Tag: writing

Camp NaNoWriMo

3rd & 4th Days of Camp NaNao

J.I. Soucie

Yesterday was not a great writing day for me. I didn’t get much sleep the night before and so only managed to punch out about 300 words.

Today, the 4th day of Camp NaNo, I managed to write a little over 1,700 words. My story has totally take a turn I had not expected and the plot I had originally planned is kaput! Now I have to think of something else as the story goes along.

Oh, man! I just don’t know what’s gonna happen! Guess that is the adventure in not following an outline but letting the story take you down paths you had not thought of before. Just letting the words flow from mind to fingertips can be such a magical experience it is almost like someone else is writing for me. It is amazing!

Well, I am off to bed for now. Need some good rest for more writing tomorrow!

Best of luck to those still writing, and for those off to bed, sleep well! Night!

Camp NaNoWriMo

2nd Day of Camp NaNo – End of Day

J.I. Soucie

Well, I have finished day two of Camp NaNo with 1446 words. Not as many as yesterday, but I had one busy day today and I am surprised I was able to write as much as I did with all the cooking, baking, and cleaning that went on today.

I started writing after my husband when to bed which was about 10:30PM and by midnight had written about 200 words short of my daily word count.

Tomorrow will not be as busy. Just some laundry to do so I should be able to exceed my word count for tomorrow. At least I striving to do so.

My story has taken a few turns I did not expect, which I think is always exciting in writing. You start out with this one idea or plan for how you want things to go and then events in the story and your characters end up leading you in another direction to either the same end, or a different end completely. It is just amazing and an adventure! So much fun!

Well it is after 12AM here on the east coast of the good old U.S.A and I am trying to decide if I want to take a break or keep working and get some words in early on this 3rd day of Camp NaNo.

Hmmmm… The decisions! lol

Good night all and best of luck again tomorrow!

General Updates

Organizing Writing Projects: What Is Your Favorite Software?

J.I. Soucie

So the past couple of days I have been sifting through files some paper, some digital, and trying to figure out how to categorized and put together all my writing ideas. Some of these ideas have generated beginnings of stories, while others are still ideas. I am trying to decided how I want to organize everything and I am thinking of using Microsoft OneNote. I love the program, but I am hesitant to use it because it doesn’t syn up with the Microsoft OneNote app on my iPad. Now if I use EverNote, I can sync from my computer to my iPad no problem. The only with that is if there is no Internet, you can’t get your files. Ugh! The frustration.

In light of this, I have created the following poll. Let me know what your favorite software is to use when organizing your writing projects. Thanks for your votes!

 

General Updates

Busy Brain

J.I. Soucie

I’m sitting here in my living room with my four year old playing with her toys on the floor and my husband reading on his Nexus 7 tablet. I am honestly trying to relax, but the creative and imaginative spirit in me is too anxious and exited to let me sit still. My brain is running in zips and zings with ideas of manuscripts almost to their first draft stage. These manuscripts are:

A Daughter’s Reflection and The History of Watertown, NY

Then I am in the process of reformatting my book The History of Sackets Harbor, New York, so I can add it to the Smashwords.com library. I am also going to add it to Kobo. I have also lowered the price of the Kindle ebook from $6.99 down to $4.99. The more I thought about it, would I really be willing to buy an ebook at $6.99? Not so much. At $4.99, yeah. I would.

I also have some notes I need to work on for Voice4Society. So much is flaring in this brain of mine. I try to relax but knowing I have so much work to do it makes it hard. Being a homemaker and stay at home mom, plus a writer has its challenges. Oh, and then there is school work!

So my task for today….prioritize! And then set a schedule. Ha! (Sorry. An ALF moment there!) I do pretty well prioritizing, it is schedules I find hard to keep because I take my time doing things so I do them right and to enjoy what I. I don’t like rushing anything unless absolutely necessary. Guess we shall see what happens. I know what I really WANT to work on and then what MUST be worked on. It is so hard to put the WANT behind and do what SHOULD be done and what I have committed myself to doing for another. I must do what is right. I shall work on an article for Voice4Society during the day today and then tonight, perhaps that is when I’ll work on my books.

So with that, I am off. To drink some Yerba Mate tea and do some research and study in the Bible. have a great day!

General Updates

Editing

J.I. Soucie

Tonight I am working on editing some posts for my husband’s blog. He has decided to develop apps for Android and is starting…well…more like continuing a blog on developing that he started several years ago. The blog doesn’t have much on it yet, but there will be plenty more to come. If you’d like to check out the blog, you can view it here. New posts will be arriving shortly.

 

While I am on the subject of editing, I bought this book a short while ago titled Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, by James Scott Bell. I am an Indie author and though I know I can do a fair job at editing, it wouldn’t hurt to work on tightening those editing skills. Both writing and editing go together and in order to have a well written piece, you have to keep flexing those writing and editing muscles.

