Landing on the top of the brightest colored flower,
Flapping it’s wings with so much power,
Suddenly it stands still,
Giving me such a thrill.
It’s wings so soft, so delicate, catch my eye,
The slightest touch may harm the tiny Monarch butterfly.
I watch as it flies away,
Eagerly awaiting it’s return another day!
I took her back to my house,
Gave her some milk and she even found a mouse,
But she didn’t look well as the day went by,
So I took her to the vet to see.
He smiled, then said to me,
“This cat will soon have babies!”
Soon after I was the proud owner of four kittens instead of one,
The man had said to give the kitten a home and that’s exactly what I’d done!
Have you ever had a story that you looked at and thought, maybe I’ll finish it…maybe I won’t? I have several times. A short story “The One They Call the Wolf” was one of them.
I got the idea of a soccer team waiting for a new player nickname, the wolf. A famous player whose team always made it to the championship. I wrote out a rough draft of the story and then put it aside not caring if I finished it or not. I came across it a few days later and decided I would finish it after all. Then I posted it on Helium…
A couple years later, I got an email from a publisher in Denmark. They said they found my story on Helium and wanted to use it in their textbook. It was totally incredible!
The One They Call the Wolf was published in, A Piece of Cake 7, in the summer of 2011, by Alinea in ?-Denmark.
I can’t believe I almost didn’t write this story. At the time not writing it seemed like a good idea. Now, I look back and think that I must have been crazy. It makes me wonder if some of the stories I’ve decided not to finish might be published today or in the future. Maybe I should go back and finish some of those stories…
When I was sixteen I got my first rejection. I was thrilled! I was just as excited to receive my first rejection as I was to receive my first acceptance. I read an article on the Internet saying that as soon as you get a rejection you’re a real writer. At that point, I was thrilled to be a “real” writer. Now I could care less about being a “real” writer. I just want to be published every time!
There was only rejection that made me want to quit writing. An editor told me my writing wasn’t good enough for the magazine (in so many words), but not only that, the editor sent me an e-mail rejection and pocketed the stamp on my SASE. I couldn’t believe I actually paid someone to reject me! Eventually, I got over it and started writing again. If I hadn’t, I never would have gotten published.
I still get rejections even though I’ve been published, they still get me down, but I haven’t thought about quitting since that one frustrating rejection. Still, as I said above, I’m human so I’m less productive until I get over the initial pangs of each rejection. One way I’ve found to get over them quickly is by having a project in progress at all times. One day I got a response from a magazine. I opened the envelope, saw it was a rejection, and tossed it on the side. I was too busy trying to get another manuscript in the mail because there was a deadline to meet. The rejection didn’t even bother me, and I haven’t thought about it since. By the time I remembered I had gotten the rejection, it was old news.
I also try to think about writers who wouldn’t be writers if they had given up after their rejections. Some of these authors you might have heard of…
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first book in the Harry Potter Series, was rejected 14 times.
Janet Evanovich: Collected rejection letters for ten years before she got published.
Stephen King: Carrie was rejected over 30 times.
Margaret Mitchell: Gone With the Wind was rejected 38 times. (One publisher told her that people didn’t want to read about the civil war.)
John Grisham: A Time to Kill was rejected 45 times.
Allan Eckert: With his Newberry Honor book, Incident At Hawk’s Hill, and his numerous Pulitzer prize nominations, would you believe he was rejected 1,147 consecutive times in 12 years before selling his first story?
Dr. Seuss: His first book was rejected by 26 publishers.
I read about one woman who was lucky enough to get her first manuscript published, but then the second manuscript got rejected. All writers go through rejection at some point during their career. The key is not to quit. If they had quit, they wouldn’t be published today. If I had quit, I would have never been published, and I wouldn’t be writing my blog.
Next time you get a rejection, comment here and let me know your home remedies for dealing with it. After that, try some chocolate! It’s good for the heart!
Lesson 1: Evaluate Your Career Goal
Is your goal to be freelance magazine writer or a novelist? This is an important question to answer because it’s pretty hard to get a novel published if you’re submitting exclusively to magazines. It’s also difficult to get articles published in magazines if you spend all of your time working on a novel. If you want to do both, then make sure the goal you choose allows you time to work on both.
Lesson 2: What are your writing and submission habits?
By analyzing my habits I realized that my submission rate is fine. The best way to be more productive is to write more, in turn, submitting more. Another thing I noticed is that last year I got an acceptance letter. This year none of my stories have been accepted and I submitted more this year than last year. Perhaps it was coincidence, but I think it’s because last I sent out my best work to compete in the marketplace. This year I submitted work that wasn’t up to snuff and couldn’t win in a fierce competition with other writers. Therefor last year, I was better off submitting less and submitting my best, then submitting more and submitting my worst.
