Archive for October, 2013
17 Struggles Of Getting Ready For NaNoWriMo. This is so cute!!!
2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What a quick easy book to read! I came away with a lot of little nuggets that will be quite handy as of midnight tomorrow night. I have been sitting on an idea I started on during Camp NaNo. I managed about 19K but a whole lot of the story has resided in my head. Ms. Aaron’s book helped me feel there is hope for this little book. So, NaNoWriMo here I come, ready or not!
I am not sure that even with my Dragon Naturally Speaking I will be able to get that kind of word count the title implies but I will say that prep work before starting a book and daily prep work will help me get a better, faster, tighter story.
Now, on to editing. I had hoped for more. The author uses her own books to demonstrate what works and how to edit, but if you have never read her books it leaves one flat. Actually, that can be said of the writing faster part of the book, too. I would have loved to have a clickable link to charts or spreadsheets to aid the readers and other, commonly read novels as examples.
Still in all, it is worth the read.
The Apocalypse Gene by Suki Michelle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Disclaimer: This was a free Kindle book from BookRooster from quite a while ago, for an honest review.
So here goes. Um… I am so torn. There were parts I liked and others had me yawning. And I don’t think it’s the parts meant to be boring. I loved getting to know Olyvia and her mother and live with them through the dark and depressing life. I thought it adorable to get the little romance going. I could even get into the little computer icons, even though it seemed to take away from the problem at hand. Even still, I managed to shift gears and enjoy the cuteness.
War! What is it good for? I suppose in this case it is to cure cancer. Not a bad goal, I suppose, but really! During all the Micah parts and the war parts I got so bored that I had to let my text-to-speech yammer on while I read emails. I tuned in to learn how the story concluded. It was a nice ending.
Another thing I had a hard time with was the philosophy of the author thrown in quite obviously. The gods and demons and all that left me … meh?
Look, maybe it was just me. A lot of people have given high ranks to this book, so read it yourself and let me know what you think.
Thanks http://prayingforoneday.wordpress.com/ for show this and nae50.worpress.com for reminding me.
I love Kristen Lamb’s Blog!
All right. We’re discussing ways to fuel the muse before NaNo. Yesterday, we discussed movies and how to use them, and today we’ll delve a tad further. One of the major reasons many writers fail to complete the story is there isn’t a single CORE story problem in need of resolution. The story dies because it lacks a beating heart and a skeleton.
Stories with no hearts and skeletons are primordial adverb ooze and not good for much other than scaring small children.
A great trick NYTBSA (and spectacular writing teacher) Bob Mayer taught me was to go to the IMDB and look up log-lines of movies. Search for ones similar to the story you want to write and use it as a template.
For instance, the log-line for Romancing the Stone is:
A romance writer sets off to Colombia to ransom her kidnapped sister, and soon finds herself…
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