Failing Well

Hello Again,

I've been ignoring the call of my computer all too well recently. Life takes my attention elsewhere, but that's not really a valid excuse. So why exactly am I failing to make my own deadlines? Linda Formichelli at The Renegade Writer's Blog asks us how well we are failing, and chimes in with another inspirational post encouraging us to fail as well as we possibly can. Must fail better.


Also, here's an unusual contest tip from Poets and Writers for the next couple of weeks:

Symphony Space
Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize
A prize of $1,000 will be given annually for a short story on a theme. The theme for this year's contest is "Are We There Yet?" The winning story will be read by an actor as part of Selected Shorts, a literary performance series at Symphony Space in New York City. Amy Hempel will judge. Submit a story of up to four pages by March 14. There is no entry fee. Send an SASE or visit the Web site for complete guidelines.

Symphony Space, Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, Selected Shorts, 2537
Broadway, New York, NY 10025. Mac Barrett, Contact.
shorts@symphonyspace.org
www.symphonyspace.org

Over at the Writer's Resource Center, the last several short story posts have been questioning some of the conventions of the the form and I'd love to know what some of you think -- particularly about the Twilight Zone ending.

That's all I have for now. If anyone has any tips or questions, let me have 'em.
Darlene

Writing Group this week and a couple of links

My writing group is this week and I'm debating what to bring. I'm often shy about bringing work to the group. The irony here is gross -- I lead the group most of the time and try to put other people at ease to read their materials on a monthly basis and yet I find it really intimidating to bring my own writing to workshop. Theirs is truly okay, but mine is truly crap. It's a mental trap that I have to work myself out of. Certainly I have brought work in the past and all was fine, and it will be fine again. I'm just nervous. [Addendum: I took in 6 pages of Shelter and it went just fine. They didn't laugh me out of the room after all.]

Given the recent Cassie Edwards scandal, we all need to know what is and isn't plagiarism, but we also need to know about copyrights.
Here's a link from Writing.com with several articles dealing with different aspects of the matter.

A few links for today

Hello again,

Today I have a couple of recommendations of useful links.

The first comes from a colleague from my writers group, Lee Lyons. Here's what she wrote to me: Writingformoney.com
"Take advantage of this website and writing guru, John Clausen, who runs it. (Clausen wrote the book "Too Lazy to Work, Too Nervous to Steal" about freelance writing several years ago) Helpful tips and intros to different forms of freelancing are available always. A very nominal membership fee ($7.95) enables writers to post their own Portfolios to attract freelance work. It's a great site and I highly recommend it!"
____________________________________________
I'd also like to plug a contest for our local Romance Writers of America chapter, so here are the details straight from the chapter president:

"February 14th is the deadline for NW Indiana Chapter 89 Romance Writers of America's annual Grand Beginnings Contest for unpublished authors. Trained judges will critique the first five pages of a participants manuscript. Entrants need not be RWA members, but submissions must be women's fiction with romantic elements. Entry fee is $20 and we accept electronic submissions as well as hard copy. All entries are critiqued by two judges and will be returned, along with those judges' comments, by April 30th.

The top 5 finalists will be ranked by published author and Wild Rose Press editor, Michelle Witvliet.

For more information and a look at the score sheet, go to our website at www.nwinrwa.org

Joanna Waugh
President
NW Indiana Chapter 89 RWA"
___________________________________________

Finally, as promised, the Indiana Writers Consortium Yahoo group is now up and ready for business. If you're interested in joining this group, head over to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indianawriters

That's enough for one day I think. Happy hunting.

I'm back

Hello again.

It's been a long seven months or so. What have I been doing? All sorts of things, but not a lot of writing. Only in the last couple of weeks have I been cracking open Word again. There are lots of reasons, most of them inadequate, but sometimes we just need a break, and a few months ago I decided to stop beating myself up about it and just take my rest. I had faith that the urge to write would come back and slowly it is.

Among the other things I've been up to, I've been involved in the creation of the Indiana Writers Consortium -- a sort of umbrella group spanning seven counties which hopes to act as a resource for writers to network and support one another. There will eventually be themes and programs but for now we're just working out the details. I'm on the web committee, and we're just putting together a Yahoo group for now. As soon as that's set up, I'll post the link. Shouldn't be but a few days.

One other midwest resource I wanted to mention is the 14th annual Poetry Center Juried Reading and Awards out of the Poetry Center of Chicago. There are some lovely prizes and there were only 266 entries last year -- so there's relatively low competition.

