Voice

After months away I am back on the blog chain. This time around the topic comes from Sarah who asks:

How did you discover your particular voice as a writer?

Good question, right? But a hard one too. Voice is one of those writing things that is particularly elusive and just plain difficult to pin down. Unlike dialogue, description, or characterization it's not an element that you can separate out and set it in a neat little box by itself so that you can poke at and study it. This is because voice runs through all of these things, holding them all together and (hopefully) setting your writing apart from everyone else's.

So, how did I find my voice? I don't really know, it's just kind of there when I sit down to write. For me, it's kind of a mixture of both my personality and my experiences, diluted a bit by all the words of other authors that I've read and then blended to a smooth consistency so that it can be spread onto the page. Kind of like Grey Poupon, but less French.

Maybe by breaking down some of the elements that make up my voice I can have a better sense of where they came from.

Humor.

At the top of that list is my sarcastic, little bit left of center, and sometimes dark sense of humor.

A large part of this can be traced directly to my mother. When my older sister and I were little kids having a bath, she told us that she had to run downstairs for some carrots to put in with us, and then she would cook us up for a nice stew. I was two. I thought she was serious, and I started crying. My mom says she felt bad as soon as the tears started to flow, but I have my doubts, especially since I have heard this story many times and every time she thinks it is hilarious.

Dialogue.

I love writing dialogue and it is always the part of writing that comes the easiest to me. This can be traced to riding the bus. Yes, the bus. From kindergarten to eighth grade I went to a Catholic school, but we rode on the same buses as the public school kids. This meant that in the afternoon the buses would pick us up first, and then go to the public school to pick them up. This also meant a lot of time on the bus.

Lots of staring out the window at scenery going by.

Lots of not talking to kids who I didn't know and was too shy to be friendly with.

Lots of making up imaginary conversations in my head where I always had the most awesome thing ever to say, and everyone was so impressed and loved me and wanted to be my best friend.

Funny. Imaginary conversations in my head then = loserdom. Similar imaginary conversations now = "Hey, I'm a writer!"

Sentence Structure.

I tend to write long sentences. Maybe you've noticed. It's not something I do intentionally - in fact, I intentionally try to do the opposite because the feedback I most often get from crits is that sentences the length of a paragraph can be confusing, annoying, and tiring. As much as I try to beat back the long sentences, sometimes I just can't. When something feels like one thought I just can't bring myself to chop it up, orphaning it's lesser parts and forcing them to hold their own in a completely separate sentence of their own. And as much as these endless sentences might be seen as a flaw, they are also - for better or worse - part of my voice.

So, what about your voice? Where did you find it? And do you feel like it is something you consciously developed or that originated more organically?

For more on this chain check out Rebecca before me and then Amanda who will be up next.

Inspiration

This is a blog about writing, and writing is about words. As writers we put words together and then sometimes pull them back apart, trying different combinations we create little worlds out of nothing but words - the ultimate Lego set.

So, it makes sense that most of our inspiration comes from reading other people's words, and I'm sure most of us could wallpaper entire rooms with the black and white pages of prose that have inspired us.

Today though I am thinking about how visuals -completely devoid of words - have inspired me. Specifically, I am thinking of the new opening sequence to the HBO show Big Love. My husband and I have been fans of this show since the beginning, and each season it just gets better and better.

However, my husband never liked their opening title sequence - he thought the whole thing was too "on the nose", and while he had a point - I liked the song they chose and the way it told a mini-story in it's minute and a half running time. Much like the cover on a book - it set the tone.

Here's the old opening.



Now in it's fourth season that just started a few weeks ago, Big Love has a new opening and all I can say is WOW. Yes, all caps. It is that good. Visually it is like a chocolate layer cake for the eyes. Rich, complex, and so good I don't want to stop eating - or in this case watching - it (Not the best analogy, I know, but I am on a trying-to-lose-the-baby-weight diet and chocolate cake that I cannot have is a bit of an obsession with me right now).

Anyway, here's the new opening title sequence.



This is without a doubt the best opening title sequence ever, and I am officially obsessed with it.

Now I don't know exactly how this will inspire me. All I know is that it's seared into my brain to the point where it's playing on the backs of my eyelids and that somehow, its influence will seep into my writing somewhere along the way.

