Julius JE Thompson's Blog, page 4

Monday Writing Tips: Consult with Julius on “Accepting Criticism and joining a Writers Group.”

You, the author, cannot be covered in a thin skin if you expect to reach your goal of creating the very best book for publication. You must accept the criticism of others! Every word should be challenged and kept in your book only if it advances the storyline. I don’t care how creative or pretty, if it doesn’t work: don’t keep it. You can save those words for a later book. The same can be said for scenes and dialogue.
I am in the process of writing my novel, Stormy Winds, and a weekly visit to a critique group will make this book better. It’s like going to the doctor for a checkup. Sometimes the medicine, criticism, doesn’t taste good.’
Writers’ groups can help you:
1. Find mistakes of logic, omission and other common errors.
2. Are your words impactful and the descriptions effective?
3. Evaluation includes constructive criticism.
4. Inspiration and motivation when you are feeling un-creative.
5. Information on ides for your book, publication and marketing
Writing Tips: Join a local critique or writers group. It’s lifeline for improvement in your novel.
For more information, purchase Jumpstarting Your Inner Novelist!
https://www.amazon.com/Julius-Thompso...

Julius Thompson...On Writing!

Sitting at your computer with a cup of coffee ready to write that first draft of your next novel…
Authors need a regular routine when they sit at the computer and prepare to write!
When you’re in the creative mood, you must follow a set of actions aht will lead to the production of dynamic writing.
When I sit in the chair at my computer, I slip into a writing zone. I don’t want any distractions.

First, I click on the Stormy Winds icon on the desktop that opens the word document that transports me to the world of my fourth novel. I pick up from where I left off on my previous writing excursion into the world of the haunted high school basketball team.

I have everything in react–Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Elements of Style–and my folders with character ideas, setting, etc.
Then the writing process begins: Sit down in front of the computer, stare at th blank screen, then put words on that screen. Some days the words flow and other days they trickle at a slow pace. The point–put words on the paper.
Author C. J. Cherryh said it best: “Write Garbage, Edit Brillantly.”
Just get the words out so you can edit brillantly!

Please visit my website: HTTP://WWW.CONSULTWITHJULIUS.COM/

Why should you really read my books?

Sometimes, I put myself in the psyche of a reader who scrolls over the book list on the Amazon website or stroll down the Barnes & Nobles’ bookstore isle. What makes the reader click and purchase your book on a website or pull a copy down of your novel from the bookshelf?
I ask myself, “Why should you really read my books?”
I want to develop a great yarn in my novels. My books are filled with hopes, dreams, challenges and fears that make us human. That is my philosophy in crafting novels.
I knew when growing up I would be a writer. From an early age in Winder, I was a dreamer, walking down the dusty red clay dirt roads of the Bush Chapel section, of this small Northeast Georgia town, while watching the cars motor on the Hog Mountain Road.
Every evening I heard the whistle of the Southern Railroad trains passing through Winder creating a nagging longing to know the destinations of the trains.
One day, when I moved to New York City travelling on one of those trains called the Silver Comet, I would see the world outside of this small southern town. It’s been a journey that I’ve told in newspaper articles and now as a published author.
Here are reasons why you should really read my books.
1. Writing from the heart and Personal Growth!
There are so many rewarding challenges in writing a book. By expanding your philosophy and sharing it with others, you’ll find inevitable growth. You will learn so much more about yourself and others you will want to write another book while you are completing the first one!
We write not just to change the world, but to create a new world. This is a perspective I share in my body of written works. I develop new ways of seeing the world and how our experiences shapes us mentally. Some people run and exercise, some people play sports, but I write to create healthy mental moments for myself and my reader.
2. Books to help people reach their writing goals!
Do you know what it’s like to go out and sign books? I do. It’s an exhilarating experience that only a few people understand. Once your book is published, the door of opportunity will fly open. You will meet people you never thought you would. Further, people will want to work with you and learn your story.
Books form a unique perspective of experience and knowledge to help others avoid the errors and the mistakes you failed to overcome in reaching your goals.
For example, Jumpstarting Your Inner Novelist is a self -help book based on nine years of teaching Creative Writing at Atlanta’s Evening at Emory University Writers’ Studio, writing five books and going through the treacherous publishing process.
People should read, learn and use the knowledge I present in my non-fiction books and how the characters overcame problems in my fiction books to learn and grow as writers and readers with a broader understanding of the world.
3. My Books of fiction based in real places, especially the Julius J.E. Thompson Trilogy!
It is a good feeling knowing people are buying my books. Not only that, but those sales can lead to bigger opportunities. I write to entertain and tell a good tale in my novels. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain in writing a book. Personally, it has been one of my greatest and most rewarding achievements in life.
I create characters that build relationships, face challenges, overcome fears and live their lives in my novels. I want to create teachable moments, but in entertainment form that capture and keep the readers’ attention. This is the best way to share an idea or story that matters. And if it matters to you, maybe it’ll matter to others. Because the book you actually write is better than the one floating in the dream world of your mind.
In conclusion, you should read my books to see characters living their hopes, facing challenges, overcoming fears and working hard to reach their dreams.

