S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 164

Winner

You all had some great theme suggestions for smash book pages, and I hope you'll explore more of this idea on your own, either for writing or anything else smash-worthy in your life. It's really a lot of fun (and we need more of that.)

In the meantime, we revved up the magic hat, and the winner of the Simply Smashing giveaway is:

traveler, who wrote Great photos which are unique. What an idea. Definitely one filled with family and a family tree.

When you have a chance, traveler, please send your full name and ship-to address to LynnViehl@aol.com so I can get the book and smashing stuff out to you. My thanks to everyone for joining in.

More Frivolity

Typoeffects.com has two free online image converter generators that will turn your photos and images into Wordle-like art. Here are a couple I made with some flower pics and a couple of lines from my favorite poem(click on image to see larger version):

Row-text image



Word-cloud image



The generators also allow you some interesting choices of fonts, font sizes, color schemes and (for the word-cloud) a couple ways to skew your text.

(original generator link found over among the way-cool compilation of generators at The Generator Blog)

Simply Smashing

Until recently I didn't know it, but I've been smashing every novel I've written since the eighties. I've also smashed my personal journals, sketchbooks, quilt diaries, poetry binders and daily planners. I've even smashed the notebook I use for what I write on PBW.

Before you start calling me a wrecking ball, I don't mean smash as into smithereens. "Smashing" is the new term for a trend in the scrapbooking industry that capitalizes on the very old practice of saving souvenirs, mementos, bits and pieces and other memory prompts in a journal or notebook. And whether you call them smash books, scrapbooks, memory journals or idea diaries, if you save any kind of junk-drawer type ephemera in book form, you're smashing.

Smashing is something most females do throughout life, I think. In Girl Scouts we used to make camp diaries and stick everything in them from pretty leaves to paper airplanes; in high school just about every girl I knew kept pressed flowers and prom programs tucked in their yearbooks. In my kids' baby albums I saved their hospital IDs, new baby cards and snipped locks from first haircuts. I have journals riddled with the kid's homemade cards, programs for all their school shows, and my guy's love notes (he always uses Post-its and leaves them in the strangest places.)

Quilters are old hands at smashing; just ask one of us to bring out a quilt diary. Along with the photos of finished projects displayed on the pages there will be swatches of fabric, experiment blocks, copies of patterns, old stencils and templates, you name it. I used to tape every needle I bent or broke in my quilt diary and then count them at the end of the year (which is also how I learned to spend a bit more money and buy better needles.)

If you're not already a smashing writer, it's simple enough to do. You need a notebook, photo album or 3-ring binder to serve as your smash book, writing instruments, paper, sticky notes, paperclips, glue stick or photo mounting adhesive (I use these little double-sided squares because they're easier than glue for me to handle.) As you collect words, ideas, images, notes and other assorted bits of inspiration and resources for your story, you put them in the book. You can be as creative or as simple as you like; there are no rules involved.

I decided to do it proper and bought K&Company's smash journal as well as a bunch of their accessories. Target and most craft stores carry a good variety, and they're not super expensive; I spent about twenty dollars for my pile of stuff. The one thing I like are the pocket pieces that I can adhere to a page and tuck things inside; that allows me to remove or add whatever I like to that particular page.

To show you some examples, here are some of the pages I put together in my smash journal for the next novel:



This one is for the male protagonist of my next novel, and has palette inspiration photos, paint chips and some notes for myself on particular setting details.



Sometimes I mount photos on the pages permanently for quick visual reference. For these two pages I collected pics I've taken in real life, but I also want to do something in one scene that transforms that setting (which is why I added the eerie red image I clipped from a calendar.)



I also pages with random stuff that catches my eye. These two are for the female protagonist and are kind of a catch-all for the stuff I'm using her character, dialogue, setting, story palette, and pretty much everything else that appeals to me.

You can organize your smash book according to characters, setting, dialogue, plot, etc., but I don't ever find anything in precise story order so I don't worry about keeping it alphabetized or indexed. Although if you put together a huge smash book, you might want to use alphabetic dividers, tabs or come up with named/themed sections to keep it easy to reference.

I enjoyed discovering this new way to keep my writer junk tidy so much that I bought more of everything to give away here on the blog: K&Company's Mod-style Smash journal as well as a nice assortment of their most interesting and useful smashing stuff:



If you'd like a chance to win the whole pile, in comments to this post suggest a theme you think would be interesting (doesn't have to be about writing) for a page in a smash book by midnight EST on Thursday, April 26, 2012. I'll draw one name at random from everyone who participates and send the winner the smash journal, the accessories and a signed copy of my novel Nightborn. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.

