Insecure Writers Support Group Post--reaching for your dreams.

Hi all!

Lovely to see another month flit by in the speed of light, isn't it? No, not really. Are you like me wondering how time can go so fast and you never quite catch up with all the things you have to do?

So...when I was wondering what to share today, I found myself staring at a photograph. Not just any old photograph, but a very original sepia photograph taken in 1917 in Codforth, England, wherever that might be. It's part of an interactive activity at the State Library of Queensland's Distant Lines project.

Here we have a group of Aussie diggers, both young and old, who have survived Gallipoli and the Somme battles and are waiting for their next posting.

I couldn't help wondering--what dreams and aspirations did these soldiers have? According to the original text on the postcard, they were checking out this English village and exclaiming at the beauty of the churches. No doubt facing death gave churches an allure.

Australia was a young country, well, it still is, relatively speaking, and these soldiers would probably have been farmers, as most Australians were in the early 1900s. What hopes and dreams did they have for their return? Were they hoping the government would give them a larger selection to do their back-breaking farming work? Did they yearn to see their wives, their girlfriends, their parents? Whatever their dreams, I hope they achieved them.

So, peeps, keep on dreaming and working towards your dreams. Our future holds more promise than that which stretched before these soldiers. Let's take the future in both hands and aspire to dream!

More inspiring quotes here: dld.bz/dB9DQ 

Thanks for reading. Click here to go to more IWSG posts. Thanks so much to the hosts this week and to Alex J Cavanaugh, whose brainchild this meme is. And even though the month flies by too fast, I really love reading as many posts as I can.

• Do you believe in the power of dreams?
• Do you have reachable goals?

If your hopes and dreams include improving your writing,
WEP has just the thing. Join our Settings challenge
due to go live on August 19.

IWSG post - If you're writing to publish, stop. And WEP returns!

Greetings from New Caledonia!

Having a great time exploring this wonderful island in the Pacific, but before I left to come over here, I scheduled my IWSG post. I was considering giving it a miss this month, but then I came across this paragraph on writing in Writing Unboxed when I was doing my nonchalant surf of the bloggers I follow. Dave King, the co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction had some good writing advice.


I don't know about you, but there's a lot of pressure for blogger/writers to get their novels out there. I'm taking longer than most as I feel I'm still learning my craft and yes, well, I'm a perfectionist. So I get pressure from blogger friends and family to get something out there into the market. But I don't intend to publish until I feel my books are ready. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a prolific writer, and if you've published a novel, you know it sometimes feels like it takes more hours in the day than God gives us.)

We have the Slow Food Movement. I belong to the Slow Writing Movement. I choose to be someone who takes her time playing with words, rather than live in a state of panic because the years are racing by and I don't have a published novel. Lalalalalalala! It's not like there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for writers. I know there is validation for the gazillion hours spent on the laptop and in your head. But to me, the real reward of writing is in the writing itself.

Dave King, editor, says:

So if you’re writing to publish, stop.  Instead, write to write.  Do it for the moments when your characters say or do something so unexpected that you wonder if you ever really knew them before.  Do it for the moments when you overhear something in the supermarket and think That was beautifully put and would make great dialogue.  Do it for the mornings when you wake up and know exactly how the atmosphere of one of your settings feels, when you have to hurry to get it down on paper before the feeling fades.  Do it for the late evenings when you finish a scene with tears in your eyes.

Exactly.

• How about you? Do you feel pressure to get your novel out there, from yourself or from others?

PS: You may have heard a whisper that Write...Edit...Publish (WEP) is starting up again! It's true! Yolanda Renee has joined forces with me. Couldn't do it without her. Our first challenge begins on August 19. There was a post on Monday at the WEP site. Go there if you want more info.

So if you got this far, you deserve a picture. [INSERT IMAGE HERE] If there's no image, it means I'm having so much fun I forgot!!

At the Baie de Citron, Noumea.

Thanks to Alex J Cavanaugh and the team for this month's IWSG. Click here for more posts.

Insecure Writers Support Group Post for June--Mindfulness

Hello everyone!

Here we are again for IWSG, thanks to Alex J Cavanaugh and the team for the month.

A buzz word at the moment appears to be 'mindfulness' and it got me thinking about how it relates to writing.


Speaking of writing, our lovely Hilary Melton-Butcher (who is taking a blog break) dubbed me the 'cafe writer' and I decided to run with it on my new blog header. Why? Well, I do most of my most productive writing in a cafe in West End here in Brisbane. It is an ancient (for Australia) building with 6 areas where you can ramble. I have a favourite table in the back amongst the palm trees and can write my heart out for hours.

