Sleep On It

When the flow of my writing slows to a trickle, I often retreat to the piano. So, when I got stuck on a scene in my WIP, The Strangekinds, I listened to Fur Elise to get some inspiration for a song I’m working on. Later, I turned in for the night. Mid-sleep, I woke up to the tune of Fur Elise flowing through my head, that delightful, brighter section (which Google says is part B.) And I thought what a nice tune to have playing during the concert scene in The Strangekinds. Perhaps, Alice will play it.

Then I remembered that Fur Elise is the exact song that featured in the old, original, non-YA, version of The Strangekinds, which is now sort of the prequel that I never finished and had forgotten all about. And I thought, well, then that’s definitely the song Alice will be playing on stage, so that the man who is sitting beside Tamara in the audience can remark upon the significance of song and the woman it reminds him of, whose name happens to be Elise. He won’t stop talking about it, until Tam realizes this dude is Bad News.

And whilst I’m washing my hands in the bathroom, which is where I shuffled off to with these thoughts in my head, I see myself laugh in the mirror. It just struck me how I could go through the whole day with Fur Elise and that concert scene in The Strangekinds disparately cycling through my head, and I never made the connection until mid-sleep.

It’s funny, the things that come together when you sleep on it and let your subconscious go to work.

Photo credit: "Sleeping Lion" by wwarby  available under CC BY 2.0

Close Parenthesis

:

That's not a colon. It's a smiley face. Only it's missing something, so now it's just a sad smiley face.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been reading an article and encountered incomplete parenthetical punctuation. I see the opening parenthesis, my mind automatically ‘nests’ the information that follows (bookmarks where the road forks,) and next thing I know I’m back in the main subject, only I don’t know it’s the main subject, so I’ve lost the thread of the whole thing. How did I get here? Where did the aside end?  How do I get back?

You can’t just leave the gate open for side comments to run off like wild tangents. You’re not a lazy writer, content with using ‘u’ instead of ‘you’ and ‘i’ instead of ‘I’. You were discerning enough to know you needed the brackets, so use them. Both of them. Close your parentheses.

Do it for the smiley faces.

SIROTI: The Week in Review

A lot of my reading on stuff about writing stems from conversations on CritiqueCircle.com. Did I mention CritiqueCircle.com is a great place to chat with a variety of writers, as well as give and receive feedback on WIPs? CritiqueCircle.com.

• The Business Rusch: Perfection

So, this week on writing, it started with Perfection, at Kristine Rusch’s website. While I thought the article was overly-long and meandering at times, there is, apparently, something for everyone to take away.  My take away? “Give yourself some credit, cut yourself some slack, and write on to the next adventure.”

Her main focus gets a little lost in the text, IMO, but it is about critics and reviewers and how one shouldn’t keep revising to appease every concern raised in pursuit of a ‘perfect’ novel. There’s no such thing. This, I find, can be applied to the inner editor, as well. Hence, my takeaway.

• Your E-Book Is Reading You (Wall Street Journal)

Speaking of the pursuit of the perfect novel, e-books can and do collect more data on how e-reader owners read books. This is useful to publishers. I can only imagine it is useful because it might help them make more money, in as much as it helps their authors know what readers’ sweet-spots are and what buttons to push.

Is it useful to writers at-large? For the ones not backed by big houses, I doubt it. Trying to write towards a trend is like trying to hit a moving target. It’s almost impossible considering how long it takes to write a novel and how fast trends come and go nowadays.

As for me, well, I think there’s a good story in there somewhere.

• http://ssnroyal.blog.com/2012/07/01/gina-fairchild-fellow-author/

Oh, and I’ve been interviewed! :)


Photo credit: "catch 22 nately" by schammond available under CC BY 2.0