What kind of writer are you...your writing style.

Authors Must Create Their Own Writing Style!

If you are sensitive to critics’ comments, the writing “Rules Police”, experts discussing this issue, with such aplomb that they intimidate, then you must turn a deaf ear to this shrill commentary that says: You must write in a certain style in order to be considered a worthy author.
Stop!
Your writing is created out of your personality. You must reach deep inside your creative self to find how you will put words on paper.
For me, I’m a “Conversational” writer…what does that mean? I write, as if, I’m having a wonderful conversation, over a glass of wine, with the reader. I’m telling a story and I want to capture the reader’s attention, not with long flowery descriptions, but with simple sentences that build incredible word pictures using active verbs and creative adjectives.
A good example is from my first novel, A Brownstone in Brooklyn,
I wanted to describe how a person’s dreams may be answered, but dreams are fleeting and will come and go with the blink of an eye. They never last and I want the reader to understand if you don’t change you will live in the past looking to keep trying to capture that same dream over and over again:
“The most special times in a person's life are not meant to last forever. They're like bubbles rising from a plastic ring dipped into a soapy solution. The soap bubbles rise, with the sun flashing brilliant colors, then bursts into a showery memory mist.”
― Julius J.E. Thompson, A Brownstone in Brooklyn
I wanted to create word pictures that captured this feeling of a fleeting moment in time.
When watching the Miss Marple TV series on PBS, based on Agatha Christie’s books. One episode was based on In Bertram’s Hotel, and Christie said, “the essence of life is change and we have too adjust and change.”

I wanted to create this moment in my book, with my writing style, as Agatha Christie created with her style in her novel.
For example, I love the sixties, but I can’t live in the sixties, but I must adjust to the music and the moments of the 21st Century.
I remembered the moment that changed a nation. Where I was when it was announced that Kennedy had been shot? I was in gym class at Bushwick High School in Brooklyn, New York on a cool November Day in 1962. It is still fresh in my mind the moment my gym teacher, Coach Diamond, told us the news of Kennedy being shot.
We were stunned. Some of us cried.
Now I must live in the rhythm of the 21st century with Hip Hop, Rap the threat of ISIS terrorism and other dominate themes must be lived through if you want to remain relevant in this present age.
My writing has always been crisp, with short sentence like F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea), Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes were Watching God) and Walter Mosley (Devil In A Blue Dress).
My style is not like Tony Morrison, William Faulkner and other authors that are expert in the long complex sentences. That’s their style.
Authors must find their style with experimentation in different writing styles.
I believe what Polonius said to Hamlet, “To Thine own self be true”
Be true to yourself as you write and experiment.
Don’t imitate, but create your own unique writing style.
Do not ever listen to the “Rules Police.”
I wish you much success in finding your writing style and that will help you write fantastic novels.
Happy Writing!

PURPLE PHANTOMS: BASKETBALL GHOSTS WHO DIED EARLY AND NOW PLAYING AGAIN!

