No Mistake About It
Yep, it's true: One of DFWWW's most successful and adorable YA authors has dabbled a bit in the adult genre.Rosemary Clement Moore's new e-book, Date by Mistake, is now available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
It's an anthology put out by Entangled Publishing, and includes stories by our Rosemary, Candace Havens, Shannon Leigh, Gwen Hayes, and Jill Monroe.
Buy it and flip directly to Rosemary's Passionate Persuasion. It's about a playboy who has left a string of hearts in his wake but can’t forget the cellist who haunts his fantasies. Now it is his turn to use his power of persuasion to prove he’s the only man to keep her satisfied.
Give it a read and try not to blush!
Cooking it Up
Have you boiled your book down to a two page summary? Did you cook it some more and turn it into a two paragraph query? Further still, an elevator pitch?Here is the ultimate challenge -- the logline.
If you've always imagined your book as a movie, this free contest is for you.
On May 20th, Scott Myers will be accepting your logline. If he likes it, you'll join him for a 24-week Screenwriting Master Class. And, if you play your cards right, at the end of it you'll have a completed script along with access to Hollywood insiders.
That's fancy.
If nothing else, this competition forces you to encapsulate your story so that it fits into a single breath. It's hard as hell to do, but a good work out for any writer.
So, good luck!
Key dates and some instructions can be found here at THE QUEST.
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dee_gee/2599026376/
The Rocket Science of Writing
Being complicated doesn’t make your story good. It isn’t said often enough, but a Byzantine plot doesn’t equal a complex story. Who really wants a complicated story anyway? What we want are characters we can care about, events that are worth watching, and maybe a setting that keeps us engaged.
That’s writing in a nutshell. If you need a deeper analysis than that then you are probably trying too hard.
Writing is hard enough without putting undue pressure on yourself. Just sitting down and creating a single interesting character is hard enough. The notion that you have to come up with something complicated for them to do is something we’re taught because . . . well, I’m not sure why.
Maybe it’s because as simple and obvious as the idea of creating an engaging character sounds, it isn’t all that simple. It is where I feel most aspiring writers fail when writing their stories. Give me someone to care about, first and foremost. Without that, you’re almost always wasting my time.
The problem is that it’s very difficult to nail down what makes a character sympathetic or interesting. Plot is simple. Plot is a series of events that lead from the beginning to the end. Plot can be crafted with incredible care, charted out, mapped like a road leading us on a path we’ve traveled a thousand times, yet somehow still worth walking. Plot isn’t easy, but it is easier to understand, easier to nail down. Yet many a book completely neglects plot and somehow still works.
This is the truth I always share with aspiring writers. Stop worrying about your story. Start worrying about your characters. Give them life. Care about their future. Make them worth reading about, and the audience will be happy to travel with them. Neglect this, and it doesn’t matter how well-researched your story is or how elaborate your outline is.
It’s not the ride we care about. It’s the company.
Unless your story stinks, in which case you should probably fix that.
-- A. Lee Martinez, DFWWW Member since 1995
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bk1bennett/2533718691/
That’s writing in a nutshell. If you need a deeper analysis than that then you are probably trying too hard.
Writing is hard enough without putting undue pressure on yourself. Just sitting down and creating a single interesting character is hard enough. The notion that you have to come up with something complicated for them to do is something we’re taught because . . . well, I’m not sure why.
Maybe it’s because as simple and obvious as the idea of creating an engaging character sounds, it isn’t all that simple. It is where I feel most aspiring writers fail when writing their stories. Give me someone to care about, first and foremost. Without that, you’re almost always wasting my time.
The problem is that it’s very difficult to nail down what makes a character sympathetic or interesting. Plot is simple. Plot is a series of events that lead from the beginning to the end. Plot can be crafted with incredible care, charted out, mapped like a road leading us on a path we’ve traveled a thousand times, yet somehow still worth walking. Plot isn’t easy, but it is easier to understand, easier to nail down. Yet many a book completely neglects plot and somehow still works.
This is the truth I always share with aspiring writers. Stop worrying about your story. Start worrying about your characters. Give them life. Care about their future. Make them worth reading about, and the audience will be happy to travel with them. Neglect this, and it doesn’t matter how well-researched your story is or how elaborate your outline is.
It’s not the ride we care about. It’s the company.
Unless your story stinks, in which case you should probably fix that.
-- A. Lee Martinez, DFWWW Member since 1995
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bk1bennett/2533718691/
Making it on Your Own
The Press Club of Dallas is offering a half-day workshop called Becoming the Ultimate Freelancer. This might be a fabulous way to spend part of your weekend if you're partial to journalistic endeavors.
Details are below, but catch member Harry Hall on Wednesday if you want a first hand account. He's been before and and he'll be going again. Remember - the proof of the pudding is in the eating!
When: Saturday, March 2, 2013 from 8:30-12:30.
Where: SMU, Umphrey Lee Center / 2nd Floor, 3300 Dyer Street
Cost: $30 for non-members.
