1. Read as much as you can. Don’t restrict yourself to the genre in which you write. Try everything, from classics to pulp, new to old, fiction, faction or non-fiction. For instance, how many of these have you read? That’s this week’s homework! 😉
2. Join a class in creative writing, whether ‘real’ or online. It’s where I got my big break. Visit your local library (in this age of cuts to budgets, they need all the support they can get) to find out about local groups for readers and writers, and check out online sites such as http://romanceuniversity.org.
3. Join groups such as The Romantic Novelists’ Association (http://www.rna-uk.org/) in the UK or Romance Writers of America (http://www.rwa.org/) who provide lots of useful information and contacts. The Marcher chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association has been a great help to me. The support of other writers, and the constructive criticism provided by writing workshops is invaluable.
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Category: Creative Writing workshop
Creative Writing Workshop: Extract from my current WIP
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Fay, Georgia, Christina Courtenay, Joanna & Ann |
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Uncrowned king, Leo— http://bit.ly/1ujX5zc |
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Athan, The Man Who Made It—http://bit.ly/1GQPIIq |
and eighty four days, five hours, then I can tell you both where to stick your job. But until then, I need you as much as you need me.
This Writing Life…
I’m on holiday this week, lazing around the beautiful Costa del Back Garden. Although I might not be chained to my desk, the writing never stops. I’ve just sent out my spring newsletter, so if you’d like to read an extract from my current work in progress (working title, Love On The Run) get the recipe for Jamaica Orange Cake, or hear some great news about one of my street team, join my mailing list by signing in to the box on the right of this page.
This week I’ll be reading through the extracts submitted for the workshop being run by the local chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Each of the eight people taking part sent a piece of writing to the co-ordinator, who circulated anonymous versions of all the samples. We read and make comments on each one, which we then discuss when we meet up at the day-long workshop. It’s a really productive exercise. We’ve all picked up loads of ideas and improved our writing after holding previous events, and I’m really looking forward to this next one.
I write up a few nature notes nearly every day, and today it will be all about choruses: dawn and frog. Every morning I’m out before dawn, either running, or checking the greenhouses. This morning a dunnock fell out of bed to join me with an alarm call at about 6am, but the robins and other birds didn’t join him until about 6:15. The territories of five singing thrushes overlap in our garden, and I waste a lot of time standing and listening to them. You can get a taste of their song here. It’s hard to believe such lovely sounds are really war cries and warnings to rivals!
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By Dick Daniels |
Our wildlife pond has been alive with frogs, newts and toads for weeks. The water boils with amphibian action, but spawn has only just started appearing in large amounts. The pond needs an overhaul. It’s the ambition of every small body of water to become dry land (or at least bog), so it’s an endless struggle stopping it silting up. That’s going to be a long, wet and muddy job for somebody. Maybe I’ll book a holiday away from home when that crops up on the “to do” list!
If you’re on holiday this week, I hope you can manage to get out and about in the fresh air. What’s your favourite sign of spring?
PS: If you fancy trying out my Jamaica Orange Cake at Easter, don’t forget to sign up to my mailing list, in the box on the right.
Writing A Book In A Month, Part One
For thousands of writers all over the world, November means NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to start work on a novel on 1st November, with a goal of reaching a 50,000 word count by midnight on November 30th.
If you’ve ever thought of writing a novel, NaNoWriMo is a great place to start. That unbreakable, unmistakeable deadline, coupled with a helpful website dedicated to this non-profit making enterprise, is a great way to turn ideas into words. In 2013, over 310,000 participants from all over the world made the leap from wishing to writing. Sign up like they did, and you can get guidance, support, hints, and tips from professional writers and experienced participants via forums, email alerts and local groups.
I’m coming in late to this game, and for a very special reason. My published novels (you can see them all here), whether historical or contemporary, come under the romantic fiction banner. I’ve always wanted to try something different, but I enjoy working in my familiar genres so I’ve never got around to branching out. My working life has always been very structured, but after attending a couple of RNA workshops (details here) I discovered the wonders of a free-form approach. Getting out of my writing comfort zone turned out to be less scary and more productive than I’d imagined.
November this year just happened to coincide with a gap in my work schedule, so last Monday I signed up for NaNoWriMo 2014. The process was easy. The prospect is chilling. All (!) you have to do is commit to writing a first draft of 50,000 words for your story, before the 30 November deadline. That works out at around 1,670 words per day. Every day. Once you’ve signed up, you start writing on November 1st. Each day, you log in to the NaNoWriMo site and update your word count on the header menu. It’s a stark measurement of your progress. I get stressed about reaching my usual10,000 word per week target as it is. Seeing my figures flagged up like that will really pile on the pressure.