Lesson 3: Don’t look at another writer’s goal and say I’m going to commit to that goal because it’s working for them. Find out why it’s working and ask yourself important questions to find out if it will work as well for you as it does for the other writer.
It began just like any other morning. The sun woke me up. I yawned. I rubbed my eyes. I was ready to begin my daily routine. That’s when the package arrived. I opened it to find my contributor copies of Bread for God’s Children and inside was my story, “Two Hannahs Are Better Than One!” It changed from an ordinary day to an amazing day. I never get tired of getting published and seeing my name in print.
The story behind the story:
The idea of a little sister wanting to be exactly like her big sister had been simmering for a while before I started writing the first draft. One day, I came up with a little different way of presenting this story and a very powerful climax. I began the written journey but I couldn’t finish the story because something was wrong and I had no idea what it was. So I put to the test a new technique I call the “Blank Page Rewrite” hoping it would solve the problem for me. I grabbed my purple gel pen and a blank sheet of paper. I started writing the story all over again, as if I hadn’t written any previous drafts. As I was writing the blank page draft I realized I had shifted the point of view from the big sister to the little sister. Would this change really save my story? Yes. Is point of view really that important? A few years ago I would have answered no. But after comparing the two drafts of my story I’ve changed my answer. Yes. Point of view is extremely important. The original draft was the big sister’s feelings about her little sister copying her all the time. The blank page draft was the little sister’s feelings about wanting to be like her sister and her reasons for always copying her. These are really two different stories. The story I was writing was one that the little sister needed to tell. It was her story, not her sister’s. I was very confident that I had written my best and I was ready to send off it to the publishing world to fend for itself. And it made it’s way into the second 2010 issue of Bread for God’s Children.
This amazing day ended like any other day. The sun set and a quarter moon appeared to take its place, surrounded by a thousand stars in the night sky. Only the star that was twinkling the brightest that night wasn’t the one that I was wishing on, it was the one that had made my wish come true.
A tent pitched and ready for the night,
Scary stories and ghostly tales born of the firelight.
No school, no homework, only fun books to read,
A summer schedule filled with riding bikes and climbing trees.
He’s down on one knee asking a young girl to be his bride,
A dream come true for the two of them walking side by side.
Summer begins on the twenty-first,
The sun shines bright–full of heat–ready to burst.
Casting shadows across the ground,
Giving off rays to turn the skin golden brown.
The sun is at it’s brightest in the early afternoon,
All this fun happens in the month of June!
I wrote a short story for kids. I rewrote, I revised, I polished. I typed up the cover letter and addressed the envelope. Then it hit me: an editor would be reading this story. So I decided not to send it out. I did another revision instead. The problem was the story kept getting worse with each revision. I read an article once that said if a writer revises too much they can edit the life out of a story. So I asked myself if I was editing the life out of the story. My answer was no. I couldn’t edit the life out of a story where there was no life to begin with. I figured at this point the only humane solution was to shoot the manuscript and put it out of it’s misery. It wasn’t such a bad idea. But then I remembered once I had a story that was over word count. I couldn’t figure out which words to cut. After I thought about committing literary homicide, I decided to rewrite the entire story. I stared at a blank sheet of paper. I thought only about the details that needed to be in the story and not about the previous draft. When I was finished with the blank page draft it was just under the word count. It was a perfect and much less dramatic solution. I decided to apply it to this story. I thought only about the details that needed to be in the story and nothing about the previous draft. I found it much easier to write in the excitement that had been lacking in the previous draft. Then I mixed together the best parts of both drafts. The result was a perfect story. My literary life support is now known as the “Blank Page Rewrite.” I apply it to my all my ailing stories before I give up on them.
Rebus: A story where pictures represent some of the words.
When I read the quote, “Rebuses look like they’d be easy because they’re short. But they can be some of the toughest writing you’ve ever tackled,” in Marianne Mitchell’s article, The Nuts and Bolts of Rebus Writing, I didn’t believe one word of it. Of course, that was before I tried to write my own rebus story.
The first problem was word count. I had too many words and had to cut some. After I cut what I thought were superfluous words the story started sounding choppy.
The second problem was nouns and verbs. In a rebus story the pictures represent nouns not verbs. I soon discovered that I had too many verbs and not enough nouns. I made several more revisions trying to remedy these problems. But the rebuses still weren’t making the cut.
So I’m going to try again. The rebus war is on! I never back down from a good writing challenge. I must pick up my best weapon (my purple gel pen) and prepare to do the battle with my new worthy foe!
Last summer I tried my hand at penning a picture book. I must say my hand moved that pen pretty well. I currently have four picture book manuscripts I let loose in the world of publishing, I have more in progress, and several ideas that I haven’t even started to develop yet.
Why did I start writing picture books?
