Who are your characters in real life?

April 26, 2013 at 5:01 pm (Characterization)
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silhouette

Well, I got my rejection email from the James Jones First Novel Competition yesterday –

“Thank you for sending us “Biomalware.”  We appreciated the chance to read it. Unfortunately, your manuscript has not been selected for the final round.”

A little disappointed but not devastated.  Onward.

I still have plans to research and do a complete re-write of Biomalware, at a more leisurely pace, this summer.  I want to do some serious in depth research into the issue of GMO’s.  I know how I feel about them based on the information I have seen but I want to make sure that the feeling is supported by all the information available.  More research might prove me wrong, bolster my opinion, or just make me more confused.

First comes the short story collection though.  In that vein, I’ve got some that I’ve written that I want to edit and some that I’ve been working on for a while.  I also wanted to write something completely new.  I felt there was a gap in my collection.  I’ve got re-writes of fairy tales, ghost stories and vampire stories.  Basically, it’s a paranormal collection.  What I do not have, is a superhero story.

Then I met the perfect person to base my main character for the missing story on.

Now, we all take aspects of people we know and have known and work them into our characters.  I long ago realized that my perception of who a person is doesn’t necessarily conform to who they think they are or who they really are, which can also be two different things.  I figure I’m creating a character of most people based on my own perceptions and imaginings.  Why not use that in my fiction?

I like to take an actual person that I’ve met but don’t really know and imagine everything else about them.  I’m making up a character based on just a few traits and perhaps a physical description then fleshing that character out in my mind.

Does anybody else do that?

It’s a lot of fun.  Give it a try.  It might just liven up your weekend.

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Changes are a-comin! The Business of Art, Writing Fellowship, a Facebook page and MY domain.

March 10, 2013 at 8:09 am (Uncategorized)
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How fast can I write a blog post that’s interesting with links and good information?  Start timing – 7:48 am.

Okay,

(Excuse me, have to go peanut butter my raisin toast, back in a minute.)

As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by the beaping of the toaster, (it’s a good thing I can still type with peanut butter toast in my mouth) lots of great things going on this week!

I went to submit my novel, Biomalware, to the James Jones Fellowship Contest last Friday and found out that they had pushed back the deadline two whole weeks!  There’s still time if you want to enter.  I’ve been slacking a bit but I worked on the book Friday and will continue to do so until the deadline comes back around.

I’ve been attending a Business of Art workshop at the Community Arts in Elmira in Upstate NY through the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes and there’s been some really interesting info. shared. 

The workshop prompted me to go purchase my own domain name through https://www.godaddy.com/.  It was quick and easy.  It did start out being 9.99 for the year but then you add on the cost of keeping it private (so that your personal contact information isn’t used for registering the domain name so everybody can see it on the Internet) and the cost of registering a dot com and it quickly came up to about $23.00.  Still, a solid investment.  This blog will soon be www.melorajohnson.com. 

Anyway, I now have a Facebook page where I will be posting a daily note on something interesting or inspiring about writing or life in general.  Come like my page and I promise not to flood you with junk!  Just click here -> Melora Johnson’s Facebook page.

It was really easy.  I just went to my Facebook profile and clicked on “Add a page” down the left hand side.  They asked what type of page I wanted to create and let me upload a picture then I posted something on my new page and asked my personal friends to like it.  Woo hoo!

A couple things I found out yesterday about using Facebook to promote yourself or your business – the first time you post each day people will look but the second time your looks/likes will go down about 57%.  Also, once I have an event or book trailer, or something, to promote, I can do that through Facebook and pick the types of people I want to promote it to.  Cool! 

Okay, it is now 8:08 am.  I need to add a pic and go put something interesting on my new Facebook page.  Hope to see you there!

Oh, gotta eat that toast too.

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The Glimmer of Hope

March 1, 2013 at 12:41 pm (Uncategorized)
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It’s been a long week and I’m so frazzled from the process of trying to rewrite, revise and edit the summary and first fifty pages of Biomalware before tonight’s deadline that I’m not entirely sure why I’m doing this anymore. I want chocolate… and a nap.

After I submit Biomalware to the James Jones Fellowship contest tonight, I’m going to take the weekend away from it. I have some reading and commenting to do for others and the house is in a state of disgrace that only some heavy duty cleaning and elbow grease will elevate it from.

I’ll need to get back into it fairly soon and revise then edit the next fifty pages so that if the Fellowship competition should call for them, they will be ready.

I’m seriously thinking about creating just an outline for the book and going back to reimagine each scene and write it fresh with all the details then combine the best of the two versions I have. I think I probably will. That would allow me to come at it from two different writing directions. It will also give me time to research the GMO question and take Sam through the research process more in the book.

Oh, and to cap off my wonderful mood yesterday, I got my rejection e-mail from the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Contest. Guess I’ll be submitting that story to Yahoo! Voices this weekend. I doubt it will get much interest because they aren’t really featuring new stuff these days but at least it will be out there. I really liked it though it’s a bit unusual, a bit of magical realism, so hopefully someone else will enjoy it too.

I write because I like to write and to connect with others. I would really like to be writing novels and short stories for a living. I often refer to it as living the dream.

