FYI
My real name is Cris Goodwin. But call me Alice. Never let it be said I didn’t tell you.
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Alice
Blogger
Hey Tessa, blogger won’t let me post on your blog right now. I’ve been having problems with them all over the place. Anyway, just wanted to tell you I love the line and Damien getting whomped by candlesticks.
Alice
Challenge 3 Has Begun
This round’s challenge:
Write the first of a six chapter story in which an accident, shipwreck, plane crash, and/or carriage accident leaves two people stranded together so that they are forced to deal with a problem. The chapter is to be no more than 10,000 characters long. A rainstorm, journal, and portrait of a woman, man and/or child must appear somewhere in the chapter. No more than three attempts to write such a chapter may be submitted.
Easy, right?
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Alice
Suzie’s House 2: Friend or Roommate?
“Um… Miranda, you know I love you even better than my own sister, but I don’t think we should try to live together again.” Suzie’s voice came out a little too tight and a little too controlled, which never worked well on Miranda. She caught herself rubbing the pristine kitchen table as if to clean it and made herself stop.
“Why not?” Miranda pulled her head back enough to tell Suzie she had taken offense. Her bleached and pink-streaked hair caught in the pink feathers along the neckline of her halter top. “We got along great before.”
No they hadn’t, but Suzie wasn’t going to tell her best friend she couldn’t stand living with her. She shoved her chair back from the table, her head shaking in a tut-tut kind of refusal. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. That’s all.” Suzie went to the stove, glancing sideways to see how Miranda would react.
“Of course it’s a good idea. It’s a great idea. All my ideas are great.” She held her hand out, looking at her nails critically.
“Like the idea to let the Johnson twins crash on our floor?” Suzie gave the stew a swift stir, not quite slopping over the top of the stockpot.
“They needed a place to stay.”
“Sure. Fine. But did that place have to be my bed? I spent the whole night fighting them off. Meanwhile you were over there in the other single snoring away as if there was nothing to worry about.”
“They tried to get into bed with you?” Miranda stopped messing with her nails and leveled a concerned look at her. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I did. You weren’t listening.” Under her breath Suzie muttered something about Miranda never listening. She noticed the bread dough was puffing more on one side than the other because of the heat from the burner under the soup and turned the pan around.
“Never mind. That was years ago.” Miranda waved her hands in the air, making the plastic bracelets on her arm jingle. “Everything is different now.”
“Are you saying you’ll never bring men into my house?”
Miranda paused as if to give it serious consideration. As if the question needed serious consideration. “Well, no, actually. I can’t promise that because I already know who your other two renters should be, and they’re both men.”
“Lord,” Suzie muttered. “This is worse than a blind date.”
“No. You’ll love them. They aren’t like the Johnson twins. Besides, that was ages ago. These are grown, responsible men.”
“Who have no home of their own.”
“Yes, well… divorce will do that to people.” Miranda arched an eyebrow.
Suzie pressed her lips together, refusing to acknowledge the hit.
For a while after the divorce, Rob had claimed she had made him homeless. He used it as an excuse for moving in with the other woman, and then grumbled even louder when the other woman threw him out. Now, because of her inability to pay the mortgage on her own, Suzie was about to be homeless too.
“This’ll be great. I can save a few bucks compared to what I’m paying for that hideous little studio apartment and still give you enough to make the mortgage. I’ll even throw in a deposit and extra month early like a real renter so you can catch up with the bank.”
“I don’t know, Miranda.” Suzie made her way to the table. She ran the numbers through her head and realized that financially the idea was sound. In fact, if she could rent out all three rooms constantly, she could have a comfortable living and still give her son, Ben, all the time he wanted. Suzie shook her head, determined to get fanciful dreams out of the way. “I’m sure I’d regret it.”
“How long will the bank give you to decide?” Miranda’s eyes narrowed.
She had a good point. Suzie refused to admit it. If she admitted anything, Miranda would roll right over her.
