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Facebook – General
Today has felt odd. Why? It’s because I should’ve been at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School for the next few days, catching up with old friends, learning so much from the talks and after dinner speakers etc. Am missing everyone but can’t wait to be back there next year. It really can’t come around quickly enough!
Meanwhile, back in very, very hot Hampshire, I am cracking on with editing work and CFT interviews. I’m also working on my long term non-fiction project. Though I have the nasty feeling my laptop with its wonderful fan is probably feeling cooler than I am right now!😀😀
Another night where my laptop (with its fab stand and inbuilt fan) is far cooler than I am. Mind you, not that I have ever had any claims to be cool!
I was chatting earlier with a writing chum via email about backing up your work at regular intervals. I lost an evening’s work once thanks to a power cut! I was about to back everything up and shut the PC down for the night when the cut happened and I just wanted to scream.
Fortunately, with power back on, I could recall a lot of what I’d written and typed up as much as I could remember as quickly as possible. I took the view that whatever I could not recall, I would at least get the gist of from what I had typed up and so it proved.
Lesson learned! I now back up every 20/25 minutes or so to memory stick, hard disk, and cloud. I’m not getting caught that way again.
Worth the hassle of backing up nigh on continuously? Oh yes! For the peace of mind alone, it’s worth it.
Still sweltering in sunny Hampshire. Am grateful Lady is not frightened of thunder. That may come in useful later in the week. Dilemmas of a middle-aged woman Part 1: am I having a hot flush or is it just the ruddy temperature outside? Hmm…
Hope you had a fab weekend. Saw family which was lovely. Glad to be at my desk after a hectic Monday. Now have second fan in the office going at full tilt so, what with my laptop having its own (via its stand), and my other one, some fresh air is being generated. But will be very grateful when the weather cools down (as will Lady). Can’t say the hot weather does much for my productivity though I do find myself singing “Just One Cornetto” to the tune of O Sole Mio when the latter is played on Classic FM! Those of you of a certain age will know why!
Looking forward to sharing a very special interview on Friday. Will have a humorous piece up on Cafelit later in the week too. Flash fiction is great to read at Open Prose Mic Nights as I did last year at Swanwick. Doesn’t take long and a punchline ending usually goes down well at events like that. Hope to do this again next year. (Many thanks to #PennyBlackburn for taking the pic of me reading at last year’s Swanwick. The others were taken by me last year).
Many congratulations to #PaulaReadman on her launch of her debut novel, Stone Angels, today.
Publication day is always a very special moment. It’s just a pity you can’t bottle up the way it makes you feel so you can uncork it again at times when you need a bit of a boost!
Behind the scenes of any publication, there is a lot of hard work. There is a quote about swans which says they look serene but underneath the water their legs are paddling hard to keep them going. Well, pretty much the same is true for writers!
We paddle hard when we write our first drafts, edit them, send those stories out in to the big, bad world, and then cope with rejections. Does it end there? No! You look at your story again, improve what can be improved and submit to more publishers. You always seek to improve what you do. You keep on writing. You keep on editing.
So yes there’s an awful lot of paddling going on!
But publication day? That’s the well earned serene bit (and so richly deserved by the author too!). (The first two images below are of Paula and her debut novel and kindly supplied by Paula for my recent CFT series on The Writing Game – and What to Watch For).
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
Phew, it’s hot! I don’t use the weather much in any of my stories, partly because I would find it hard to avoid cliche. (It was a dark and stormy night, anyone? Mind you, I do love the Peanuts cartoons that have Snoopy writing and using that as one of “his” lines!).
In my flash fiction, with the limited word count, I have to work out what is vital for readers to know. The weather is rarely amongst vital details! I can imply it though. If I get a character to wear a raincoat, that would be enough for a reader to realise the weather was likely to be wet without me spelling it out further.
And this is one of the things I love about flash. It encourages the writer to use implication and I know as a reader I love being able to work things out for myself.
I hope to share a cover reveal for Tripping the Flash Fantastic in due course. Will keep you posted.
As with From Light to Dark and Back Again, I hope to have a cyberlaunch and again will flag up details. I’ve “been” to a few cyberlaunches now and they are all great fun. You do feel drained afterwards but in a good way!
Best ways to support author friends then – no real surprises here but all of these things ARE appreciated!
1. Pop along to their cyber (or other kinds) of book launch and be the friendly face offering support.
2. If you’ve read the book concerned, please, please, please review it on Amazon and Goodreads. It doesn’t have to be a long review either.
3. For a cyberlaunch, someone asking useful questions helps get the discussions going. and encourages others to join in. Think along the lines of helping the author to talk about what made them write the book, what inspired their characters etc. Writers love talking about that kind of thing.
4. Share their posts/tweets etc.
And when launches are possible again in book shops etc., standing your author friend a cup of tea after the event will always go down well!😊
When I’m reading stories, what am I looking for first and foremost? Well no surprises here when I say the character has got to grip me. If they don’t, I’m unlikely to be reading their story to its conclusion.
But how can you make a character grip an unknown reader? There is no single answer to that but what helps is:-
1. Ensuring your character has an absolute right to have their story told. What do I mean by that? From a reading viewpoint, a reader shouldn’t be able to imagine the story WITHOUT your character.
2. As well as having a reason for being, the character has to have an understandable and strong enough motivation to see the challenges of the story through to a satisfactory conclusion. (Doesn’t necessarily have to be a happy one. The character’s motivation doesn’t necessarily need to be entirely virtuous either. I can understand a character who steals to provide for someone else, say. It doesn’t mean I approve of stealing – I don’t! – but you get the gist).
3. There has to be a point of change. Something has GOT to happen and it has to be vitally important to the character.
4. There have to be obstacles in the character’s way, including other characters who have got good reasons of their own to block Character A.
Getting that right takes time and practice but makes for cracking stories!
The fan in the office is probably working harder than I am right now… I may’ve mentioned I don’t like the heat much!😀😀
(Lady is fine and keeping cool. For a young dog, who is generally as daft as the proverbial brush, she’s sensible on this which has come as a relief to us and fortunately we are surrounded by trees so lots of shade).
One thing I like about flash is I can draft a story (100 to 250 words, my favourite) in about 15 minutes. It will need a lot of editing to get it into shape, but that’s okay. What’s nice about this is on those days when I know I haven’t got a lot of time, I know exactly how I’ll be spending those pockets of time which might otherwise go to waste.
Yep, drafting flash fiction stories ready for submission later on. And knowing I’ve got a story down ready for working on later always makes me feel better. (Unlike this wretched heat…!).
Goodreads Author Blog – Reading In Hot Weather
Currently in the UK as I write this (8th August 2020), most of the country is experiencing a heatwave (30+degrees C).
Yes, yes, I know! I can think of several places where that would be considered to be on the cold side!).
But give me the fact most of us here are finding it hot!
So do you find it easier to read in hot weather, given most of us are not going to feel like doing that much?
Or do you find it harder to read because what you really want is to cool off and reading in itself isn’t going to do that?
Or do you welcome reading because it’s a great distraction from feeling too hot?
I find it easier to read magazines and the shorter form of fiction when I’m finding the weather a bit much. Now is not the time to tackle War and Peace I think!
So over to you then! What do you prefer to read when the thermometer is on the crazy side? What would you recommend?
Allison Symes: Collected Works 