Be Adventurous

Kelly Babcock Leave a comment
Malaga
Let life lead you to your adventures

I dare you to be adventurous.

And I don’t believe you can’t be.

If you’re a writer, a fiction writer, and you claim you’re not adventurous, you’re probably not telling the truth … to yourself.

Being adventurous is a two part thing. The first part is having an imagination. The second part is acting on it.

Being a writer, of course is a completely different thing. Yes, of course you have to have an imagination. But you don’t have to act on it, your characters do.

And when they do that, when they act on your imaginings, you live through what they live through as you write about them.

So I have to ask …

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How To Support an Author… Other Than Buying Their Books

Donna Judy Curtin Leave a comment

I came upon a Twitter thread where a frustrated author was venting. This author, who I might add, is already at least a decade ahead of my writing success because she has a published book that in my imagination has a stunning hard cover hugging her words. She was asked by an interested party, “So, how many books have you sold?”

My first thought was, ‘what an honour—to have a book to sell’ but the author was quite upset by the question and expressed how she felt the person had blatantly asked, “So, how much do you make?”, as if the curious person had requested to see her undergarments and T4.

The remuneration we receive for our work is intimately personal. We don’t actively speak about what we get paid in society and often times, the amounts don’t compute. Why does a home care provider, nourishing the future generation and tending to the family home, essentially get no pay, while others make millions buying and selling businesses?

How do you put a value on art? On someone’s creative ability to share a fearfully thrilling, heartwarming or life altering story? Read more

Not-so-Happy Endings

Bernice Connell Leave a comment

Beginnings and endings are arguably the most important and memorable parts of our reading journeys. “How does it end?” is a familiar question when sharing what you’ve read or recommending a book to a friend.

In an effort to hone my writing skills, I’ve been paying closer attention to what I’m reading; studying what I love about an author’s style, thus inspiring my own writing. Readers are frequently able to anticipate twists and turns and to occasionally predict the ending, but primarily, we are willing participants in the suspension of belief and enjoy being taken on an adventure. We take the storytelling at face value and enjoy every moment without ‘reading’ too much in to it.

Admiring an author’s style and thoroughly enjoying the story only to be let down by the ending is disappointing. The relationship between writer and reader is symbiotic and there’s a sort of mutual trust that what has been promised will be delivered. Read more

The Love (And Hate) Of A Great Book

Tracey Richardson Leave a comment

As writers, we love to read good books. We appreciate them, we celebrate them, we admire them, we lose ourselves in them. Why, then, does reading a good book sometimes cause our writing insecurities to rear their ugly little heads?

One of my writing acquaintances recently complained that while she was loving a book she was reading, at the same time she was finding it discouraging. Why? She elaborated, saying it made her feel like she could never write something that great and so why the hell was she even trying.

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Creating Conflict that Resonates throughout your Novel

Diane Ferguson Leave a comment

I was recently at my mother’s reading a magazine with the title, How to increase Conflict. My mom looked at me with a strange expression and I realized how the title must look to the non-writer. Who wants to increase conflict? Of all the self-help books on the market, I doubt any of them have that title.

Most of our lives we try and avoid conflict and tense situations, but then we have to turn around and create them. This was a major issue that came up for me in my substantive edit: my main character was avoiding conflict. In a good-humoured way, my mentor did say she sees this a lot. Writers tend to avoid conflict in their own personal lives, and then do the same on the page. The good writers realize that’s where to get it all out, all the conflict they’ve been avoiding.

So my major re-write has me focusing on creating the right amount of conflict and tension in my novel. How much is too much? Depends on the story and the reader. Ultimately, there is no one answer. It’s a balancing act known as pacing, and only the reader will tell us if we get it right. And each reader is looking for something different.

But there are some guideposts to follow.

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Sometimes, I Surprise Myself!

Lori Twining 12 Comments

Sometimes, I resist trying new things, for fear of failure, but eventually, I force myself to do it. Sometimes, I regret the decision instantly and other times, I surprise myself.

All my writing friends know that I hate participating in writing exercises. Those on-the-spot moments where an instructor snaps her finger and says, “We have five minutes, let’s write something with the words: Baby, Police and Dietary Fiber in it. Go!” And, of course, she also mentions we will be reading the exercises out loud. Seriously, I’d rather stare out the window and count snails slithering by, than write something that will waste my time. AND, there is no way I want to read my drivel out loud into the room where every word can bounce back and hit me in the forehead, reminding me how stupid it sounds. Read more

Why Write?

Kelly Babcock Leave a comment
question mark
Good question …

I write a lot. I write a lot of words and they end up in a lot of places.

A lot of what I write ends up online, easily half of it. And the stuff that doesn’t? Well, it ends up in files on my computer.

Of course I hope to those other words published some day.

But even if that never happens, I still have to write.

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