This is a book based on real life and for all who loved a young person that died too early and never fulfilled their destiny or achieved their goals. I wanted to honor my former players.
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For years when the high school basketball season ended. I would go to the empty gym and reflect on the previous season. A gym is a lonely place without players practicing or players playing in a game.
The gym feels forsaken without basketball players, basketball fans and the bright lights of a Friday night game.
Sitting in the empty stands, I would think about past seasons and the players who gave everything and left everything on the floor. What hurt were the players whose life were cut short and never had the chance to perform during a basketball season.
Sometimes, and this feels eerie, I would sit and I could sense the presence of my former players next to me. I decided I had to do something to give them another chance.
I wanted to coach them again…even yell instructions and glare at them to make them better players. But all from a sense of love and enjoyment of seeing their skills displayed.
When I was at Jackson County High School, Jefferson, Georgia, I had a young man named James (J.B.) Brown a talented freshman. He had the personality and athletic skills to be a super star and a Division One player.
Even today I can remember every morning how J.B. opened my door flashing that smile that brightened the room with a warm glow and yelled, “I got it coach.” That was a key that everything was under control.
The last day before Spring break that year, I saw that smile and heard that greeting for the last time. Over the holiday, he was killed in a car accident with his cousin going to a pickup game in a neighboring county.
To ease that pain, and the mental anguish from players dying. I wrote a novel: Purple Phantoms
This is a book based on real life and for all who loved a young person that died too early and never fulfilled their destiny or achieved their goals. I wanted to honor my former players. As I was writing that novel, at certain times I could feel a presence in the room. It was a warm feeling as If they were watching over my shoulder as I was typing on the keyboard.
After Purple Phantoms was completed, I read the manuscript and it seemed to come alive. If you read Purple Phantoms, you will sense the presence of young people in this fictional fantasy about a second chance to fulfill a dream.
Main Idea for Purple Phantoms: Five Ghosts, who were young basketball players that died too early, are given an opportunity to return to life. They inhabit the bodies of five living basketball players to inspire, motivate the five starters to the coveted State Championship. As they themselves continue to learn life’s obstacles that can only be overcome in growing up.

Chapter One

Five phantoms lurked invisibly in a tiny corner of the sky. On stormy evenings, they shed tears that added to the rain that splashed over the Earth. Sometimes, on the gym windows, rivulets of water streaked the clear glass panes, like tears rolling down the cheeks of an unhappy child.
Five marauders, seeking athletic human hosts, and a place for ghosts to take care of unfinished business, a state basketball championship.
They longed for a chance to bounce a basketball once more, to shoot a jump shot, or to make a steal again. They craved to feel the sweat and excitement that human beings feel as they run up and down the court.
Sure, they played games in the airless environment that all athletic ghosts float around in, but something was missing. The sweaty aroma of athletes and the noise of a cheering crowd filling a high school gym on a cold Friday night were essential elements. The Phantoms missed human emotions the most….

Return to a Southern County Fair Ground!

I drove into Winder, Georgia and visited the Old Lions Club on East Broad Street and the grassy area in front where the annual county fair was established in the late fifties and early sixties.
Oh…the memories exploded in my mind as I looked up at the old white Lions Club building. I smiled as the flashbacks created past visual images in rapid succession.
I remember the October day was a little overcast and a slight chill was in the air at the start of the early nineteen-sixties Barrow County Fair.
Grandmother Mary Lee had always entered the baking contest, but this year she didn’t and I decided to uphold the family tradition and cook a pound cake. The baking contest was a big deal at the time.
I wanted to use Mama Katie’s Lemon Pound Cake recipe, but decided to use a plain pound cake. I wanted to win the blue ribbon. This was important!
I decided to make this trek to Winder, in late 2009, as part of my research for my third novel, the 2011 National Gold Medal Winner Ghost of Atlanta. I’m glad I did as the visit created visual images of key scenes that used in the beginning of the novel.
I got out of the car and walked through area and looked around. I remembered coming to the Barrow County Fair in my uncle’s old Ford. I remembered carrying the pound cake and going through the doors of the Lions Club.
I talked to the lady in charge and left the cake.
We drove back to my Grandmother’s old family home in Statham. I talked with my Grandmother about my chances of winning.
A couple of days later, my Uncle Charles drove me back to the Lions Club building. I opened the door an walked to the area where the baking were judged.
I looked for a second…and smiled.
My Pound Cake Had Won a Blue Ribbon!
My uncle carried me back to Statham, and I hugged my grandmother and we talked all night about me winning the blue ribbon. It was a joyous feeling.
A couple of days later my Grandmother Mary Lee put me in a car with a family friend, Athens, Georgia, who carried me and my sister, Rochelle, to the train station in Athens to ride the “Silver Comet” to a new life up north.
We were on our way to Brooklyn, New York and a new life as part of the great migration of southern blacks to the big cities in the north.
The days of old southern living with my Grandmother Mary Lee were over, but I still remember the time in the kitchen in Statham, Georgia cooking the pound cake on the old iron stove.
It was a winner then, and it’s now a winner again as a key part of my novel, Ghost of Atlanta!
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Please click to Link to the Ghost of Atlanta!
The Ghost of Atlanta
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If you would like the recipe, email me: Juliusthomwrites at gmail.com and I will send you the original Lemon Pound Cake recipe!