Now...mindfulness. It resonates with me as I've always been a 'stop and smell the roses' type of gal. You never know, next time you pass by they may have drooped or been dead-headed or ripped out to make way for a road.

Mindfulness is about living in the moment, not letting your brain run ahead to the next thing and the next instead of enjoying what you're doing at the time. For example:

When you're taking a shower or bath, instead of planning your day, or running over the events of the day, take time to relish the feel of the gorgeous soft water flowing over your body and being thankful you live in a country that has water, and hot water at that. Inhale the scents of the shampoo, conditioner, bath gel etc. Enjoy the experience. Let your mind declutter and rejuvenate.

Now what does mindfulness have to do with writing? Well, instead of furiously tapping that keyboard or scratching that pen across the page, thinking 'when will I ever get this done?', 'I hate this story!', 'Will my editor approve these changes?', 'Will the public want to buy my book?', relish the time to write. Be thankful that you have the time, the motivation, the creativity. Allow your brain to create without being short circuited by superfluous thoughts.

Maybe if we let our creativity flow unhindered, maybe if we practise mindfulness, our writing will shine even brighter and all those other questions that demonstrate our insecurity will be banished (for a moment, anyway).

• What do you think? Do you practise mindfulness in your life? In your writing? Tell us about it.
• Thanks for coming by. Click here to go to other posts for IWSG.
• May your month be sweetened by the fragrance of roses. 

Happy April Fool's Day!! IWSG post. You're dreaming, right? Or is it your goal speaking?

Hello and welcome to April, the month where it's all happening! Today is IWSG post day, so thanks to Alex J Cavanaugh and his helpers for this month, Suzanne Furness,Tonja Drecker, Toi Thomas, Rachna Chabria, Fundy Blue, and Donna Hole! Thanks for collating this huge meme good people.

Also starting today, many bloggers are participating in the ginormous A - Z Challenge. Those who are not are often on a blog break where they're using their time to get their WIP underway, edited, polished, submitted etc. or working on other myriad writing projects.

Click to read more posts

I've participated in the A - Z for several years, but decided against it again this year. Instead, I'm doing my own AprNoWriMo (my own little NaNoWriMo) where after months of 'hunting and gathering' (research) I'm going to work on the first draft of my Paris story and comment on some A - Z posts that catch my eye.

Thinking about writing goals can make us insecure, as everyone else seems to have their first, second and third novel published and are working on their fourth, fifth or six. Hmm. Wherever we sit in the novel/short story/flash fiction/freelance magazine/blogging or newspaper article spectrum, it doesn't hurt to have a dream/goal/idealised future, does it? Life would be soooo dull without dreams.

Source

But writer's dreams can be dashed in a flash--a form rejection from a publisher/editor you just know should love your story idea, leaving you wondering where to turn next. So most of us have learned that a writer needs to :

• balance dreams and goals. 
• a dream is something that happens as if by magic (mega sales of your book, a review in the Paris Review, winning first prize in that prestigious writing competition). You have almost no control over these dreams, so try to keep them to a minimum (as if...)
• A goal is something you can work towards--finishing your second book within a year of your first, sending stories out to high-profile magazines, investing in a fancy schmanchy camera so the editor can't resist buying your pictures etc. Working on your goals will help stir up the magic that makes your dreams come true. (Oooh, National Geographic just came calling!)

Source

• What are your goals for April?
• What are your dreams for the future?
• If you're planning a new book during April, here is a fantastic link to Jami Gold if you don't follow her. What she doesn't know about writing isn't worth knowing.

IWSG post - A First Page Checklist - would an editor or agent turn the page?

CLICK BADGE for more entries...

Hi all!

Welcome to another month of IWSG posts. Thanks to Alex J Cavanaugh and his assistants for running this helpful meme.

Those amongst us who have written unpublished novels, whether we've submitted them or not, might, like me, feel very insecure about sending the ms off to a publisher. I found this checklist on the blog: Flogging the Quill, where published author and writers' helper Ray Rhamey offers all sorts of tips for unpublished writers, including a free public chapter critique.

I liked Ray's very comprehensive checklist to keep the editor/agent compelled to read on. It had me combing my first page for these elements...

A First-page Checklist

Do you have all these elements on your first page?

• It begins connecting the reader with the protagonist
• Something is happening. On a first page, this does NOT include a character musing about whatever.
• What happens is dramatized in an immediate scene with action and description plus, if it works, dialogue.
• What happens moves the story forward.
• What happens has consequences for the protagonist.
• The protagonist desires something.
• The protagonist does something.
• There’s enough of a setting to orient the reader as to where things are happening.
• It happens in the NOW of the story.
• Backstory? What backstory? We’re in the NOW of the story.
• Set-up? What set-up? We’re in the NOW of the story.
• What happens raises a story question—what happens next? or why did that happen?