There’s a pretty simple reason. I had an idea for one. I was struck with an idea that I never fully developed. Have you ever had one of those ideas that keeps nagging at you until you give it the attention it deserves? Well, that was the case with this idea. If I didn’t start doing something about it, I was going to explode. I sat down and starting working with this idea and developing it into a middle grade book. Well, that was my first mistake because it wasn’t a middle grade story. The character was about six years old, the problem he needed to solve wasn’t a middle grade problem, and the story didn’t need to be told in 30,000 words, 800 would do the trick. So I rewrote the story and my first picture book was born.
After I finished writing that one, another idea floated into my mind, this time it was specifically a picture book idea. Then one after another, all these ideas kept flooding my mind, like when the closet is stuffed full of clothes, books, and other things. The when you open the door, everything falls out burying you underneath dirty laundry? That’s what happens to my brain when I get ideas, only I’m not buried under dirty laundry. I’m buried under inspiration and creativity!
My short story, “HomeRun Malone” has been accepted for publication by Boys’ Quest!
The story behind the story:
This story started out as a submission to a different magazine. I wrote the story based on their guidelines. One of the guidelines for that magazine was a maximum word count of 800 words. Shortly after submitting the story, I received a rejection with the words no writer wants to read or hear: “We’re sorry but your story isn’t right for us at this time.”
After that, I ate some chocolate, then I hung my head for awhile, then I came back with a vengeance. I will not declare defeat! While surfing the Internet, I came across the themes for Boys’ Quest magazine and one of them was for baseball.
I thought, Hey! I’ve got a story about baseball. It would be perfect for Boys’ Quest! All I had to do was revise it from 800 words to 500 words (not an easy task, but not the hardest task either.) I immediately set to work.
Mission accomplished, I printed out the story, the cover letter, self-addressed envelope, and sent it out. I got busy working on other projects. I completely forgot about the submission.
Time passed. One day I received another SASE. I didn’t even bother to open it until the end of the day. I was busy and I knew what the letter would say, “”We’re sorry but your story isn’t right for us at this time.” I opened it and only half read it. All I needed to see was “Sorry,” and I filed it away with the others I have collected.
A few days again passed. Another SASE came back to me (what an ugly sight!). I knew it was a rejection. It was thin. I figured they just forgot to put the manuscript in the envelope (perhaps I had become a little pessimistic), so I tossed it on the side. Again, I was busy and didn’t have time to look it at it.
A little while later, I was sitting down at the computer waiting for a website to load. I broke down and opened the envelope. Bracing myself to read the word “Sorry,” and then file it away with my growing stack of rejections. I read the words, but instead of seeing “Sorry,” I read, “We have found a place for your article.” I screamed so loud my family thought something was terribly wrong. On the contrary, it was something wonderful. I had just been accepted for publication!
I’ve been accepted for publication before by a local magazine and some online ezines, some by email, some by phone, some by letter. Each time, no matter what type of communication, I get this wonderful feeling inside. I don’t think it will go away even if I’m published a million times!
A poem is a reflection one’s soul. Or so I’ve heard.
I wrote my first poem when I was fifteen. It’s called Snow, and I still like it a lot, even though my writing has progressed since then. At the library, I found an advertisement for the “Sparrowgrass” poetry contest (anybody know if this is still around?). Well, anyway, I had to have the submission postmarked within a couple days. I didn’t have a poem written, I’d never written a poem before. I paced around my bedroom pad and pencil in hand and made a list of things I liked. One of those things is Snow. I don’t remember how I wrote the poem.. It was a long time ago. Actually, I didn’t even know how to write a poem. I only knew that it had to rhyme:
Snow
When snow falls,
The winter calls.
Time for snowmen to be built,
Time for sledding down the hill,
Making angels in the snow,
Making white, fluffy balls to throw.
Then, by the end of the day,
As the light begins to slip away,
The day becomes darker, and the wind colder, too,
You think of the hot chocolate, waiting at home for you.
A poem has to mean something to you, but it doesn’t have to be positive. I like snow, so when I wrote Snow, I made it a very positive and upbeat poem. But that doesn’t mean you can’t write about something if you don’t like it. Here’s an example of an upbeat poem from the opposite view point. Still titled Snow:
When snow falls
the winter calls
I hang up on it
I can’t stand this,
This town, of the yucky brown snow, I want to rid,
When it’s slushy and gunky, cars on the streets they skid.
Snow, snow, go away. I don’t want to see you ever again, you’re so messy!
Polar ice caps, keep on melting, global warming–get a move on already!
Just remember to add feeling to your poems. Good or bad. The second version is also funny. The original version, though happy and positive, wasn’t funny. This poem is saying you don’t like something, but it’s done in a funny way making it exciting to the reader or listener.
