Riley Adams's Blog, page 226

5 Questions That Always Surprise Me When I Write a Book

Every time I write a book, I'm surprised by the problems I run into—even though the problems are always the same. And actually, looking at my list of issues, I'm not sure there's a whole lot I can do to prevent them from cropping up, unless I really wanted to change my approach to writing a book. Maybe that's why they keep recurring!

5 Questions that Always Pop Up Once While Writing My Books

1. Where do I go next? I'm guessing this is a problem faced more frequently by folks who don't ...

Favorites

My daughter is nine years old. Like lots of nine year olds, she loves to poll everyone on their favorites.

And you'd better have an answer.

I haven't thought very much about my favorite anything for probably the last thirty years.

Until now. :) After several conversations with my daughter that ended with her saying, "How could you not know what your favorite song/color/food/season/book/movie is?!" then I actually took a few minutes to think about it one night.

I was able to make...

Pacing Ourselves

On Saturday, the kids and I went on a bike ride.

We're mismatched bikers. My teenage son is the super biker, easily losing us without even realizing it. My daughter is still on a little-kid bike with no gears, and I need to stick behind her to make sure she doesn't get left behind. Me? I'll fall off the bike if I bike too slowly…which sometimes happens when the greenway gets too sandy and my daughter pops off her bike unexpectedly to walk the trail instead of bike it. I always seem to...

Writing and Revising in Layers

Working on a first draft can be really challenging. There's the plot to wrangle into shape, the conflict to ramp up, the characters to breathe life into. And there are a whole lot of pages to write before the final scene.

There's so much to include that I frequently don't include it all in the first draft.

In fact, there are some things that I never put in my first draft because I spend way too much time thinking about them and it messes up my pace.

Using a layered approach to writing a...

Twitterific

Here are writing links that I've posted to Twitter for the past week. If you're looking for a particular topic, just plug in your keyword into the search box at the top left-hand corner of the blog (on the black header right above my blog name…next to the Blogger symbol…the small search window is next to the magnifying glass) and the roundup with your subject will come up. To narrow your search down on the page, do a CTRL+F, type your subject, and hit enter.

What do the most highly paid...

Moody Reading and Writing

Lately, I've not really been in the mood to read anything emotionally disturbing or heavy. Lately being the last couple of years. :)

I grew up reading heavy literature in school. I read a ton of the classics, which aren't usually known for being lighthearted.

But for some reason, every time I pick up some really heavy literary fiction lately, I struggle with the topics.

For crime fiction, I handle it better. I wondered why, started thinking about it, and realized that the bad guy...

Looking for an Agent—Thoughts and Resources

Looking for an agent can be a really overwhelming process.

When I was first looking for an agent, that there wasn't enough information out there online.

Now it seems like there's almost too much information—but it's scattered around. So I thought I'd run a post with at least some of the information in the same spot.

Below I've listed websites that can help you narrow down your agent search, helpful posts on writing query letters, popular agent blogs, and agents on Twitter.

Good...

Inciting Incidents

Usually, when I think about plots, I'm thinking about conflict.

But I keep running into the term "inciting incidents." It's usually a scriptwriting term but I've been hearing it more and more in regards to fiction.

Actually, I really like it. It reminds me that there really is a pivotal event in each book that jump starts the plot. It's the whole reason there's a story to begin with.

What happens that takes our character out of a boring, ordinary day into an adventure?

In my...

Manuscript Problems—Which to Jump on Right Away

I don't know about you, but it seems to me that I spend a good deal of my time on auto-pilot.

Any rote kind of activity in my life—laundry, vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen counter—it's sort of committed to muscle memory. Sometimes, when I'm done with it, I don't even have any memory of having done it and I have to check myself (this is what happens when you write books in your head while you do housework.)

Unfortunately, I was apparently on auto pilot a couple of days ago when I went to t...

Getting Out More

I'd posted last week on my need for a little downtime to fire up my creativity.

I think a lot of us are in the same boat, juggling family and job responsibilities while trying to write at the same time.

And don't even get us started on social media and internet distractions, right?

Funnily enough, an article with some suggestions for handling this problem was posted on Wow—Women on Writing a couple of days ago—and I was quoted in the article! So apparently I've forgotten some of my own ...