So, what's inspired you lately? What do you think of these two very different openings? And are there any opening sequences for TV shows that you absolutely love?

New Year, New Wednesday

Wow, sitting down to write this blog entry I have a bit of that first day back to school feeling. It's a mixture of uncertainty, excitement, and nervousness. Overall I'm happy to be back, and I have missed all my blogging friends and can't wait to hear what you have all been up to - at the same time though, it was really nice to have a break.

And I took a big break. Except for that one blog entry in December (which was really just an excuse to post pics of my children and then enjoy all the "oh, they're so cute" comments) I have been away from the blogopherse for over two months. So, now I need to get back into work mode and also find out what everyone else has been up to while I've been away.

And what have I been up to?

Well, I did finish those pesky revisions on my Urban Fantasy. I went right to the wire on that one, finishing it up a few days before I was scheduled to go into the hospital for my c-section.

More excitingly though, I have started on a new work in progress that is still in the "getting to know you" (bonus points if you read those words and immediately started singing the song from The King and I) phase. It is another Urban Fantasy, but this time it is also Young Adult. I am very very excited about this right now and am sure will be talking about it a lot more as it comes along.

I've also done mucho mucho mucho reading. And it's been wonderful. I have read so many books that I honestly can't remember all of them. The biggest highlight though was my discovery of Georgette Heyer. Her English Regency romance novels were published in the 1930's, so you would think that having been written nearly half a century ago - and the novels themselves taking place taking place another hundred years before then - that they would seem hopelessly dated. Except they don't.

I think her novels stay current because the relationships between the characters ring as true and touching and funny as they were when she first wrote them. So far I've read every one of her novels that they have at my local library - and I've even bought one. Yes, spending money on a book - not even second hand - that' s when you know I am serious. And I have plans to buy more.

I could go on and on about how funny these novels are - reading more like a comedy of manners at times - but if you are looking for something fun to read I urge you to check them out yourselves. My favorites so far have been Frederica, Devil's Cub, and The Grand Sophy.

And my last bit of news is the most exciting of all: I bought a new desk chair! Okay, so this news is more exciting for my butt than for anyone out there reading this, but I just had to share because A. the old chair was a broken-down hand-me-down that was excruciatingly uncomfortable to sit in, while the new chair is a really comfortable and cute little faux brown leather one and B. the money to buy the new chair came from selling another story to Woman's World magazine! And it's really cool to sit in my writing chair and know that the money to buy it came from my own writing.

Whooo. Okay, that wasn't so bad. Now I need to catch up with all of you - and all of your blogs... although that might be a bit more time consuming, but I am still looking forward to it! In the meantime, I'd love to hear the short version of what everyone is up to in the comments!

Work in Progress... Um, Er, Wednesday?

So, it's been a while since we've done that WIP Wednesday thing together, but I have good reason for my online absence. As I've mentioned before, besides my writing related works in progress, I've also been working on a very personal non-writing side project.


The only problem is that as time went on this side project began to consume more and more of my time and energy - until it wasn't so much on the side, but rather more front and center.

Kind of like this:




And as of December 3rd, 2009 at 1:59PM - that side project has become fully integrated into my life in the form of a baby girl: Zoe Ann Quinn.

Coming home from the hospital.

Posing for pictures with big brother Jamie.

Aaaahhh. Sleeping.

And discovering new uses for her hands.


So, that's what I've been up to, and as I am still working on remembering what day it is (and sometimes even what time of day it is - those sleepless nights are rough) my posts will be infrequent (or non-existent) until after the New Year. In the meantime, I hope all of you out there are getting a lot accomplished on your own works in progress and that you have an awesome holiday season and a Happy New Year!!!

Are you Afraid?

It's blog chain time and this time Kat brought us a question perfect for Halloween:

What are the primary fears that drive your characters? Do they battle aliens or gangsters or monsters? Or do they battle unreconciled issues in their lives? Which do you prefer writing about? What do you fear?

