S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 108

NaNo Ten

Ten Things to Help with NaNoWriMo

13 Writing Tips by author Chuck Palahniuk that are actually pretty decent.

50 Writing Tips from Every Writer's Resource.com.

Search the fiction, nonfiction and verse databases at Bartleby.com for keyword quotations, title ideas and more.

This real-world
NaNoWrito is an online, distraction-free spot where you can work on your words for the day with a built-in counter to tell you how many you've gotten. Great for timed writing exercises and word wars, too. Don't forget to save your work!

OneLook Reverse Dictionary allows you to input a definition or concept and get in return a list of words that mean exactly that.

Symbols.com, the online encyclopedia of Western signs and ideograms, contains more than 1,600 articles about 2,500 Western signs, arranged into 54 groups according to their graphic characteristics.

Wordcounter.com is an online text analyzer that "ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text. Use this to see what words you overuse (is everything a "solution" for you?) or maybe just to find some keywords from a document."

Writers Friend on Tumblr has lots of advice and prompts.

Writing Fix.com also has tons of writing-related resources.

Comments Catchup Day

See you in comments.

Bold Sub Op

Tychee Books is currently accepting submissions, and looking for ". . . bold science fiction and fantasy novellas and novels (60,000 words minimum; 120,000 words maximum). We welcome stories that aren’t easily categorized; stories that push the boundaries; stories that aren’t afraid to challenge the reader. We will accept these stories in any sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy, including steampunk and slipstream. What does that really mean? So long as the critical part of the story depends on Science Fiction or Fantasy, we’ll take it." Payment: According to Ralan.com, "print=25% net; e-book/audio=35% net." Query on reprints, electronic submission only, see guidelines for more details.

Amazônia Manauara

Go to the heart of the Amazon and take a tour of some of its beauties in less than three minutes (includes background music, for those of you at work):

Amazônia Manauara from MOOV on Vimeo.

Heart the Paper

When I heard that the folks at Cloth Paper Scissors magazine would be branching out with a new venture, I Heart Paper , I made a point to watch for the first issue to hit the shelves. And while I'm definitely more of a cloth gal at heart, the premiere edition did not disappoint.

I Heart Paper really is all about paper, and how to transform it into primarily 3-D projects like bracelets, sculptures, ornaments, wreaths, etc. There are 32 projects in this issue of the magazine for you paper fanatics, many of which use handmade and recycled papers and some very fun techniques. Some, like this paper topiary, are utterly gorgeous. If you've ever wanted to sculpt a book, fold flowers or form a hat or wreath from paper, this is a mag you don't want to miss.

Collage lovers will find a lot in this issue to inspire them as well. Artist Annie Simcoe's article on how she makes her own paper pairs nicely with instructions on making a decorative collage of the same, and Mary Rork-Watson shows you how to collect found papers and use them to compile artful strip-collage pieces for hanging around the house (I'm thinking of doing the same with all the fabric selvages I've saved over the years.) The magazine is also divided into several themed sections, so if you have some paper fanatic pals you can use this issue to inspire a creative get-together.

Skill levels required for the I Heart Paper projects range from easy to advanced, and while most of the ideas are primarily decorative there are a few that are very writer-friendly. I really liked Catherine Anderson's Photos-in-the-Box collection, which shows you how to creatively show off a bunch of themed photos and/or create an inspirational gift for an artistic friend. I also liked this project for making fortune cookies out of paper (easy plus no calories; a terrific party favor idea.)

If you're bored with scrapbooking, curious about how to creatively recycle variously types of paper, or simply want to take your paper art to the next level, I recommend I Heart Paper as a solid investment and a neat source of new inspiration.

NaNoWriMo: Trust Issues

Tomorrow it will be one week since writers around the world began working on their National Novel Writing Month book. I always love the first week of writing a new novel, but I always hate it, too. There's the excitement of beginning a new story, which clashes with the dread that I've chosen the wrong idea to write. I've probably had the characters in my head for quite some time, and yet I've never heard them before on the page (a bit of synethesia there; I hear my characters via the dialogue I write.) Unless I'm working on a series book I'm generally in a new place with a lot of unfamiliar folks doing things unknown to me, and this can be both exhilarating and exhausting.

For some of you this first week has been instructive; it's given you a chance to engage in a work routine, figure out how much you can comfortably write per day, etc. You've discovered self-discipline, internal or external motivation, and how you may best do this thing. For some of you it's been the exact opposite; you're fighting with the words and the characters and the concept; the story is getting away from you (or hasn't appeared at all as you imagined it), and you may even be thinking this was a very bad idea, and/or you're considering tossing in the towel now before you end up looking/feeling/writing like a fool. Most of you will waffle between these two states or land somewhere in the middle of them for the next twenty-five days.

