Covers

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction.

I did not write this. Actually, I got it off of guardian.co.uk. 

READ IT. It was so helpful to me and it's invaluable information--told by real authors, including the fabulous Margaret Atwood.

The article comes in two parts:
Part One
Part Two



Some of my favourites:


8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants", what do the "Ameri­can and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story. - Elmore Leonard.

1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils. - Margaret Atwood.


3 Only bad writers think that their work is really good. - Anne Enright

4 Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand. - Anne Enright


1 Write only when you have something to say. - David Hare



And my ultimate favourite:  

My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work - Philip Pullman




Sunday, May 22, 2011

Covers

Sleepless Beauty and Prince Charmless by Whyte.Rhose




Shadow Wolves by Christine Ko




Stolen by heyheyhey


FML.

Today I (accidentally) spilled a cup of tea over my laptop, Suzanne (yes, I named my laptop).
Again.

F***. My. Life.
Can I be any more clumsy?

My laptop has been through the wars. It's like I'm always spilling something or other onto it, yet she still works! Kinda.

Now the speakers don't work and the only way to get sound is using headphones and the space bar sticks.
Great.

But she's still working!!!

Spiraling.

What is Spiraling you ask?

Well, I kinda just made it up.

But it's when you begin to lose interest in your book. Suddenly your characters are boring, annoying, way too chirpy to be a teenager or just plain flat. Your plot has so many holes it might as well be a piece of Swiss cheese, and your ending is fuzzier than a buzz cut (<-Yeah, I know that makes no sense ._.)

Your book is slowly, but surely, spiraling down and down and down and down until it hits the ground, and you can't even look at it anymore. You're slowly losing interest in it, and soon you don't care about whether or not it falls.

Cheringue got a severe case of the Spiral earlier this year. Izzy seemed to bright and happy for a girl whose life was pretty much trashed, and there wasn't enough going to on to make it to a decent ending.

The thing with Spiraling is that how do you know which projects to pick up and which ones to leave on the floor?

Look at them, study them. Do you care about what happens? Chances are if you don't care, neither will your reader.

And remember, not all projects should be picked up and polished. Some are better left on the floor.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Nearly a third of the way there.

Today I hit 25k for The Magician List.
I'm feeling pretty bad-ass about it, too.

I'm chalking that up to the fact that Cheringue got to 26k before it spiraled down into a pit of crap. And seeing as I'm less than 100words away from getting TML to 26k, it's a good sign that it's showing no signs of "spiralling". 

But yes, I'm nearly a third of the way there. I'm estimating a finished book of 90k, but the way I'm writing, I wouldn't be surprised if it went for longer. Of course editing will practically chop away half the book, though, so it's no big deal.

I've made a decison, too.
TML is going to have three parts, each of roughly 30k. And they are: The Discovery; The Battle; and The Release. The names suck, but they're not set in stone. Which is good, because they truly are terrible.



Friday, May 6, 2011

The Magician List

This is the first cover I've made for my new project, The Magician List. I'll be adding more later.