I'm hoping to post once a week or so again, but bear with me if that's a bit out of reach right now. I'll do my best to ferret out some useful and interesting writing links for you every week. If anyone has any tips they'd like to pass along, I'd love to have them, so feel free to email me or post them in a reply.

Thanks for your patience, everyone.
Darlene

I'm Not Sleeping

I'm just resting my eyes.

Thrown for a loop by a death in the family and an illness, I've been more or less away from my writing for a couple of months. I'm slowly getting it back together, but honestly the blog is (gasp) low on my list of priorities. So I do hope to be back at this eventually, but for now, I don't expect to update any time soon. I'll leave it up for the list of links. Happy writing everyone!

What are you doing this summer?

Got summer plans yet? Any of them writerly? I am taking a trip to Zion National Park in June to celebrate my brother & sister-in-law's marriage. Never been to Las Vegas (where we're flying into) or Utah. I shall do my best to gather inspiration.

For those of you without plans, here's a link to the Writers Conferences and Centers' list of writing conferences and retreats. If you've never attended a writers conference, I completely recommend one. Of course the quality varies from program to program, but the ability to immerse oneself entirely in writing for a whole day or week or month... it's fantastic. I attended the Washington University Summer Writer's Camp in 2000 and I loved it. I met lovely people and was so grateful just to talk so much about poetry for two whole weeks! (I just pulled up the program's home page and was amused to find a quote from me on their sidebar. Name's misspelled though.) One of my favorite poems was written during this conference. I can't wait to attend another.



Maybe I'll round up some mountain lions in Zion and we'll compose sonnets to the arches.

Tom's naming question

One of the men from my writing group posed the following question to me via e-mail. Naming techniques are always a hot topic. Anyone have any feedback for poor Tom?
___________________________________________________________________________________


Darlene,

I need some help. I'm looking for names for some of my characters. Mainly; Lois Lane, Mary Jane Simpson (MJ) and the protagonist, Darryl Mark Steele, in my stories - Do you have any good and/or bad ideas? (In the best tradition of brain-storming; Even seemingly bad ideas can sometimes spark something that might workout.)

Perhaps you could pass this along to the members on the e-mail list and they might have some ideas too. It might be nice to get some discussions going between members through e-mail. What do you think?

I named Steele's secretary Lois Lane and had a little joke with that in the first novel, but the consensus now seems to be that the people who hold the copyrights to Superman will not look kindly on me using that name. Even if I add an “e” (Loise) to her name, as someone suggested at the last meeting, I think it may cause copyright problems. The joke, with her name and the reference to Superman, was funny at the time, in the first book, but doesn't seem worthwhile if the name is going to cause problems now .... Got any brilliant ideas? I'm very open to suggestions.

Ha - Ha ... Just had a funny thought ... how about I name her “Darlene Cohn”?

[There you go again, assuming I won't sue you!]



As for "MJ" - You yourself pointed this out last year when I first read parts of the first book at a Blank Slate meeting. (I'm sorry ... you read it for me - and I thanks you!) Anyway, your comments then are still valid now, especially with the release of the latest Spiderman movie upon-us. I took your advise and re-named this character in the new book ... her new name is Penelope Anastasia Simpson. She goes by the name of "Poppy", still just to annoy her snobbish mother. It's a little joke that I really haven't had time to develop yet - perhaps in the third novel.


Anyway after reading through my current work the nick name of Poppy seems a
little to modern (Remember the story takes place in 1954) Now, I'm looking for something a little more traditional. I still want to develop the thing between her and her mother further, so I want her to have a name that will lend itself to some sort of nick name . The more traditional being: "Sam" for Samantha or "Charlie" for Christine or even Cathrine. In V. I. Woochcoski (I don't think that's spelled correctly, but I hope you get the idea) the author used “Cat”, for Cathrine, as one of the leading characters.

I have also had some misgivings about the detectives name. I am considering changing it from Darryl Mark Steele (The Steele part of which I must say, I appropriated from the TV show Remington Steele. Also a detective – which may also cause copyright problems later on) and replace it with “Darryl Mark Falcon”.

So if you have any suggestions I am completely open to any ideas you might have. Even if you don't have any input, Thanks for listening in any event.

Thanks,

Tom

A Glorious Link Dump

This week, I have another link dump for you. I've been saving up some tasty treats in the hope I'd find a few minutes to post. This dump is dedicated to Tom, who likes to read concrete methodological approaches to writing. Must be an engineering thing. :)

Here's an article Tom himself drew my attention to discussing the use of "how-to" books by amateur writers who are no longer novices.

Terescia Harvey has an impressive list of links to practical articles discussing everything from plotting techniques to query letter writing.