From what I've experienced and observed over my 15+ years as a novelist, the difference between the writer who glides through the work and the writer who plows through it is monumental and yet also very simple: trust. If you trust in yourself and your idea and your skills and everything you possess to pour into writing this story, you will glide. If you don't, you will plow. You'll probably do a little of both -- and you never really know how it's going to be until you begin to write that day.

You can't fake trust; it's an instinct based on innumerable factors that contribute to making up who you are as a writer and a person. For example, if you've ever had any trouble writing anything, that will factor in, and hover over your keyboard and loom in the back of your mind and otherwise get between you and the page. For the rest of your writing life that difficulty will haunt you, and make you wonder if it'll happen again. Think about it more than what you're writing, and it probably will happen again -- because that's how doubts work.

You can't escape doubts anymore than you can force trust, but there is something that always helps me: I don't think about the writing; I just write. I write because that's what I do. I write because I trust myself to write well. I do know it's impossible to write well 100% of the time, but I also trust myself to edit, rewrite, or do whatever it takes to make it work after I write the first draft. Even if that means tossing out two-thirds of a book and rewriting it from scratch (something I've done more than once, in fact) I know I can do that. And if none of that works -- another, awful thing that has happened more than once in my career -- I trust myself to set aside the story that failed, and write something else, and keep writing until I do produce what I do want on the page, and what I do expect from myself as a novelist.

It's not easy to trust in yourself as a writer, particularly when you're in the beginning stage of creation. You're a stranger in a strange place with a lot of strange characters; you're entitled to feel the magic or the mayhem of that position. When you're away from the work, celebrate it, wallow in it, but whatever you feel, get it out of your system so that when you go back to the page it's just you and your story. Trust in both as you forge ahead, and you will reach that 50K finish line.

Site Safety Rating

Webutation is a site that rates any other web site based on how safe its content is. I'm happy to say that PBW rated 100% safe:



They also give you some code for your rating so you can add it somewhere on your site, and it shows up like this:


pbackwriter.blogspot.com Webutation

I found the link to Webutation over on The Presurfer, which also scored a 100% safety rating -- way to go, Gerard!

$1.00 Ten

When Mom visits we always make a trip to the local dollar stores for cards, gift wrap and other seasonal necessities. During our last pilgrimage I looked around for writer stuff, too, and here's:

Ten Things I Found for $1.00



1. Ruled Writing Tablet, 6" X 9", 100 lined pages. I usually pay a couple of bucks for these at the local drugstore.

2. Pack of 8-1/2" X 11" designer computer paper, 40 sheets. The store had a bunch of these packs in different designs so there's a good variety.

3. Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs, hardcover remainder. Original price tag of $17.34 still on the cover. I already own a copy but I'll use this one as a lender.

4. 10 manilla 1/3-tabbed file folders, letter size. I'm setting up a filing cabinet for my daughter so I need lots of these.

5. 2014 pocket weekly planner. Can I ever have enough of these? Probably not.

6. Stretchy school textbook fabric covers. I mentioned in my last Recycle X 5 post that you could probably find these at a dollar store, and here's the proof.

7. Floral pocket notebook, 4.25" X 5.62", 60 ruled pages. Perfect size for my purse, and the elastic band on this one will help hold stuff like receipts and business cards along with my notes.

8. The Gate House by Nelson DeMille, remaindered hardcover. I actually haven't read this one, so a good TBR bargain.

9. Gardens 2014 Calendar duo. One wall-size and one mini. These are actually quite pretty, and comparable to the ones for which you pay ten or twenty times as much at the bookstores.

10. 2014 11"X 17" desk planner/blotter pad. To better organize daily next year I'm going to park this on my work desk, and this one is the exactly right size to fit.

Purchased at my local Dollar Tree on 10/23/13; availability of items will likely vary.

Comments Catchup Day

See you in comments.

YA Sub Op

Spotted this open call over at Ralan's place this past week:

"Kaleidoscope is an anthology of contemporary YA science fiction and fantasy with a focus on diverse perspectives. Alisa Krasnostein (founder of Twelfth Planet Press, and winner of the World Fantasy Award in 2011) and Julia Rios (fiction editor at Strange Horizons, and host of the Outer Alliance Podcast) are co-editing this project, which we hope to fill with a variety of exciting tales, happy and sad, adventurous and meditative. We’re not simply looking for cookie-cutter vampire or urban fantasy stories, but for things that transport us and subvert our expectations." Length: "Stories submitted for this anthology should be between 2,500 and 10,000 words"; Payment: "5 cents per word (USD) to be paid on publication in late 2014." No reprints, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details. Deadline: December 31st, 2013.