N.E. White's Blog, page 25

A Short Cut to Mushrooms

Black Riders hound the
Hobbits. Speed through Maggot’s farm
to a safe crossing.

Want to read The Fellowship of the Ring in Haiku format?  Of course you do! Check out these posts:

A Long-expected Party  – Laith
The Shadow of the Past  – rarasaur
Three is Company – The Indecisive Eejit
A Short Cut to Mushrooms – N. E. White (this post)

More coming soon! You can sign up, too– just go here: The Fellowship of the Ring Haiku Project.

Deconstructing The Road

At the moment, I am taking a class on dialogue in fiction with the online Odyssey workshop (this one).

Oh my goodness, just when I thought I knew what all I wasn’t doing right! This class is showing me a whole other world to writing, one I pretty much knew nothing about. (sad sigh)

In one sense, it is very disheartening to know that with as many books as I’ve read on the topic of fiction writing, I haven’t read them all and the gaps in my knowledge were readily apparent about 10 minutes into our first class.

But at the same time, I’m jazzed about learning how dialogue should be used in fiction, and how I can edit my current and future writing so that they read way better.

And I’m glad I recognized the need to take a class like this, because otherwise, I’d still be fumbling around in the dark.

The other day, my instructor, the wonderful Jeanne Cavelos, mentioned that I should deconstruct The Road by Cormac McCarthy – as an extracurricular activity. She said I would learn a ton with such an exercise. And, of course, the first thought I had after I picked my jaw off the keyboard was that I should share it here.

Lucky you, right? (Come on, you know you like reading about writing just as much as I do, Writer-Geek.)

So, every other Wednesday or so, I’ll go through a chapter of The Road. I’ll give you plenty of warning so that you can read along if you’d like. Be forewarned, the book is decidedly on the depressing side, but it did win a Pulitzer. Even if you hate the story, you have to admire the quality and skill. His writing style is spare, almost skeletal, and Mr. McCarthy eschews punctuation like the plague (pun intended, though nuclear fallout is humanity’s downfall in this book). As a result, every single word in this short read is there for a reason.

Let’s find out why together.

Next article of the Deconstructing The Road by Cormac McCarthy series planned for Wednesday, November 29th, 2013. The focus will be on the first chapter.

Authors Doing Good and other sundry items

Merry Monday! (If it’s not Monday where you are at, Terrific Tuesday!)

Today I have a couple of announcements.

Africare

In its first year of publication, our anthology, The End – Visions of Apocalypse raised $400 dollars for Africare.

Can you believe it?

I know that doesn’t sound like much, but the idea was to keep this anthology free. I hadn’t expected it to make any money. However, because of the way Amazon does things, it started out at 99 cents.

What to do with the pennies that we’ll make?

I asked the authors and we decided to donate any revenue to Africare. What with different promotions that Amazon does (that I have no control over), The End garnered more sales than I could have imagined and thus the “surplus”.

Bigger, Better

Over the weekend, I finally reached out to the excellent editor and e-book designer, J W Manus, and asked her to fix the images in the aforementioned anthology. And she did!

If you bought the original release, please download the latest file (live in the next 24-48 hours or so). For that last story, the clarity of the images should be infinitely better on whatever device you read on.

If not, then please accept my apologies and a free copy of Lucky or Unlucky? 13 Stories of Fate. Just drop me a note (nilaewhite (at) gmail (dot) com) and I’ll send our newest anthology to you in .epub, .mobi, or .pdf format.

Blog Content

I’m such a flake. Not even a week gone by, and I’m reneging on my fiction commitment. I just can’t shake the habit of writing about writing fiction. Expect to see the start of a new series of writer-focused material!

Until next time.

I Hate Phillip

I hate Phillip because he left me. A cold wind tore through my thick, black cloak, sending a shiver along my spine. I let it worm its way into my heart, hoping it would kill the last remnants of love between us. Though the flames were too far to warm me, a gust of air […]

New year, new blogger

Hello Fellow Writers, After six years of blogging, I’ve come to a realization: I’m not doing it right. Oh, I suppose, I’m doing something right. I’m read by a small group of dedicated writers, whom, like me, are struggling to find their way to a satisfying writing life (whatever that means for you and whether that […]

Twitterverse

Yes, I know. I said I would not join Twitter. But I did. Never say never, eh? Late last year, a fellow speculative-fiction writer (and contributor to my latest anthology), Michell Plested, interviewed me in a podcast. It was fun. If you get a chance to do one, you should. Anyway, sometime after the interview, […]

Call for Submissions!

I’m happy to announce that we are doing it again. Allow me to present our 3rd annual collection of speculative short fiction: Wars to End All Wars Alternate Tales From The Trenches There are many worlds and many histories, but The Great War happened in all of them. A complex web of events, both great and small, […]

READ

The other day, my husband told me a shocking statistic: 42% of college graduates will never read another book after they graduate. Truly, I was shocked. I thought, 42% just stop reading - for the rest of their lives? This implies only 58% of college graduates read books beyond their graduation. I couldn’t believe it. I […]

Dream Big

Today I have the pleasure of introducing Charlotte Ashley, adventure fantasy author and bookseller and, now, anthology publisher! I met Charlotte online (where else?) over on SFFWorld.com when she joined the forum to participate in our contests. Her writing is smart, funny, and entertaining. I have no idea why her work isn’t in every store […]

Rule #22

And the very last one. Finally! What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there. This should have been the first rule, huh? Why was I wasting our time with all the others… Today ends our journey through Emma Coats’ Pixar’s 22 Storytelling Rules. […]