Karen Sandler

Tag: awakening

  • Get Out that Broom (or a Shop Vac) to Tidy Up Your Writing

    Vac O MaticThis week on YA Highway, Road Trip Wednesday asks, What do you hope to “clean out” from your writing? What habits/tropes/words, etc do you want to eliminate?

    Before I even clean anything out of my writing, I’d like to clean up my act regards my Internet obsession. My e-mail checking, tweet reading, Facebook status browsing, YahooGroups message scanning, time-wasting habits. Some of what I do on the Internet is legitimate (I’m really working hard to make my social networking become a better marketing tool), but when it’s a political blog I’m clicking over to, or Google news I’m poring over, or an irresistible cat video I’m watching, my writing train has gone off its tracks.

    Assuming I continue to battle that time-wasting impulse, there are a few things I’d like to sweep away in my writing. Sometimes I struggle with pacing. I can write a pretty exciting scene, but then I worry when the one after it maybe drags on a bit more than I’d like it to. I’m lucky to have fab editors to clean that up, but I need to focus more on pacing even before my editor gets to it. So get out the Dust-Buster for those draggy scenes.

    Awakening Final cover-s
    Aren’t those a great pair of eyes on the cover of Awakening though?

    Next, I’m weird about eyes, and all the things they do. Glance, glimpse, stare, glare, look, and plain old see. I use eye action a little too much sometimes. I’d like to get out the shop vac for that.

    I am thoroughly in love with ellipses…and em dashes– Often on the ends of sentences…when it often doesn’t need to be used–when it might work better just to break up the sentences into multiple ones where I’ve inserted the ellipse or em dash. Sweep those little buggers out the door (or, rather, the manuscript).

    I still have a bad habit of too much throat clearing at times (taking too long to get to the point). This kind of goes along with pacing, but it’s often at the start of the book, or maybe even the start of a chapter. It’s as if I’m having to hack up all those words to get a sense of where I’m going. It’s later when I realize (or someone points out), Oh, I don’t need all this info dump in here. Get out the blower and whoosh it away.

    There’s probably a few more odds and ends of writer’s spring cleaning that I could do, but this is all that comes to mind at the moment. I have to say, I am so grateful for 2nd drafts (and 3rd, 4th, etc), and other pairs of eyes on my manuscripts.

    Especially when those eyes are glancing, glimpsing, staring, looking, and plain old seeing what needs to be fixed.

  • Give Your Story Its Head? Or Keep it on a Tight Rein?

    PEC 9-26-10I am a horse person. Maybe better to say I am horse-obsessed. If I’m fast-forwarding past the commercials in a DVRed TV show, I’ll hit pause if I see a horse (gotta love those Budweiser Clydesdales). When I’m out driving in our semi-rural area, my gaze will rove over the surrounding pastures, admiring the bays and appys and chestnuts and grays (those are horse colors for the uninformed) ambling about. I’ll walk up to total strangers in the supermarket and strike up a conversation if they’re wearing chaps and boots.

    I ride my Andalusian/Morgan mare 3-4 days a week, mainly in the arena. Although she’s a nice horse on the trail, mostly I do dressage with her. That’s one of those equestrian disciplines that’s fascinating for its participants and dead boring for everyone else. A horsie friend’s hubby has a T-shirt that says, “Whoever said life is too short has never watched dressage.”

    When riding dressage, the movements are pretty controlled on the part of rider and horse. The horse has to be very attentive to the rider, to pay attention to each request made of her and be ready to segue into the next.

    On the trail, on the other hand, I ride my horse on a loose rein, let her take a gander at the countryside, admire the view, maybe snatch a little mouthful of grass. She should still pay attention to me (I’m not letting her march me through the poison oak, no way no how), but it’s supposed to be more relaxing for horse and rider. Plus, if she smells a mountain lion and takes off running, I’m gonna let her take the lead.

    Char SketchSo, what about your writing? How do you approach it? Do you keep it on a tight rein? Do you pin down every little detail about your characters, the plot, every turning point, dark moment, what and where the climax will be?

    Or do you just sit and start writing, pages and pages of stuff in some sort of free form way? Characters popping up as you go, the story revealed to you just as it will be revealed to the reader (mega-bestselling author Lee Child said he does it that way).