Educationally Free

Copywriter and Men with Pens blog owner James Chartrand is holding a contest for his Damn Fine Words online writing course; the winners each receive a free spot in the class. To enter, you have to write a blog article, minimum 450 words, on why writing is important to you and how better writing skills would change your business or your life, and post it on your blog, and then do some linking. No entry fee, deadline is May 1 at 7 am EST; see contest post for more details.

I'm at the halfway point of my online art class now, and I feel that I've already gotten twice my money's worth in advice and instruction, so that's working out quite well (and I will be relating more about the class once I'm finished, for those of you who were curious about it.) It's also nice to shed the authorial albatross for a couple of weeks and be a regular person.

Over the years I've been approached by various colleagues and organizations to do pay-for online writing classes, and while I've been flattered I've always declined. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with charging people to learn about writing; talented writers who share their knowledge certainly have the right to be compensated for it, and teaching for money helps them supplement their writing income which for most of them, let's face it, is probably never going to be the stuff of instant retirement.

I'm a child of public education, though, and my university was the local library; I teach for free to honor the librarians and public school teachers who guided me in this direction, and to be there for all the writers like me who could never afford to pay for classes. Aka my little personal Crusade.

My past efforts at online teaching have been both rewarding and frustrating. Early on in my career I moderated an online writer's think tank in a chat room, which made every Friday night a blast, at least until my arthritis grew worse and I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with the questions. My Left Behind & Loving It virtual writing workshops were also a lot of fun; they just got too big too fast to handle on my own. When RWA committed the ultimate irony by promoting me and my fellow writers' efforts to their membership as an alternative to their National conference, I knew it was time to let them go.

Likely the most successful teaching project I've done to date is The Novel Notebook. When I put it together five years ago I thought it might help a couple of writers organize their stuff better, but that was all. I can't tell you how many writers have since downloaded and used it, because I don't track things like that, but it's the most popular free e-book I've ever posted online. Last year during NaNoWriMo I heard that several groups were actually handing out CD and printed copies of it at their meetings, which was very neat.

I don't know yet what my next teaching project will be, but I'd like to do something along the lines of the Novel Notebook (whatever evolves, I promise I will keep it free.) Which makes me wonder: if you could get me to teach something online, what would it be, and how would you want me to teach it? Let me know in comments.

Graphic credit: © Yellowj | Dreamstime.com

Off to Avoid Doing Anything Really Stupid

Create a sticky note online for your blog at Wigflip.com's sticky note generator, Superstickies (link originally swiped long ago from Gerard over at The Generator Blog.)

Blog Test

The Emergency Blogger Hasn't a Clue system will now test the new Blogger posting screen for Paperback Writer.  Please standby as PBW begins the test.

I hate this.  What are all these stupid icons for?  What happened to using words?  Did everyone finally forget language and can only understand pictographs?  Must we all now blog like ancient Egyptians?  

Okay.  I'm calm.  I can do this.  If I can make a new paragraph.  Can I make a new paragraph?  Maybe I should type in that idiot pointy-bracketed P that was the only thing that worked last night.  Only I think I have to be in another screen.  Where is the hieroglyph for the other screen?  Let me try some of these.  No, that's insert image from Google's dumb image service that I don't use.  No, that's video upload.  I think.  Is that PacMan?  Why do I have a PacMan icon?

I can't do this.  Why should it be, you know, simple to use?  Why is there a five-second lag now everytime I type something?  The bastards are determined to make me relearn everything.  This is so stupid.  I can't find tags.  At all.  The big T with the little red x is not tags, btw; that much I figured out.  Because using the image of a T for Tags would be too confusing, right?  It's probably the PacMan thing.  Or not.  Everything is wrong, in the wrong place or has completely vanished.  Maybe.  The all-white screen is making me snowblind.

Image Test:



Does everyone see the birdie?  'Cause I sure don't.  I can't view the blog when I hit view the blog.

Link Test:

This is my photoblog, or should be, unless Google screwed that up as well.

Google, you suck.

Thank you, this concludes the test of the Emergency Blogger Hasn't a Clue system.  Had this been an actual emergency, your local writing community service would likely have sent you somewhere else until PBW stopped screaming in outrage or her head exploded, whichever came first.

