Bev Pettersen's Blog, page 31

Smile – Everyone’s Watching

Conferences! What a wonderful time to meet like-minded people, make friends, find mentors, learn the craft, and maybe entice that perfect agent or editor to love your stories. You can make major strides forward in your writing career by attending conferences, but you can also make some horrendous mistakes that can set you back. Let’s talk about positive attitude.

From the moment you step into the hotel, or maybe even as you arrive at the airport in your hometown, you are “on.” Meaning that th...

April Showers Bring May…

…flowers? Nuh-uh, not where I live.

Here in Minnesota, there’s still snow on the ground, and anything planted before Memorial Day will likely be a victim of a serial killing frost.

Nope, if you grew up where I did, just south of the Canadian border, learning how to skate as soon as you walked and with a legit Team USA “Miracle on Ice” Olympian living across the street, April is all about hockey playoffs, and May the Stanley Cup.

In Minnesota, April showers bring May mullets.

The (Not-So) Dreaded Synopsis

In thinking about what I wanted to blog on, I remembered a synopsis article I’d written for my RWA chapter several years ago. In my distant memory, I’d recalled having fun with it (fun with a synopsis, you say?!?!) and dug it back up. I hope you’re forgive the re-do, but I thought it might be fun to pull it back out and see if it still resonates.

So here we go!

You’d be hard-pressed to find any words in the English language that strike more fear in a writer’s heart than the words, “I need you...

MOVE…or at Least Get Up and Stretch!

Hello, friends, and welcome to a non-writing but necessary blog post that will hopefully have you up and toe-tapping. Or like mentioned in the title – at least stretching. 

The Rubies had a conversation a few weeks ago about our health, specifically about getting up and moving around. One of our little slippers got tied into a deadline, spent way too much time in the chair, and ended up with a medical emergency because she didn’t move enough. Yeah. That’s crazy scary considering how much we w...

National Library Week

I grew up in St Augustine Florida, the oldest city in the nation. History all round. Many buildings in use date to the early 1700’s. My grandparent’s home was built around civil war times.  

One was constructed around 1783, by Bernardo Segui.  It also was the home of Edmond Smith, the last Confederate general to surrender his command. He was born in the home in 1824. In 1863 Union officials exiled the general’s mother from the city for spying.  

The house came to be called the Segui-Smith Hou...

It’s All In The Past

I love a good action movie where it’s all about the ticking bomb, once in a while. However if the screen writer adds a character that touches my heart, the movie goes from good to great! When that happens, I can’t stop talking about it. I tell my family and friends. I chat about it at work and on social media. And I easily lay down my hard-earned cash for the next movie. Readers have the same reaction after finishing a book that left them feeling something for someone, the character.  And wor...

Autism and writing what you know

I give a writing craft workshop called Write What Your Family Knows. The concept is partly about research, partly about a writer’s life. By mining my family’s interests or careers, I have instant access to a (mostly) inexhaustible source of expert information.

Do I want an alpha hero? Little brother is an Army retiree. Do I need a teen character to have a fun hobby? Just say “anime” to my baby girl, and I’m her captive audience for hours. These conversations are two-for-one; I get fabulous re...

Industry Terms

Sometimes authors and those in publishing rattle off industry terms and acronyms forgetting not everyone knows what they mean, so I’ve listed a few.

Feel free to add, or ask about those not included in comments.   

TYPES OF FICTION

Commercial Fiction- Fiction written in ‘plain’ language that focuses on plot and content rather than prose.  Commercial fiction, also called mainstream fiction, focuses on plot and character development and has a narrative structure.

Dystopian Fiction – Dystopian i...

Write Me a Book as Fast as You Can!

Many of us grew up reciting nursery rhymes from Mother Goose. The other day I was thinking about how chaotic the writing life sometimes is. We live from deadline to deadline or feel like we’re stuck on an assembly line that slowly picks up speed. It’s easy to keep up at first, but pretty soon it gets harder and harder, until one day we burn out. Or lose the love. There’s no happy-ever-after, if you lose the love.

Enter Mother Goose and her rhymes. I was listening to a radio program, and someo...

What I learned from the trash truck

For twelve years, every Monday night I’ve taken the trash can out to the curb for early Tuesday pickup. You’d think by now taking the trash out on Monday night would be imbedded in my DNA. Nope, last Monday night I didn’t take out the trash or pick up the mail. No reason for it, I just didn’t think of it.

My brain was on overload. I’m one of those people who want to write my book in a single sitting. Do my taxes (I do them by paper and pencil, the old-fashioned way) in a single day. Create th...