New York State came up with an ad campaign a few years back for their lottery tickets that said “you can’t win if you don’t play.” Now they more often go with “Hey, you never know.” Both sum up how I feel about submitting my work to contests and for publication. It’s a long shot but there’s that glimmer of hope that keeps me persevering. I know I want to write for a living and I know it’s a long shot but I know it’s certainly not going to happen if I don’t submit what I’ve written. I’d write even if no one ever read it but it’s so much more fun to share what I’ve written.

So, I have my lunch hour today and what time my 2 year old will allow me after work to continue revising and editing the excerpt from Biomalware before I submit it competition. On the one hand, I know there is so much more I could do to it, and will in the future. On the other hand, I promised myself that I was going to submit to this contest and I really feel compelled to at least put it out there. Maybe I could get an honorable mention for the ideas, if not the execution.

Hey, you never know.

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Dispiriting critiques – throw a writing dog a bone, would ya?

February 22, 2013 at 1:31 pm (Uncategorized)
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A bad critique can be dispiriting.

I started out really happy with what I found when I went back to look at my draft of Biomalware.  I know it needs a lot of work.  I’m sure it’s going to change over time, but I think I’ve got the bones of a really good story.  Maybe it’s too early to be submitting it to a competition but the deadline is next week and I don’t want to wait a year.

I’m submitting the first fifty pages and a summary to the James Jones Fellowship contest.  The award is to “honor the spirit of unblinking honesty, determination, and insight into modern culture.”   I think my novel falls into that.

There may be even more competition this year because I saw it in Writer’s Digest, so I’m sure a whole lot of other people did too.  Now, I may not have a chance in hell but I’m submitting whatever I’ve got at the end of the month because if I don’t submit, there’s absolutely NO chance I’ll win, place or at least receive an honorable mention.   (I say at least but it sounds pretty damn good to me.)

So, I did a quick edit and sent it out to my writer’s group and a friend, hoping for feedback to help me clean it up and focus it.  I received a couple quick responses that made some suggestions but were generally favorable.

Then, last night, one of the group ripped into it.

For the love of God, if you’re critiquing someone’s work, find one or two things that you liked about it.  Don’t just hammer them with everything you see wrong!  It’s guaranteed to put the writer on the defensive and it’s just not nice.

Now, he gave me some good notes and some that I totally disagree with.  It’s my book so I get to decide what to take and what to leave.

But there’s a weight when someone rips apart your story that way.  It drags you down.  You waste energy and time fighting out from under it.

Now I have to somehow overcome this malaise.  Right now I just want a nap and a piece of cake.  I’m not going to have either though.  I’m going to get through my work day, do what I need to at home (which will probably take most of the evening) and eke out some time to work on my book.

Maybe some good music will help.

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Hey! Who wrote this book?

February 15, 2013 at 12:19 pm (Uncategorized)
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Open Book

 

Hey! Who wrote this book?

It all started earlier this week when I was preparing a talk on Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. There was an intro by Edwidge Danticat and I decided to look her up. I’d known of her writing for years and always thought of her as an older woman.

She’s only FIVE years older than me!

AND she’s been wining awards and recognition for her writing since I went off to college.

Argh!

I posted about that on Facebook, questioning what the heck I’d been doing all this time with my writing, and an old friend suggested we share works in progress to help move things along. Being as he is a really good editor, I pulled out my Biomalware manuscript from last August that I wrote during Camp NaNoWriMo.

Now, what I want to know is, who wrote this book when I wasn’t looking? Because there’s 149 pages and it’s not nearly as bad as I remember. I guess what they say about giving it time in a drawer is true.

So, yesterday I took the afternoon off to work on it. Of course, I got a stomach virus but that’s a story you don’t want to hear and I STILL managed to get the novel outlined and rearranged some pieces of it – after a nap.

(I’m sure I’ve mentioned Biomalware before but to bring everyone up to speed, the novel is set in the near future where a new strain of genetic modification to crops has created food which isn’t food for everyone, some people cannot derive nutrition from it. Now it is infiltrating even the organic crops through pollen contamination, and that’s not all it’s doing.  The short story that started it is here, in case you’re interested.)

My next step is to use the information on Scenes and Sequels that I learned from Jim Butcher’s LiveJournal to focus the action in each chapter. (If you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend it. He hasn’t written much lately but the information on how he writes is really useful.)

Then I’ll go back through and tighten up things using the rest of the info in his posts on things like characterization and THEN I’m going to look back at it and make sure I’ve done everything I learned from Donald Maass in his book, Writing the Breakout Novel.

Luckily, after posting on Facebook, I have several more interested readers to give me feedback once I’m ready, as well as my writer’s group.

Now, the problem is that I want to apply for the James Jones Fellowship Contest because I think my book fits in AND because the first prize is TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.

It’s awarded to “an American author of a first fiction novel-in-progress” and “is intended to honor the spirit of unblinking honesty, determination, and insight into modern culture exemplified by the late James Jones.”

What’s the problem there, you ask? Well, the deadline is March 1st. Luckily they just want the summary and first fifty pages so I will send that out to my readers at the end of the weekend.

Of course, we also plan to celebrate Valentine’s Day on Saturday and we have a family gathering on Sunday.

*slump*

Maybe I can get some rest next week.

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