More info on the presenters and ticket sales can be found here: http://pressclubdallas.com/becoming-the-ultimate-freelancer-workshop-march-2nd/
Details are below, but catch member Harry Hall on Wednesday if you want a first hand account. He's been before and and he'll be going again. Remember - the proof of the pudding is in the eating!
When: Saturday, March 2, 2013 from 8:30-12:30.
Where: SMU, Umphrey Lee Center / 2nd Floor, 3300 Dyer Street
Cost: $30 for non-members.
More info on the presenters and ticket sales can be found here: http://pressclubdallas.com/becoming-the-ultimate-freelancer-workshop-march-2nd/
Because it's Cheaper Than Moving
I finally had to admit I had a roach problem after they stopped respecting the time-share agreement.
You know what I mean: You turn on the kitchen light, the tiny saloon piano stops for a sec, and then they go right back to doing jelly shots and playing poker in the toaster crumbs.
So I did the usual stuff. Cleaned up real good, got careful with the trash, sprayed behind the appliances. Then one night when I had some friends over for dinner, one of the little bastards fell out of a cabinet and right into the soup.
Yeah.
I got educated, got equipped, and then I got revenge.
It took two of us to pull the fridge out from the wall, revealing the hideous Blattodean¹ ur²-source underneath. I spent about an hour mopping up six years' worth of furry ectoplasm, MIA cat toys, and the lone moldering Cheeto. Then I sprinkled borax over the floor and caulked up the crevices, which was the best part (because I was all, "hey, this is like frosting a cake!" and they were all, "for the love of God, Montresor³!") The last roach I saw was fleeing to Italy, carrying his father on his back.
By this point, you're probably thinking, "Dang, Tex - I came here to check out the writer's workshop, not to hear about your horrific affinity for literary allusions and squalor." So here's what I got.
You work hard on your manuscript. When you print it and re-read it and red-pen it, you can squash any number of scurrying typos and six-legged plot-holes.
But if you've done all that and you're still racking up rejections or watching your sales figures flatline, then you might need to take a deeper look at things. This is where critique partners come in useful. Capable as you are, sometimes you do need a battle buddy to help you pull the fridge out and see where your problems are coming from.
It's not easy. In fact, it is embarrassing as hell. But there is a real security in knowing that when a dinner guest doesn't finish her first course, it's because she didn't happen to care for fish-stick bisque, and not because of what she found floating in it.
-Tex Thompson, DFWWW member since 2012
Footnotes (just in case and just for fun)
1 Cockroaches are categorized in the insect order Blattodea. Derived from the Greek word for cockroaches, “blatta”.
2 –ur has Germanic origins and can be used in a combing form to mean “earliest, original”.
3 Montresor was the narratator in Edgar Allen Poe’s work, The Cask of Amontillado. In the work, Montresor tells about his deadly revenge on a friend who offended him…and it ain't pretty.
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/garibaldi/2950742137/
You know what I mean: You turn on the kitchen light, the tiny saloon piano stops for a sec, and then they go right back to doing jelly shots and playing poker in the toaster crumbs.
So I did the usual stuff. Cleaned up real good, got careful with the trash, sprayed behind the appliances. Then one night when I had some friends over for dinner, one of the little bastards fell out of a cabinet and right into the soup.
Yeah.
I got educated, got equipped, and then I got revenge.
It took two of us to pull the fridge out from the wall, revealing the hideous Blattodean¹ ur²-source underneath. I spent about an hour mopping up six years' worth of furry ectoplasm, MIA cat toys, and the lone moldering Cheeto. Then I sprinkled borax over the floor and caulked up the crevices, which was the best part (because I was all, "hey, this is like frosting a cake!" and they were all, "for the love of God, Montresor³!") The last roach I saw was fleeing to Italy, carrying his father on his back.
By this point, you're probably thinking, "Dang, Tex - I came here to check out the writer's workshop, not to hear about your horrific affinity for literary allusions and squalor." So here's what I got.
You work hard on your manuscript. When you print it and re-read it and red-pen it, you can squash any number of scurrying typos and six-legged plot-holes.
But if you've done all that and you're still racking up rejections or watching your sales figures flatline, then you might need to take a deeper look at things. This is where critique partners come in useful. Capable as you are, sometimes you do need a battle buddy to help you pull the fridge out and see where your problems are coming from.
It's not easy. In fact, it is embarrassing as hell. But there is a real security in knowing that when a dinner guest doesn't finish her first course, it's because she didn't happen to care for fish-stick bisque, and not because of what she found floating in it.
-Tex Thompson, DFWWW member since 2012
Footnotes (just in case and just for fun)
1 Cockroaches are categorized in the insect order Blattodea. Derived from the Greek word for cockroaches, “blatta”.
2 –ur has Germanic origins and can be used in a combing form to mean “earliest, original”.
3 Montresor was the narratator in Edgar Allen Poe’s work, The Cask of Amontillado. In the work, Montresor tells about his deadly revenge on a friend who offended him…and it ain't pretty.
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/garibaldi/2950742137/