“I have plenty of cash right now. I could move in this week end and all your problems would be over.” Miranda got up from her chair and came around the table, her step confident in her precarious high heels. “If you’re worried about me being around all the time, don’t. I’ll be at the office all day. I’m over here most evenings anyway so that’s nothing new.”
Miranda had a point. Her job at the advertising agency kept her busy all day and sometimes in the evening too. Maybe it would be all right.
Miranda slung an arm across Suzie’s shoulders as she bent down next to her. “Face it Suzie-Woozie. It’s take me in or lose the house.”
Suzie looked at the cheerful tile backsplash she had installed herself, the antique ceiling lamp she had found at the second-hand fixtures warehouse, and the stained glass edging she had made to go around the windows, spending hours and hours at this very table. Then she eyed the bits of pink feather that had accumulated at Miranda’s end of the table, the long hard nails tapping on the table next to her, and the wry expression twisting her old friend’s glossy pink lipstick.
Lose the house, or gain a room mate. Suzie bit her lip.
The previous was Suzie’s House 1: A Matter of Economics
This is Suzie’s House 2: Friend or Roommate?
Next is Suzie’s House 3: Rules Are Made to Be Bent…
More Reading as a Writer
As I said before, reading with a writer’s eye on technique has it’s pitfalls. I talked a little about how it’s done, but I didn’t give you much reason to try it. And maybe I should.
Off the top of my head I can only think of one really good reason. The fiction that readers love is the final authority on what is and what is not acceptable in fiction.
I originally went on and on about it, but decided this says it all.
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Alice
Inspiration
I get inspiration in all kinds of ways. For me, writing is like day dreaming on paper. Only with a little more organization.
Most of my books, both the original idea and much of the follow through, have come when I am day dreaming. I keep telling my family I really am working while I stare out the window. They say they believe me, but I’m not sure I believe them.
When daydreaming doesn’t work – like when all my daydreams get taken over by, well, regular old daydreams – then I’m likely to resort to a game of What If. What If works very, very well, so long as I have a kernel of an idea on which to latch for starters.
Although I’m not so much inspired by as influenced and rejuvenated by them, reading books has been a very helpful in getting me going again. If I’m working on a Romantic Suspense and I read about a character burying a gun I might start wondering about ways in which to damage a gun and what will happen when someone tries to use a damaged gun and end up with the solution to the scene in Chapter 15 of my WIP.
Poetry and song lyrics can inspire me, but generally it only happens if I’m not looking for inspiration.
Being in particular places can inspire me. I’ve trained myself to focus on writing while at my desk. Now I can sit down in front of my computer with nothing but a FanLit challenge in front of me and make words appear. It’s better if I don’t fly quite so much out of the either, but it’s nice to know I can do it.
The other three places that have been particularly good for coming up with something to write are the bathroom, while out walking, and bed. The bathroom is great except for all the people pounding on the door and the way the tissue paper shreds under a pencil. Walking is a bit of a problem because people tend to think I’m crazy when I start gesturing, crying, laughing, or talking to myself. The best of the three is bed, except most of my ideas there end up being like the first chapter of Zackly Right.
Ideas are easy. I get thousands more than I use, hundreds more than I bother to write down. It’s making them real that’s hard.
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Alice
What Was Your First Romance Novel?
This seems to keep coming up, so I guess I’ll try to come up with an answer.
I have no idea what the title or author of my first Romance novel was. I was in high school and hanging out with a girl who was addicted to Harlequins. Out of curiosity I asked her which was her favorite and why. She couldn’t tell me. Apparently she never looked at the title, only the number.
She leant me one of her favorite numbers. I found it frustrating because it was full of dot-dot-dots. Dot-dot-dots are where they used to have all this sexual tension leading up to the moment of fulfillment, then right when it got interesting there would be an ellipses, a couple of line breaks, and the scene picking up with the after glow. Argh! Leave me all hot and bothered why don’t you!
