2
Aug
Archive for the ‘Hero Journeys’ Category
20
Feb
Lessons from LTUE
I learned lots of different things at LTUE this past week, despite having gone for the past several years and attending some of the same class sessions and panels before.
It was awesome to hang with some other writers and to make new writer friends.
So, what did I learn?
It was reaffirmed to me that I need to really commit myself. I’ve let job and teaching be my excuse for not writing every day. That needs to stop. I am making a goal, right now, of finishing my tree.love book this year by writing for at least an hour per day (probably at work during lunch), six days per week. Another goal is to write 2 new short stories and to keep submitting old and new ones this year. My ultimate goal is to be writing full-time by 2015.
Speaking of which, I learned a lot about how to structure short stories. I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to end a story. I figured that I was just more cut out for novel-length writing. While most of my ideas do tend to run to longer works, I just was too influenced by the literary sensibilities of short story writing (which doesn’t work well when writing genre fiction).
I thought Dan Wells’ session on How to Scare People was especially awesome. I am not planning on writing horror, but I do want to build more suspense into my novel. I liked the idea of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” in story-telling (from the story about the guy whose upstairs neighbor would always drop both shoes loudly on the floor at night until one night when only one is heard).
Paul Genesse had some great sessions too. One was about hard science concepts and how to present them (presented with Eric James Stone). I liked the idea that Quantum Mechanics equals magic! I was stuck a bit in my novel about how to handle the engine, and the stuff they talked about helped point me in a good direction to solving the problem. Paul also had a nice discussion about the importance of using character as your starting point and plot seed.
The session on Dystopia helped me classify my novel better.
Marketing and Promotion was completely made of awesome! I’ll have to post more about that later. Bree Despain is an amazing marketer – very impressive. I bought her book because I was so impressed.
I learned about the value of music with writing. In the past I’ve not listened to music, for various reasons. But I want to start using some of the ideas to see how things go. It seems to be working well for Stephanie Meyer.
The Romance versus Story with Romantic Elements was very helpful in getting me thinking about those parts of my novel and how to improve the character relationships and the sexual tension.
I haven’t really thought about sequels, but they brought up some great points that I definitely need to consider.
Dave Wolverton (aka David Farland) had a great session about Editing and Revising. Some of what he talked about will be on a to-be-released-episode of Writing Excuses. I especially appreciated the idea of doing a triage edit first.
John Brown’s Lessons from the Hunger Games gave me lots of stuff to think about with that series, especially considering my initial reaction to the story.
And so much more.
I’ll get stuff up here within the next week to share some other lessons and to be more specific about how I want to apply what I’ve learned.
18
May
Writers of the Future
Well, things have been pretty busy for me lately.
I finally have the plot down for tree.love. It is going to be awesome, if I do say so myself (and I just did). I had lots of trouble figuring out a way to make the protagonist actually win in the end because I had such good ideas for the antagonist. I suppose that is a good problem to have. I don’t want it to be an easy victory, after all, especially given my small criticisms of the endings of the Twilight saga and The Host. I need to post more on here, and plotting would definitely be a good topic (note to self).
But, what I’m really writing about today is that I submitted a story to the Writers of the Future contest. I got it in before the end of March, so I still have a month and a half or more to wait until I hear how the story did. I am not getting my hopes up too high, but I feel like I wrote the very best story I could. It was the Bamboo Lessons story that I started a couple years ago. I’ve had my writing group look at it a couple times, as well as a few other friends and family members to get feedback. It really helped to bring the story together and to tie it up better than I could have imagined.
I like reading short stories, but I’m not sure if I am a short story writer. I don’t think I always have the right idea for what a complete story is. And, I love to spend time with characters and situations that just can’t be done easily in a short form. So, if I don’t even get an honorable mention, I will probably stop working on short stories and spend more time on novel-length works. Not that I couldn’t learn and do better next time, but I feel like this story is the best short story I can do right now.
On the other hand, if the story does well, I’ll still work on novels, but I’ll start more in earnest on revising my short stories and getting them out to publishers.
I’ll post an update as soon as I know.
29
Jul
First Rejection
My last post, I wrote about sending off my short story. Well, I just got a response back yesterday. It was a no.
But, the note was kind and didn’t totally tear down my dreams of fame and fortune.
It said:
Thanks for submitting your story to IGMS. It had some good qualities, but in the end I only have a limited number of slots and your story didn’t rise high enough to make the final cut.
Makes it sound like my story was at least considered. Of course, this is probably a form rejection, but it is still nice and positive.
The next step for this story is to put it up for my online writing group to critique. That should help me figure out where it is weakest.
I have no idea where else to send this, so I’ll have to do some more research on that too.
28
Jul
CoWW
Codex Writer’s Workshop.
I anticipated this event for a long time.
The first few days were for critiques of novels and short stories, as well as some class sessions on writing and being a writer. We had the famous Ellen Datlow critique our short stories. She was very insightful and gave lots of comments to everyone. We also had David Coe come for dinner one night; after which we picked his brain with questions.
The last week or so was just a retreat time where we could relax and write and explore Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I’ll post more later about what happened and what I learned.
This looks like a very interesting conference. I may go. We’ll see how the finances shape up 
CottonTree Inn
10695 S. Auto Mall Drive
Sandy, Utah 84070
FEATURED PRESENTER:
Timothy Travaglini
Senior Editor at G.P. Putnam’s Sons
(a division of Penguin Group, USA)
In the works: Friday Night Entertainer: David Nibley
Panel: Finding an agent
Panel: LDS Publishers
One-to-one interviews with editors/agents
And your favorites:
Writing Contest
Boot Camp
Exclusive Book Store
Special Announcement:
Saturday Night: The Whitney Awards Gala?
Recognizing excellence in fiction by LDS authors
More information at: http://www.ldstorymakers.com/conference.html
Meeting fellow Bootcampers for lunch with Brandon Sanderson.
8
Sep
NaNoWriMo 2007
I participated in National Novel Writing Month last year, and it was lots of fun to meet other writers and to just churn out words.
I had trouble with it at first, but this year I am going to do a bit more planning up front. We’ll see how that works.
Life, the Universe & Everything:
The Marion K. ?Doc? Smith Symposium on Science Fiction and Fantasy
Guests to include:
Running from February 14-16, 2008.
Admission is FREE!
This should be a blast. I may even enter the writing contest.The deadline is in January, so I’ll have to see where I’m at by then.
What an awesome experience
tree.love
2.53 %
What I'm Doing...
- Note to self: look for blog by @mettieivieharrison about Darth vader and Dr who as vampires. From #ltue 1 hr ago
- From @larrycorreia : Brandon Sanderson is an example of everything, at #ltue 2 hrs ago
- Now at writing action with @larrycorreia at #ltue 3 hrs ago
- More updates...
Posting tweet...
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