Everyone who reaches the 50,000 word target is a winner. From 20th November onwards, you can paste your completed novel into the NaNoWriMo site. Once validated, you can apply for your winner’s badge (the NaNoWriMo site allows you to scramble your text, so you don’t need to worry about security).
NaNoWriMo helps writers in all sorts of ways. There are forums where you can get support and inspiration from other sufferers (sorry, writers). There’s even a section where you can pick up orphan plots, characters or settings suggested by other people, and generously offered to anyone who’s stuck. The whole site is a well of inspiration, and a hub for networking.
I’ve had a particular Alpha male living inside my head for quite a while, but he felt too damaged to be the hero of a classic romance. I knew he’d be locked away for a life sentence unless I found some way to free him on parole. Then my local chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association held a workshop where we each had to submit the first ten pages of a novel. These would be reviewed by all the other workshop members. It felt like the right place to give him an airing, so I let my mind freewheel around the idea for a few days. In that time, my damaged hero solidified into a guy called Josh with a “dangerous” dog and a bad attitude. He met an anti-heroine, Sophia, whose backstory is even darker than his own. Then I sat down at the computer and fooled around with the pair of them until I had a sample long enough to submit to the workshop.
The other writers thought my new project had a future, but a series of tight deadlines meant Inever got a chance to do anything more with those first ten pages.
Luckily, I finished my current Work In Progress, His Majesty’s Secret Passion, in time to sign up for NaNoWriMo 2014. It’s given me a concrete reason to devote one whole month to my new project. I’m raring to go, if a bit apprehensive. On the plus side, I’ve already got the first ten pages of my new novel, a folder full of character outlines and a general idea of what’s going to happen, to whom, and how. On the minus side, typing “The End” seems a long way over the horizon, and it’ll be uphill all the way.
I’ve cleared my diary, sharpened my pencils, and told the family I might be taking a holiday from the kitchen. If the words don’t come, we’ll be living out of the freezer until December 1st.
Keep tabs on my progress by subscribing to my newsletter—just click on the subscribe button top right, or drop me a line at christinahollis(at)hotmail.co.uk.
Are you going to join NaNoWriMo 2014?
Creative Writing: Self-Help And Suggestions…
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View From The Barrow Wake by B.R.Marshall |
If you want to write a best seller, self-help and sex are the subjects to get you the highest sales. Think of all the books on dieting that’ll hit the shelves to coincide with our New Year Resolutions in January 2015, or the sales figures of Fifty Shades Of Grey.
Whatever your book is about, how are you going to get it written? You’ll need imagination and determination, but it helps to have some encouragement along the way, too. This is where self-help and community action join forces.
I wrote here about how the Marcher Chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association held a creative writing workshop back in the spring. We each submitted ten pages of our work in advance. Then we all made notes on everyone else’s work, and presented them on the day.
I found the experience of having other writers assess my work really helpful. After all, they’re keen readers, too, and that’s exactly the audience I want to entertain. After a day spent talking about nothing but the craft of writing, we all went home after that workshop with lots of inspiration.
Along with everyone else, I was encouraged to finish the work I’d showcased. You can read an extract from The Survivors’ Club here. Our workshop that day was the final push I needed to finish the whole book. After a final polish, it was packed off to the publisher. Everyone else arrived at our next meeting with similar stories. Nobody wanted to be the one to confess they hadn’t done anything more with their project!
The need for advice, and a spur to turn it into action, are prime reasons to join a local group. The online writing community is great, but sometimes it’s good to get out from behind your screen and meet other people face-to-face. If there isn’t a writing group in your area already, why not start one yourself? It’s got the potential to be much more productive that a simple book club, although there’s nothing to stop you combining the two. All writers are readers, and you might encourage other people to pick up their pens. That’s how fan fiction began, after all. You can cheer each other up when the going is tough, and cheer each other on when it’s going well. All it takes is somewhere to meet. Plenty of tea and cake always helps the creative process, but that’s optional!
If you want your meetings to be productive as well as sociable you need a good chairman (or chairwoman) to keep meetings on topic, and make sure everyone gets a chance to speak. Criticism should always be constructive, and try and keep to the ratio of three stars to every black hole–that is, highlight three times more good points than you give suggestions for improvement. It keeps meetings upbeat. That way, you all go home feeling your work has been praised more than it’s been criticised. It makes everyone feel more confident about tackling the suggested revisions.
Do you belong to a writers’ group or book club? What’s the most useful piece of information you’ve been given?