Janis I. Monroe's Blog, page 6

Quiet Evening

My hubby is putting our youngest to bed, and my daughter is on the couch munching on popcorn and watching Caillou. Our dogs are lying on the couch as the night slowly drifts on.

Early this morning, and I do mean early as my son decided to get up at 1AM not go back to sleep until about 4AM. I had some time to work on preparing my novel for Camp NaNo. I’m going through an old manuscript and tossing out most of it. I’ve labeled my chapters and now working on a document that gives me a summary of what I want each chapter to be about. It’s just so confusing taking snippets here and there that will still work in the book, but tossing the rest. So now it’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together though many of the pieces haven’t been written yet.

I have so many ideas and they sometimes render me immobile. I’m sure I’m not the only writer to experience that. If it’s not writer’s block it’s having too many ideas at once.

So tonight, I am going to try and make some progress on the chapter summaries.

Where are you on your Camp NaNo prep? Or are you preparing? Are you going to be a pantser?

Camp NaNo starts in just 9 days! Are you ready?

Straight Talk on Mental Illness Part II

The next talk will be on March 26, 2017 at 8PM Eastern Time and I will be talking about PTSD and sharing my own story. There will also be a time for questions and answers.

Here is the event link on Facebook if you are interested:  https://www.facebook.com/events/110256096139209/

Straight Talk on Mental Illness Part I

On March 19, 2017 I recorded a video about the prevalence of mental illness in adults, teenagers and those with chronic illnesses.

Here is the link to the video I recorded:  https://www.facebook.com/events/704566376371322/?active_tab=discussion

Behind the Writer

I’m sitting here in my office with the pellet stove roaring away. It’s comfortably warm in this room, but inside me is a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. You see, I’m not just a writer. First and foremost I am a child of God and I suffer from PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, and depression. Why am I telling you this? Because I am going to be making blog posts about mental illness that will relate to my upcoming book about my journey through mental illness. And because I’m not afraid to admit that I have a mental illness.

Sometimes, I think that having a mental illness can make us more creative individuals because we look for creative ways to work out the pain that is deep inside. So deep it stays well hidden until we are alone and then we can contain it no longer.

Open the flood gates. Our emotions either come out as a trickle or a roar whether through tears, or through creative means. Or both.

So now you know more about me. But you’ll learn even more as I go along.

Fear and Writing

You at your computer, or maybe sitting at a table with a pen in hand and a notebook in front of you. You’re writing along and having a great time. Days pass and the weeks and months go by until you have a finished manuscript. You feel great that you have finished a novel and you feel it’s time to celebrate. You pop the cork on the bottle of champagne, take a swig and then your enthusiasm dissipates when you realize you now need edit and rewrite your book to help it reach it’s best for publication.

You freeze… “I can’t do this,” you think. “What if I can’t make it good enough? What if people don’t like my writing? What if I make a mistake in the historical fiction I’m writing and someone discovers it? Oh, I don’t think I can publish it.”

You put the champagne away and go slump on your couch. All these questions going through your head and self-doubt settling in. You ask yourself if this is normal for a writer? And the answer is “YES”. Though it doesn’t feel normal nor does it feel very good. Anxiety and publishing usually go hand-in-hand because you’re putting your work in front of an editor and then in front of the world to see. It can be nerve wracking to think someone won’t like your work, or will criticize the heck out of it.

But we write and publish for those who WILL like our work and enjoying reading it. For those who don’t like our work…well we can’t appeal to everyone. It’s just not possible so why bother trying.

I read a great post by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn about Fear and Writing and I think you would find some solace in what she has written. http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/03/17/writing-fear-of-judgment/

Do you have a fear of writing, editing or publishing? What about creating a writer’s platform? I know I do. Let me know in the comments if you suffer from these fears as well.

CampNaNo April 2017

It’s that time of year again! Camp NaNo Wri Mo is coming near. Just a couple of weeks away. I have decided to write Secret Anguish: My Journey with PTSD. In the novel I will share my story of how I came to have PTSD as well as the symptoms and trying times I had to live through before I even knew I had PTSD. From then on it was medication trial after medication trial, and switching from one therapist to another, but that was not all that helped me get through the storm.