    Which way should it be? To some extent, I think it depends on the writer. I personally like some of that dressage-like preparation. It also depends on what you’re writing–a first draft? Go ahead and gallop down that trail if that works for you. A final draft? Mmm, maybe you need to get a better grip on the reins. Do you know who all your important characters are? Do you know what their goals and motivations are? Do all those great scenes that spilled out have a place in your story? Do you have a lot of repeated word usage, or overused imagery that you need to change or cut out?

    If so, it’s time to tighten those reins a bit. All that freedom to do what you want has to be traded in for the discipline of the rewrite. You’re doing arena work now, keeping focused on what the manuscript needs you to do, improving each paragraph the way a dressage horse improves the beauty of each move it makes.

    Gal canterSome people don’t want the restraint on their freedom. They want to just keep running headlong through their manuscript. They chafe at feedback that suggests change. Well, if you never want to publish a book that someone will want to buy, write it anyway you like. But just like me letting my mare trot sloppily into the show ring, you’ll never get the blue ribbon, or a book sale, that way.

    So use the beauty of your creativity along with the discipline of your craft. And go and create something wonderful.

    Meanwhile, I’m gonna go ride my horse.

  • Avoid the “Empty Calories” of Extraneous Scenes

    Junior MintsI am an absolute nut for Junior Mints. I admittedly eat far too many of them in the course of the day, and then have to compensate for the indulgence with daily exercise.

    My passion for the sweet, minty, chocolate-coated candies started in childhood. At the movies, a box of Junior Mints would be my treat of choice. I would have to discipline myself not to open the box and start eating until the movie started, or I’d finish them off too soon. Now I buy the mondo 12-ounce packages when I can find them at Walmart or Target and force myself to only eat five at a time.

    As tasty as these yummy morsels are, they are regrettably empty calories. There is no nutrition whatsoever in Junior Mints. They’re nothing but sugar (okay, and some modified food starch plus a few other ingredients). They add nothing to my diet.

    What do Junior Mints have to do with writing? Well, let’s say you’re writing a romantic thriller. You have this marvelous idea for a scene in your novel. There’s going to be a summer carnival in town and your hero and heroine will be attending together. He’s going to show off his skills at dime tossing, she’ll demonstrate her stomach-stretching prowess in the pie-eating contest. They’ll go on the Ferris wheel and it will get stuck for a few minutes, then the operator will fix it and they’ll get off again. They’ll have a final cotton candy, then he’ll take her home.

    This is the story equivalent of Junior Mints. You could write this scene beautifully, have your reader smelling the popcorn, hearing the carny calls, easily visualizing the bright colors of the lights on that Ferris wheel, tasting the bubblegum sweetness of the cotton candy on their tongue, feeling the warmth of the summer night breeze. But there’s a bottom line question you have to ask with every page, paragraph, sentence that you write. Am I moving the story forward? And this scene, although as yummy as a Junior Mint, does not.

    Every scene you put into your book, every line of dialogue you put in your characters’ mouths, your reader will take note of, whether consciously or unconsciously. They will wonder, Hmm, something important is going to happen at this carnival. I’d better pay attention. But when it turns out that scene had nothing to do with anything, that it was the empty-calories-equivalent of a Junior Mint, they’re going to be annoyed. Why did you make them read something that doesn’t move the story forward?

    So think about every scene you write and if you figure out it’s not advancing the story, cut it out of your “diet.” You can’t afford those empty calories.

    But go ahead and have a Junior Mint.

  • Gol! How I met my goals when I thought I hadn’t set any

    Goal KittenThis week, YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday asks, where are you on your reading and writing goals? I have blogged before about how I don’t like setting goals and making resolutions. They kind of stress me out and bring up all kinds of fears that I won’t be able to achieve them so why should I set them in the first place? (Imagine me saying that last part really fast and in a high voice).

    Yeah, pretty negative. And what’s kind of silly about this is that I actually do make goals all the time (I never would have finished writing a single book if I hadn’t). I just don’t tend to write my goals down on a piece of paper or keep track of them in a file. I probably should. I bet I’d be far more organized and it would be clearer when I’ve met a goal.

