What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme geared toward readers and writers, allowing us to touch base with blog friends and let them know what's up, put on by Jamie Morrow and Erin Funk. If you'd like to join click on the links above!

What I'm Reading:
Bring The Rain  by Lizzy Charles. I really enjoyed her other two books, Effortless With You and Perfectly Messy, they were super cute contemporary reads. But there was some serious slut shaming in this book that really hurt my brain, and I couldn't quite get over it. She did try to address it, but was too little too late for me. If anyone has any reading suggestions, I sure would love them!

What I'm Writing:
Not much of anything. I picked up some speed this week, but I'm nowhere I'd like to be with my word count. I'm also thinking about revising an old manuscript I can't seem to forget about. I has some querying success with it, but nothing panned out. I think I figured out what wasn't working and I'm ready to go back into that world.

What Works For Me:
Not much of anything lately. Sometimes you just have to let the writing slump run its course.

What Else I've Been Up To:
Well, this happened:

Our family is very excited to welcome our fifth and final child into this world come September! One of the reasons I haven't been able to do much of anything lately is because I'm still getting over the morning sickness phase. I'm officially in my second trimester, but it's taking a while to start feeling somewhat normal. I've been waiting to announce until we saw the little person ourselves, which we did last week. He or she is doing great and I'm hoping the rest of the pregnancy continues smoothly.

What Have You Been Up To?

What's Up Wednesday

                                                  

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme geared toward readers and writers, allowing us to touch base with blog friends and let them know what's up, put on by Jamie Morrow and Erin Funk. If you'd like to join click on the links above!

I'm Reading:
I was lucky enough to get the first three books in The Lunar Chronicles. I read Cinder when it first came out but never got around to reading Scarlet and Cress and let me tell you, I'm so glad I got to read them back to back. And in less than three days. Amazing books. I can't wait until Winter comes out!

What I'm Writing:
I started a new contemporary romance that I'm really excited about. It's fun and goofy and a nice change from the more serious issues I've been writing about in my other projects.

What Works For me:
Having fun. If I feel like I have to push myself to work on something, I move on. At least for a little while.

What Else I've Been Up To:
I got into Sun Vs. Snow and my entry went up on Monday. I got a few requests and I'm super excited and nervous about all of it. I have so many doubts running through my head. The publishing business is so scary.

What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme geared toward readers and writers, allowing us to touch base with blog friends and let them know what's up, put on by Jamie Morrow and Erin Funk. If you'd like to join click on the links above!

What I'm Reading:
Please Remain Calm by Courtney Summers. I loved This Is Not A Test and have been anxiously awaiting for the release of this short story. I loved it, and it did not disappoint. The ending may have crushed a little piece of my soul, but it was beautiful story.

What I'm Writing:
I've revised almost a hundred pages and I'm hoping to get another fifty done this week. We'll see how it goes.

What Works For Me:
Cleaning. If my house is a disaster I can't concentrate on my writing. Clutter is not my friend, neither are dirty dishes and laundry. The burden of having a dirty home weighs heavily on me. It's unavoidable, but I can't tell you how much cleaning actually helps me when I'm stuck. Usually I have Pandora going on in the background so it helps activate my creativity.

What Else I've Been Up To:
My life is so incredibly mundane, so I won't bore you with the details. I have been critiquing some other writers' stuff and it's such a great experience. There are some seriously talented people out there.

Snip Snip

Cutting words, paragraphs, pages is a given in the writing world. That doesn't make it any easier. When I first started writing I tricked myself into thinking that I would be one of those writers that would never have to get rid of a character or a scene or sentence (HAHAHAHAHA). You know what I discovered? Those writers don't EXIST. Editing and revising are absolutes when it comes to our craft. You can't skip on either if you want to make your manuscript the best it can be. And as a writer that's all I want. To give justice to my characters and the story they're telling ME.

I also discovered that I'm an OVER-writer. What is that? Someone who likes to use one too many adjectives to describe the color of the sky while the sun is setting when just one is plenty. Words have impact and smushing a bunch of them together to make a sentence prettier isn't going to help you make a point any clearer. I don't want to make my readers wade through them in order to understand what the heck it is I'm saying.

What else do I suck at? Using the same words over and over again. Okay, we all have characters who like to shrug or roll their eyes or mumble and murmur, whatever it may be, but having them do it like a hundred times in so many pages is a bit excessive. Also, you don't want those wonderful characters to injure themselves with all that unnecessary movement. (Did you know if you rolls your eyes too much itwill cause people to permanently cut you out of their lives because they're sick of your passive-aggressive show of annoyance?)

