Carrie Baize's Blog, page 14
July 16, 2013
Can You Believe This Place?
The written word is a wonderful medium.
A well-written book is like a blockbuster film in the genre of your choosing, with the ideal cast and amazingly epic special effects…. and it plays when you have the time to watch it. Any time day or night, on the silver screen in your mind.
We’ve already established that my stories are extremely character-driven. The personalities of the various characters and their interactions with each other move the story along (or drag it to a grinding halt – both a...
July 10, 2013
Twists & Turns
1) Nothing ever goes according to plan.
2) When you think your outline rocks and you’ve got it all dialed in – please see #1.
3) And don’t forget – nothing ever goes according to plan.
Seriously, when it comes to (my) writing, any and all planning is pretty much out the window. Makes me wonder why I even try.
Then I figured it out.
As the characters in my current WIP* started their journey on a dark twisty road and are now well into their journey on another less friendly twisty road, it seems like...
July 2, 2013
Just Do It
By the time you read this, I should be a couple thousand words into a new book. (If not, I’m sitting in a corner somewhere crying into a tub of Ben & Jerry’s or I’ve got a death-grip on a rum & coke… either way – someone please send a search party.)
I spent a lot of my life thinking I was a writer and I wrote a lot of garbage. There’s no other word for it, really. There were some cool ideas, some great one-liners, and some rather amazing characters… but there was no focus.
Then a friend of mine...
June 25, 2013
Planning (Or What Passes For It)
Ideally, the story idea is knocking around in my brain before having to go through the process of meeting the characters.
This hasn’t always been the case for me.
My most notable example of ‘random characters’ developing a story is the Scarred Sun Trilogy. I browse a lot of websites for inspiration. One day while surfing through the Renderosity community, I stumbled on this image by Phillip Mullin (Renderosity user Geist1) and I was hooked. I had no idea of Mr. Mullin’s inspiration for (what I...
June 18, 2013
Meeting New Characters
Meeting new characters is an interesting process, but it’s a lot like meeting anyone else.
The Rio Crew and the Urban Wardens fall into that dubious friends-of-friends category… you know how it goes.
Your friend talks about these people. You’ve heard about them, their jobs, their families, and the awesome camping trip your friend went on with them last summer. You’ve got a pretty good idea, before you’re ever introduced, who these people are.
The characters that make up the Rio Crew and the Urba...
February 5, 2013
It’s Good To Be A Goddess
Don’t go anywhere. This isn’t me tooting my own horn.
“Eccentric” and “strong willed” might be two of the most accurate descriptions for most (if not all) of my characters. Most of the characteristics of many of the characters (particularly members of the Rio Crew) are exaggerated – and they’re written that way for a reason.
One of the coolest things about creating your own reality is that you’re in control of that reality. When someone calls Liberty Haley a freak, she already knows she could l...
January 22, 2013
Social Media Integration Experiment
You know how I’m always saying I’m no good at keeping up with this thing?
Well… hoping to keep you informed, I’ve added a Twitter feed over there on the right.
The Twitter feed is already tied to to the facebook page, so whatever I post on facebook shows up on Twitter.
I have no idea how many times I can make the same data cross over itself, but it seems like a fun little experiment. I trust you don’t mind being my guinea pigs 
January 14, 2013
Interrupting the cricket song…
I must apologize for my long silence here.
NaNoWriMo ended and the madness of the holiday season began in earnest.
Just when it seemed things might calm down a little, a tragic accident rocked our little community in the central California foothills and it’s been a real struggle the last week or so to reach anything resembling normal.
I did complete the NaNoWriMo challenge, though I’m not nearly as pleased with Rasch Decisions as I have been with some of my other endeavors. It will take a lot mo...
October 15, 2012
November is coming…
You may have noticed that we’re half way through October, already.
This means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Honestly, it means a lot of different things to me.
It means it’s time to start making pumpkin bread, for one thing. It means that the High School & Youth Football seasons are almost over and that I’m running out of time to get the finishing touches on a houseful of Halloween costumes.
And it means that it’s almost November.
For those of you who don’t know (and I’m not sure...
October 10, 2012
Hey! Where’d the “Order” tab go?!
Yes, the ORDER tab is currently gone.
No, it’s not a glitch.
There are probably some folks out there jumping for joy – thinking I’ve given up on my dream and fallen in line with reality. There are probably some of you reading this that got to the “it’s not a glitch” part and wanted to smack me because you’re afraid I have given up.
If you fall into the second category, take heart. I have most certainly not given up. Seriously. No reason to smack me!
If you fall into the first category, sit down a...
