Thursday 1 August 2013

Creative events - New blog to share our online writing, art and photos...and Imagination Sparks Blogfest

Hello everyone!

Today there are two creative events at my blog - first, I reveal a new initiative, the second, I have my entry for Charmaine Clancy's Imagination Sparks Blogfest.

click on image to go to my new bloghop home

INTRODUCING: Write...Edit...Publish, where you can publish FLASH FICTION, POETRY, NON-FICTION, PLAYSCRIPTS, ARTWORKS or PHOTOGRAPHS to a monthly theme - currently VACATION.

Write...Edit...Publish is my new-look monthly bloghop home to supersede RomanticFridayWriters, which Donna Hole and I sadly closed the door on recently. RFW was great, but it was a huge drain on the writing life of both Donna and myself and the 'romantic' element seemed to scare off many writers. I intended to close shop altogether, until a comment by Nancy Williams gave me the spark of an idea which has grown into my new baby.And many RFW members stated that they hoped something else would pop up to provide an audience and valued feedback for their work

HOW IS WRITE...EDIT...PUBLISH DIFFERENT FROM RFW?

Write...Edit...Publish will be much more host friendly. At RFW, we provided critiques, monthly bloghops, Featured Writers, weekly posts  etc etc -- a truckload of work.

Write...Edit...Publish will remain a monthly bloghop, where participants will create an entry, edit before publishing (if it is a written work), then accept a stated level of feedback and provide feedback to other participants if confident. No different from RFW in these aspects, except for the open genres and no requirement for a romantic element.

At times at RFW, we had disagreements about levels of critique, but one thing that we all agreed on was that our writing definitely improved, and that continues to be my main goal -- to see our writing/editing skills improve to such an extent that publication is possible if not already achieved.

All genres are welcome at Write...Edit...Publish --  all categories. In fiction, from Adult to YA and MG is fine. I have included Playscripts, Artworks, Photography to the categories we had on RFW. Of course, written entries can include your illustrations or photographs.

RFW member Madeleine Sara sent me a comprehensive link on Genres and Narrative Styles. Worth a perusal if you are flummoxed at the freedom you have at Write...Edit...Publish to choose whatever style you want. Fan Fiction is not specifically on the list, but it proved very popular with readers when we explored this style for a RFW prompt.

NOW...the first prompt is VACATION. The bloghop Inlinkz is open now in my sidebar and at Write...Edit...Publish  and eventually at other participating sites, I hope.

Please sign up now if you are interested in posting to the theme this month (as I nervously await reaction to my new initiative...:) You have until Wednesday 21 August  - Friday 23 August to get your post together. I will send out a reminder email close to the due date.

Would love to have you join us!

I am so excited! Did you notice?

I am over at Yolanda Renee's blog spreading the word. Please visit here and say hi...


Now to Charmaine's blogfest!!



This is the IMAGINATION SPARKS BLOGFEST

In Charmaine's own words: What does that mean? It's easy. We all know at least one good warm up exercise to get our brain geared up and ready to write. That one creative task that gets your imagination bubbling with ideas. I thought we'd share them and try each other's.

Here's what I want you to do:
  1. Register your blog in the link list to show you are going to try and participate. Sign up will be available from now until the end of the blogfest. If you'd like to use the image above to let others know about the blog hop - go ahead!
  2. On the 1st of August (or there about - I'm not strict), post one of your favourite writing exercises that we can all try. 
  3. Read other people's blogs and try some of those exercises.
  4. Around the 8th, do a follow up blogpost to let people know which exercises you tried and what results you got. Visit the other blogs to see how they went with the exercises. (we all have different time zones, so anytime that fits your schedule is good for me)
  5. Get new ideas and make new bloggy friends!
So I decided I'd better get cracking on this so I can try some cool warm ups from you!


I'm a writer who likes to consider Point of View. Changing the POV means changing SO much. 

A crucial question to ask yourself when you're writing your story is:

Whose story is this?
What is the story about?

Sometimes when we write, a minor character pops up and is more interesting than the main character. Some say to kill off that show-offy character,others say to give them their own book, but I say, maybe this story should be about them.  

For the Imagination Sparks blogfest, I am posting a writing exercise from Fiction Class by Susan Breen (fabulous book) which examines POV/story. 

Think about a family gathering: a holiday (vacation), a birthday, a funeral. Imagine a scene...imagine your characters...then write about that gathering in the FIRST PERSON VIEWPOINT from the POV of a child at the gathering.

Writing from the POV of a child will change a story's tone and impact. It can heighten emotion, add honesty. Try this exercise and let me know how you go.




  • Any further questions about my new bloghop, please email me at den.covey@gmail.com
  • Please consider signing up to Charmaine's blogfest. Great writing ideas...
  • If you get an email from Grammarly asking you to add a few lines to your blogpost for an Amazon Gift Card, consider it -- I did this last post and am please to announce that my Gift Card has arrived. I have been using Grammarly Lite for sometime.
  • Thank you for your great response to my previous post on e-books' need for editing.






29 comments:

Michael Di Gesu said...

Hi, Denise,

WOW, This is JAM PACKED with fabulousness. I have to say your enthusiasm is so uplifting! I feel it in every one of your sentences!