Here's a contest worth checking out if you're fond of experimental fiction. The Diagram is a very cool little mag.

A funny blog posting comparing lame romance novel plot twists with venereal diseases. (Rated PG-13 for obscene language. Gasp!)

That should keep you busy for a week or so. Get to it!

Conundrum

The girls at the Renegade Writer blog have posted a great interview with Michelle Goodman who's book The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube surfaced last year. (Here's Michelle's blog.) In the interview, Goodman addresses the question of how to make the jump from small, low-paying assignments to more rewarding work. I've been mulling this one myself recently. I've now written nearly 20 articles for the Post-Tribune, and I like the work well enough, but it's not what I want to be doing. I take the assignments because, hey, at least they're assignments! But they take up time I could be using to pursue more challenging work. Do I keep working for peanuts or suck up the money shortage for a couple weeks to push out some queries? What do you think?

Napkins

A quick link today, for I have stories to write before I blog, stories to write before I blog.

Everyone go write a story on a napkin. Right now.

Toys

I'm back after a jaunt to St. Louis and a bout of illness. I take my writing with me when I go to St. Louis, but I almost never get any work done. I can't concentrate! Plus, my DH was in Manchester, England having a great time at a conference, and I was livid with jealousy. (No, not really. Well, just a little. Maybe.)

Today's post: writing toys. How I love toys! While I am skeptical that using toys can help you write anything truly inspired (that's what your own damn brain is for!) I like messing around with electronic generators. Good for practice.

So, first up is RhymeZone, not actually a toy but a respectable and proper rhyming dictionary which is impressively thorough. The challenge, write a poem using a truly odd collection of rhyming words. Mine: through, peacock blue, taboo, pas de deux, hullabaloo, epoxy glue, blink 182. That poem practically writes itself!

Next, for the truly lazy, the Story Base Online plot tool. Pick a few architypical characters, choose an emotion or conflict, and presto -- a bunch of potential plots.

Finally, an enormous list of writers tools at DMOZ. Some useful stuff, mostly not, but it's fun to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Fan-cee!

All I can say is "Wow!"Check out the groovy bookcarts from around the country. Absolutely silly. Makes my Sauder composite board bookshelves look downright sad (sadder than they already did, the poor saggy things.)

You know you wanna look

Ages and ages ago, I promised to set up a Del.icio.us account so I could post links to my clips. I did that quite some time ago and never posted the link. Here you go. Mind you, everything on here right now is for the Post Tribune, but I'll keep posting clips as I have them.

The Post Tribune has already given me 7 articles this month, which is fantastic. I have four to do next week, but it's definitely keeping me from focusing on more ambitious work. The money is not a small consideration, but still, I can't help wondering how I can be more focused on preparing a query. I want to accomplish at least one query for a national mag this month.

I miss Claire Zulkey at the MBToolbox blog. It's still a great place for info about queries, but she brought a lively, personable presence to the blog which is now a little dry.

I finished reading Fun Home by Alison Bechdel last night. It was so brilliant. She broaches some incredibly sad and fraught topics (her disfunctional family, her lonely, anxious childhood, the suicide of her father and her coming out) with humor and beauty and love. It's very literary and sophisticated. Yay! I highly recommend it. She is the author of the Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip, which is also fantastic, if you've never seen it.

Lastly, here's a blog I've recently discovered: Writer Unboxed. Tom, one of the members of my writing group, is always looking for new ideas about plotting, and one recent post features links to a couple of methods. Nice tone, well organized, thoughtful.

Skin

If you haven't heard of Shelley Jackson's work of human literature, Skin, yet, check this out. Here's her page: The Inderadicable Stain. Here's the Poets and Writers Magazine write up.

Get up and dance

This morning I'm listening to 12" remixes of 80's music on iTunes radio -- Erasure, right now, for the curious -- to help me stay awake. It's confusing. I don't know whether to get up and dance or put my head on the table and sleep. (And thus, the inherent conflict of the bipolar.) I'm not wearing anything sequined or see-through, though, so I suppose I better just write.

I am free of the university now, and significantly calmer, and once again ready to tackle the serious responsibility (smirk) of the blog. I was disappointed by how easily I fell off the wagon last semester. But now there are no more semesters for me, and I couldn't feel more relieved. So I'll just get on with it...

First up, a beautiful excuse for poets to skip the gym and stay home with a notebook. I'm not lazy, I'm dwelling in Possibility. Anyone have any great 2006 poetry recommendations?