How to come up with ideas
I get ideas for poems pretty much from the same places I get ideas for stories. I find inspiration everywhere I go. Be alert to your surroundings. Ideas are everywhere!
Traveling:
A lot of my poems were written while I was traveling. I went to California to visit my brother and sister and drove through Arizona and New Mexico to get there. That inspired the first lines of my poem San Diego:
Drive through Colorado,
Arizona and New Mexico,
It’s not long before San Diego,
“Butterflies” was inspired by the Butterfly House at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.
“Rocky Mountains” was written after driving through the beautiful state of Colorado and the city of Ouray.
“Mackinac Island” is in my home state of Michigan. I haven’t been there since I was really little and I always wanted to go back. By writing this poem I was able to take a trip back there again.
“The Million Dollar Highway” is about a stretch of road between Ouray and Silverton in Colorado.
I wrote about “Mission Bay” in San Diego.
I was inspired to write “Georgia Rain” when I ate a Georgia peach in Georgia.
I wrote about “The Ocean” in Florida.
Of course, you don’t have to travel across the country to get ideas for poem
A poem is a reflection one’s soul. Or so I’ve heard.
I wrote my first poem when I was fifteen. It’s called Snow, and I still like it a lot, even though my writing has progressed since then. At the library, I found an advertisement for the “Sparrowgrass” poetry contest (anybody know if this is still around?). Well, anyway, I had to have the submission postmarked within a couple days. I didn’t have a poem written, I’d never written a poem before. I paced around my bedroom pad and pencil in hand and made a list of things I liked. One of those things is Snow. I don’t remember how I wrote the poem.. It was a long time ago. Actually, I didn’t even know how to write a poem. I only knew that it had to rhyme:
Snow
When snow falls,
The winter calls.
Time for snowmen to be built,
Time for sledding down the hill,
Making angels in the snow,
Making white, fluffy balls to throw.
Then, by the end of the day,
As the light begins to slip away,
The day becomes darker, and the wind colder, too,
You think of the hot chocolate, waiting at home for you.
A poem has to mean something to you, but it doesn’t have to be positive. I like snow, so when I wrote Snow, I made it a very positive and upbeat poem. But that doesn’t mean you can’t write about something if you don’t like it. Here’s an example of an upbeat poem from the opposite view point. Still titled Snow:
When snow falls
the winter calls
I hang up on it
I can’t stand this,
This town, of the yucky brown snow, I want to rid,
When it’s slushy and gunky, cars on the streets they skid.
Snow, snow, go away. I don’t want to see you ever again, you’re so messy!
Polar ice caps, keep on melting, global warming–get a move on already!
Just remember to add feeling to your poems. Good or bad. The second version is also funny. The original version, though happy and positive, wasn’t funny. This poem is saying you don’t like something, but it’s done in a funny way making it exciting to the reader or listener.
How to come up with ideas
I get ideas for poems pretty much from the same places I get ideas for stories. I find inspiration everywhere I go. Be alert to your surroundings. Ideas are everywhere!
Traveling:
A lot of my poems were written while I was traveling. I went to California to visit my brother and sister and drove through Arizona and New Mexico to get there. That inspired the first lines of my poem San Diego:
Drive through Colorado,
Arizona and New Mexico,
It’s not long before San Diego,
“Butterflies” was inspired by the Butterfly House at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.
“Rocky Mountains” was written after driving through the beautiful state of Colorado and the city of Ouray.
“Mackinac Island” is in my home state of Michigan. I haven’t been there since I was really little and I always wanted to go back. By writing this poem I was able to take a trip back there again.
“The Million Dollar Highway” is about a stretch of road between Ouray and Silverton in Colorado.
I wrote about “Mission Bay” in San Diego.
I was inspired to write “Georgia Rain” when I ate a Georgia peach in Georgia.
I wrote about “The Ocean” in Florida.
Of course, you don’t have to travel across the country to get ideas for poem
My short story, “HomeRun Malone and His Lucky Bat” has been accepted for publication by Boys’ Quest!
The story behind the story:
This story started out as a submission to a different magazine. I wrote the story based on their guidelines. One of the guidelines for that magazine was a maximum word count of 800 words. Shortly after submitting the story, I received a rejection with the words no writer wants to read or hear: “We’re sorry but your story isn’t right for us at this time.”
After that, I ate some chocolate, then I hung my head for awhile, then I came back with a vengeance. I will not declare defeat! While surfing the Internet, I came across the themes for Boys’ Quest magazine and one of them was for baseball.
I thought, Hey! I’ve got a story about baseball. It would be perfect for Boys’ Quest! All I had to do was revise it from 800 words to 500 words (not an easy task, but not the hardest task either.) I immediately set to work.
Mission accomplished, I printed out the story, the cover letter, self-addressed envelope, and sent it out. I got busy working on other projects. I completely forgot about the submission.