Blogger & Backyard Drama

At some point since I last logged in Blogger has completely changed their service, drastically altering all of the screens and options I use to post to the blog, and now I haven't the slightest clue as to how to make anything work. I'll just have to fool with it until I figure it out, and hope you guys will hang in there with me until I do.

In the meantime, a photographic update on our latest backyard drama:

Nympho Mama has been sitting on the nest all day and night, but this morning I noticed she had shifted back a bit.

Seems her babies have hatched and are growing up fast.

These doves really are the most devoted parents I've ever observed (and Dad still comes around at least once a day, too; I just haven't yet managed to snap both of them together with the fledglings.)

Pop Quiz

Ever since the revival of romantic paranormal fiction, reader have been hankering for great, original novels in this genre. Unfortunately this has resulted in a lot of derivative knockoffs which are neither great nor original. As a writing community service, we here at PBW have compiled a list of uh-ohs in the form of an originality test, and we recommend that anyone who is considering writing a paranormal romance novel might want to take this exam first.

The Paranormal Romance Novelist's Exam

Answer "yes" or "no" to the following questions:

1. In the first five pages, do the protagonists meet under the worst circumstances, and/or in a dark, deserted alley, and/or are attacked during their first meeting, and/or try to kill each other?

2. Is your female protagonist an oddball with no siblings, no “real” friends, deceased parents, a crap job, no money in her checking account, and who possesses a mysterious and inexplicable superpower of which she is wholly unaware until the moment when the male protagonist inadvertently does something that causes her accidentally to use it?

3. Is your male protagonist a solitary, lethal, massively muscular, insanely handsome immortal who has been seriously considering suicide because: 1) sex with normal women has become boring; 2) sex with superhuman women has become boring; 3) his onerous duties, which he has carried out for millennia without a problem, have just yesterday become unbearable; 4) despite his heroic resolve he simply can’t stand up to the vicious female deity whose smallest whims he must obey; 5) immortality, endless wealth and incomparable power seem paltry when compared to true love, which he is convinced he will never know?

4. Is your story about an immortal brotherhood of less than a dozen males battling an ancient and innumerable enemy in a centuries-old, high-casualty war that despite massive losses on both sides has somehow never once had a cease-fire declared in order to negotiate peace talks, or ended by one of the many decisive if somewhat unrealistic victories won by said brotherhood?

5. Is your story centered around a quest for that one chick who breaks the most important of your world-building rules, and as such is destined to either destroy or save the world?

5a. Is the only way the world can be saved is if your male and female protagonist have wild monkey sex before page 200?

5b. Does your male and female protagonists' inexplicable urge to have wild monkey sex result in consequences that will bring an end to the world?

5c. Unless one of the lovers kills the other one, I mean?

6. Does your novel contain a best friend/helpful sidekick character whose real job is to replace infodumps by explaining the hard parts of the story to the reader via as-you-know-Bob dialogue?

7. Does your book contain a character who is actually an angel, or was before he got booted out of heaven for being a bad boy who couldn’t follow fairly reasonable rules with which none of the other angels had a problem?

8. Is the evil overlord antagonist secretly the biological father of your female or male protagonist?

9. Is the deity ruling your brotherhood a demanding sadistic virginal bitch who takes pleasure in torturing her male underlings who, despite all her cruelties over the centuries, still smooch her feet at every turn?

10. Do the female characters in your novel spend a lot of time worrying about 1) how sexy they are; 2) how sexy they dress; 3) how long it’s been since they’ve had sex; 4) if (despite their mandatory relative inexperience) they are any good at sex; and/or 5) what sort of evil spawn they’ll give birth to if they do the nasty with the male protagonist?

11. Does your immortal male protagonist, who has been effortlessly for eons driving hordes of women out of their minds with pleasure, hold off on sex with your female protagonist because he worries that he is too “jaded” “cynical” or “heartless” for her?

12. Do any of your female characters exist solely to collapse into a puddle of wet Kleenex the moment there is any real trouble?

13. Do any of your female characters exist solely to transform into thinly-veiled rip-offs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the moment there is any real trouble?

14. Are any of your characters half-blood hybrids who are forever torn between their human and nonhuman heritage?

15. At any point in the story will you make the vampires and the werewolves unwilling allies?

16. Does everybody who doesn’t possess a superpower, immortality or the ability to shape-shift exist solely 1) to be killed by the bad guys; 2) to keep the protagonists from having world-ending sex, or 3) to be corrupted by the antagonist, whom they will serve with unwavering devotion until just after the black moment, when a moment of completely unjustifiable remorse causes them to change their mind and sacrifice their life to protect the protagonists?