So then she leant me a few that sort of filled in the dots. Only it was in some strange code. I mean, when you’re still a virgin can you be sure what “he entered her” means? It sounded rather grizzly to me, especially when she was a virgin and blood was involved. Worse yet, I would try to read them on the school bus, and really, really did not want to have to explain why I was blushing.
I tried a couple of bodice rippers, but they were badly written. Pretty quick I was back to a straight diet of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which was what I was writing anyway.
15 years later I was visiting my mother over Christmas and ran out of reading material. Her bookshelves had a few SF/F I hadn’t read yet, but a lot more Romance. I asked her for a recommendation. She handed me an Amanda Quick.
I love Amanda Quick’s sense of humor! I devoured the book and asked for more. Mother refused, though there were several more Amanda Quicks on her book shelf. She said I had to give it a long break between or I would ruin it for myself and not be able to enjoy Amanda Quick’s books anymore. So she made me read something else. It might have been a Nora Roberts, but I forget now what it was.
The thing about the Amanda Quick book was that it had a one-word title, like about a dozen of her other books. After having read a dozen, I don’t remember which it was. What’s more, I’m not sure it matters. All her books use basically the same two characters in more or less the same situation and most of them even include a fire at the end. Even her other pen names tend to use the same two characters. I read too many in the course of a single year, and now I don’t enjoy them anymore. Whaahhhhh!
That Amanda Quick book got me started reading Romances again. I only read a few now and then when I happened to run across something interesting. Then I moved to a podunk town on Montana which thankfully does have a good bookstore as well as a library, such as it is. The first thing I bought in town was a Romance novel. It was something about cowboys in Montana, but again, I don’t remember the title or author. I quit watching TV and started reading like crazy; 200-300 books a year. I even decided to start writing the stuff.
So, we could say I have three “first” Romance novels – the first I ever experienced, the first to hook me into the genre, and the first to set me off. And I couldn’t tell you the title of any. I could only name the author of one. I guess my answer to the question is “I don’t know.”
Alice
Chicken Noodle Soup
Open one can of chicken noodle soup. Pour into pot. Add one can of water…. No?
All right, I’ll give you the real McCoy
I generally start with precooked chicken. If you want to start with raw I’ll be glad to discuss it. Otherwise we start with the cooked bird.
In a pot slightly larger than the amount of soup you want, put in either pre-made broth or water and enough bullion to taste slightly salty. Bring to a boil. Toss in onions and chopped celery, chicken pieces, and noodles. Season to taste. I like a pinch of sage, and a little black pepper. Grated carrots can be pretty good too. Simmer for about 15 minutes or until noodles are the way you like them.
I recommend freezing a little of this so that you can simply microwave it on those days when you need it for medicinal purposes, because if you leave it up to your family to provide, you’ll end up with the canned stuff. At least I did.
Alice
Under the Weather
I’m not up to much of a blog today. My entire family came home from Christmas with a cold. Naturally, it hit me – the care giver – harder than anyone else. Yesterday had me in and out of bed several times, and not for anything fun.
Luckily my kids are old enough to take care of themselves. So is my dh, but he was off at work. So I curled up with Jennifer Crusie and Iris Johansen and tried to keep my eyes focused while blowing my nose.
When my kids were in preschool I could count on getting laid out by a cold or the flu at least twice a year. It was obvious where the germs were coming from.
This year I blame the rum balls.
Alice
FanLit Forever's Challenge 3, First Round
We have several polls set up on FanLit Forever to determine how we are going to work Challenge 3. I think we are fairly safe in assuming the poll to determine how many chapters the challenge will run is going to result in a 6-chapter challenge.
Won’t it be nice to get away from these one-chapter challenges?
Anyway, I’m going to write this blog entry on the assumption that we are working with 6 chapters, a maximum of three entries per chapter of no more than 10,000 characters each.
It looks like option F is going to win the “type of challenge” poll. That means in the first round we will have to write a chapter in which something happens to make the hero/heroine face a problem AND include three objects which have yet to be named.
