Category Archives: Writing

There’s No Such Thing as a Writing Birthday (and how I celebrated mine)

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Sad birthdayThe morning began as most as winter workdays do, which is to say dark, and because of that, what felt far too early to me.

This year, I made a conscious effort to remember my writing birthday – to commemorate it on the actual day, or if nothing else, to at least make note of it.  February 12: in truth, an arbitrarily-chosen day meant to mark the start of my first (incomplete, shelved) novel as approximated through a forensic accounting some emails I sent to a friend around that time.

I’m an Aquarius writer.

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Thoughts on Nearing the End

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Book near the end

I should qualify this by saying I mean the end of my novel.

(Were I talking the end of my life, my thoughts would be considerably different, and if nothing else, I’d perhaps be referring back to this post about my bucket list.)

Ending a novel is hard.  The fact that I’ve done it twice thus far in my writing career hasn’t made it any easier.  Perhaps this is because only once did I consciously do so since my “two-book” series-in-progress grew to three books initially without my realizing it.

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Watching Netflix Made Me a Better Writer (and I bet I’m not the only one!)

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Netflix

It was around this time in 2014 that I first signed up for Netflix.

It’s hard to believe I’ve only been watching Netflix for a year, unless you happen to know me well. I’m perpetually late to everything new and cool.  The last thing I adopted early was Gmail back in 2006 when you needed to be invited to by someone already using it.

As well, I went through a period of about six years where I stopped watching TV and movies altogether. Continue reading →

It’s the Silence That Keeps Me Awake

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Can't sleep

What keeps you up at night?

For some reason, I have a disproportionately large number of friends who are insomniacs.

I’m not talking people who occasionally suffer bouts of sleeplessness like we all sometimes do.  Rather, I mean folk who chronically don’t sleep more than a few of hours, every night of their lives.

That must really suck.

The notion of insomnia really came to the fore of my mind due to my recent trip to Australia. From my connection at Los Angeles airport to Melbourne, Australia, the flight was about 15 hours long.

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Cities (and Stories) Are All the Same … Except When They’re Not

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Flinders Street Station transit hub, Melbourne, Australia

Flinders Street Station – a major transit hub, Melbourne, Australia

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, I’d travelled more than half a day into the future; perhaps journeying more than half a day closer to my final day.

~

“I don’t feel like I’ve just come halfway around the world.”

These were among the first words I spoke on Australian soil to my Aussie-born friend and former Vancouver roommate who was the impetus behind my recent trip Down Under.  This after she’d retrieved me from a very crowded Melbourne airport and pointed out all her favourite cafés, restaurants, shopping areas and, walking paths during the drive to her apartment.

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My Very Very Short Story Inspired By Australia

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The Daintree Rainforest, a tropical rainforest and UNESCO World Heritage Site along the coast of Queensland, Australia.

The Daintree Rainforest, a tropical rainforest and UNESCO World Heritage Site along the coast of Queensland, Australia.

I didn’t expect to do any writing while here in Australia.

That is, not after I overcame my last-minute fervor to do lots of writing while in Australia – to write during as much of the flight as I remained awake for; to even finish my novel while abroad, if possible, and return home like a conquering hero.

In preparation for this, I scanned and PDF’ed an entire chapter of a reference book (since my WIP is historical fiction and thus research-dependant).

I also downloaded Evernote on both my iPad and phone so that I’d have two methods of inputting my deathless prose that would automatically sync as well as keep a backup in the cloud.

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Work or Leisure: How Do You Perceive Your Writing?

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All work and no play

Like many writers, I am balancing my as-yet unpaid writing efforts with my paid day job.

At certain times of the year, my job requires me to work overtime.  One such occasion recently occurred, and at the end of my protracted work day, I found myself riding the elevator down with my boss, who is also an up-and-coming writer.

We got to chatting about how we would spend the rest of our respective evenings, or what remained of them.  This morphed into talk of how we usually spend our evenings, in particular as related to our writing.

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Be it a bang or a whimper, be sure to start your story with conflict (and a question)

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Story beginnings are tough; even I can recognize that.

Outlander posterWhen I’m getting ready to start a new writing project, I spend a lot of time developing and getting to know the main character.  One of the things I do is write a character monologue to help get a sense of his/her voice.

With my WIP, I had the brilliant idea to include this monologue as the novel’s opening – a decision for which members of my writing group rightly called me out when I read it to them.  Comments included,

“Nothing happened.”

“I was bored.”

“There was no action; it was just a bunch of information that didn’t mean anything to me yet.”

“I found it rather poignant.”

(I think I fell in love a bit with the guy who said that last one.  However he was already taken, plus he eventually quit writing and gave up the group, which suggests he didn’t really know enough about writing craft to give me proper advice.)

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I Never Miss a Deadline … Except When I Do (which is often)

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Deadline

So, my WIP, such as it is, is indeed still IP.

To date, despite have been writing seriously for some six years, I’ve yet to complete anything novel-length that stands as a fully completed story – a fact that haunts me continuously.

I’d originally resolved to finish my WIP last year by my birthday, which is at the end of November.

I didn’t make that deadline, but consoled myself with the fact that I had an entire other novel to write to finish the story, my previously anticipated duology in fact being a trilogy.

But there’s still something about deadlines – something definitive and binding, which I suppose is the whole point.  I almost never set deadlines.  I really don’t like them, even though my “type” is supposed to thrive on them.

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Is There a “Method” to Your Writing? (Writing advice from the acting world)

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Acting

Earlier this year, I met a writer who was also an actor, from whom I received some interesting writing advice.

It happened during a session of the writers’ group that I run.  At each meeting, we discuss a specific writing-related question that all attendees are given a chance to answer.

The question du jour inquired which element of writing craft folk felt they needed to learn more about.

When it came my turn to answer, I said character voice.

Specifically, the fact that I wanted to someday write a sequel to my WIP from the first person point of view of a different character, but was unsure how to make the voice distinct from the first person narrator of my WIP.

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