Writing process – Linda Nelson

Original image via Bing Creative Commons, courtesy of jobike.it

I like Idioms. I always have. Before now I honestly never gave them much thought and never quite noticed how they can be difficult for a person not from our country to understand them. Some of them, if you took them word for word you would be left wondering, what’s that supposed to mean?

Have you ever twisted them up?

I’m a NCIS fan. I miss seeing Zeva David on the show. She used to mess up the idioms we use all the time in our country. Some might find it annoying, but I always got a big kick out of it. In fact, I like this more than Tony’s constant quotes of movies. These are quirks of character that I have found myself paying attention to more and more since I have begun writing. Some of the best character quarks can be found in the weekly TV series we watch.

For example, Zeva tried to use the haystack idiom. It didn’t come out quite right. This is an example of what she might have come up with; the cat lost its tongue?

When I want to add a little bit of humor to my stories, I try to switch up idioms with my characters. I believe I did this more so in Witch Book than any of my other stories.

In the future, I will be attempting to do this even more.

ROW80 Check in:

Kait is calling for us to look at our goals once again and adjust them if need be.

I think my goals are going to stay somewhat the same.

I need to write as much as possible. It does not matter as to whether it is my blog posts or my work in progress, just as long I am working on something that has to do with writing.

I’m not making word count goals this time around. Instead, I want to make writing time goals as in 90 minutes a day. This can be either plotting, writing, researching, or editing. My words per minute, when it comes to typing, has gotten pretty high since I began in 2010. So, if I’m spending the right amount of time working on the work in progress, I’m sure my word count will reflect this.

I will log my word count on my blog counter once a week instead of daily. This is so I will stop focusing on word count and more on the actual doing of the writing. I’m hoping for a longer novel this time around that will be slightly influenced by The Game of Thrones. Why?

Because I like how in that story, everyone wants something, they all have some sort of secret, and I want to use the secrets and wants for the coming book. Enough! I can’t tell you anymore, or it will spoil the story, besides the part where I will be trying to get most of the cast in this book, even if it is in the mode of a guest appearance.

As you can tell, the plot is pretty much set in motion. I have my inciting incident that has carried over from Witch Book and Aaron and Keja. I even made a rough draft of a map to help me out.

Witch Book was written in 90 days as a first draft. It had a strong plot outline for me to follow. This is one of the most crucial things I need to have in order to write fast.

What about you? How do you go about your writing? Do you plot or punster? Do you use maps or charts? Cast outline or Character sheets or both?

Please share, I’d love to hear about your writing habits.

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Do you have morals you adhere to as a writer?

I know I do.

It is tough to build your morals as a writer/author when you go it alone and there is no one out there to teach you right from wrong. You scan the internet looking for ways to publish your book and get it to sell, but of course you will make mistakes. When you first start out you will stumble a lot along the way.

I’m sure you will do stupid stuff too. It is all part of the learning process.

The morals I have developed over the past few years have come from bits and pieces I have learned on many different blogs I follow. It might be from given advice in the blog or by seeing what another author did that they shouldn’t have done.

No one wants to be an example. Why? Because it is embarrassing, but once you learn to move past the embarrassment it takes you down a whole new path and a learning experience happens.

Examples can be:

poorly edited books you have published
over reacting to bad reviews
becoming offended when you can’t find readers
being offended at a critique session
stalking editors
stalking agents
Putting down other writers books in hopes of making your own look better.

After you get over your embarrassing moment you begin to enter your learning experience. There is no telling how long a denial period is for a newly published author. Some can take years before they are ready to grow from their experience, just like life in general.

Learning experiences can lead to:

Making multiple revisions of your published works until you can’t revise them anymore. Then waiting two years to go by and then taking another look at that story and attempt to revise it once again.
Learning to laugh at reviews or if they still bother you then don’t look at them. A negative review can be used as a heads up saying that maybe you need to return to that story and take another look at it to see if you can make it better.
You can’t shove your story down someone’s throat. If they want to read it then they will read it. Just accept the fact you don’t write for everyone. If you did then you would be God.
Learning that critique sessions are in your best interest. It is a good place to throw out your ideas and maybe brain storm with your colleagues. That is how some best sellers are formed.
If you write it and write it good the editors and agents will come.
Putting down another person’s book is not in your best interest. We all want to be liked and have our stories liked. If you really have found fault with a particular story then don’t leave a review. Give the author a chance to learn to make their story better. Send them an email instead letting them know what they might want to look into to make their story better. It is called paying it forward. Help them to become better writers.

Do you practice a writer’s creed?

Tell me about it. I would love to hear it.