For the sake of this blog I’m going to pretend the winner of the premise poll is “An accident/shipwreck/plane crash/carriage accident leaves two people stranded together,” and the three objects are Goose Feathers, Earth, and A Book.
Pulling it all together round one requirements would look like this. Write the first of a six chapter story in which two people are stranded together by a travel-oriented accident and thus forced to deal with a problem. The chapter is to be no more than 10,000 characters long. Goose Feathers, earth, and a book must appear somewhere in the chapter. No more than three attempts to write such a chapter may be submitted.
We’re looking more like Avon every day.
So, how do we get from that to a chapter?
Let’s say Cindy’s horse, Jack, wandered over here from Christina’s blog. Maybe he was pulling the carriage that tipped over ten miles from the nearest inhabitation. Quit laughing, it could happen if the right person is holding the reins.
We could go any of several ways with this. For an Historical Romance, the two people could be old flames who suffer a carriage accident. They end up in an abandoned hovel and rekindle old passions while coming to a new understanding of their past. One that requires they eventually settle fundamental differences. For a mainstream it could be brothers who had a falling out. For Fantasy one of the people could turn out to be Jack, the horse, who is psychic and has a few things to say to his mistress about what she intends to do with him when their rocket ship crashes on Earth instead of Sentaury 3.
I’ll go with the two brothers, and call them Andrew and Benedict. They both fell in love with the same girl, who flirted with both, encouraged fights between them, then married someone else. Then she ran off with someone else. At the time they agreed to bury the hatchet, but then never spoke to one another again. Andrew’s plane crashes near the family’s remote cabin. Benedict is already at the cabin and rides Jack out to rescue Andrew. Unluckily Jack won’t let anyone but Benedict ride him, and so they are stuck at the crash sight. Andrew can’t move on his own, but isn’t so badly injured he will never recover. He jokes about doing a nose plant in a plain and coming up with a mouth full of earth. Benedict makes him comfortable with goose down pillows he found in the wreckage. In the chapter they come to realize it wasn’t the girl who put the wedge between them. It was Andrew’s belief that Benedict always usurped his place in the family as Andrew is the eldest but Benedict, a math wiz, runs the family business. Note that they do not settle their differences, merely face the fact they exist. The whole thing comes up when Benedict, who has an eidetic memory, starts reciting passages from the girl’s diary which he read while they were competing for her. While discussing the passages they come to appreciate one another more.
Remember, in round two something must go wrong. Leave room for that to happen.
Unluckily the brother’s story only comes in second for the first round of Challenge 3. In the second round, if the first option – “Write based on the winning chapter from prior round (except first round)” – is chosen then either the brothers must work their way into someone else’s storyline, go to “Continuations of Challenge Chapters” or disappear.
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Alice
FanLit Winners
The rankings for the FanLit Forever Challenge 2 have been posted. If you entered something into Challenge 2, go claim your kudos.
Alice
Suzie’s House 1: A Matter of Economics
Welcome to Suzie’s House. This is a serial that posts every Friday. To see the following week’s post, click the link at the bottom.
Suzie stirred the stew, sending up inviting whafts of basil, thyme, and onion. Wisps of steam from the stock pot spread the scent throughout the kitchen. Suzie paused to take in the warmth and beauty of her kitchen, a long last look before she lost everything.
Light-yellow walls she had painted herself, oak cabinets she had refurbished, polished granite counters she had spent more than one paycheck on, everything looked homey and welcoming. She was going to miss this room even more than the rest of the five bedroom Victorian “painted lady” when the bank foreclosed.
Suzie pinched off three portions of bread dough and rolled each out, though she was more in the mood to punch something. She changed her mind about making a braid out of the bread, and put the three portions back together to make a loaf.
How ironic that she would loose her home, the home she had fought tooth and nail to keep in the divorce, to a simple inability to pay the mortgage.