Time passed. One day I received another SASE. I didn’t even bother to open it until the end of the day. I was busy and I knew what the letter would say, “”We’re sorry but your story isn’t right for us at this time.” I opened it and only half read it. All I needed to see was “Sorry,” and I filed it away with the others I have collected.
A few days again passed. Another SASE came back to me (what an ugly sight!). I knew it was a rejection. It was thin. I figured they just forgot to put the manuscript in the envelope (perhaps I had become a little pessimistic), so I tossed it on the side. Again, I was busy and didn’t have time to look it at it and wanted to remain upbeat.
A little while later, I was sitting down at the computer waiting for a website to load. I broke down and opened the envelope. Bracing myself to read the word “Sorry,” and then file it away with my growing stack of rejections. I read the words, but instead of seeing “Sorry,” I read, “We have found a place for your article.” I screamed so loud my family thought something was terribly wrong. On the contrary, it was something wonderful. I had just been accepted for publication!
I’ve been accepted for publication before by a local magazine and some online ezines, some by email, some by phone, some by letter. Each time, no matter what type of communication, I get this wonderful feeling inside. I don’t think it will go away even if I’m published a million times!
The deadline loomed in the distance! It was time for me to do nothing but write. Everything else in my life took ‘low’ or ‘no’ priority. My aunt brought to my attention a short story contest in a local magazine she read. She told me on Monday, (the deadline was Friday at midnight)–sheesh, talk about short notice. The short stories I had been writing up until then were for kids, and because this was an adult magazine, I had to start from scratch, so I began writing a romance story. I didn’t see the other side of my notepad for days. Talk about cutting it close–Friday night at 11:50 after writing, rewriting, polishing, then having my aunt, sister, and mother read the story, I was ready to submit. Luckily, I was submitting by e-mail, so it would get there in plenty of time.
Honestly, I hate to admit it but I forgot about the contest, mostly because I was behind on a lot of stuff. I was working on other writing projects, too, so my mind was far from the contest.
Next month, as I was getting ready to go out, the phone rang. It was from a woman I didn’t know, but she asked for me. She told me she was from Everything! Magazine and that I’d won the short story contest. I was ready to hang up on the lady. I was busy. I had somewhere to be and I thought it was like getting junk mail that says, “You’re the big winner of one million dollars!” I’m thinking yeah right, I won what contest? She went on to say how much she liked my story, Another Chance. That’s when it clicked, and silently, so she couldn’t hear me on the other end of the line, I jumped up and down. I was so excited. I blanked out everything she said after that–like when I was supposed to get the money and the copies of the magazine, etc.
She also wanted me to send her a bio and picture to include with the story. I’m thinking okay I can do that and she asked me how soon I could get it to her and I said, not thinking, “tonight!” She thought that was a great. I may have been a little too quick to speak. I was going to be gone all day. When was I going to send the bio? Well, I thought about it as much as possible the whole time I was gone, and when I returned home (at 10:00pm), I typed up the bio and got it off to her as promised.
That became my first paying publication. Seeing the title of my story with my name underneath it published in a magazine was amazing. It was a dream come true. I’ll never forget how it felt to be published for the first time!
Does anybody out there have as much trouble as I do with the middle of the novel? That’s the point where I start pulling out my hair. I end up putting the novel aside, and start writing the begining and the end of another one. This is a bad habit, especially when there’s a deadline looming, and worse, the novel you can’t seem to finish is the one that has to be produced.
I usually get the beginning and ending right away, kind of like a package deal, the beginning doesn’t come without the end and visa versa. Never have I had a middle and no end or a middle and no beginning. Just once I’d like to get a middle first, and then fill in the blanks of the beginning and the end instead of filling in the blanks of the middle.
But I guess if writing a novel was easy, everyone would do it.
In my opinion, the endings and beginnings are easier to write because there’s no connection between them. The middle is where the clues are laid out for us to collect to solve the case along with the detective, or where we watch the romance blossom between the characters.
The killer can’t be caught in the middle and the couple can’t be together in the middle; otherwise, it would be the end of the story.
Example:
The beginning:
A house catches on fire.
The end:
The guy who set the fire is caught.
This makes for a very short, very uninteresting story. What happened in between? That’s what everybody wants to know and that’s what the middle tells us. The middle ties the beginning and the end together.
The beginning:
A house catches on fire.
The middle:
The owner doesn’t care about finding the arsonist and doesn’t report the fire because, if he calls the police, they’ll find the drugs he’s hiding in the basement. The woman who lives next door is an amateur detective. She thinks something is fishy and begins to investigate. She finds the drugs in the basement and calls a cop (who she is secretly in love with). Together they investigate the case. Clues are laid out to tell us “whodunit.” The guy sees how good the woman is at investigating and falls for her.
