Book Review

<div style=”margin:0px;”>
<embed width=”190″ height=”300″ src=”http://www.goodreads.com/images/widget/widget2.swf”
quality=”high” wmode=”transparent”
FlashVars=”id=1557114&shelf=read&title=Bill’s bookshelf: read&host=www.goodreads.com&sort=date_added&order=d&params=amazon,,dest_site,”>
</embed>
</div>
<div style=”margin:0px;”>
<a href=”http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1557114-bill” target=”_blank”><img alt=”Bill’s  book recommendations, reviews, favorite quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists” border=”0″ height=”32″ src=”http://www.goodreads.com/images/widget/widget_logo.gif” title=”Bill’s  book recommendations, reviews, favorite quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists” width=”190″ /></a>
</div>

The Art of Storytelling

There is an art to being a storyteller. I aspire to be that. I also aspire to be a writer. I believe I am both, but I just hope others believe the same thing. It’s funny but recently I have been talking with some of my friends that these do not necessarily go hand in hand.

I have a sister who was picked on horribly by some of my younger brothers and sisters. Her stories went a little long – and I sometimes wonder if she didn’t try to read how interested people were and embellish – just a little. Anyhow, my siblings called her, Rose (from the Golden Girls) whenever her stories were getting a little long. She is now a much better storyteller, but I think that it damaged her self-esteem a little early on when it came to storytelling – so that is not my recommendation.

Some of the people  I know who are the worst storytellers – writers. I am not sure why but there is a lot of time I want to say, ‘too much exposition – get to the point.’ And yet they are the same ones who critique my peers on using too much exposition.

LOL – not sure what my point is here, but I do believe there is an art to good storytelling. Here are some of my suggestions:

1. Have a story to tell.
2. Get to the point – evaluate is the extra build-up or follow-up necessary. Often I believe it is not, most of the people I am talking to are not stupid and needing to be walked through the story and if they need to know more they ask questions.
3. Don’t ask the questions yourself – if your listeners aren’t asking, it probably wasn’t relevant to the story, or interesting enough for them to identify questions.
4. Know your audience – if it’s offensive to certain populations, maybe it is best told to those one or two people who know you well enough to tolerate you even when you offend. And if it is in the field they work with or related to someone they know – you don’t need a long explanation of who or why it’s important. Which leads me to my final point -
5. If you have to explain why it’s a good story to tell, you are probably wrong.

If you think of any points I may have missed – feel free to leave them in the comments.

On-line Publishing

So about ten days ago, I spent a lot of time investigating some online magazines and their guidelines. I have considered doing some of these for quite awhile, and found one which I was really interested in – gud magazine – but they were on a submission hold. However, by cruising around their site a little, I was able to discover some other sites. I remember one – though not offhand that I submitted to, only took something like 48 hours to reject my submission.

The funny thing is that I was telling some friends about it and was kind of excited – it was a site which would not accept simultaneous submissions, so it was nice to know early on that they were not going to accept it so I could submit it somewhere else. By then the time that the other magazine was starting to accept submissions again – and I was so sure, I knew this would be the magazine for it – they took 6-ish days to reject me. Not as fun the second time around.

Oh well, more opportunities out there, I just gotta get looking, right?

Book Review – The Lightning Theif

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my reviews >>

Welcome the Pen

I have been very disappointed in myself with writing the blog as of late. I am trying to get back into more of pattern that will challenge me to post more often. I am in these two newsgroups and have recently loved the challenges that one of them is bringing to me. There is a woman who is trying to get more interaction on the newsgroup going – she is posting questions about writing and people are responding. So far they have been very interesting: What are you reading? How do you write (pen and paper or computer), roll call and getting to know your characters.

Some of these are ones I have blogged about in the past, like the character development. The one that really provoked me to do a lot of thinking was the one on how do you write. I always thought that I was being ‘less productive’ and not keeping up with the times because I tend to write – pen to paper. It’ll happen in the most unusual times and places as well – and I will write on whatever I can find that will work as paper and welcome the pen that I am using.

I have tried typing my initial story on the computer – but always seem to fail because either I am distracted or just get tired of sitting at the computer and typing. When I look at the short stories I have written – everyone completed one of them was written first from pen to paper. So it got me thinking about why I do this and I wonder if it has to do with the whole editing portion of the computer. I think I try and edit as I write when I am typing, but when it is pen to paper – it just keeps coming out with a speed and focus that I can’t seem to get on the computer. Though I am a much faster at typing on the computer than I am writing by hand.

So now that I have identified this, that offers a new challenge – either get writing more with pen and paper or learn to write without editing on the computer – one would be faster than the other. Both have just as many inconvenient steps as they do convenient ones. The pen and paper route really allows for me to write just about anywhere – that means I have to carry paper with me wherever I go. Pen and paper is slow for me to transfer to the computer – seems to be my first edit. The computer is just faster and it is right there for me to edit after I finish; however, doesn’t seem to be something that I do well at doing (although I do seem to be able to do it in my blogs).

Any thoughts?

