Tag: ideas

What is Success in Writing?

On By dotluvs2writeIn blogging, Fiction Writing, Inspirational, Musings, Writing Techniques15 Comments

fountain pen on white paper

 

Some folks believe success in the fiction writing world is when you are a bestseller and are able to make loads of money off your books. This is a rarity, and it’s fine.

Success to me is:

1) The joy of ideas flowing in my mind, writing the scenes from the visions in my head, and finishing the story. It’s a fabulous achievement, first and foremost.

2) Having my book published to share my characters and their world with readers.

3) My characters and storyline reaching and connecting to the reader, leaving an indelible and profound feeling in their hearts and minds.

I believe these are the greatest blessings in the realm of writing fiction books. If you’ve accomplished any of these, you are a winner in my view.

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Treading in Unfamiliar Genre

On By dotluvs2writeIn blogging, Fiction Writing, Inspirational, Musings, Writing Techniques5 Comments

genre picture 2Last week, several ideas of a new story came to my mind. It was exciting. I mean, when is it NOT exciting to have new story ideas bloom in your brain? It’s a fantastic feeling, right?

I started writing down notes on this new story. Many thoughts and many questions. What’s the core of this story? What’s the main character ARC? And what about this idea or that one for the storyline?

Then it dawned on me that I was steering outside the usual path of women’s fiction genre I write to one I’d never really driven on before. Looking up the genre I believed my story ideas fell into, revealed it to be in the speculative and dystopian fiction realm.

I cringed a bit because I’ve never been into sci-fi, fantasy, or dystopian stories. From the stories I’ve read on my online critiquing site, I do have an interest in certain paranormal stories. And, I have to admit, one of my fellow critiquers writes King Arthur fantasy, and her story won me over through her excellent writing. But these examples are exceptions, not the norm in my regular reading regimen.

A few days ago, I finished writing the first chapter to this new story, and I loved it. I read it to my sons and husband. They loved it.

I have notes on where I want the story to go. But I’ve not been able to get back to the story and write it.

Now, how often has that happened to us writers? Pretty often, right? So, I wasn’t too surprised, but it still frustrated me.

Then I thought, “I just need to get to writing. Start the next chapter.”

That’s how I was able to finish up my last novel that took a year and a half to write. I had to push myself to start each chapter, even though I knew what I needed to write. The writing would start out slow, dull, and mechanical, like I was just writing to get the words down. And I was. However, around mid page, the creativity started to pour out, and I became immersed in the scene.

So, with my own experiences, I can use them and tell myself to “Just start writing”.

Try it if you haven’t already, my fellow writers. Just put words down on the paper or on the Word document.

Wish me luck on this new project. I’m hoping it comes out to be worthy of future readers.

 

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Plethora of Promising Projects

On By dotluvs2writeIn blogging, Fiction Writing, Fun, humanity, Humor, Inspirational, Musings, Past Life Activities, Writing Techniques2 Comments
write and ideas

Last night, I started having the desire to write something new… a new story. I had an idea of one I’d thought of several months ago in which I wrote a couple pages of notes. I actually wrote an opening, full page, but since then, it’s sunk to the bottom of the trash bin of writing ideas and mediocre beginnings that have turned into dust bunnies.

Then I told myself I have so many stories I’ve written that needed to be revised, rewritten, strengthened, tightened, and polished, so I don’t need to worry about another story at this time. Truly, I have several stories written from 2014 to 2019 that I believe have the potential to be transformed into real gems.

Two novels:

Passage of Promise — Took me four and a half years to write, revise, rewrite, and edit. It’s still in the hands of the publisher I queried. Waiting to see if they accept my manuscript.

What She Didn’t Know — my most recent finished draft as of the summer of 2019. Took me a year and a half to write it. It is the longest novel I’ve ever written. At present, it is going through my online critique group. It’s my most complex and profound book I’ve written so far–three broken sisters, their encounters with relationships and life events.

Novella:

Mourning Dove — I ran it through my critique group a year or so ago. After running it through, I made the suggested changes, and I also added new scenes to make the story more comprehensive and complete. Gabby, a young widow, tries to help her deceased husband’s homeless cousin back on his feet, but a messy run in with another homeless man brings violent retaliatory behavior upon the cousin and envelopes Gabby into the vortex of that violence. I plan to run it back through my group after What She Didn’t Know is finished in the critique queue.

Novelette:

The Rocky Retreat — I’ve only run this story halfway through my critique group a couple of years ago. It’s a controversial piece having to do with contention between environmentalists and 2nd Amendment activists set in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. It is satire and supposed to be more humor than reality. I have some questions on its plot–if it’s strong enough. Even though it’s supposed to be fun and entertaining, the plot needs to be there and concrete. Therefore, I’ll be running the whole story through the critique queue probably after Mourning Dove.

Short Stories:

Incident at Coral Canyon — a middle school/children’s book on bullying encountering mysticism. It was the first story I picked up a pencil and wrote on paper in 2014 after nearly eighteen years of treading in the writing desert. Last month, I worked on revising this from third person omniscient to close third person point of view, as well as overall revising, cleaning up some of the syntax and word usages. This is further back on the shelf of works to complete and introduce to my critique group.

Remember the Daisies — A touching story of an elderly woman’s memories and loss. This story was inspired by a real-life event in my neighborhood back in Lancaster, PA, that I used loosely to create a unique story for my fiction writing class in college at the time. I ran it through my critique group after I’d written up the first draft and got great responses, most of which were how touching it was and how much they liked the story, more than critiques on anything regarding plot, character, or tightening of sentences. I will run this back through my critique group sometime after the others.

 

As you can see, I really have no reason to start another story at this time. I’m thinking, when the time is right, a new, brilliant idea and storyline will come to me, and I think it’ll be after a few of the projects I mentioned above are done and published. God willing!

A whole stack of stories to work on. What could be better? Life is good.

What writing projects are you working on?

 

 

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