One tear rolled down her face. She rubbed it off with the back of her hand, and blamed the onions. When someone knocked on the back door, she welcomed the break from her endlessly repeating thoughts.
“Come in!” Suzie shouted.
“You’re cooking? Stove AND oven?” Miranda let herself in, then teetered across the kitchen in ridiculous shoes – this time hot pink strappy things with spike heels inverted so the wide part hit the floor and the minuscule tip attached to the vamp. Suzie bet the heels would snap off in less than a week. The shoes went with a sequined mini skirt and feather-trimmed halter top. Her hair was blond streaked with pink today. Yesterday it was red.
Miranda flopped onto a kitchen chair. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean ‘what’s wrong?’ Nothing’s wrong.” Suzie shaped the loaf, then dropped it into a battered bread pan. She refused to look Miranda in the eye. If Miranda knew what was happening she would be sure to make trouble. Suzie wasn’t sure what form the trouble would take, but didn’t doubt who would take the brunt of it.
She draped a cup towel over the loaf and stuck it on the stove where it would probably over heat on the side near the burner and be too cool on the side away. Then the loaf would puff unevenly. She told herself she’d give it a turn every few minutes, knowing she lied to herself but pretending she didn’t.
“You don’t go to this much trouble if there’s nothing wrong.” Miranda plucked at a feather at her shoulder.
“I cook every day.”
“Not if you can help it.”
Suzie pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the kitchen table. Sitting, she ran her fingers over the smooth surface. “I like to cook.”
“Sure, when you’re in the mood. Which always seems to be when you are avoiding something else. Now spill.”
“If you hadn’t rescued me from Tommy Crocker in the third grade there’s no way I’d let you be so rude to me.” Suzie faked a glare.
“But I did rescue you. So spill.” Miranda leaned forward with her elbows on the table.
“Miranda, I’m going to have to sell the house.”
“No!” Miranda drew back as if she’d been slapped. “You love this house. I love this house. The judge said you could keep it, and there’s nothing your rotten X-husband can do to change it.”
Suzie tried to smile. Miranda had stood by her through the whole messy business, siding with her when Rob tried to lay claim on a house he hadn’t wanted to begin with. If she hadn’t used her inheritance as the down payment, he would never have set foot inside. He’d matched her on mortgage payments about half the time, but made her pay by getting his tubes cut after Ben was born so she couldn’t fill the rooms with children.
In the divorce proceedings Rob tried to claim the house for himself simply because he knew it would hurt her. When that didn’t work he tried to force her to sell, or cough up money he knew she didn’t have. Luckily the judge had not agreed.
“He can’t do anything, but the bank can. I’ve been running behind on the mortgage for months. They’re threatening to foreclose.”
“I know you never have enough money with the book keeping job, but you always pay it all eventually. Can’t they cut you a break?” Miranda jutted out her jaw in righteous anger.
“I lost my job. Even if I can make this month’s payment, what about next month? And the month after?”
“There must be something you can do.” Miranda tapped one hot-pink talon on the table top while her eyes narrowed. “I’ve got it! You should rent out your extra bedrooms. Sort of like a long-term bead and breakfast. What were those called? Boarding houses! You should make this a boarding house.”
“I thought of that, but who would I rent to? Some stranger who answered an add in the newspaper?” Suzie shuddered. “I have to think of my son. I can’t let just anyone live here.”
“So rent a room to me!” Miranda leaned back in her chair, her smile decidedly smug.
“What?” Suzie’s throat felt tight. She hoped she’d heard wrong.
“Rent a room to me. I can help you find renters for the other two rooms. That’ll put you in the black. Then you’ll have more than enough to pay the bank and I’ll get at least one good meal a day. What could be better?”
Suzie thought about what it was like when they lived together in the dormitories in college, and blanched.
Thank you for reading. Please comment, and continue on.
This is Suzie’s House 1: A Matter of Economics
Suzie’s House 2: Friend or Roommate?