The end:
The clues add up and the arsonist is caught, the drug dealer is arrested, and the couple confesses their undying love for each other.
That makes the story more exciting. There’s the fire, the drugs, and the romance. The middle is as important to the story as the beginning and the end. It shouldn’t be skimped on, even if that would make the writing easier.
If you get stuck in the middle, decide what needs to be written in your story to make the story flow. Unveil a clue. Lead up to something that will happen at the end. Introduce a conflict or mystery. Make sure there are enough scenes to show the attraction growing between the two characters. Make sure there are enough obstacles for the character to overcome so they can get what they want in the end. Make sure everything the reader needs to know is explained in middle.
Dig deeper and learn more about your characters, something that can make the story a little more interesting (and a little bit longer).
One of the hardest parts of writing for me is to write description. It’s still difficult for me, but I am better at it now than I was before. Why? Because I read every writing book I could get my hands on and every article I could find on the Internet. I searched every message board and blog I could find to get advice and opinions from other writers. All these efforts contributed to my writing skills, but I believe what helped me the most was reading books, not books on the art of writing, but novels, kids’ books, romances, mysteries, etc. I don’t read the books only for pleasure. I go through and analyze the description. I type out descriptive passages that never go in stories. They’re just for practice. Every time I write an idea summary, I try to write it in a descriptive way so I’m always incorporating description in my writing. I will continue to do that because I feel that helps me the most. Writing is what I really want to do with my life, and I’m not to going to give it up because it’s difficult in one area. I’m going to take the time to perfect my description writing. A writer once told me not to take a writing course because all it would teach me was “description.” Some writers don’t have a hard time with it, but I do, and description is what I need.
What’s the best way to learn how to write? It’s different for everyone. Here is some helpful information that works for me.
Read:
If you want to write novels, read novels, but don’t read just novels, read articles, romance novels, mystery novels, short stories, comics, and poems. Everything you read has been written. An article in the newspaper is written. A novel is written. Poems are written. They can all teach you a little more about the craft. Sometimes I go to the library or a bookstore and just read the backs of books. Even if I know I’m not going read the book, I’ll still read the back or maybe the first page for ideas. This way I can see the writer’s style or some descriptive passages or how the dialogue is written without having to read the whole book.
Watch:
TV shows are written. Movies are written. Even news programs are written. I’ve been complimented on my dialogue more than once from people. Writing dialogue is easier for me than writing description. I watch TV more than some people, but not as much as others. TV is all dialogue. Actually, watching TV helps my dialogue more than reading a book. I’m not suggesting becoming a couch potato and supergluing the remote to your hand, but everyone watches TV. You can learn from it. Study the story formats and the dialogue. TV can even help inspire ideas. Because a lot of people have commented on my dialogue, I have considered getting into writing for TV. I bought a book about writing for television. It says not to just “watch” TV, but to analyze the show and see what makes the show the way it is. This is the key. Basic writing is always the same. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. Each show, however, is written differently, just like all books are written differently. They might follow a basic formula, but the execution of the idea and the combination of the characters are all different. Study the shows, study the dialogue, and study the writing format. Characters might grow and change a little bit during the course of a show or a series, but they have the same characteristics in each show throughout the series. They act the same way, they have the same thoughts, values, and beliefs.
Listen:
Listen to people talking, not just to the dialogue on TV, but in the store, at a restaurant, when you meet someone on the street, or at a p
There is no “secret” to getting published. I have read articles by published writers who claim they have the “secret,” and it’s always something different. In one article, the writer had a sample cover letter that she used. She stated that she hadn’t gotten rejected since she started using the letter, so I copied the letter word for word. I only changed my name, address, story title, and the magazine where I was sending it. I received a rejection slip from the magazine. Well, that “secret” didn’t work.
I read “never write your age or anything personal in a cover letter.” I sent a poem to about ten print magazines. In the cover letter I told the editors I was 18 years old, how I wanted to make a career as a writer and touch peoples’ hearts. I hoped that my article had a place in their magazine. I didn’t list any publishing credits because I didn’t have any. I was rejected by all but one magazine.
One editor saw my passion and my talent for writing in the cover letter I wrote. Even though she couldn’t use the poem, she requested I write an article. I did. She accepted it. I then sent the article to other magazines, even the ones that rejected the poem. I didn’t include a cover letter with any of those submissions.
Some magazines accepted it, and some rejected it. One editor said that even though she couldn’t find a place for it her magazine, she would send it to two other magazines. One of those two did accept it. The other didn’t. This cover letter “secret” is no secret.