The main factor in my recovery is my faith. Without God I could not have done it. I have learned so much through having PTSD and God has not only healed me but healed my Dad who was the root cause of the PTSD. We have a better relationship now than we have ever had. And this is after a PTSD teacher mentioned in a class that you can’t reconcile with one who has caused PTSD. I beg to differ since that is exactly what happened. When she said those words, I was thinking, “God can make it happen if He wish. It’s nothing short of Him.” And it wasn’t.

So anyway, that is what I am brainstorming on.

Are you participating in Camp this year? What kind of story are you working on? Are  you going to plan things out or are you going to be a pantser?

Structuring a Memoir

Writing a memoir is difficult. Yes, sure you have the information in front of you but how do you structure all of that information? That is something I have struggled with. In my search, I found this article, Structuring Your Memoir by, Wendy Dale a big help.

She also has more information at Writing for Geniuses at http://www.geniusmemoirwriting.com/

Words Fly

This morning I have my iced coffee next to me, the radio blaring WKIT Stephen King’s Radio Station here in Bangor, Maine, while my daughter and her friend play in her room before the bus comes. My son is in his bouncer next to me jumping away and singing to himself.

I have Scrivener open and I’m working on my second book Secret Anguish: My Story of Gluten Intolerance. Problem is I see a couple of different versions of a few chapters and I’m not sure I like either one of them. It’s so tough writing memoirs. I’m not sure if I want to start in the present and work my way backward, or start more toward the beginning, or should I start in the middle. Oh, boy! I sure have my work cut out for me. A lot of brainstorming will be going on today.

Are you writing a memoir, or have you written one already? What did you find most difficult about writing it? Do you have any advice for those writing a memoir?

The Writer’s Complete Fantasy Reference

Building Believable Characters

The Writer’s Digest Sourcebook for Building Believable Characters, by Marc McCutcheon is one of the many useful resource books put out by Writer’s Digest Books.

There are many building blocks for writers when it comes to crafting the foundation for stories. Creating characters is one of the most crucial elements writers must develop. Without characters, there is no story. However, many writers are uncertain about how to go about creating characters and bring them to life on the page.

Building Believable Characters offers great advice from other writers as well as a character questionnaire. The questionnaire is in-depth and asks the writer to fill in such information on their character such as name, weight, height, age, body type, physical characteristics, race, religion, gestures, skills, occupation and so much more.

After the questionnaire, there is a chapter titled Character Thesaurus. Under this chapter there are subsequent sections touching on: Face and Body such as complexions, skin types, blemishes, eye type, shape and color, noses, hair, facial hair, body types and so on.

Personality/Identity covers personality traits, bad habits and vices, psychological/psychiatric problems, diseases, disorders, afflictions, hobbies and sports, along with a few others.

Facial expressions, body and vocal language includes anger, anxiety, fear, shock, pain, suspicion, guilt, arrogance, disgust, nausea, happiness, love, grief, drunkenness, laughs, etc.

Dress involves clothing such as dresses, skirts, pants, shirts, coats, undergarments, shoes and boots, hats, sweaters, glasses, fashion styles and others.

Dialects and Foreign Speech runs through Southern (US) Accent Pronunciation Guide, British Expressions and Pronunciations, French and Spanish vocabulary, as well as Italian, German and Russian vocabulary.

Given Names and Surnames from Around the World pulls together names from English, Scottish, Irish, French, Berman, Jewish, Dutch, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Scandinavian, Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese.

The last section covers character homes such as adobes, log homes, bungalow, Cape Cod, Greek Revival, Georgian among many others.

I personally have used Building Believable Characters to create characters from my own novels and short stories. The result was having vivid characters whom I knew more intimately than I thought possible. My characters were alive on the pages and therefore generated more emotion from my readers as they followed my characters’ lives throughout the book.

Marc McCutcheon has an excellent book here and I recommend it for novice writers uncertain of where to begin with building their characters, as well as for professionals looking to juice up their characters.