S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 137

Covered & Free Read

New and lovely cover art for the LYX German edition of my first Kyndred novel Shadowlight. This one will be released in September.

For those of you who enjoy great writing on the darker side of fantasy, author Kris Reisz has released his short story collection Quiet Haunts and Other Stories for free on Smashwords.

Journaling Small

Today is National Handwriting Day, and to do my part to promote the art of writing by hand I thought I'd offer an idea how you can do that . . . in a small way.

While working on my 1000 Cards Project last year I wrote three small journals. One was an ATC-size blank book I found at BAM and wrote in for a week; fitting my handwriting and art on the tiny pages was an interesting challenge. I also made two other, shorter journals by hand; one that I wrote in for a day and the other a collection of ten thoughts about living the creative life.

Now I have much love for big, roomy journals, but those three mini projects did give me a new appreciation for journaling small. Reducing your physical writing space can be a good thing for your focus; when you're working on 2-1/2 X 3-1/2" pages every word really has to count. Although I'm not sure why, it also had the pleasant side effect of making my entries mainly positive - maybe because the space limit didn't give me a lot room to rant.

Working on a smaller scale can be a fast and fun way to explore some non-traditional journal making methods. The little accordian journal I made last year using fake fruit was fun but didn't require a huge chunk of my time. If you'd like an alternative to artist trading cards you might consider making a mini-journal out of index cards, old rolodex cards, or even some playing cards (card sleeves, an index card box, rolodex holder or deck box would serve nicely to hold them all together versus the usual binding and covers.)

Journaling small also makes your project more portable by reducing it to purse- or pocket-size, so you can take it with you on your daily travels. Since you don't have to wrestle with a standard-size book, you might be more inclined to jot down ideas or make a quick sketch on the run. If you want to embellish your pages on the go, use a pencil case or an empty Altoids tin to carry a few art supplies with you.

A small project can help you think outside the journaling box, too. I was fascinated by the shape of this reader challenge silhouette book in the Jan/Feb '13 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors; I'd love to make a little journal like this shaped by its own theme, like love poems in a heart-shaped journal or a quilting diary shaped by my favorite patchwork template. I can also see making a neat photo journal of my pups shaped like a bone or in one of their silhouettes. You can also find ready-made shaped notebooks around if you look; I spotted this rainbow-shaped notebook in the dollar bin at JoAnn, and it would make a great happy thoughts or gratitude mini-journal.

A pocket-size journal might also inspire you to journal more often, which can ease you into a more regular writing routine. Big journals with all those blank pages can be intimidating; a miniature version may prove less stressful. You're not under pressure to fill dozens of empty lines or pages with your thoughts; you can note simply what's most important that day in a few words or one paragraph. Writers, this is great practice for creating premises, hook lines, working out dialogue and other elemental story ideas. Poets can explore and play with short form verse by creating a daily haiku journal. Readers who like to keep track of what books they read and their thoughts about them might find a pocket reading journal easier to update and take along on the next book store excursion.

You can have fun with the artistic challenge of making small journals, too. I picked up a couple card decks, a mini spiral notebook and a pack of index cards, all of which I'm going to try to transform into guided small journals, and if I don't make a hash of it I'll post some pictures of the results.

Finally, for those of you who are fine writing instrument lovers, check out being held by Fahrney's Pens. You can mail, fax or e-mail your handwritten entry by January 31st, and the winner will score a Pelikan fountain pen worth $348.00.

Twinsies Again

While we were out of town our old feathered friend the ditzy mourning dove built a new nest on top of our birdhouses -- again. I swear, she must have been casing the house. Anyway, she hasn't moved from it for the last week, until today:



When she saw me step out on the porch she moved, perching out of the way to show off her new additions:



It's hard to be annoyed when you look at their cute little faces; even when one of them obviously inherited his mama's smirk:

Writerisms Ten

Ten Things Writers Say, and What They Really Mean

A book is a labor of love.

Nineteen hours in drug-free hard labor with my daughter was easier, actually.

Being a professional writer is an interesting and rewarding career.

Be anything but a professional writer. Don't make me beg you.

I'm always thinking about my story, even when I'm shopping at the market.

I'm always thinking about . . . hey, are those chocolate-frosted donuts on sale?

I'm so glad you enjoyed the book.

I'm so glad your e-mail was a nice one because I just ran out of Valium.

Maybe Publishing is tough, but I love the competition.

Maybe Wal-Mart is hiring.

My editor is thoughtful with responses and is making me a better writer.

My editor hasn't answered my e-mail and is making me crazy.

So you want to write a book? That's great.

Please don't ask me to help you write your book.

Sure, I can wait another six weeks for payment to be approved.

Sure, I can pawn my wedding rings again. Do you have any recipes for making something edible out of ketchup and beans?

Writing a synopsis isn't so bad. You just have to think about it.

Writing a synopsis makes me break out in hives but I'm too poor to hire someone to do it for me.

You will absolutely love holding your first book in your hands.