There's truth in this piece by Jenna Glatzer, encouraging us to write about what terrifies us. It's marvelous advice, and certainly, for me, some really important stories have come out this way -- not necessarily publishable stories, but important. I also think that I shrink from it at times: my fiction tends towards the very dark. These stories are essential to me -- they are the terrifying stories I need to tell, but sometimes I just can't face them.

And one contest link for midwest poets: The deadline for the Poetry Center of Chicago Juried Reading is January 27, 2007. Get on it.

Until next week...

NaNoWriMo authors beware!

This post from Ann Crispin on Writer Beware is a great point. While I don't believe anyone reading my blog would be silly enough to sign a contract without doing some research about the publisher, I do think it's a great point. Ever since my days as a CRM at B&N, I've been cringing about self-publishing companies which take advantage of writers' frustrations and aspirations. One woman told me she'd paid $10,000 to a publisher to produce a self-published elementary-level handbook for sign language. Don't be that silly. Writer Beware is a great site.

Would you like sour cream with that?

Webdelsol.com features a series of essays called Writers On The Job: Tales of Non-Writing. Even though I've been doing plenty of writing of late, I still find camaraderie in writers discussing what happens when they're away from their desks/cafe tables/zinc bars.

Celia Woloch's piece titled "I'm Really Not a Waitress (Or Am I?)" resonated with the former waitress in me. I, too, have blue-collar roots, child-bearing hips, and -- thanks to years of waitressing -- the ability to gracefully navigate a swinging door with a three-foot tray bearing thirty pounds of food and china. Once I left my last waiting job, I had a real sense of "God, I'll never do THAT again!" but Woloch's piece is a nice bit of nostalgia. It reminds me to appreciate my strength and resourcefulness. Luckily, I have no ex-husband, but in between publications, I could always waitress.

Boo!

Bear with me, faithful reader! I have been overrun with other work the past couple of weeks (Actual writing work, among other things!) and haven't done any blogging. In lieu of an actual blog of substance, let me direct your attention to NaNoWriMo. Just as last year, my days are far too packed to devote to something as irreverent and inspirational as this, but I sure wish I could. And remember writers, as my dear friend Ginger believes, there's always room for Zombies! Happy Halloween.

Throbbing Members and Heaving Bosoms

Well friends, it's official. I quit my job teaching at the University, so as of December 22, I am exclusively freelancing. I'm free! (Yay!) I'm lancing! (Huh?) So, hey, World: please hire me to write stuff. Please Please Please.

This post about romance cliches from Agent Kristen made me laugh and cringe. Those of us who write genre fiction of all types (Kristen has a companion entry about fantasy cliches) are always in peril of falling into cliche overuse.

Now, to some extent it's hard to avoid them in genre fiction, because one is treading an exceptionally well-worn path. Still, there is nothing more infuriating than opening a book and finding the same tired plots and characters. (I'm not talking about the back-cover copy here -- I mean the actual writing.) I read a fair number of romances, and I prefer historicals, but I am SUPER picky about them. If I'm not impressed or engaged after 2 pages or so, I put the book down, or worse, throw it across the room. Flaccid writing and stale characters make me throw a book every time. (My husband likes to pick these books up where he finds them and make fun of them.)

Even though cliches can be disastrous, ridiculous attempts to circumvent them can be worse. The most memorable metaphor I ever encountered in a romance novel described a man's, erm, equipment as a "fallen tree" with "two ostrich eggs." I swear! When I picked myself up off the floor and stopped laughing, I could only say "ewwww." Ostrich eggs? Get that thing AWAY from me!

I kept that book for a while, but only so I could show all my friends!

On another note, recently, someone asked me to post links to the articles I'm publishing in the Post-Tribune. The website doesn't keep the articles cached very long, so I'll have to set up a Del.icio.us account and post those links. Give me a couple days to get that together, and I'll post them here.

Unctuous Bromide

A very comical post on the hokiness of poorly written obituaries on Poynter.org's Writing Tools Blog. It's funny, but it's got me thinking about how hard it is to write about (or even talk about) a person's death. Unfortunately, I've had the unpleasant task of buying "In Sympathy" cards twice recently. What a feeble gesture it is to send a card to the grieving, and what pap is to be found in sympathy greeting cards. We are rarely as tempted to resort to cliches as we are when dancing around fresh, feral grief. I found myself reading the cards and wondering, if my husband (father, mother, child, best friend) had just died, which of these cards would annoy me the least?

Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools was recently released and I had the opportunity to check it out at B&N. He has generously provided the text of the book online as well. What a guy. Nothing revelatory here, but great tips for streamlining and strengthening writing.