Okay, so fear. I think most writers would admit to having some pretty big fears, because it kind of goes hand in hand with that whole overactive imagination thing. It does not, in my case at least, take a lot to get that imagination going either. A horror movie will do it - actually I just can't sit through horror movies anymore - I literally shake and cower during the suspenseful parts, cover my eyes entirely during the gory sections, and for days afterward have trouble walking into dark rooms. Or a news article about a dry drowning can make me even more neurotic than ever about letting my son anywhere near a swimming pool.

Now with my own fears, I use my worrying almost as a neurotic type of shield - like it will keep all the bad things that I imagine away. Or I try to find actual physical ways to make life safer - whether that consists of making sure the doors are locked at night (Actually this is my husband's job, but sometimes if I hear a funny noise outside I'll ask him, "did you make sure you locked the doors?" Sometimes, if I'm feeling especially nervous I'll put in a request for him to double check. For the record, he does not seem to appreciate this.) or putting some padded foam onto a sharp counter corner in the kitchen (I actually just did this today - my son kept banging his head on it, and I didn't want it to get to the point where he banged it so hard he needed stitches or lost an eye. Yes, I know. I really am neurotic.)

However, my characters are not so lucky. There are no locked doors or safe foam corners for them. As soon as I know what my characters fear most, then I know exactly what will happen to them.

Fear of fire? Grab some matches.

Arachnophobia? Bring on the mutant spiders. A

fraid you'll turn into your mother? Then it's time for some Freaky Friday action.

Whether the fears are internal or external I want to be constantly nudging my characters towards the edge of the cliff, until there's nowhere to go but down... and then I found out how they deal with falling.

So, what do you fear? What do your characters fear? And do you push your characters towards their fears too?

And for more blog chain fun you can find Rebecca's post before mine and Amanda's directly after.

WIP Wednesday and Blog Chain

Happy Wednesday... I guess. It's a gray day today here in Knoxville, with steady rain coming down, and no end in sight. And while I like the occasional rainy day - it's always a good excuse to curl up with a good book and a cup of tea - we have had so many of them lately that honestly I am a little sick of it.

Maybe though my anti-rain bad mood is just me being disappointed that I didn't meet my goal of finishing my rewrites this past weekend. The problem is that I kept hitting walls that I hadn't anticipated, so instead of having a plan of how to get over or around them, I ended up just sitting, staring at the computer screen (or sometimes a Bejeweled Blitz game) and wondering what I should do next.

I am slowly figuring things out, and eventually moving past the walls, but it is definitely a process, and one that can be very discouraging at times. I guess it is all part of the journey though... and that is my kind of lame segue into our current blog chain topic brought to us by Sandra.

What kind of journeys do your characters make? What effects do they have on the characters and the plot? Also, if you wish, please tell us about one of your personal journeys and how it changed you.

As several other blog chainers before me have mentioned, the most important journey that a character makes is their internal one. The question of how my main character changes or tranforms by the end of the story is second only to what that character wants. However, it can also be helpful to show rather than just tell about this journey by the character going on an actual physical journey - whether that means having them hop on a transcontinental flight or a simply take a trip to the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

In my first (now trunked) novel, a contemporary romance, the main character, after having her heart broken, decides to bicycle back to her hometown of Buffalo, NY from her current location in Miami. After spending several days on the road, mostly getting lost and frustrated she comes to a realization - that she is lost in more ways than one. Here is a small excerpt of her making that realization:

Now on day five, after ending the previous day having actually lost a mile, Stella tried to once again to remind herself why she was here. Wherever here was… she was once again foggy on that point. The rational that it was something Old Stella wouldn’t have done now seemed preposterous. It had taken Stella five days to realize that there were in fact many things that Old Stella didn’t do, that any sane person wouldn’t - for good reason - ever want to do. Stella was beginning to suspect that bicycling from Miami to Buffalo might be one of those things. With this thought, Stella stopped peddling.

She was on a completely deserted road. Lost is what she was in every way possible. She wasn’t doing this to prove something, this was now clear. What she was doing was running like a chicken with her head cut off. Or like someone uncertain of where she belonged anymore. The truth was she didn’t want to go home. This bicycling thing wasn’t flying solo - it was stalling. It was when she got home, and had to decide what to do next that Stella would have to test her wings for real. Maybe the stationary bicycle in her living room hadn’t been taking her anywhere, but for all intents and purposes, this one wasn’t either. Decision made Stella wheeled her bicycle around and started peddling back in the direction she had come from. For the first time in days she felt like she might be going in the right direction.