17. Do your immortal characters exude powerful scents that your mortal characters find alluring, bespelling or bewitching?

18. Does your novel contain a prologue that is very well-written but actually has little or nothing to do with the rest of the story?

19. Is a glossary of difficult-to-pronounce, wholly invented terms, that when read out loud sound a bit like Klingon as spoken by a drunken stuttering Welshman, parked in the front of the book?

20. Is this the first book in a series for which you have no practical ending or resolution in mind but that you figure will come to you eventually?

21. Did you first get the idea to write this novel after spending six months to a year in agonized fandom over a vampire television, cable or movie series?

22. Do any of your characters have names that have not been in popular use since the year 1066?

23. Do either of your protagonists have a single-word name, a four-syllable name, or a name that translates to something like “unvanquished hero” in Latin?

24. Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same immortal gene pool being named "Lucien Alastair Wrathworthy" and "Bill"?

25. Does your novel contain demons, shadow demons, mindless shadow demons, little mindless shadow demons, etc.?

26. At any point in your novel, do the protagonists have no choice but to trust another character who to that point has proven to be completely untrustworthy?

27. Do you write your battle scenes by taking notes while watching Underworld movies (but fast-forwarding past the really icky parts)?

28. Do the fabulous, expensive, beautifully-furnished locations in your book exist solely so your protagonists can retreat there to have intimate chats that always lead to wild monkey sex, at least until they’re interrupted by 1) vengeance demons; 2) the rest of the brotherhood, who happen to live downstairs, heard all the noise and got worried; 3) sex-starved vengeance demons; 4) one of the antagonist’s red-shirts, who decided on his own to prove his loyalty by defying orders and killing both of his master’s enemies; 5) the female deity, who cannot permit this disastrous mating for reasons that are never adequately explained until the final pages of the last chapter?

29. Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time discussing their feelings, their tragic pasts, the pain that no one (except the love interest) will ever understand, etc. instead of say, coming up with a practical solution to their real problem, aka a plan that a fifth grader or Scooby-Do and Shaggy could put together in less than five minutes?

30. Could one of your characters offer up a magical spell/charm/book/talisman/power that would solve all your protagonists’ problems, but they refuse to do because [insert utterly stupid reason]?

31. Do you ever use "grated" as a dialogue tag for your male protagonist more than four times?

32. Do you ever use “breathed” as a dialogue tag for your female protagonist more than four times?

33. Do you not realize how big the wounds are when you bite someone?

34. Do you think vampires can actually go on forever without feeding, even if they are in madly love with that mortal and would rather starve to death than nibble once on her neck?

35. Does anybody in your novel fight merciless enemies for most of the night, skulk back to their remote lair on foot, and wrestle a brother in a semi-homoerotic fashion before having meaningless sex with a handy/willing house wench, all of this without bleeding, sweating, bathing or taking a five-minute rest break?

36. Do either of your protagonists have tattoos that, if ever seen by real people in the real world, would cause them to 1) scream in horror and dial 911; 2) take lots of photos for the Facebook fan page they intend to create; 3) demand to know the name of the ink artist who did such amazing work; 4) ask if he/she’s a bad ass vampire slayer with a heart of gold; or 5) ask if he/she’s a bad ass vampire with a heart of gold?

37. Does anybody in your novel ever wield a sword of unimaginable power?

38. Does your immortal hero fall in love with the one mortal female in the entire world who has the only, unknown-to-her superpower that can kill him?

39. Do the shape-shifters in your story possess magic pelts of incredible colors that are never noticed by ordinary people on the street, and that never shed a single hair anywhere, even on that black velvet comforter on the female protagonist’s bed?

40. Is there absolutely no humor in your novel whatsoever? At least, in your opinion?

41. Is your massive immortal male protagonist able to withstand without blinking an eyelash consecutive, vicious attacks from armies of shadow demons, but is knocked unconscious by a single half-hearted girly punch thrown by your petite mortal female protagonist in the midst of a temper-tantrum?

42. During vampire feeding scenes, do you replace the word “blood” with euphemisms like “essence” “honey” or soften it with prefixes, i.e. “lifeblood” because they sound nicer?

43. Does your male protagonist werewolf go through hell fighting a full-moon change so as not to upset/disturb/reveal his dual nature to/consume the clueless mortal female protagonist, whom he doesn’t want to frighten away despite the fact that he goes through this every four weeks and -- unless she's a complete moron -- she is bound to find out anyway?

