A Full First Wednesday

When I started to plan this blog post, I couldn’t believe how many things I wanted to share with you today. So beware, this could be a long post.

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Remember, the question is optional!

How has your creativity in life evolved since you began writing?

The awesome co-hosts for the November 7 posting of the IWSG are Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Ann V. Friend, JQ Rose, and Elizabeth Seckman!

If anything creative has happened to me since beginning to write, it has been that I’m more aware of people and events around me. I talk less, listen and look more. I’m more inside my head than interacting or sharing what I know or think I know. And as I’m soaking up voices and images, I’m turning them into scenes. Of course, these scenes have no stories to complete them, but they’re stored away for sometime when they’re needed. A small example happened a few years ago. I was in an ice cream shop and three boys all about ten years old came roughhousing their way inside. They were noisy, but not rude, just having some boy fun. They bought their ice cream and sat at a table in front of me, so I could see and hear them.

“Lookit,” one of them said. “My mom’s picking me up at 3, so we got us some time. What do you guys want to do?”

A few years later when I was writing The Great Time Lock Disaster, here’s what happened.

“Lookit. . . Dr. Wraith,” Weasel said, “I don’t like time travel. I hate it.” 

 

Then with Sign of the Green Dragon, Joey’s voice had a lot of this in it. “Let me see that.” Joey snatched the yellowed paper from Sam. “We got us just one small problem.”

I’m not sure this counts as creativity, but maybe it does. Since I began writing, I’m taking snippets from real life and using them in my stories.

My EMAIL CONNECT this month is called  NETWORKING 101, and that’s because I just attended a book event at a local library where I picked up some interesting ideas, so I wanted to share those with my followers. If you’re not on my list and want to be you can link up HERE. I’m also featuring DENISE COVEY. She’s a great writer to know and she does some very interesting online networking.

I hate this picture. I look kind of ghoulish (October appropriate, but definitely not a good November look). However, it does show some of the authors I sat on the Fantasy/Sci-Fi panel with. L-R: Donald Craghead, Andrew J. Stillman, Ajax Minor, Brian Paona, Ned Huston moderator, R.L. King (not shown) and me.

Fantasy/Sci-Fi Panel at Monterey Library, October 2018

 

 

 

 

 

BIG NEWS:

If you’ve been off spelunking, you may have missed that WEP AND ISWG have partnered. Now for the newest BIG NEWS…you can enter a contest to choose the WEP February 2019 theme. Here’s all you have to do:

Submit your idea for a WEP February theme by November 12 to admin@insecurewriterssupportgroup.com. Nothing too U.S. culturally bound because we are open to WEP entries from around the world.

If your theme is chosen, you’ll be featured in the December IWSG newsletter. Good publicity for writers! And, of course, the winning theme will be the official February WEP theme!

Deadline: November 12. The winner will be announced in the November newsletter on November 28.

 

I hope you made the deadline for the IWSG anthology. It should be another great one and to be included will be very exciting. If you missed that opportunity, please don’t miss the next Twitter Pitch Party.

 

WEP OCTOBER WINNERS!

Why Leap?  You can read this at Kalpanaawrites.

Deja Vu by Jemi Fraiser at Jemi Writes

Deja Boo! Susan Swiderski

 

ON THE WRITING FRONT:

I’m sort of limping back into writing and have a draft of a new piece. I’ve broken one of my promises to myself in writing this one. I always said I wouldn’t write a YA fantasy, but I think I just did. Maybe it was my weakened state of mind, but whatever caused it, the characters are here, the plot’s in place, and I wrote The End. Now, as any here who write know, I need to get some readers to plow through it, churn it a bit and give me some yays and nays. Then it’s edit time.  Oh, one thing I don’t have is a title. I’ve been writing it with only the MC’s name as my title, and I’m not sure that’s  what I want.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH: “My Golden Rule for Networking is simple: Don’t keep score.” Harvey Mackay, author