Yep, Tonight's The Night
Challenge 2 closes tonight. If you’re going to go in and do some reading, maybe give some scores, you’ve got to do it in the next few hours.
Challenge 2 is being developed right now. If you’d like a say in how many chapters it will run, what the premise will be, etc. then you better get down to The Polling Booth in FanLit, The Game on FanLit Forever.
Alice
More Naughtyness
The boss of a Madison Avenue advertising agency called a spontaneous staff Meeting in the middle of a particularly stressful week. (This is one Pretty sharp boss!)
When everyone gathered, the boss, who understood the benefits of having Fun, told the burnt out staff the purpose of the meeting was to have a Quick contest. The theme: Viagra advertising slogans. The only rule was They had to use past ad slogans, originally written for other products, that captured the essence of Viagra. Slight variations were acceptable.
About 7 minutes later, they turned in their suggestions and created a Top 10 List. With all the laughter and camaraderie, the rest of the week went very well for everyone !!
The top 10 were:
10. Viagra, Whaazzzz up!
9. Viagra, The quicker pecker picker upper.
8. Viagra, like a rock!
7. Viagra, When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.
6. Viagra, Be all that you can be.
5. Viagra, Reach out and touch someone.
4. Viagra, Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.
3. Viagra, Home of the whopper!
2. Viagra, We bring good things to Life!
And the unanimous number one slogan:
1. This is your winkie. This is your winkie on drugs
Writing Logs
I’ve gone through all kinds of logs, tracking everything from the number of minutes I sat in front of the computer to the number of pages I revised while writing. What I have now appeals to my accountant’s soul.
I put the date, the name of the file I worked in, the page count when I started, the page count when I finished, the change between the two, and the page numbers of the pages I actually worked on.
Seems a bit much, doesn’t it? Yet this is the simplest form that has worked for me. There are days when I have spent all day working on a story and felt like I hadn’t accomplished much, but discovered when I did the math that I’d covered a lot of pages. That makes me feel better. Other days, particularly when I’m revising, I may have reduced the total number of pages, but have worked on a fair number of actual pages.
When I’m fully in gear, I try to cover a certain number of pages in a day. I’ll push out each page when the going gets rough looking for that page count. So long as I keep it reasonable, I find it helps motivate me. For me reasonable is 2 pages a day when I’m ditzing around, 5 pages a day when I’m working well but not geared down, and 7 pages a day when I’m in my “writing cave”. Keep in mind each page is 500 words long. If I happen to get in the flow, I could rack up as many as 20 pages.
I find focusing on page count much more motivating than focusing on time spent. If all I do is track how many hours I BIC-HOK I’ll end up feeling like I wasted my time, regardless of how much I got done. However there were times in my writing life when I really needed to focus on the time spent in front of the keyboard because I was not yet any good at making myself do it. Only when I found tracking time spent counterproductive did I stop keeping track of it.
I have several years worth of logs, and can now see a number of patterns in my writing habits. After a rejection has come in, my page count tends to be a bit thin. When I’ve won a contest or particularly pleased my critiquers, I might see an upsurge. More significantly, page count when transitioning between books or on revisions tend to be quite different from when I’m geared down on a rough draft.
I can also recommend making hash marks, at least on a rough draft. There is something thoroughly satisfying about being able to make a mark each time you get to the end of a page. It also helps you pace yourself.
There have been times when keeping track of pages written undermined me. I focused too much on producing pages and not enough on the story and ended up blocked. Patricia McLinn gave me some great advice once when I complained about it. She said to forget how many pages I was writing, and simply try to get down one scene a day. The change in focus worked like a charm.
However, trying to log scenes didn’t get me anywhere, and I was soon back to my regular log.
I’m sure for some people logs are a waste of time. If you aren’t disciplined enough to write down the pertinent info as it occurs, or if taking the information down prevents you from getting into your story, then logs are probably not for you. But if you can make yourself do it, you might surprise yourself with how well you are doing.
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Alice
