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Read these 6 Books to Improve Your Fiction Writing (With a Sex-Related Bonus)
When I first started writing fiction back in 2014, I devoured books about writing. Nerdy little librarian that I am, I was sure I could learn this writing thing from a book. Or three books. Or maybe twenty. And you know what? I did learn. I read, then I wrote, then I read some more, then I wrote some more, and I got a little better. I still made mistakes, but I made better mistakes. You can’t learn to write from a book–you learn to write by writing–but books (and blog posts and podcasts and YouTube videos and, especially, critique partners) help. So today I’ll share my top 6 writing…
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My Favorite Writing Tools 2: Writing Trackers
If you haven’t figured out by now that I’m a hopeless nerd, this part of the post ought to clarify that point. I *love* trackers. I find them motivating, and I need all the motivation I can get. I own a FitBit and obsess about my standings in the Workweek Hustle Challenge (I was even more ridiculous about it during quarantine). I track my habits (exercise, personal development, and about six others) in Toodledoo. And of course I track my writing. I’ve tried a few writing trackers and settled on two that I like: Online Writing Log (OWL) OWL lets me track word count and time spent by project, set…
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Hope: the engine that drives human activity (and Vegas)
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; this week’s prompt is, “hope.” Remember the story of Pandora’s Box? Pandora was like Eve, only instead of being told not to eat an apple, Pandora was told not to open a box. Of course she opened it anyway, only to find it contained all the evils of the world. The evils flew out, as evils are wont to do, and poor Pandora poked around in the bottom of the box, desperately searching for something good amid all the horror. And what she found was Hope. Two thoughts come to mind…
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What would make me quit writing (#IWSG)
This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop. On the first Wednesday of each month, I and my fellow insecure writers post something related to writing, and then we visit the blogs of our fellow members and read and comment on their IWSG posts. This month’s optional question is, What would make you quit writing? Sometimes these IWSG monthly questions are timely. Back in April, I wrote about a problem I was having with my right arm. In looking over that piece, I realize I failed to explain exactly what went wrong and why I included a pretty diagram of arm veins in the post. Ah,…
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My Favorite Writing Tools 1: Notebooks, Pens, Note-Taking Software, and Writing Software
Other writers procrastinate by binge-watching Netflix or reorganizing the contents of their hard drives or scrolling Twitter for 6.5 hours. I procrastinate by playing with new productivity tools (and scrolling Twitter for 6.5 hours and occasionally binge-watching Lucifer and… wait, where was I? Oh, yeah, productivity.) I geek out on notebooks, writing software, pens… basically anything that lets me feel like I’m doing something writing-related when I’m actually farting around. But when I’m not farting around, I do appreciate having a solid suite of tools to help me organize the jumbled mess that spews out of my brain in search of a place to splat. I’ve tried a bunch (see:…
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Bring characters to life with specific details–Carrie Underwood style
Want to bring your characters to life, to make them live and breathe on the page? Use concrete, specific details. One of the most common issues I see when I critique other people’s writing (and when I look at my own early drafts) is too many generalities. Don’t tell me your character wore jeans and a t-shirt. Tell me he wore faded 501s, two sizes too small, and a Van Halen t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Or tell me he wore Wranglers with the outline of a Skoal can etched into the back pocket. (And I just told you I went to high school in a rural-ish town in…
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Desert View Watchtower, Grand Canyon National Park
If you’ve hung around on this blog for very long, you’ve probably figured out that I love photo challenges (see just about any of my photo posts for evidence). Well, I just found a new one, the Amazing Stonework challenge over on the For the Love of blog. Anita’s goal is, “to highlight the artwork created by builders of long ago.” I’m fascinated by old stone buildings, from millennium-old pueblos and cliff dwellings to the midcentury brick homes in my Tucson neighborhood, so I’m excited to participate in this challenge. I’m also excited to use this challenge as an opportunity to share photos from places that relate in some way…
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#SoCS: Rolling with life’s ups and downs
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; today’s prompt is “up/down.” I’ve been thinking about life’s ups and downs a lot lately, maybe because the last couple of years have been up-and-downy for me, even more than normal. Of course there’s the Microbe that Must not be Named, but even setting that aside, I feel like my mood and energy as well as life events have fluctuated quite a lot. I’ve always prided myself on being resilient, on being able to roll with life’s punches, but lately I’ve been feeling life’s bumps a little more. It’s been an…
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#SoCS: In which your intrepid blogger whines about the Arizona heat
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; this week’s prompt is, “hat/het/hit/hot/hut.” Me, about an hour ago: I haven’t participated in SoCS for awhile. I’m tired and sleep-deprived, and I really don’t feel like revising my novel, so I’ll hop over to Linda Hill’s blog and see what today’s prompt is. Maybe it’ll be something I can relate to. It includes the word, “hot.” There’s a massive heat wave in the Western U.S. And I live in Arizona. Yeah, I can relate. We’re on about day 6 of temperatures over 110. It was 113 yesterday here in Tucson,…
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PitMad and an Update from the Query Trenches (Otherwise Known as Rejection Report #1)
While working my way through the June posts in the IWSG Blog Hop, I found a wonderful post on Emma Louise Gill’s blog, in which she summarizes her querying experiences so far. I just started querying last month, and I found her post both encouraging and informative. Oh, and inspirational, in that it inspired me to post my own (much shorter and less eventful) query update here. I’ll try to make it a monthly tradition, so you can share my pain vicariously. I’m currently querying Vanishing, Inc., a time travel romance in which Alex Collins flees to a tiny town in the Arizona mountains to escape an abuser. There she…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