    So, let me look back and come up with my first quarter goals in a retroactive way. First, I wanted to complete the edits on my first mystery novel, Clean Burn, which is coming out in September 2013 from Exhibit A. I had to wait for my editor’s notes, but he’d assured me they would be fairly simple. After I got his notes, I was able to incorporate those changes over the course of two weekends, so I’ve kicked that imaginary soccer ball into the net and the fans are screaming, Gol!

    Second, I wanted to complete by a certain date a rough draft of my current WIP, Revolution, the third and last book of the Tankborn trilogy from Tu Books. I’m being cagey about the specific date, because I like to keep that sort of thing to myself. I’m on target with that. Assuming I meet that goal as I expect to, I’ll have a few days to set the book aside, have some fun without having to think about the story, then get back to Revolution so I can get the rewrite done by the deadline. Haven’t quite reached the goal of finishing the rough draft since the date hasn’t arrived yet, but it’s within reach.

    ARe Sweet Dream LoverThird, I wanted to get going on my marketing and discoverability for my indie published romance novels. I’m meeting that goal with my new author “support group.” After a writer’s conference last October, a team of us had agreed in principle that we would work together to learn more about social networking. Our ultimate goal is to improve reader awareness of our books and therefore improve our sales. We had a fantabulous get-together last weekend (which I blogged about here). We’re still working out the details, of course, but there will be some exciting ventures coming out of our collaboration (new goals!).

    I’ve also wanted to get my website updated, which my hubby has helped me with (okay, he does all the work, but he does ask the occasional question that I have to answer). It’s still got some work to be done (I have to set up sites devoted to my romance and mystery sides), but you can check it out here.

    So I’m doing pretty well on the goal front. I have completed or am close to completing most of what I set out to do this quarter. I’ve got a bunch of new things on my list, but that means I’m moving forward and challenging myself. Isn’t that great?

    So how about you? Are you meeting your goals? Are you happy with how things are turning out?

  • Discover-a-whatilbee?

    Hotel PoolSix authors walk into a hotel room (two of them virtually)…and find themselves in a Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest/Triberr/Goodreads/Shelfari/Hootsuite madhouse. All in the pursuit of discoverability.

    Back in October, I attended the annual Novelists, Inc conference in White Plains, NY. We all learned about something dubbed an author “lifeboat,” in which a group of authors support and promote one another through social media. Several authors, including myself, decided to form our own support group. Some of these authors I’ve known for years, some I’ve only met recently.

    After much back and forth via e-mail, we coalesced into a group of eight. E-mails and posts via YahooGroups flew through the ether as we got to know each other and each other’s work. In the workshop we’d attended, it was suggested that we schedule a weekend for all of us to get together to share our expertise with each other. We decided on this weekend, and six of us met–four of us physically and two of us virtually (via Skype). The remaining two (who had planned to join us virtually this weekend) couldn’t make it due to (1) illness and (2) family commitments.

    What was it like? Imagine deciding to take three days to earn a doctorate. Or maybe allowing three days to learn all of Bach’s sonatas when you don’t know how to play a piano. Or perhaps the most apt analogy would be to take the entire contents of the Internet and forcibly shove it into your ears in hopes you will actually understand what all that social media is for (cue the glazed, deer-in-the-headlights look).

    And imagine you’re doing all of this in glamorous, luxurious Manteca, CA. Garden spot of the Central Valley. Kind of the official middle of nowhere, and you really don’t want to what Manteca translates into in English.

    Well, not many distractions other than that glorious pool we did not dip so much as a toe into. We didn’t even sniff the chlorine wafting from the hot tub. But to quote what I posted on Facebook, here is what I learned this weekend:

    Lifeboat Dinner 4sWhat Triberr is and how to post there, how to use a list in Twitter to categorize tweets, how to grow my Twitter followers, how to tweet to Twitter and post to Facebook from Pinterest, that I need to include links in my indie-pubbed books to my other books, each platform will need a different file for different links, that reader street teams are pretty cool, that I can blog directly on Goodreads (and post a first chapter for readers to sample), that I can run contests through RaffleCopter.com and best of all, authors may be pretty crazy, but they are the best fun to hang around with.

    Thanks Deb Salonen, Barbara McMahon, Ginger Chambers, Lisa Mondello, and Rogenna Brewer.