Welcome writers & all non-calendar-conformists dropping by.
Goods news for wordsmiths bent upon formal or sub-rosa NaNoWriMo/ National Novel Writing Month — you have 8 lovely DAYS to hit yr goal! That’s midnight next Friday, Nov 30. Words enuf & time, yes?
For anyone who woulda but could’na, join us to occupy January 2019 with WriteOn’s 3rd Annual
DailyKosWriMo
for all kindsa authorship, not fiction alone. No need to start from scratch, either.
Bring us your diarists,
your poets,
your translators and
essayists
yearning to write free!
The scratched-out refuse
on your teeming floor —
bring these, the gormless. temper-tossed to me! ™
w/apology as always, to
Emma Lazarus, author of
The New Colossus,
inscribed on the base of
the face-palming statue
at the left, there,
...um, actually bring’em to SensibleShoes, Write On!‘s fearless leader, series originator, and —for 1st timers here— published author of some unique historical and fantasy novels (2017-18 Kos Katalog Books etc. section) [on toppa some nonfic titles I’ve seen], back hosting next week, as usual.
For now, I’ll edit/update NNWM wordcounts & other goal-reachings from your new-data comments, and then onward to the websites, challenges, and collateral festivities.
As of Thursday, November 29, 2pm leftkost:
bonetti 📌 90,009/100k wds
clio2 📌 40,306/50k wds
Cyclopsgirl 📌 write at least once a week
dconrad 📌 40,000/50k wds
Diana in NoVa 📌 15,028 & into Ch 9/50k wds
DoctorCorey 📌 7000/50k wds
GrouchySquirrel 📌 write every day
James Wells 📌 16k wds
Leo Orionis 📌 81% (ch 17 partway) of finishing draft of A Meeting at Ishtun
mettle fatigue 📌 computer hook-up & resume ms (done!)
Mnemosyne 📌 3800/25k wds
reppa 📌 6125/20k wds
SensibleShoes 📌 finish revising Ghost Ships (1/2way thru 2nd pass)
ursulafaw 📌 make a collection of diaries published on dKos
xaxnar 📌 make a collection of diaries published on dKos
aaaannnd….
So, each week we haz a blocwote at the end, tonite here instead:
Write On! will be a regular weekly diary (Thursdays 8 pm Eastern Time, 5 pm Pacific) until it isn't.
Before signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Absolute Write, Preditors and Editors and/or Writer Beware.
Added note: I’m told you can type Absolute Write
and the name of an agent or publisher into
google’s search box to find out if
that site has info on said A or P. |
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Across WriteOn’s years (ten, count’ em -10), SenSho has brung many other links too! Here’s a few at random:
▓ Kansas Univ. Gunn Ctr for the Study of Science Fiction promoting cool workshops for July. ▓ Nicola Morgan, the Crabbit Old Bat, has focused on her main website the past year, but her Help I Need a Publisher site archived lotsa gud stuf on writing & editing & pub’g oh my, indexed by topic in the right-hand margin (scroll down) such as How long is a book? :D ▓ At Rachelle Gardner's long-lived prof’l agent/teach-you-the-ropes site, explore around & scroll alla way down for: Writing • Editing • Submitting • Publishing • Marketing • the writing life • et cetera. ▓ From last summer, Critters.org's page on spotting scams. and here’s their marketing page“The Black Hole” ;-) ▓ This link to Community of Literary Magazines & Presses is from Vermont College of Fine Arts’ Hunger Mountain. ▓ Shelf Talker is a Publishers’ Weekly blog “in which children's booksellers ponder all things literary, artistic, and mercantile.” Noodle around with the url to see if PW’s got other genre/category blogs as well? ▓ Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.org ▓ PIMP MY NOVEL debunked some misconceptions about writing & publishing among other archived wisdoms (went walkabout in 2011). ▓ Alan Rinzler is a consulting editor with an informative blog, if sans deerstalker cap. (Whether to ever use paid editing services is a whole nother ballgame, of course.) ▓ Bookends Literary Agency’s earlier blogspot explained what a style-sheet is and advantages of DIYing yr ms-specific own, vs only the publisher’s. ▓ The Authors Guild homepage. ▓ SenSho called the still-up-&-running Making Light a blog by a Tor editor back in 2010. Note their list of "linguistic marker" phrases vanity presses use to getcha, plus it’s got a quotation from John M. Ford so it’s in. ▓ Nathan Bransford's blog still informatively up & running. ▓ Answers for FAQ from Neil Gaiman. I know nothing of him except he’s famous and had a cameo on Big Bang Theory. (Update: tonite I learnt more: see comment down there somewhere.) ▓ A very kind rejection slip... do any kind exist anymore? ▓ Why famous authors don't wanna read anyone’s unpublished ms and the 10 best things you can do for yours from once-anonymous 2009-2013 pub’g blog TheIntern. And how, when yr plot is stuck, the answer just might be the question (which I think we talked about more recently). ▓ How to sell your novel from back when SenSho was on her 2nd musk ox (go see, happily worth the click). ▓ the dirty secret truth about yr writing talent — and how to grow it from ”creative bad-ass” JustineMusk, posting thru 2015. ▓ Strong female characters vs only seem to be from Jim C. Hines site, © thru’ 2018. This author includes a tab-ful of Rape Resources worth bookmarking in case of need to help. Linked articles date back over a decade, shouldn’t be current but, alas, still are. ▓ Scholastic editor Cheryl Klein blogged here through 2016. ▓ The Purple Crayon is children’s bk editor Harold Underdown’s blog. ▓ For F/SF markets etc, Ralan's Webstravaganza ▓ Duotrope Digest is “a subscription-based service for writers & artists that offers an extensive, searchable database of current fiction, poetry, nonfiction & visual art markets, a calendar of upcoming deadlines, a personal submission tracker, & useful statistics compiled from the millions of data points we've gathered on the publisher & agents we list….” ▓ Querytracker appears to offer free finding & researching data on agents and tracking yr submissions to them, publishers and some other stuff… ▓ enchantedinkpot.blogspot.com/ a community for writers and readers of middle grade and young adult fantasy. ▓ some of the above and a boatload of nifty more are at Write On! A hitchhiker's guide to the write-o-sphere by SensibleShoes — Mar04, 2010 so I’ll leave you to it.