Congrats on the NEW blog... I am so looking forward to contributing something fun.

I certainly plan to do Charmaine's blog hop, but not until next week. I am booked up Friday....

Thanks for sharing with us!

Trisha said...

I love your new monthly 'fest idea, and it sounds like it will be a lot less work for you as a host!

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

The new group sounds great, Denise!! I bet you'll have a lot of people participating.

Charmaine Clancy said...

What a great writing exercise! I have tomorrow off, so I'm going to try this one. And I'm definitely up for the new bloghop - I'll post about it this week - here's to new projects!

Yolanda Renée said...

Thanks for the post, it will be up at midnight tonight!

Yes, I agree the exercise is awesome, I too will try it!

Thanks for the new bloghop! Looking forward to it!

Romance Reader said...

Wow! Denise! It all sounds just fantastic! Looking forward to reading all the posts!

Nas

Denise Covey said...

Thanks Michael. Can't wait to see the entries!

Denise Covey said...

It should be Trisha...

Denise Covey said...

Thanks for the future shout out Akex! I hope lots of people join us!

Denise Covey said...

Glad you're on board Charmaine. Love your bloghop too!

Denise Covey said...

Thanks for the post Yolanda. Looking forward to it.

Denise Covey said...

Appreciate that Nas!

L. Diane Wolfe said...

I could do photographs!

Denise Covey said...

Yay, we love photographs L. Diane! Bring on those vacation shots.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the shout out. I have now added Fan Fiction to the list.
Yes writing from a child's POV is quite a challenge and worth exploration.
Congrats on being at Yolanda's blog :O)

Anonymous said...

If I take part I would prefer to link directly to my post if that's okay Denise? x

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Denise .. good luck with the new look "Denise" inspirational new blog look ... looks like you have interested parties already ..

I shall watch and learn .. cheers Hilary

Bevimus said...

Hey Denise!

I've been following other writers who participate(d) in RFW for a while and I've thought about participating myself. I even planned it one time. But one huge thing always got in the way: romance. It's not really my style, never has been, and while I somtimes do come up with romantic sotries they're always romantic by accident rather than by design.

Needless to say, I'm trilled about this new format. I have a lot of pieces that I really want feedback on and while I share then on FridayFlash I don't walys get what i'm looking for since that a writing share rather than a writing critque group. So I'm gonna give the vacation prompt a shot and see what goes. Thanks so much for starting this!

Christine Rains said...

What a fantastic new initiative! Good luck and I'll be following. :) Have a wonderful weekend.

Chancelet said...

I truly like the idea of WEP. It's something I will need to look into once my blog tour is over. One question I have, is do people find it hard to submit their pieces to anthologies, since most want work that haven't been published, even on blogs? Writer’s Mark

Theresa Milstein said...

Good luck with your new venture. I like the idea of WEP too.

dolorah said...

That's a great writing exercise. Sometimes I've had to write a scene from an different POV to get the feel just right. Can be a lot of fun to change up POV, even if for just understanding the character or situation better.

I'll link my Vacation post directly when it is finished and published. Good luck with the new adventure :)

......dhole

Anonymous said...

I like playing with POV too, and I have my creative writing students write the same scene from three different POV's each semester. Your new blog sounds cool!

Vallypee said...

Hi Denise, I'd love to join in with this, but I'm not really sure if I have time. I'm trying to finish a paper for my studies at the moment, but if I can, I will. I like l experimenting with POV as well. I'm reading a book now where I find the POV is a bit confusing, so it's quite topical!

Thank you for downloading WW! I should warn you that apparently there are some mistakes in the e-book version. In my own defence, I didn't do the e-book, the publishers did and I fear that when converting the text for e-book format, some mistakes crept in that weren't in the paperback :-( I find that frustrating, but now I have done the e-book conversion for my latest book, I see very easily how it can happen! I haven't read the e-version as I don't want to be depressed…haha... but I hope it's not too bad. Let me know in any event. I would be glad to hear what you think!

mooderino said...

Sounds like an exciting new venture. I'm sure it'll be a great success.

mood

Crystal Collier said...

I am seriously going to have to get over to that Write...Edit...Publish thingy. I keep hearing about it, and you can only resist for so long.

I fine with POV, sometimes when the novel is new it's fun to write a couple scenes from other characters perspectives, to see which is the strongest view point. Great thoughts there.

Yolanda Renée said...

Awesome, you found the Sunshine before I could bring it over! And yes, I did choose a few RFW's - I think they are some of the most talented individuals in the blogsphere and yes we'll get even more to sign up - the word is spreading!

Suzi said...

The Write... Edit... Publish bloghop sounds cool. I'm not really into flash fiction writing (and I don't do any of the others), but this will be fun to watch. I hope you have lots of participants who do the artwork/photography and screenplays because I'm really interested in seeing what people do there.

The first YA story I wrote was from the POV of the girl. But after it was all done (this was before I knew really anything about writing well), the boy's story really hit me and I wrote his--in a separate novel. They are now combined, dual pov, and I love both of them. But usually I don't have a problem knowing whose POV the story will be told from.

The Words Crafter said...

This sounds like an interesting and fun project. I'm not quite ready for submission, but I'll def. come over and check out what others are creating.

Your new look is sooo pretty!