Back on the horse – or lessons in editing?

I have made some major changes in my life and they appear to be more routine than I had initially believed they would be. They are affecting many areas of my life and I like it. I have started exercising regularly. I am in a contest with friends to lose weight – we have been doing this for going on 3 years, I think. With little success, so this year I created a much bigger challenge for all of us who wanted to participate which is building a savings account for a trip. Only those who lose 10% of their weight in 10 months are able to go with the monies saved. I have every intention of being one of those people and so I stepped it up. I was not doing well for the first half of the challenge – so I looked at my weight and the things I have done for most of my adult life and what has worked and what has not. I want this to be the last time I am focused on losing weight. The main thing was exercise. So I started with ½ hour a day and it is working. In the first 15 days, I lost something like 7 inches of fat. So I am keeping it up, along with a journal focus of my weight loss and the activities I am trying and doing.

I did not realize how much more energized I would feel. It has helped in keeping me more motivated and active. Now, the bummer is that I have spent less time at the computer actually writing. This is not okay. I am really frustrated by this.

I have to admit that some of my struggles are coming in the form of editing. Even when I get the stuff down and on paper, I review and edit, review and edit to the point that I believe it is ready to start submitting. A few months ago, I submitted a story of mine that I thought was ready to go. A friend is helping with the editor position for stories to be read on a radio station, and I found one that I had writing which could be read online. It had been published in a literary journal and at an online journal. I thought cool – this is the one to go with. When I first read it to my writers group – I was complimented on the voice and the story. There were a few changes that I now realize I had not made before submitting it, but overall the story was enjoyed by my peers. This friend was one of those peers – the story was returned to me and edited as a ‘favor’. I honestly do see it as a favor as it she was trying to be very helpful in what needs to be in place before submitting. I admit to feeling crushed – there were so many marks the original story was hard to find. Now there were some actual errors that I was glad to have pointed out to me, but then there were things that I don’t agree with. Which is alright as well – everyone is entitled to their opinion – yet, I wondered, how did it get accepted at these other places if there were so many errors. I am still a little confused by this. I have not looked at it for awhile because I honestly found it a little depressing.

Now I am trying to edit a couple of my stories for submission – one of which I think has a really good change at this on-line magazine which accepts some horror stories – and even though there is no truly gory details, it is violent. I am now not confident in my editing skills and am worried that I am letting one persons edit affect my own editing. It took me awhile to realize this, so I think I am going to simply do it the way I know how and submit. I am, however, looking for options – 1. Who do you get to edit your pieces before submitting? 2. How do you know when you have edited too much?

Billy’s Been a Bad Bad Boy

I am no sure what is going on. I have not been good about posting to this blog. My writing has suffered – I have been spending some time focusing on editing trying to get some stuff ready for some contests, but other than that I have not been doing well with it. It is definitely time to get things back on track. Today is the new day of a new phase of 24 days. One of my main focuses is 15 minutes a day!

Book Review: Club Dead

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I just finished reading this book – it’s a good addition to the Sookie Stackhouse series. Nice action – good tension and not so much mushy stuff between her and Bill. It’s interesting to see all this attraction the supernatural beings have towards Sookie.

View all my reviews.

No Change Yet…

So far I am not doing so well on the 15 minutes a day. I am beginning to think that more than one change at a time, sets me up for failure. Initially, I was thinking I could carry over minutes – so if I didn’t get my 15 minutes done yesterday I could owe 30 today. I am now up to 1.25 hours. That is not going to work, if I can’t get the 15 done – why would I add more. It’s Monday and I tend to do better when I start on a good beginning of the week kind of day. So today will be the first day of my 15 minutes of writing per day. I have the time in my schedule today, so there should be no excuses.

My Interests…

…lately have not been so good with this blog. I have been wondering what to write. My focus has been on this experiment I am doing to make changes in my life for exercise and for a healthier lifestyle. So far today is the end of that first 24 days and it was overall pretty successful. Feel free to follow or check out my experiment at my other blog: 24 Days to Habit? Or Once Again – Not Enough?

I am looking to make this chnage in other areas of my life as well. My writing has only been half-assed lately. I have a screenplay that I am playing around in my mind. I have been recording and writing down different parts of it, but not knowing how to really write a screenplay has made it somewhat difficult. However, last night I was playing around with something I could be doing and that is writing it out as I know how to write – since much of it is in dialogue at this point, it should be easy enough to do and then I can go back and fix it in screenplay style.

I think part of me has been struggling with it because it is also a gay-themed story, my writer’s group – as good as they are – I do not believe would be that receptive to critiquing it, but you never know. I am thinking that I also know a few screenwriters who would be willing to review it for me, so we will see.

In the mindframe of my writing every day and how do I incorporate my 24 days to habit thinking? I think I need to start smaller – I have been trying to set aside at least an hour a day to write. I believe that I am going to start with at least 15 minutes a day writing with the intention of adding 15 minutes at each 24 hour cycle. I am not going to post on this daily, like I am on my exercise, but I will try and add it to my weekly post.