You will scream like an air raid siren, shake like you're standing naked in a blizzard and then cry like a teething baby while clutching your first book in your hands. P.S., don't let them videotape it.

NaNo Now What + Artistic Kid Op

My editor Adam Wilson has a great post over on the Office of Letters & Light blog with advice on what to do now that's its all over. If you're wrestling with how to go from here with your November novel, or you simply want some very good writing and editing advice, definitely check it out.

I'm not a huge fan of gigantic internet corporations, but those who provide nice scholarships for artistic kids get a gold star in my book. Like Google, which is sponsoring the Doodle4Google contest. To quote from their site, it's "an annual program that invites K-12 students in the United States to use their artistic talents to think big and redesign our homepage logo for millions to see. This year, we ask students to exercise their creative imaginations around the theme, “My Best Day Ever…” One talented student artist will see their artwork appear on the Google homepage, receive a $30,000 college scholarship, and a $50,000 technology grant for their school along with some other cool prizes!"



Every U.S. citizen or permanent resident who is currently attending a K-12 school (this includes the homeschooled) is eligible to enter this one, and there is no entry fee involved. To read over the official contest rules go here, and to download the entry form go here. All entries do have to be sent in via snail mail to the address at the bottom of the entry form page. Deadline for this one is March 22nd, 2013.

Title Logic

After getting into an interesting discussion about story titles over at the Chicas I tried to remember if anyone ever taught me how to come up with my own. In school the teachers were more focused on beating Chekhov and Conrad into our heads than the mechanics of giving a name to a story. Most of the how-to books I've read tend to skim or even skip this topic as well.

Like most of what I do with the work, titling stories evolved as part of my natural writing process. With the very first stories I wrote I used character names as titles or part of the titles (Jean, Glenna, The Diary of Sebatina Hariski) and I think that is a pretty common default among young writers. I then went through a mercifully brief flirtation with Faulkneresque titling (The Wounds of Yesterday, The Power and The Glory) and shock-o-ramas (Postcards from Hell, Let's Drink the Draino) before I began shedding all my drama and paying a little more attention to the story itself and mining what I'd written for title gold.

The first title I can remember being proud of was Realm, a 100K fantasy novel I wrote in four weeks back in 1984. I wanted something that sounded as epic as the story, and since the otherworld I'd built in the book was called the Realm nothing else would do. I wish I could take credit for it, too, but while world-building I actually borrowed it from the very first computer BBS I ever visited (local via the old Prodigy network, and it didn't last long, but it was a neat place to hang with other writers.)

I know the influence that one title had on me as a novelist. I loved the sound and the brevity; it had impact without all the frilly hoopla of my earlier titles. Had I published that book the title probably wouldn't have survived the editor's first pass, but that experience got me thinking in what would be the right direction for me.

From that point on I tackled titling with three goals in mind:

Keep it Simple -- use only one or two words whenever possible.

Make it Unique -- draw the ideas from obscure sources or the story itself.

Go for Memorable -- choose something that would be easy for the reader to remember.

I used to drive myself crazy trying to find that one perfect title (and occasionally still do) but lately I've been trying to change that. Presently I compile ten to twenty possible titles for every story, a list to which I constantly add during the writing process. I'll use my favorite from the list as a working title, but if the editor or marketing doesn't like it, I've got plenty more on hand to offer as alternatives. I can't give you statistics on how many writers' original titles are changed by their publishers, but about half of mine didn't make it onto the cover. If like me you're invested in titling your own stories then it's probably a very good idea to have some backup ready, just in case.

Related PBW links: Playing with Titles ~ Poetry Sparks ~ Ten Things to Help You with Titles ~ Titles That Brand ~ Wordling Poetry

Letter Art

Hardly anyone (except writers and font-lovers) thinks of words as art, but Ji Lee shows us a whole new way to look at them. For those of you at work, this one has some sound effects as well as some risque content. But to describe it in a word?

•?((¯°·._.• βяɨℓℓɨąɲţ •._.·°¯))؟•



Word as Image (by Ji Lee) from jilee on Vimeo.

Video link swiped from Gerard over at The Presurfer.

Your Dream Franchise

Seeing that pic of StarDocs Coffee yesterday made me think of how I'd franchise my novels into businesses if the opportunity ever arose. I can't really see a chain of java joints in my future -- not really my thing -- but I wouldn't mind lending my brand to a couple of Lynn Viehl book shops. I could have fun designing a Dark Need goth tea room franchise, too, only they probably wouldn't let me decorate the places in black and red. Rats.

Evermore the theme park might work, if I could convince the cast of Full Metal Jousting to staff it and they'd let me live there. Or maybe some Kelly's quilt shops might be fun (assuming quilting ever comes back as a needlework trend.) StarDoc would only work for me as the name of a free medical clinic franchise, which no one would want to run because there's no money in it, so that's off the table.

I know: PBW retreats. Affordable and comfortable beach cottages where writers or readers can spend a couple of weeks working in peace ad solitude. Full prestocked with all the tech, books and supplies they need. Sun, sand, sea and stories . . . yep, that would be my dream franchise.