Getting rid of words can be painful. Writers tend to get attached to their work and saying good-bye to something that helped shape an entire book can be hard. That's why you have other people read your stuff and tell you what isn't working, because we can't see the hot mess that is a missing or pointless plot point.

At the end of the day we all have to get our fingers ready to press that delete button so that we can make something truly amazing happen in 70,000 words or less. That's not asking for a whole heck of a lot now is it?

What's Up Wednesday

Wow it feels like forever since I took part in one of these. I've missed everyone!

What I'm Reading:
I recently finished Swimming to Tokyo by Brenda St. John and really loved it. I thought it was a unique premise and I loved the location. And the romance was sizzling. I'm currently working on Reclaimed by Sarah Guillory which is definitely interesting thus far. Also I downloaded The Gateway Through Which They Came by Heather Marie and I'm super excited about it.

What I'm Writing:
I got in 1k so far this week. Not much, but I'm in the middle of revising Fading again. I got some requests which ultimately turned into Rs after querying and decided I needed to go over my manuscript one more time. I got some great feedback from some fabulous readers and am working on those. My goal is to revise the first fifty pages this week.

What Works For Me:
Stepping back after receiving critiques. I give myself a day to wrap my head around everything before jumping right into them. Maybe even more than a day. And I also ask myself if I agree with them, because if I don't then I'm unwilling to go and do the work to fix up whatever it is that needs to be fixed.

What Else I've Been Up To:
We spent Christmas in LA with my dad and though it was fun, I'm so glad to be home. But I now need a vacation from my children. Two weeks straight in a tiny apartment with all four of them just about drove me to madness. Also, I'm finding myself fall more in love with the writing community. It's so nice to be around such supportive, awesome, lovely people.

What's Up With You?

2015????

I rang in the new year with the flu this year. If that's any indication as to how this year is going to go, then no thank you to 2015.

Everyone has already done the 'goal' post this year and I'd like to add to the masses. Mine are simple. Finish the first draft of Keepsake by some time in February, revise the hell out of it and then jump into the query trenches again. Maybe by the end of the summer. I'd also like to finish a first draft to another project.. Not sure which one yet.

Other than that I'd like to eat less sugar (yeah right), keep up my exercise schedule, play with my kids before they grow up and start thinking it's lame, and just try and live in the moment. Oh, and read 50 books. I got over 100 in 2014, so I think that's doable.

Last year was the most I've ever focused on my writing, and I'd like to keep up the trend. I feel like as a writer I'm getting closer to where I want to be, so I don't want to skimp on the writing any and get lazy.

I hope it's a wonderful year for everyone and that we accomplish some of those goals we set at the beginning of every year. It's only five days in to 2015, so we have 360 days left to make things happen, so let's do it!

Embracing Your Writing Style

Forgive me father for I have sinned. I am guilty of coveting.

Let me preface this post by stating that I am not in fact a Catholic. I don't know what it's like to confess my sins to a Priest, but I am most definitely guilty of coveting. Not the usual type. Sure there are times I want something someone else has, but for the most part I'm pretty content with my life and grateful for all I have. What I'm talking about is more specific, and writing related. I covet writing styles.

There have been so many times I've read someone else's words and thought "Ugh, I want to write like her/him!" And I WANT WANT WANT it SO bad. There's Maggie Stiefvater, John Green, Laini Taylor, Sarah Dessen, Alexandra Bracken, Stepanie Perkins...I could go on and on. I love reading so much but there are times when I feel so completely out of my league and think to myself, "If I could just write like so and so my story would be so much better". But it's not the story I'm really referring to, but myself. If I wrote more like so and so I would be better. And that's total BS and kinda bananas.

I'm not into voodoo magic or anything, but there are times when I think if I had the power to gain someone else's ability to write a certain way I might jump on that cheating train. Because that's what it really is when you get right down to it: cheating. I want to write like so any amazing authors but if all of us wrote like everyone else things would get pretty boring pretty fast. Just like we as individuals are different, so are our writing styles. I need to tell myself this every time I tear apart another scene, character flaw, word choice etc. I have a style that is uniquely mine and no one else's and I need to LOVE it with all I have, while also trying to be better at this whole writing thing. The only way I can do that is by continuing to go go go, by continuing to read, by continuing to get critiqued and strengthening my weaknesses.

Will I ever get to a point where I think I'm REALLY good at this writing thing? Doubtful. But being a perfect writer is as an unattainable goal as being a perfect person. It just isn't possible or realistic. All I can do is progress and love the journey that will hopefully span a lifetime.