind because I forgot how much was actually left to finish CoB. Hopeful...
Continue reading ...

Part of being an author is critiquing. Not just your own stuff, but your peers. Your partners in scribe, your sounding boards, the only people in the world who seem to GET you. One of the many kernels of advice given to me by published authors is to have your manuscript read by as many people as possilbe. Find people outside your demographic, who aren't your normal audience, find friends who are readers--not writers, definitely have your writer friends read it as well, and by all means, if a ...
Continue reading ...

Ulterior Motive is as done as it's going to get. After revising it further, tightening it up and tweaking sections (not to mention finding lame grammatical errors and correcting them) UM is now 104K. I'll wait for the consensus to come back to see if there's further points I can edit.

I had to finish fleshing out the new story idea (Political Thriller) and my outline for the Zombie Apocalypse as those two things were preventing me from focusing on the very end of UM.

I am so excited to dive in...
Continue reading ...

We are always on a path of continual growth and I can honestly say I've had my own personal writing breakthrough. It came after reading four different suspense thrillers this weekend. Actually, I should say, re-read. I've not been able to read for pleasure in so long that I went hogwild in the genre of manuscript I'm trying to publish. It was a smart thing to do, because I realized, in comparing my own writing to these authors, who bookish and "telling" my writing can be. Instead gently leadi...
Continue reading ...

I am so into this edit and revision of Ulterior Motive it's all I've been able to think about. Along with the need to slash some serious word count down, I'm also trying to subjectively look at the plot. Finding and answering loopholes, addressing character depth, evaluating tonality, and cutting verbose passages.

I'm half-way through the edit/revision and have killed about 2500 words. I need to kill about 10K more. I see where there is opportunity to do so, which is a good thing. I always wo...
Continue reading ...

I learn something new about the writing industry, the craft itself or about myself almost every day. From the business aspect, to learning the wisdom of others in the process, feedback on manuscripts (and, because I'm not an English Major--all kinds of grammar and structure goodies), to my own limitations and abilities to help me grow. Using social networking like Twitter has helped me connect with others like me, those whose successes I can't wait to realize, and industry professionals who g...

Continue reading ...

There is an author I communicated with early on in her career (of whom will remain nameless as I don't want to name drop) when she was a debut author. She writes in a genre I love to read, but don't write for. I asked her advice about how long it took her to get to where she was, what to expect, and what should I do to better my chances of being published. We'll call her Ms. H.

First, I know and understand (as should anyone entering in this business) that you don't write thinking you're going ...
Continue reading ...