• What about you? Would you add anything to the checklist?
• Do you disagree with Rhamey on any point?

Thanks for taking time out for your holiday preparations and coming by. I hope you'll visit more blogs today.

IWSG post - The Ten Best Sentences in fiction according to the American Scholar.

Hi there!

Welcome to another month and another round of IWSG posts. As we dive into NaNo or dive into our writing for the month, I thought I'd post some inspiring sentences.

Click to see more IWSG posts

I like to read A LOT and I like to consider the way some of the greats write in the hope that some of the magic will rub off on my writing. Here are some of the ten best sentences in fiction according to this article I came across online. 

I think these sentences are pretty awesome, but also demonstrate how times/tastes change. No doubt some of you won't like these examples. Flick through and let me know which one you like best...or perhaps post your favourite sentence from your current WIP or a much-loved book.

Here we go....

Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

---

I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

—James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

---

This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.

—John Hersey, Hiroshima

---

It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

—Toni Morrison, Sula

---

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

---

It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.

—Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

---

Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.

—Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

---

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

—Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

---

In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor.

—Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

---

There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.

—Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

---

And a bonus:

Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.

—Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

fabcddaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

• Do you have a favourite sentence from the above list?
• What is your favourite sentence in your WIP or another book?

#InsecureWritersSupportGroup entry for e-book - Tips on writing BACKSTORY

Hi everyone!

It's Wednesday, October 1, IWSG post day.

It’s also the website’s one year anniversary and the day to post your entry for the IWSG anthology. If over 300 words, you can email it directly to Alex or to theIWSG@gmail.com. 

Once you have posted on October 1, go to this page at the IWSG site and enter your link - http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-guide-to-publishing-and-beyond.html  We will be reading every post, but we don’t want to miss someone’s submission!

This is my entry for the IWSG e-book which seeks articles on Writing, Publishing and Marketing. I give my consent for it to be included in the e-book. It is slightly over 300 words.

My topic is Writing.

BACKSTORY - Write Winners, not Skimmers.

Firstly, what is BACKSTORY? BACKSTORY is the history that happened before Chapter One.

What I've learnt about BACKSTORY:

1. BACKSTORY should not appear until our readers get to know our characters -- some say Chapter Four.
2. BACKSTORY is the story that the author tells herself. She needs to know where her hero/heroine comes from, the deepest, darkest secrets from his/her past. So make up a file, or write it into your story then move it to a separate file. 
3. The reader doesn't need to know everything we know about our characters. But how can you share fully-formed characters without being boring? Solution. Dribble hits of BACKSTORY through dialogue (but don't info dump). Creatively include bits and pieces from your hero/heroine's past. 
4. Write what readers will read. Too many slow sentences or paragraphs of BACKSTORY and the reader will skim, hoping the story picks up. Readers rarely skim dialogue. Don't waste time crafting clever paragraphs readers won't read.
5. BACKSTORY is not a bad thing. Relevant BACKSTORY needs to be slipped into your WIP in an active way at the right juncture. Keep the story rolling. Keep the reader engaged. 

So...what to do? I learned this trick from Mark Sullivan, thriller writer.

1. Write the BACKSTORY. 

2. Make a BACKSTORY file. For your eyes only. Try to keep it to one or two succinct pages.

3. REVIEW those pages. Highlight what you really must include in your story. Will it move your story forward?

4. Check your highlighted BACKSTORY. Can you eliminate anything? 

5. Put the reader-can't-live-without BACKSTORY into bullet points on a new page.

6. PRINT.

7. Then...imagine these bullet points were printed on a sheet of glass.

8. Picture yourself dropping that sheet of glass onto the floor and watching it shatter. Kapow!

9. Picture this: Bend down and pick up one sliver of BACKSTORY at a time, then slide those slivers into your story.

***

SHORT BIO: Denise Covey is a writer of romantic fiction - flash fiction, short stories,  novels. She blogs at http://laussieswritingblog.blogspot.com

***

Thanks to the co-hosts for October 1:

Kristin Smith - http://swordsandstilettos.blogspot.com/

Elsie http://mockturtlemusings.com/

Suzanne Furness http://suzannefurness.blogspot.com/

Fundy Blue http://selkiegrey4.blogspot.com/

Go here for other entries.

• What's your take on BACKSTORY? Anything to add?