As wealths of info go, and considering you can access it from wherever you’ve got a connection, the above comprises a suitably move-able feast. Here’s dessert:
🌿 🍷 http://SAGEBLACKWOOD.blogspot.com/ 🍷 🌿
Sage Blackwood is SensibleShoes’ fantasy fiction pen-name! :)
In comments, do potluck others you recommend.
¶
Let’s set up for tonight’s challenge with questions: flashbacks — are we in favor of this literary device or opposed? What are the pitfalls? Is there any genre of fiction they absolutely don’t work in, or any where they’re a must? Are they always obvious and intrusive, or can they glide along slick as jello in June? What kinds of scenes —action, dialogue, interior monologue, “walking” scene, narrative, etc etc— make the best ones and how come? And whadda we do if we need one somewheres else?
Thoughts in the comments? Go for it! The Crabbit Bat’s post on willing suspension of disbelief may apply helpfully, btw, since real life may haz Bimbos of the Death Sun and Zombies of the Gene Pool but no flashbacks. Not out where everyone can see’em, anyway. And a good thing, too!
THE CHALLENGE, Mr Phelps, should you accept it, is to write the start of a flashback for a tale never told. Supply some minimal lead-in framing from the nonexistent novel’s or the memoir’s here&now, to hint whose flashback it is, and what plot incident brought it to that character’s mind — fictional character or author-as-character, or whatever — be creative!
Why only the start? Well of course, to avoid having to cobble up an entire book, backstory and all, just for one Thursday evening. Or of course, as always, your WorkInProgress may serve.
300 words or so, yeh? A while back, dconrad brought us gearside.com's Big Text Box utility, a sleek wordcounter if what you usually use is less convenient — this one’s nice ‘cos ya can compose and edit right innit, and then copypasta back to here.
But first, a final website, by way of flashback: my first WriteOn diary was 2014’s turkey-trot, Progressive Genre Fiction that Cooks. So titled because of a heroine in it who does. “Cooks” as a colloquialism musta bin outmoded 40 years by then but who cares, archaic patoisie is great!. Plus it suits — the diary hadz links to two of the author’s recipes…
….”Beware of this … chocolate grog… [that] warms the cockles and all other places … It is Cocoa for Grown Ups … utterly delicious and very alcoholic … Thinking about it will put you over .05...”
and
“… French Onion Soup.” I’m no chef, but I cannot resist instructions like:
“...keep stirring. These are stirring times...”
To close the frame of that flashback, at this link FREE you can download heroine Corinna Chapman’s recipe book, from author Kerry Greenwood! Is that liberal of her or what?!
A necessaire (probably England), mid-18th century: insert plate, velvet interior lid, mechanical handle, ivory memo pad, silver container and lid, small spoon, large spoon, glass ponce jar and lid, ink glass jar and lid, mother of pearl knife, mini spatula, fountain pen nibs. Medium: shagreen, silver plate. Bequest of Sarah Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Maybe a writer owned this flashback.
As long as you’re here, and if your own situation is reasonably safe & secure these days, consider increasing how much gift-giving you do from purchases at local&small business, or in the form of certificates you give that tell the recipients “donation made in your name to______.” …. for links to where to donate to California fire relief including animal-aid, for Puerto Rico & USVI hurricane recovery, and for InnoculationProject low-income school STEM programs, belinda ridgewood's diaries are a great place to start. For farmworker fire relief and general support, see the final link in Gabe Ortiz’s diary As some Californians are urged to stay indoors due to toxic smoke, farmworkers continue working or click on https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/support. For dollar-for-dollar matching thru’ Dec 31, type www.plannedparenthood.org/match into your URL bar. See also the Helping Humpday diaries, and here's another link to the 2018-2019 Kos Katalogue.
Except for Gabe on staff, all of these are brought by volunteer effort, so please also think about celebrating holidays by putting shoe leather or elbow grease into your own local area relief work for hunger and homelessness, safety for elders and the disabled and minority groups, or mentoring or tutoring at-risk youngsters. Your community’s faith-based organizations usually include many that work on local needs all year round, shoulder to shoulder regardless of political affiliation, and there’s almost no way to be more rewarded with a huge dollop of hope & surprising pleasure than doing some good alongside folks we might think we disagree with on everything. Qur’an, Surah Fussilat 41:34 “Repel evil by that which is better.”
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Write On! will be a regular weekly diary (Thursdays 8 pm Eastern Time, 5 pm Pacific) until it isn't.
Before signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Absolute Write, Preditors and Editors and/or Writer Beware.
I’m told you can type Absolute Write
and the name of an agent or publisher into
google’s search box to find out if
that site has info on said A or P. If anyone
tries it, let us know how it works out! |
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