Here is the Table Of Contents:

Introduction to the 2nd Edition

On Becoming a Writer

PART I: SELF-EDITING

Chapter 1: A Philosophy of Self-Editing

Chapter 2: Characters

Chapter 3: Plot and Structure

Chapter 4: Point of View

Chapter 5: Scenes

Chapter 6: Dialogue

Chapter 7: Beginnings, Middles, Ends

Chapter 8: Show Vs. Tell

Chapter 9: Voice and Style

Chapter 10: Setting and Description

Chapter 11: Exposition

Chapter 12: Theme

 

PART II: REVISION

Chapter 13: A Philosophy of Revision

Chapter 14: Before You Revise

Chapter 15: The First Read-Through

Chapter 16: Deepening

Chapter 17: The Ultimate Revision Checklist

 

Epilogue: The Trick That Cannot Be Explained

Appendix

Index

 

Whew! Sure seems like there is a lot to that book, but I cannot wait to start reading it. I may write a review of the book when I am finished.

 

An article written by WritersDigest.com’s Brian A. Klems titled, “HOW TO REVISE YOUR WRITING (& AWESOME EDITING SYMBOLS YOU SHOULD KNOW)” is pretty good and also gave me a laugh!

Well, I must get back to work! Night all!

General Updates

Working On Projects for Friends

J.I. Soucie

Today I took a break from working on my own writing to work on some projects for a woman who is elderly, but seeking to live her dream as a writer. She doesn’t quite grasp the computer age, but she tries. Since I have more experience in the writing and published field as well as computers, I have decided to help her out.

I started writing her author biography today, but first I spent some time reading about writing a good author biography to see how things have changed since I last wrote mine several years ago wish some updates. I think I am going to have to change mine! An update is in order.

It is a chore to write your own author biography, but the real challenge comes when you write one for someone else. While I am working on putting a professional spin on her biography, I have sent her some interview questions that will help me to write her biography, as well as an interview article, and possibly help with writing the press release for her book The Rose Garden.

Then, I will be helping a friend post updates on his blog about his adventures into the world of developing apps. He is starting off with an Android App called OrganicGarden. He has a list of things he wants to talk about on his blog, so this will be more learning experience, but also a learning curve into the world of a computer engineer. Shall be enlightening! He hasn’t added anything to his blog in quite some time. I guess he hadn’t found what he really wanted to do yet.

So that is what I have been working on for today. I have made some progress. Not as much as I had hoped, but I am thankful for what I was able to get done. Now we’ll see what tomorrow will bring.

Voice4Society

Article On Grief

J.I. Soucie

It has taking me a few days to come up with a new way to write this personal experience article on grief. I was thrown for a loop at the beginning on how to begin writing a personal experience piece, so I did some reading online and found some good references. One of the places was Writer On Line: http://www.writer-on-line.com/content/view/325/66/~Articles/Memoir/Turning-a-Personal-Experience-into-an-Article.html

Taking the advice from the above article, I was able to rewrite my article and now find my writing to be going more smoothly. I am finding it easier to stick to my topic and the article is going in direction I originally intended. Thank you, Kathryn Lay, for writing “Turning A Personal Experience Into An Article”.

It is great that other writers can help other writers learn new things and help each other branch out into other areas of writing. This keeps our writing muscles challenged and never bored.

Now I must get back to my article. God bless!

Camp NaNoWriMo, General Updates, november nano

Holidays Are Here

J.I. Soucie

You have probably noticed I have not posted anything recently. No updates on my writing…. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing something here and there or at least thinking about my writing, but the holidays are here and it is that crazy time for buying gifts, wrapping gifts, making gifts…not to mention the cooking and baking involved and planning out what is going to be on the menu for dinner and dessert.

I have been quite busy planning our menu for Thanksgiving as well as ordering Christmas gifts, wrapping a few of them, and I still have to make some of the other Christmas gifts. The gifts I have to make are taking up most of my time, so my writing really has been pushed to the back burner.

I have tried to keep up with NaNo but this month seems to be the hardest for me. November just seems to busy. I tend to have better luck with the Camp NaNo months, but I know those aren’t taken as seriously by most as the November NaNoWriMos.

There really is no telling what next year will bring, if I’ll be participating in the NaNos or not. I predict it will be busy with house searching, however, my daughter starts pre school so that will give me some more time to sit and write and not feel so rushed. Still, everything is in God’s hands and we’ll shall see what happens. I’ll keep praying and remaining flexible to what God’s will is. I know that is important. We shall see what He has in store. Keep up the writing! God bless & an early Happy Thanksgiving!!

november nano

New NaNo Story

J.I. Soucie

Well, I have started work on a new story for NaNo. It will be fantasy. I am runny far behind on being ready for NaNo to start, but that’s okay. I can still work on some development as I go.

Still need to come up with a title and some character names, but the final decisions will come later. Right now I may just throw some names in there as fillers.

I have the basic story idea about done. Then it will be developing the characters I am seeing carry out various actions to make this story work. Man, I am having dialogue coming to me and my story crying to be written. Oh, how am I going to be able to wait until Nov 1st to begin writing? It’s so hard!!!!

How are you fellow NaNoWriMos coming along with your story? Are you ready for the month long event? Do you plan on staying home and writing or getting out with other writers in your area? I haven’t fully decided what I am going to do. Will have to see if there are any meetings close to me.

Well, I know this isn’t much of an update this time. Hopefully, I’ll have more to say later. Best of luck and happy writing!

Janis