The Pen of a Ready Writer

     A friend of mine was blogging about wealth (among other things) and how it is meant to be shared.  You think about the lonely miserable old miser.  You think about the joy they would have if they had someone to share with.  Wealth is not meant to be squandered but neither is it meant to be horded.      My friend went on to say that God did not give us wealth as a trick test to see how much we would give away.  And, as I read that, I thought of how many times it has been portrayed that way.  "God gave you good things just to see what kind of person you are.  You will be graded on the percentage of your goods that you distribute to the needy."  Is that how it is?  No.       But are we supposed to share our wealth?  Yes.       God gave us good things for us to enjoy them.  And we already established in the first paragraph that you will enjoy your wealth so much more when yo...

"Too much drama, not enough action." I've talked about this before, but I am coming back to it because I have seen this drama/action ratio again.  This time, it was in the first 2 episodes of OUAT.  I didn't especially like it, so I spent an evening mulling over WHY I didn't like it...so that I can avoid the same mistakes in my own writing. Before I start, I should reiterate that I only saw 2 episodes.  I know several people who absolutely love this show, and I am sure that there are great things about it that I overlooked.  So, don't be angry with my judgments -- I know they aren't perfect. Going into the show, I knew that it was a tremendous favorite among several groups on the blogging world.  And therefore, I had a kind of disney princess/robin hood/king arthur expectation...which was inaccurate.  Also, OUAT is not the sort of show that I typically watch so it all seemed new and strange to me. Here is what I saw: Pros : mystery.  Honestly,...

Hi.  This one, which I am calling JW, is coming so fast.  I told you I usually give these things a couple days, but I think I am going to let it reign until the weekend.  I am up to 12,239 words now, and I'm very close to the halfway point.  It would be crazy to stop now.  Besides, I'm nearly biting my nails to see what happens next.

     So I wrote a tiny snippet of nothing and then fell in love with it.  I got to thinking that maybe I should play with it for a couple days.  I do this with plot bunnies that won't go away.  If I let them free for a couple days, I often capture enough information to store them away and come back to them at a later date.       Wednesday, I let this snippet free.  And I wrote 6,474 words in the story.      I don't know if I have ever written that much in one day.      I plan to let it run free tomorrow and then we'll see what we get.  At this pace, I'll have a first draft on my hands before I'm done.

     "Benjamin Cooling."      Jemma shook the offered hand.  "Is that your name?  Or an air conditioning company?"

This is a "bit of nothing" that I typed on 4/10/15 because... I needed a break from every story that I am working on,  I was inspired to try "showing instead of telling" by a Go Teen Writer's contest that I am too old to enter, and I wanted to write about somebody who is exhausted from a long day of work only to find that she's got a long, exciting night ahead of her. Yeah. I might could give you a good reason for that last one.      Jemma shut the clinic door on the last patient of the day and sank into a chair.  Everything ached -- her arms ached, her feet ached, even her head ached.     Carolyn poked her head into the office.  "Hey, nurse Jemma -- are we done?"     Jemma rubbed her forehead.  "Yep, Mrs. Greenclair was the last name on the schedule.  I've never seen so many patients in one day.  I don't know how you do this every week."     Carolyn disappeared down the hall, and a moment lat...

     I've been working on ToP in my spare moments, trying to figure out how to say all that I want to say.  The thing about ToP is that it is layered.  There is not just one arc.  And that is true of many stories -- especially big, fat ones.  But what I haven't learned from "how-to" articles is how to plot all of those layers.      One of the things that I am doing is a character relationship chart, which I invented (and shared here ).        Some relationships stay steady through a whole book, but many of them follow an arc. Examples: Strangers to friends.   Love at first sight to a lasting solid relationship.   Friends to enemies.   Enemies to arc-enemies.   Enemies to friends.      And those relationships may be viewed differently by the different parties involved.  Maybe Joyce was trying to make friends all along, but Brenda couldn't see that until t...