I’ve found there are no “secrets” to get published, and if there are any “secrets,” no one knows them, or, they aren’t revealing them to others. From experience, though, I do have one piece of information I know will help you. The magazines I first got published in were either local or small, and just starting out. You will have a better chance getting published in a local kids’ magazine than Highlights for Children. I had a better chance with Everything! Magazine (which is local) than Good Housekeeping or Woman’s World (who actually rejected my story, Another Chance). So was my story bad? It was published, and I got paid for it once. How bad can it be? It’s not. It’s luck and the mood of the publisher. If they need five stories and yours is the sixth, you will get rejected.
The three non-secrets to getting published:
1) Persistence. Never give up. You can’t get published if you don’t send anything out.
2) Write your best. Don’t send in a piece that is “mediocre” or “bad” just to make sure you get something out. Take the time to polish it. Don’t take forever, and don’t use that as an excuse not to submit anything. Make sure it’s free of errors. Make sure it reads the way you think it should. Have someone else read it to make sure you didn’t miss anything.
3) Perfect timing. If the magazine needs a story, and yours is there instead of someone else’s, you will have a better chance of getting published.
You want to write the best novel or short story you can, but you have no idea where to start. Writing isn’t a scientific formula. You don’t have to do one thing after another in a certain order, but there are two stages that do have to be done in order.
One stage is the creative stage, the invention stage. This is where there are no rules, not even grammar rules. You can write an outline for your story if you want. I choose not to work from outlines. I like to write the story as I go along. Sometimes I will write a little out of sequence if I think of an idea or scene I want to get down on paper. Anything can happen in the creative stage.
The revision stage is where the organization comes in, putting the scenes in the correct order, correcting grammatical errors, making sure others will understand the story, and finally to make sure it flows and all the information and facts are correct. In this article, I will be talking about the first stage, the creative stage.
In this first stage, be creative, think outside the box, come up with something different, and, yes, even break some of the rules. It’s fun!
What comes first? The characters? The plot? The title?
It depends on what inspires me first.
Most of the time the plot comes first, but I have had stories where the characters have come first, then I build the plot around the character. Sometimes my characters are a result of the plot.
I have a series in progress about a twelve year old girl who solves mysteries. At first, I only had the character. The plots for each story came after I created the character and then I put her into situations based on her character.
When I wrote Another Chance about Keri and Mark, I had the plot first: A woman refuses her boyfriend’s proposal in high school, and then later realizes she still loves him.
At the same time I created a secondary character, Lisa, Keri’s best friend, a work-a-holic who doesn’t let things like love interfere with her life. She is always professional no matter what she’s feeling inside. After telling Keri’s story, I decided it was time for Lisa’s so I built a plot around Lisa’s character. So, in Another Chance for Lisa, the character came first.
In another work I have in progress, I had an empty place in the story. I knew I needed another character, and I needed her to be the co-star of the story. She had to match the main character of the story. I started creating a character. As I was thinking about the character she needed to be, I remembered I had a character like her already, but she was part of another story. She didn’t fit in the other story so I took her out and imported her into the new story.
If you come up with an exciting character, but you don’t have a story for them, that’s okay, just create the character! If you come up with an exciting plot, but it doesn’t fit the character you created, put the character aside and create characters that will fit in the plot. Or, put the plot aside and create a plot that will fit the character you created. Pretty soon, you will have a list of characters and plots. You can use them separately or mix and match. It will be like an all you can write buffet!
Does the title ever come before the plot? Absolutely. I have lists of titles as well as plots and characters. Sometimes I build a plot around the title. For example, when I wrote another article on this blog, Waiting on the Muse, I had the title first. Obviously, this article would be about ideas, but I didn’t have a specific subject in mind, just a snazzy title on paper. Based on the title, it could have been what to do while you’re waiting for inspiration. But as I started writing and thinking about wha
This is a popular game among writers. Here are some ways it can help you in your writing.
In my previous article, Waiting on the Muse, I talked about using memories to inspire story ideas, but sometimes your memories won’t appeal to the reader. When I was eight years old, I went to camp for a couple weeks one summer. Nothing exciting happened, nothing was stolen, nobody got lost, nobody got in trouble for breaking the rules, nobody found buried treasure, and nobody got hurt. This made the camp directors happy, but it won’t make the reader happy. There was no excitement, no action, and no obstacles which is what a good story needs.
At camp, we ate, played games, went swimming, and were able to buy snacks at the snack bar all day long. That was a lot of fun, but that doesn’t make a good story, even if I described all the food in glorious detail.
Imagine the blurb on the back of the book reading “eight year old girl has a fun time eating at summer camp.” I’ll tell you, even if I wrote it, I wouldn’t pick up the book, and I wouldn’t promote it for anyone else to buy. So why would I even bother writing about a girl going to summer camp? Because it’s a basic idea, and that is where What if comes into play and turns the basic concept into an exciting story.
What if I wrote about a girl who found buried treasure at camp? At camp we played baseball.
