Saturday, March 31, 2012

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

With my reviewing the edits I've just received from my editor for Chapter 29, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Although my original plan of finishing my manuscript by the end of March is now going to be a definite memory, I can see that the middle of April will be when my dream to write my first YA Paranormal/Time Travel/First Kiss romance manuscript will now come to fruition.

Once it is completed, a brief wait and then it's a final slow review of the complete manuscript making sure I have a continuity of all of the components for the story and that I haven't confused any of my character's names.

I plan to start/finish Chapter 30 of my manuscript by tomorrow which by coinciedence is April Fool's Day [but this is not going to be a joke.]

Monday, March 26, 2012

GHOSTLY WHISPERS #7 - March 26, 2012


A little later that night, Mary dropped a large pen on the floor, and Suzy ran away with it. Suzy dropped it on the floor under the dresser. When Mary tried reaching for it, she couldn’t. Then for some reason, she tried moving the dresser on the right side.

When she did, the dresser seemed to slide to the left along with the floor under it, revealing a small door in the middle of the wall. Mary peeked inside and, because it was dark, she decided to get the still-lit oil lantern from her desk.

Unsure of what lay past the doorway, Mary hesitated before stepping inside. When she did, the doorway she had just entered disappeared, and there in front of her stood her ghostly figure, no longer ghostly or opaque, but a solid living person. She glanced down at herself, no longer seeing her jeans, tee shirt and sneakers. Instead, she wore a dress, black shoes and short white socks--the same clothes she found the other day, only now, they looked new.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

GHOSTLY WHISPERS #6 - March 19, 2012

“How did Mary know about our idea? It’s too big of a coincidence for her to have dreamt about having a sleepover the same night we had planned it?” said Megan.

“I know what you mean. She couldn’t have known what we had quietly discussed while she was gone helping her mother,” replied Samantha. “And that could only mean one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Her ghost told her. And this is the reason why we’ve decided to have the sleepover in the first place.”

“This means we’re going to have to keep our eyes open even more on Friday night, as anything could happen now,” said Alexis. “Agreed?”

A DIFFERENT KIND OF WRITER's BLOCK - Late Posting

I'm still suffering from writer's block. But I believe it's a different kind of writer's block which authors usually face.
At this point in time, I still need about 7,800 more words which equates to about five more chapters. While I don't know exactly what to write next, my mind has jumped ahead to the LAST CHAPTER and has it about 95% completed, and it seems to be writing the final chapters backwards.
I don't know whether I should write what I already have in mind, and then worry about bridging the "backward" written chapters together; or to keep what I have in mind until I can put those words unto paper.

GHOSTLY WHISPERS #5 - March 14, 2012

All of a sudden, things started to float all over the room, but Mary was standing in the middle of the room, far away from where she had controlled everything before.
More and more things began to happen.
“Hey, someone just blew in my ear,” Grace said, jumping a foot away from her spot.
“Who poked me?” Samantha asked, color draining from her face.
“Who pulled my hair?” Alexis asked then stared at Mary with her mouth open in a huge O.
With so many things happening, everyone started to leave.

GHOSTLY WHISPERS # 4 - March 9, 2012

Alexis asked, "How do you like all the homework we got yesterday?"
Another ordinary question, which Mary answered, "This teacher likes to give us a lot, huh?'
With these questions out of the way, her friends began to ask about things geared to make fun of her and her house.
"Come on Mary, we know you didn't do the math homework yourself. You had help," said Emily
"We know your ghost did it for you, when you weren't in your room." Megan flashed Emily a knowing look.
I can't tell them it's the truth. I can't tell them because if I do, they'll tease me about believing in ghosts. I don't like it, but I'm going to have to lie.

CHANGING GENRES

Some of us who have chosen to write fiction come from a variety of a variety of places. And by a variety of places I'm not referring to a physical location [city, state or country"; I'm referring our wrting experiences.
There are some of us who have enjoyed writing since we were a child, and each year we had written something in school it improved. For some of us, it has continued until we've graduated college and are working. Some of us entered the work force taking jobs which required us to write, whether it was procedures, handbooks/manuals, or news stories. But all of these are non-fiction, and each one has a set of "rules" which need to be followed to write something well enough to be acceptable.
As for myself, while my regular job did not require me to write, for eleven years I wrote articles [commentaries/viewpoints] of what was happening in my community. When I started to write these items my writing skills were not honed; and by the end I stopped I became quite adept at it.
Starting to write fiction, I somehow drift to writing a romance story and I still have it, a contemporary paranormal which after almost 9 years is still not completed. Someone at the local chapter of the RWA suggested I should write for a much younger audience, which is what I'm writing right now--right now for which I've written over 42,000 words and still need at least 7,800 words to finish.
The story I'm writing is a YA Paranormal/Time Travel/First Kiss romance, where I've writtien more in several months than I had with my previous endeavor.
Anyway, making the transition from non-fiction to fiction I've had to learn a new set of rules in how to write. Most of these involved dialogue--telling not showing; where before I just told. I had to learn about tags. I had to learn not to be overly descriptive of something, but allow my reader to create the image for themselves in their minds. It was hard to do at the beginning, because old habits are hard to break, and now I'm finding it easier each day. The biggest issue I've had to face and which I'm still trying to get a good handle on is POV [Point of View], regardless of what's happening or being said it has to be in one's character's perspective, and you can't flip-flop between two characters within a scene--there needs to be a transition from one character to another.
The critiques I've listen to for another members of the RWA chapter I belong to us help me mold myself to the author I'm becoming.
I've also learned there are addtional rules within a genre depending on the sub-genre you've decided to write in. These rules apply to the dialogue spoken which needs to be true to the time period you're writing in, as well as how your characters are dressed, and their titles if any [as is the case with the regencies sub-genre in romance].
So as you can see writing is not mere a string of words you put together, there are rules which need to be followed.
I hope everyone read this has come away with some knowledge they didn't have before. If you want to, you can leave a message and I'll try to respond, as soon as I can.

GHOSTLY WHISPERS #3 - March 4, 2012

A girl who introduced herself as Alexis blurted, “Everyone in town knows your house is haunted.”

The others nodded, and Alexis added, “No one has lived there since before we were born. Every Halloween, we’d go inside to see who could stay the longest without running out scared to death. Last year I won. I stayed in there for almost an hour.”

“The house looked great when we moved in,” replied Mary.“How long has it been empty?”

“As far as I know, it’s been empty since before I was born,”said Samantha repeating what Alexis had just told Mary.

GHOSTLY WHISPERS #2 - Mar 1, 2012

When it was time to go to bed, she took her covers into the closet, keeping the door open. She turned off the light and fell asleep with Suzy at her feet. Mary didn't wake up when three o'clock rolled around this night.
When the ghostly figure appeared, it floated around Mary's bedroom three times as usual and then disappeard into the closet. Finding Mary sleep on the mattress there, it paused and sat down on a chair near her.
The ghost peered at Mary for several minutes. Then it got up and floated over to her. Bowing down, it kissed Mary on her forehead and like Sleeping Beauty, she awoke from her sleep.