Oh, Oh. Writing the Same Way

The Read and Progress???

Discovered Simon R Green's new series introduction, Ghost of a Chance, and discovered half-way through it that I was writing the same way in my struggle to finish a short story for Renna's Tales.   Way too much exposition.  Like telling, telling, and more telling.   While I'll grant, Green sticks mainly to the events at hand, I kept trying to expand the story into the larger political battles in mine.

The reason I'm late in getting this blog up is:  1) the Renna story, and 2) I couldn't get to the end of Green's book.  I decided to put it on the trade pile just when the evil villains were winning the fight with the associates while the leader of the ghost hunters went chasing a ghost through the London Underground.  [The half-way turning point of the story.]  Granted, Green's Nightside series had a lot of exposition, but it came across as a ballerina pirouetting rather than the giant clomping in his seven league boots.  Or, was that seven inch boots?

Other Progress ...

Voices is lying fallow again.  Got one revising run through done on the computer.  Now I have to print out a copy to revise.  Also, do I have any excuses not to query agents?  No, but I doubt I will.

Oh, remember Maren who I couldn't turn into a novel?  Well, she's back haunting me saying she's a short story or maybe a novelette.  I wonder if I can turn her into a full blown novella ... if I dramatize the exposition.  Hey, maybe I didn't learn something from my reading.

Web Stuff ...

I enjoy way too many blogs, but Justine Musk posted one every new and experienced writer should read about blogging last week.   [Reducing the number of times I blog ... builds in some delays in my comments.  I apologize if the ideas have already turned into compost for you.]

The if agent queries are haunting you, you might find Jessica Faust's blog on openings and the following comments helpful.

Perhaps the most important bit of info for me came from a link from the Writer Beware blog of ....  If any of you are considering e-publishing as I am [for Dark Solstice] you might be interested in what ... has to say about "The Seven Secrets to e-Book Publishing Failure".  Some of the ideas might even apply to "traditional" publishing.  This is one of the few articles I bookmarked. 

Then, there's promotion of what you publish ... either on the web or on paper.  1st Turning Point points presents a blog by Cristyn West on how to get the best use out of Twitter to promote your blog, book, or whatever.  Title:  Using Twitter to Expand Your Readership.  Yeah, another bookmark.

Trivia ...

Got a chuckle when I traced one of my stats for referring urls ... and it was an air conditioning site.   Then, there's google search engines.  For some reason, I'm getting a lot of hits for the Half-Elven website from a Cyrillic alphabet site.

I've never grown out of being a "bad girl" ... a habit that exasperated her mother.  Why else would I get such inordinate pleasure from eating unhealthy meals.  Oh, I ate two vegies and a fruit ... plus a little starch and some shrimp (sauteed in butter with garlic).  But gasp, the vegies were both light colored.  (cauliflower and cucumber)   So much for Dr. whomever and his call to eat bright colored vegies.