What if the girl in story couldn’t play baseball? She decides to spend all day in her cabin and not come out until they changed to an activity she could do. While she’s in her cabin, she discovers a note from a previous camper. The camper mentions where she hid some buried treasure. Now…the story is getting good. There is a crisis and a mystery. Buried treasure is much more exciting than eating… How much better could summer camp be?
Remember the story in “Waiting on the Muse” about a girl who goes to Nashville to find fame and fortune?
What if this girl drops out of school, goes to Nashville without her parent’s consent. What if she’s only 16. She can’t get a recording contract without her parents. She lies and says she’s 18. Maybe she runs into legal problems. This slows down her chance at fame and stardom. Finally, she has to go back home and face her parents. What? That doesn’t sound good. Well how about this:
What If the girl isn’t 16, she’s 26. She just finished getting her MBA and her father is ready for her to take over the family business, but she drops a bombshell. She’s going to Nashville to become a singer. Obviously, she’s over 18 so her father can’t make her stay home, but he’s hurt that she’s leaving. What if she only ends up singing on street corners and in sleazy bars? She’s taking a chance on her dreams but fame and fortune seem further away in Nashville than they did back in her small town. Does she go back and beg her father’s forgiveness, or does she keep going whether she makes it or not?
What if also comes in handy when you’re stuck with a story. Let’s take the example from, Waiting on the Muse, the orphan story:
A girl is adopted by a couple living on a farm who can’t have kids. When the girl finds out they don’t love her she runs away and stows away on a pirate ship.
Now, I’m not thrilled with the scene of the girl stowing away on a pirate ship. For one thing I don’t know anything about pirates so I can’t even describe what a pirate ship looks like; however, if the pirate ship was important to t
Ask some writers, and they’ll say getting ideas is one of the hardest parts about writing. Ask me, and I’ll tell you getting an idea is the easiest part about writing. I could give away all of my ideas on this blog, and, then in a few days, I would come up with another hundred ideas. Actually, the hardest part for me is executing the ideas – making them look on paper the same way I see them in my imagination. It’s like singing in your head. A song is stuck in your head. You can sing it perfectly, but open your mouth, and it doesn’t come out right. It’s the same with writing. Sometimes, I find I come up with an idea that sounds great in my head, but when I go to put it on paper, I suppose you could say that from my brain to the paper, it “loses something in the transition.” Now, this could be a good thing, because I don’t think many people would want to be inside my head.
Here are some of the ways the muse gets in touch with me:
Memories:
These generate good story ideas. Most people probably don’t want to know about me. Something that’s precious to me might not have any effect on someone else. That doesn’t mean I stop considering my memories as ideas. Memories can be the basis for a great fiction story. Events don’t have to be written the way they happened. I can take the basic idea of a memory and make it more dramatic or exaggerated. Some of the things I’ve done in my life could make good stories. Summer camp, concerts, traveling, writing a story that won a contest, and, now, I’m starting my own blog. Memories are not copyrighted. Good, bad, or indifferent, memories add something to your copy and create excitement as well as a myriad of emotions.
TV, Books, Movies:
Ideas are not copyrighted, just their execution, the characters, and the combination of information and scenes. Let’s take Anne of Green Gables for example. This is a story about an orphan who is adopted. That basic concept isn’t owned, but if you add the other details like, an orphan named Anne, with an E, Shirley, moving in with Marrilla and Matthew, sister and brother, who only adopt her because they thought the adoption agency had a boy for them, and they needed help on the farm. They only let her stay because she has no place go, but they grow to love her more and more throughout the story.
This doesn’t mean that another story can’t be created using the idea of an orphan being adopted by a couple owning a farm. The characters, and the combination of Anne, being a writer, meeting a boy named Gilbert, having a best friend named Diana, and growing up to become a teacher, is owned and copyrighted. Of course, in your version of the story, the character can also meet a boy and have a best friend, the character of a writer can be used, or the character of a teacher can be used, just not exactly the same way the previous author did it. Make the character a writer, but not a teacher, or visa versa.
How about instead of a brother and sister adopting her because they need help on the farm, a couple adopts her? They can’t have a children. The couple doesn’t really love her, they just like the idea of having a child because that’s what’s supposed to happen. Now, the girl finds this out, runs away and stows away on a pirate ship…okay maybe not. But it definitely isn’t Anne of Green Gables, and it’s no longer copyrighted by L.M. Montgomery. All that you are using is the basic idea of an orphan being adopted by a couple who owns a farm which isn’t copyrighted in the first place.
People Watching:
One thing I like to do is watch people. Ideas can be anywhere. I’ve been sitting in restaurants or stores and ideas have popped into
Hi my name is Elizabeth Wrobel. Welcome to my blog.
I’ll be sharing my first hand experiences about writing and publishing. I’ll be posting my own writings. So keep checking back for updates.
