fiction – Page 4 – Linda Nelson

Linda Attends her First Ever RWA Meeting

Yesterday I attended my very first Romance Writers Meeting in Bow, NH. I had a great time.

My friend Linda Kepner whom is also a member of the Monadnock Writers’ Group invited me to this meeting as a guest. She has been a member since last year and wanted to share the experience with me.

I think I got a lot more out of this meeting than was apparent to me yesterday. It has helped spark some enthusiasm in me just by being around these fun loving girls.

Can you imagine being at a meeting in a library where you have been taught over the ages to be quiet and to find that this meeting is so loud with laughter that it can be heard in the main part of the library behind closed doors.

I had such a good time that I began to check out the National site to see how much the membership costs. What I say made me say ouch. If it wasn’t for having to have a root canal taken care of over the next few weeks I think I would have had the money to join. It is kind of steep when you are living pay check to pay check.

Oh well, it will just have to wait a few months.

In the mean time I began to poke around and discovered that the RWA also has a subchapter that is right up my alley. The Fantasy, Futuristic & Paranormal Special Interest Chapter of RWA.

If this doesn’t motivate me to join, I don’t know what will. When I saw this I said, “Wait a minute. I guess I really do need to find a way to join.”

But still it is going to have to wait. I can’t pull money out of a hat unless it is in a story line. Unfortunately reality does not work that way.

So coming back to reality…

My ROW80 Check – In:

At the beginning of the week I had only added 1k words to Road Salt. Working on this story has been like pulling teeth. Sometimes I have found it to be almost as painful. It is not meant to be an entertaining read and I have to destroy the lives of my characters. I’m not really having fun doing this. Even the humor is lacking making this to be a dark sort of fiction, or so it seems to me.

But I do have to write this story. I promised to write it and by golly I will write it and finish it. Then I will be able to reward myself by writing the next installment of the Orgarlan Saga.

Today I am happy to report on my current additional word count of Road Salt. In the past 2 hours I was able to add another 2k words.

That makes 3k words for the week. Yes!

Now I will go back and fight off the temptation to put Road Salt away for the rest of the day. World of Warcraft is calling me. Hopefully I will be able to resist the temptation and keep on writing.

Have you written any stories where you felt like you were pulling teeth?

Stop by and check out and meet some of the other ROW’ers with our Linkey List.

In response to a recent posting by Kait Nolan, Why Portraying Strong Women Is Important, I had to ask myself how strong my characters were that I used in my stories. So I gave this some thought.

I think when you first start out with writing the characters tend to be kind of weak out of fear of publishing your first story. But with each new story I have published I have noticed that each character, whether it is a newly created one or one being carried along in a series tends to become stronger in general.

Karla who was in my first story, Friends of Choice, was a combination of meek and strong. Her strength came from her naivety. She isn’t stupid; she just thinks that no one could ever do something like that to her. As the series continues she becomes a little bit wiser as time passes but she is still that meek girl originally portrayed. But her counterpart in the story, Carol, she is and was portrayed as the strong one and continues to be that way. Even though she battles her own addiction she is less likely to suffer from depression or let anyone step on her. By rights, because of her character build I do believe she really shouldn’t have an addiction problem. But maybe I am mistaking her strength as just pure brutish instead. I mean she is kind of a bully in the first story.

In Aaron and Keja, I found that Aaron is a very strong character right from the start. This is kind of interesting for me. I never really gave this much thought even when I was developing the story. I just kept writing and this is what I got.

Then in Witch Book, there is two strong characters, maybe three if I count Wenda. So when the third book comes around I wonder if they will be portrayed in Amazonian fashion. That would be funny. Maybe I will find out when I begin working on the next book for November. I am planning on it being my next NaNoWri Mo Wip.

I don’t know if Road Salt will be done by then, but I will take time out for NaNo to begin the next Orgarlan Book.