What would be your dream franchise using your titles, your name or any of your favorite things? Let us know in comments.

Hey, I'm a Franchise! Or Maybe Not.

Someone (you know who you are) sent me this, and evidently it's for a coffee shop somewhere in Mexico. Gotta love the name, but doesn't that mermaid look awfully familiar?

Smart Edit Goes Pro

Last summer I discovered a freeware editing program called SmartEdit, which analyzes any text you feed to it and provides lists of and stats on adverbs, clichés, repeated words and other problematic content with the text. The program was so useful that ever since I've been recommending it to other writers.

In December SmartEdit went pro, and while it is still available for a ten-day free trial, a license to use the program beyond that now costs $69.95. While I wish there was still a freeware version available for writers who have no funds, I understand that the developer has to earn a living, too. The real question for me was, is the pro version worth the investment? I decided to buy a license, put the program through its paces and find out.

First, the differences between the two programs; the freeware version of SmartEdit checked:

Repeated Phrases List
Repeated Words List
Adverb Usage List
Monitored Words List
Cliché List
The pro Version of SmartEdit checks:

Repeated Phrases List
Repeated Words List
Adverb Usage List
Monitored Words List
Dialog Tag Counter
Cliché List
Separate Dialog & Prose Checks
Misused Word List
Foreign Phrase Usage List
Profanity Usage List
Suspect Punctuation List
Proper Nouns List
Acronyms List
Sentence Start List
Sentence Length Graph
Smart & Straight Quote Checker
Dash and Hyphen Checker
Word, Character & Page Count

One thing I have to note here is that I did fry the computer on which I had downloaded the old freeware version so I can't pull up the old program to double-check if there was anything else it did; I'm going by the notes I put together for last summer's post on it.

The first thing I noticed as I started up the pro version is that while the basic layout is still the same the program looks much more polished and professional and (obviously) has more options to offer. SmartEdit's scans can be fine-tuned to suit your needs, and also may serve more than one purpose. In addition to searching out problem areas, you can use the program to edit anything from a scene to an entire manuscript in one shot, discover what as well as where your weed words, echoes and other writing weaknesses are, and even create a style sheet for your story.

As before when I test drove the freeware version I decided to feed SmartEdit pro the manuscript for Taken by Night, which was my 50K NaNoWriMo novel and a story that hasn't been edited by anyone but me with the daily edits I did while writing it. I didn't refine any of the scan perameters on the first pass in order to get back the most comprehensive report, and the first report was 210 pages long (which I reduced to 51 pages after eliminating info like all the words and phrases I had repeated only twice, which are reported as a single column.)

As with the freeware version I learned a lot from the scan. The top five phrases I repeated most often were one of the (33 times), out of the (32 times), the rest of (29 times) in front of (17 times) and in the park (16 times.) These are all phrases I would hunt down and weed out as much as possible, along with my individual weed words (i.e. 87 eyes, 41 doors, 39 nods and 31 voices.)

The rest of the report provided lots of new and interesting data for me, too. For example, the scan identified fourteen different words I used that were either profanity or potentially offensive (all intentional and fine with me, but good to know in the event I want to put together a PG version of the ms. to use as a school seminar teaching tool.) My adverb usage report was nine pages long, and while I don't follow that Absolutely No Adverbs Whatsoever rule that seems a bit excessive. I need to take a hard look at my adverb usage during the final edit of the ms. and see if I can trim that down. I also started 304 sentences with She, 264 with The, and 253 with I; it surprised me that those were my top three sentence starters. I put a space in front of a dash 24 different times (typing style preference of mine, and one that most of my editors tolerate) and made one punctuation error by putting a space before a comma (which I do need to fix.) If you'd like to see a copy of the full scan report, I've uploaded it in .pdf format here.

SmartEdit is ideal for me to use as part of my full ms. edit; I'll be working it into my process by running a scan as soon as I finished the first complete draft. I also intend to use it to work on eliminating some of my weed word bad habits as well as simplifying the creation of my own style sheets and foreign language glossaries.

The one major issue I have with SmartEdit is that it's only available for Windows; for now you Mac and Linux users are out of luck (the developer notes that a Mac version may be possible in the future.) I have Windows so it doesn't affect me, but I know plenty of writers who are devoted to their Macs. Since this program is geared specifically toward us I think it should be available to all writers, not just the Windows users.

The freeware version of SmartEdit was a useful editing tool; the pro version is even better, and I think every serious writer should take it for a test drive. You simply can't compile this much information on your own without a great deal of tedious searching and list-making. Even with close attention you will probably miss half of the data SmartEdit can compile for you with a single click. What the program doesn't replace is your internal editor; it's still up to you to analyze the scan results, make the appropriate story decisions and apply that to your manuscript. The nice thing about this program is that it's a good teaching resource for new writers who want to learn what to look for as well as what to think about when they are writing in order to get their manuscripts up to professional level.

Bottom line, is it worth the purchase price? I say yes, absolutely.