As for my own personal journeys, I think that just like in fiction the most memorable ones are those that help us learn or understand something new about ourselves.

On some trips you learn that if you are going in July to stay with a friend who lives in North Carolina you should really make sure they have air conditioning (and in this case, I also found out that you should also be prepared for less than clean living conditions when you already know ahead of time that this person had been on the Jenny Jones show in a segment entitled: "My Roommate Is A Slob.")

On other trips you learn about your own resiliency when you end up in an unknown city having to seek out a ear, nose, and throat specialist for a horrible earache, and your bare minimum health insurance doesn't cover it.

And finally there are simple day trips, like when my husband and I drove from LA up to Santa Barbara and I found out that while it may look cool to be driving in a Jeep with the top down, in reality you mostly are just hot and windblown, while on the next day you end up with some pretty funky sunburn lines.

So what journeys have you made lately - whether it's a character's journey or your own?

And to follow this full chain, check out Rebecca before me and Amanda after.

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If you want to participate in WIP Wednesday, simply post your own WIP Wednesday entry on your blog and leave a link to it in the comments below. Or if you don't have a blog, feel free to report your progress directly into the comments box.For more detailed information concerning what all this nonsense is about please consult the original Work in Progress Wednesday posting.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Well it is once again WIP Weds. and I am still doing rewrites. So far I have written about 6,000 new words, while I have cut around 4,000 old words. I still have some big cuts coming ahead though, so it will be interesting to see where my final word count ends up.

As you may have noticed that is a fairly large amount of new words, and in helping them find their way to the page I made use of my new SUPER SECRET WEAPON!





Behold.

Bejeweled Blitz courtesy of Facebook.

Okay, it's actually not terribly secret, nor is it really weapon-like at all. In fact, some might even consider it more of a black pit of procrastination. To those people though I would say... okay, yeah you have a point.

Yes, there have been times when before jumping into the Word document that is the current version of my MS, when I might play one, two, or (gulp) twenty-five "warm-up" games of Bejeweled Blitz. You know, just something to transition me from the checking email and blogs part of my computer time to the getting down to serious work part.

However, once I have gotten through those one, two, or (gulp) twenty-five games of Bejeweled I dive into my MS and start writing... aaannddd then after a solid two or three minutes of writing there is usually a pause of some sort where I consider which words need to come next. Now some might take these time to stare into space, spin in your chair, or consider the state of your cuticles and while in the past I have done all these things - now I have found something even better. During this time I flip back to the ever so conveniently still open Bejeweled Blitz tab and play one more game (really it is just one this time... okay, sometimes two).

But - and this is an important but - while I play my brain is working on that next sentence and flipping through the various possibilities until I come up with the perfect thing. Then I flip back to Word, type that in, and if it doesn't immediately lead to something else I flip back to Bejeweled to ponder my next sentence.

There are two reasons that is the perfect game for this type of "multitasking".

One: Each game is only a minute long. It is long enough to give your brain a chance to work on your story, but not so long that you get sucked into the game and forget about the story altogether.

Two: It's kind of a mindless game, or it is the way I play it, which is to say, with a minimum of strategy. I'm not looking for the big plays or thinking ten moves ahead - I just make the matches as my eyes spot them. And I swear every time in this game that I've gotten a really high score it is when I am on the phone, or not really thinking about the game at all (although I am usually kind of a middle person on the scoreboard and my highest score to date was only around 113,000.).

Okay, that's my WIP Weds. Hopefully next week I will have finished my rewrites - that is the plan at least. How about you? How is your WIP coming along? And do you ever play games or have something else to get your mind going when you get stuck?

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If you want to participate in WIP Wednesday, simply post your own WIP Wednesday entry on your blog and leave a link to it in the comments below. Or if you don't have a blog, feel free to report your progress directly into the comments box.

For more detailed information concerning what all this nonsense is about please consult the original Work in Progress Wednesday posting.

Feel free to also make use of the lovely little WIP Wednesday logo as well!