44. Is there a secondary female werewolf character who is 1) hopelessly in love with your male werewolf protagonist; 2) is insanely jealous of, or has killed in the past, anyone who falls in love with your male werewolf protagonist; or 3) betrays the pack, causes the death of half her friends and hands over the female protagonist to the bad guys because she’s sure that’s the only way to secure the love of your male werewolf protagonist for herself? And does no one ever get even a little suspicious of this chick before the bloodbath commences?

45. Does the female protagonist meet her long-lost or ever-absent immortal father, only to lose him to a demon attack in the same chapter?

46. Does your antagonist have nothing else to do in life but seek vengeance on your protagonist?

47. Does your vicious, overbearing, slightly psychopathic, armed-to-the-teeth male protagonist turn into an oversize, quivering, uber-emotional bunny rabbit whenever he discovers your female protagonist weeping, sitting by a window and sighing, or slumbering on his bed where she fell asleep while he was out hunting?

48. Is your story about a vampire brotherhood who truly despise all mortals (except that special one they're going to fall in love with who turns out to be only half-mortal) and yet spend all their time defending the mortal world against forces that would otherwise surely wipe them out, which logic dictates would really be okay with the brotherhood, given their human hatred?

49. Is the current leader of your werewolf pack a tough but wise Alpha, beloved by everyone, who is about to be assassinated by the antagonist, who turns out at the end of the story to have been one of his most trusted lieutenants?

50. By the end of the story does the mortal female protagonist undergo, either accidentally or voluntarily for the sake of love, a life-threatening change that has never worked on anyone else but by some extremely slim chance may bestow on her immortality, and does it work like a charm?

How to Score: if you answered "no" to all fifty questions, you passed with flying colors. If you answered "yes" to one or more of the questions, you might want to consider heading back to the drawing board and coming up with something new.

(based on The Fantasy Novelist's Exam by David J. Parker)

Virtual Storyboard

If you like working with whiteboards and/or index cards for your stories, you might want to check out Trello. According to their About page, Trello is "a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process."



To test drive the service I set up this example story board, which you can see in more detail here. Using Trello is pretty straightforward; you just have to fiddle with it a bit to get the hang of how to edit and arrange your cards. I'd be most likely to organize a story project outline as shown and keep a running list of what tasks I need to accomplish, but you can use your cards for whatever you like.

Two of the features I liked most are the simple color-coded tags you can apply to any card, and the search feature -- you can sort through everything by any keyword, which makes finding pertinent data and editing the cards a snap.

For those of you who collaborate with another writer Trello would probably be extremely useful. You could set up an account for the two of you, organize your schedule, plot out your next project, work out who needs to do what and update each other on your progress. The right activity sidebar shows all activity on the board in chronological order, so you can always look there to see what's been added, deleted or changed recently. You can also set the board to be private so that no one sees it but you and your writing partner.

Thanks to our blogpal author Charlene Teglia for originally blogging about Trello.

Sterling Sub Op

I have to start spending more time reading through the market archives over at Ralan.com; I'm always finding marvelous sub ops there. For example, L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest. This one awards sizeable cash prizes for SF or Fantasy short stories up to 17K in length. So why is this so marvelous? Let me count the ways:

1) It's not open to professional or published writers. Only those who haven't yet published can enter (publication is defined by the contest rules as follows: "The Contest is open only to those who have not professionally published a novel or short novel, or more than one novelette, or more than three short stories, in any medium. Professional publication is deemed to be payment, and at least 5,000 copies, or 5,000 hits.)

2) There's no entry fee. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Which makes it completely affordable for anyone.

3) Entrants retain all pub rights to their work, which means if you win the contest you can still sell the story elsewhere whenever you like.

4) Editors, agents, or any other non-writers are not part of the judging process; the awards are adjudicated by professional writers. Aka your peers.

5) The awards: First Prize of $1,000, a Second Prize of $750, and a Third Prize of $500, in U.S. dollars or the recipient's locally equivalent amount.

6) You can submit your story in hard copy by snail mail or electronically.

7) The contest runs four times per year, beginning on October 1, January 1, April 1 and July 1. The year will end on September 30. The four first-place prize winners are then rejudged and one is awarded the grand prize of $5000.00.

This quarter's contest opened on April 1st and runs through until June 30th, so if you want to enter but have nothing written you have time to put something together. To get more details on submission requirements, check out the contest page here.